Emily and Lennon: the trivial points

My latest piece contains the subjects Emily Dickinson and John Lennon. But this is not the first time I've combined these two. A very early piece titled: Not a Girl Who Misses Much was the first meeting of these two.



The piece has always been nicknamed "Red Em" -- for obvious reasons. This was the first piece of artwork I sold in a gallery.




As you can see from the framed art, there's more to the image than is shown in the close-up. Being such an early piece, I didn't have the image capture processes in place that I do now. It was too large to fit on my scanner bed. And I didn't own a digital camera when it was completed (prior to being framed).

And because of this, these are the only two images that exist.

Dylan paints me a picture...

I was driving home from work yesterday listening to Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" on my iShuffle. I replayed it a number of times. This image came to me and I wanted to get the words right. I wanted to "do this piece" after supper last night. Just jump into. But I ran out of time. So, I thought I would do a digital collage to work from. But that didn't happen either.

I made time for it to happen tonight....

Emily goes digitally-WONDERful!

Mark Martin...the Cartoonist, NOT the race car driver has a wonderful website: www.markmartin.net with artwork, a blog and "draw-with-me's"...His latest "Draw-With-Me" is all about "super-heroes" and some collector cards or whatever...


Here's who I entered:



http://www.markmartin.net/cdwm/true/believer.html

Emily Dickinson and John Lennon in "The Room"

LAST NIGHT...after watching The Queen, I returned to the "Queen and King" in progress... I really wanted some closure on my most recent collage of Emily and Lennon. So, I started and completed the assemblage part. I tried a few new techniques in the use of tape and glue adhesives. I also used the the double-sided tape with a foam thickness to build up a whole area. Actually, a whole image. Emily has "three-dimensionality" in this composition. I was quite pleased with the results. This morning, I picked up some colored pencils and started adding more color to this piece. I continued with this process this evening...

Here is the finished piece... (click the image to view it larger)



You can see quite clearly in the larger version the "natural shadows" cast by the light hitting the raised pieces....

...In this image, you can see the "foam thickness" that is raising Emily further from the paper surface than John and the background...



...The double-sided tape with the foam thickness is placed all around the image close to the edges. Then further bridging is done horizontally and vertically to give support. But it's similar to a thin plywood floor placed over joists--there's still a lot of flexibility and "bounce" in some areas...

...This requires a very delicate approach to any further coloring. I like this limitation. It forces me to work areas slowly. And the pencil can sometimes be grainy. This is cool....



...the "logical approach" here would be to complete all coloring before assemblage. And really, that was my intent. I felt the coloring was complete -- last night. But seeing it all assembled on my drawing board this morning, it just called out for "more"....

...Part of that is due to it's size. All the images in the collage were based on existing images. The majority of it is based on my "winter piece" of my "Emily Dickinson: Four Seasons Series". And here you can see how much larger it is than the original. (click on image for larger view.)...




...being so much larger just asks for more fleshing out of the facial features and such....

Well, another one completed (or nearly so), I'm looking forward to the next but it's late so it'll have to wait....

A little about Lennon....

On this, October 9th, Lennon's birthday, I thought it appropriate to post this image of one of my earliest renderings of John. There actually were a number of others done during my high school years including a couple of scratchboard drawings. But these have been lost or stolen over the years. And so this oil painting done in August 1973 is "the oldest."

In honor of BANNED BOOKS Week

Here's a piece I created inspired by the "banned book":
Slaughterhouse Five