Tiny Bubbles and Small Moments

Last Friday night as I was coming out of the darkroom at 3 in the morning--I had been working on the last project--I noticed that the fountain in front of the art building was bubbling up from soap. It's a fairly frequent (at least once a year) prank/phenomenon that a group of students puts detergent or soap mix of some form into the fountain late at night so it bubbles over and the bubbles get blown across campus into the morning--which is a pretty magical event in itself, especially when its so early that the dew hasn't even dried from the grass and the birds are singing rather confused versions of their typical morning medleys. Of these events, I had never seen the fountain before it bubbles over--I must have gotten there within thirty minutes of them adding the mix. So, I just had to whip out my digital camera (which I just happened to have on me) and take pictures!


It would have been perfect if I'd had my tripod on me, as the lighting was (typically) awful and I needed to use a long exposure. I managed to deal with the hand shaking problem fairly well, though, obviously most of them are slightly burred, but at least it's not too bad. I would have gone back into the darkroom to borrow a tripod, but all the doors were locked from the outside and I really didn't want to call security to let me in. I'll admit that I was a little paranoid about security finding me on their evening checks and thinking that I had put the soap mix in the fountain. (I don't know if someone could actually get in trouble for it.) So, I took as many photos as I could and absorbed as much of the moment as I could without lingering too long...


The whole thing was still pretty magical, though. I felt like a character out of one of Calvino's Difficult Loves stories, or maybe from Marcovaldo. I had a little chunk of happenstance, a little chunk of time and space all to myself. It's these little moments that make everything a little brighter. I have quite a few more photos of this, so maybe I'll post more. We'll see.

Better Days

A two-pic poster today...mainly because it's the gross kind of rainy (I love rain, but this is pathetic) and I miss my kitties.

So here's for the first:


And here's for the latter:

Skin, Ink and Soul I (Cyanotype)

This image comes from my first photo assignment of the term--a series called "Skin, Ink and Soul." A very close friend agreed to pose for me so I could photograph her and her tattoos with a pinhole camera. It was a lot of fun. The next assignment is a series of cyanotypes, so in class the other day we learned how to make a cyanotype and each made one image. I actually really like how it looks in the cyanotype. This one isn't perfect--the application of the chemicals wasn't very even so I have bits of darker and lighter cyan, but there is a definite learning curve for this process.

Dream of a Girl Inside (Underpainting)

The colors are a bit more red in the dark tones and a bit more gold in the medium tones than they should be--all I used was Raw Sienna and varying amounts of turpentine. But, oh well. Such is the price of digital copies.

I don't think I'm going to add many color glazes. The girl's shirt will be a light gray (with a *touch* of purple I think), her jeans will get a light wash of blue-gray, the horse will be bronze-red-brown like Toler, and the shadows and edges (for a lop-sided vignette-effect, really) will get a navy-black glaze. As for the woods themselves, I might just add a little white glaze over some small areas to give it a more "fogged" look, but other than that I really like the dreamy gold feel. I'm debating about adding very, VERY slight glazes of subtle color just to add a little depth, but I have no idea how that will turn out. Everything I do in terms of glazes will be pretty subtle, though. I really want to be a dreamscape, so it needs to have that diffuse, magical tone/feel to it. We'll see. Suggestions are more than welcome if anyone thinks of anything.

Into Being

Remember Majesty? It's okay if you don't (he's in my labels). Well, anyway, this was taken a looong time ago. It remains one of my favorites, and although I know a lot of people have seen it already, I had the itch to post it. =)

Movement of Souls

A painting! Acrylic on (hand-prepared) canvas. I don't technically have a title for this one yet. Anyway, I painted this last term in my first painting class. At the time I was really drawn to high-contrast form images, so I combined that with my concept--to depict the wholeness, or transcended state between horse and rider (what I believe dressage strives for).

It took me a loooong time to complete. I started off with a drawing that took me two-three days to complete, which I transferred onto the canvas with carbon paper. After that I did the shading in the horse and rider, painted the background dark gray, then added layer upon layer of color until it created a "black," leaving just enough streaked brush stroke to allow some color to show through. I did the white highlights in the horse and rider last. Despite the amount of tedious work, I really enjoyed working on this piece.

This photo doesn't really do the color justice--there is a strong prescence of green throughout, or a green/blue/teal tonality, but there is a lot more reds, oranges, and purples showing through than you can see. Oh well. Eventually I'll be able to take a better photo of it, I hope. (Especially as acrylic isn't very archival.)

For Alfred

So, my university owns a real human skeleton. Actually, I think it might have been donated to them by the individual (I might be remembering incorrectly, though). In either case, the skeleton makes his (we're fairly certain it's male, but some profs argue the point--it's old, so no one really knows/remembers for sure...) home in the art studio. He's kept safe and sound in storage for the most part, but he gets pulled out for drawing and, well, whatever exercise he could lend a bone (or a body) to.



Last term I used him in my drawing class, before we did nude figure drawing, just to get used to the proportions of the human body. Our class initially named him Alfred. Today in photography, we used him to practice taking pictures with 4x5 view cameras and pinhole cameras. Woot! J got us special "Croatian" positive paper (apparently they still use it there in photobooths, like for id photos) that we used instead of negative sheets. This meant that all we had to do was take the photo and develop it in the darkroom like we would a print after exposing it in the enlarger. Near-instant results! (Which is perfect for getting familiar with "new," time-tasking equipment.)

The first two images were taken with a view camera. This last image, however, was taken with a pinhole. Because of the paper, which is eqivalent to 3 ASA, and it being in a pinhole camera, it needed a LOOONG exposure time. Long = an hour and a half! I set up the pinhole camera (just a wooden-box camera) on a stool in front of Alfred and left it for, yes, an hour and a half. Good times. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, even though it looks a little creepy. Alfred got moved a few times (different poses, etc), so he looks a little ghostly. And you might notice something about his skull...


And, no, no April Fool's day joke. Sorry. I'm lame. =(