Coil

Happy Easter! (or day after)

The days really meld together, don't they. I've been able to stay pretty productive in light of our circumstances. With the new makeshift studio space in the basement I've been able to dabble in both print and wax-sculpting/casting.

The little octopus core I showed you last time has since been rubber-casted so the mould is complete. It does face a complication where, because of the way it's oriented, a cavity of air will always form where the eyes are, but I've found some solutions for it. Meanwhile, I still have some skulls to finalize. Once I finish those and make rubber moulds out of them, I'll make them even more complicated with flowers and moss and all that lovely stuff!

I printed the backup Lonely Hydra plate up to the second layer but it ended up cracking as well. This time, there was a piece of tape on the bed underneath, but I'm just starting to think that it was just a cursed image to begin with. It could be as technically as the image itself providing too many stress points, but it could just very well have been a project that took far longer than it should have. It was an easy project, but the lack of resources and timing kinda botched it from the get-go. All good and well, I then purposely cracked it even more and plan to get some last prints off of it, count my losses. Luckily I bought a whole stack of papers in February before the stores shut their doors. I'll post pictures of those prints when I get to them.

​I'd say the most exciting thing I've been up to is my return to digital art. My online shops and activity were neglected when I was working in the basement. My wrist was acting up again after some printing (probably onset carpal tunnel) so I decided to do some work at the computer. It's odd, because typically drawing on the computer can also mess up your wrist badly, but I took it easy at first, and my wrist was bound in a hot-cool compress. Since then it's been much better, and I've been having a lot of fun. 

​My next design is digitizing the back of my ukulele, which is a fresco-like mural of a few of my favourite things. I've posted pictures before, but I'm really pleased with how the remaster is going. It's a bigger canvas and less messy; more of my details are retained and refined. So far I've gotten, maybe, a third of the way down? I've also added the Termina Moon from Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and I'm sorta sorry I didn't have the mind to add it on the uke. That game has always made me tremor with fear and awe.

I've reached the same dilemma with it as I did with the uke, however. As cool as King Ghidorah is, the fact he has three heads makes his design tiresome to render. After I finished one head I decided to finish a very quick design to liven up my shop. It ended up being the biggest file I've ever made, but I'm very pleased with it!!

I mentioned before how I was really interested and inspired by Alphonse Mucha's work, or La Style Mucha, and I wanted to employ some of the qualities to my online work. Although still a little messy, I think this is the type of illustration I'd love to move forward with. Digital paintings like the Uke Fresco or my Gaffer Gods will still be approached as digital paintings, but I really like how Plague Gaffer came out, and I want to approach other motifs in this way.
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Plague Gaffer's based on a photo of glass artist Alexander Rosenberg, who starred in the first season of Blown Away on Netflix. I haven't had a chance to meet him personally, but I've heard him speak and seen him from afar, he's a really cool guy. I found an image of him working taken by photographer David Leyes on the set of Blown Away and based my drawing off of it. The background is based on an old Art Nouveau tapestry, and the textures from a watercolour image package I downloaded. All and all, a good collection of new techniques for me to employ for future designs. ​

Alexander Rosenberg. Photo by David Leyes.

Right now I'm uploading Plague Gaffer to my shop, which is a long process due to terrible internet connections, but I'll post an announcement on my social medias when all of it is live. After that I'll go back to working on the Uke Fresco.
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Stay tuned, and take care!

Gosia