Ink on paper
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The Hellmouth is a medieval theatrical motif that found its way into religious art. It can be found in engravings(+), illuminated manuscripts(+), Renaissance paintings, and contemporary pop culture.
For this still life I used a carved jaguar head that my brother brought back from Mexico. The figures were based on toys from Archee McPhee's, which I turned into devils. A visiting artist dubbed the whole setup 'Bosch in a Box.'
During my research for the piece, I stumbled upon one image in which the artist had rendered the flames in a manner resembling leaves. I liked the idea so much that I ran out and gathered a fistful of the freshly fallen Autumn leaves. As they dried their shapes grew more convoluted and flame-like.
5 comments:
The tone is really impressive. This is one of the cooler works I've seen in a while
Wow, Michael. Very nice line work. I'm glad that you included the detail images. Frankly, I'd also like to see a larger image of the full piece. (And more information on paper and ink would be nice, too.)
Will:
Thanks for the kind words. I've been working on making smooth washes of tone using charcoal, which runs counter to my general nature. In this piece I wanted to try to achieve a similar effect using crosshatching. I'm glad to hear that it gets a 'thumbs up.'
HH:
I'd be happy to post a larger image. I used assorted Micron pens over a pencil under drawing. As for the paper, I used a cream colored Reeves BFK. My initial drawing was on white illustration board, but I scrapped it and went to the warm off-white to give it a mellow, time-worn sort of feel. The paper, as it turns out, was rather ill-suited for the task. It was too soft and caused some headaches. Happily, the softness allowed me to actually erase ink with only minimal surface disturbance. I can't say I'd choose it again, but it did end up saving my butt on a few passages.
Hey Mike,
I thought the head looked familiar. What are the dimensions for this?
BTW...the detail is nice, and I like the 2D 'cut-out' look of the hills in the background. It gives the piece a diorama feel. I've seen some folks use this approach with 3D animation.
Sean
Ideas2image
Sean:
This drawing is 12.5" x 15"
Yeah, I had fun setting this up. After looking at the stylized hills in iconography and decided to make mine out of stacks of glued cardboard. The result was quite different from the inspiration, but I liked it nonetheless. It played along with my tendency to conceive of images in discrete layers (for example look at my painting "...and I'm afraid I never will." aka the old Irish guy on the hill)
I also like the diorama feel of the whole thing. While working on this I was very interested in the relationship between landscape and still life. In "Still life with Virgin Mary," for example, I actually constructed a little building out of cardboard, drew a tree-lined background, and made little snow banks out of styrofoam. Though it's less obvious, "Leviathan" was also part of this series, however the only still life element was the boat, which I constructed out of paper.
Though it seems pretty straight forward, the landscape/still life relationship is actually pretty nuanced and interesting. I'm working on an essay about it.
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