art

Framed Crow

| kirsti

IMG_1254

I was framing a couple of illustrations yesterday and in the box that passes for my artwork storage I came across a little ink sketch that fit a spare frame I had lying around. Framing is tedious, expensive and time consuming and my wallspace is minimal so things don’t often make it under glass but it’s kind of nice when they do. I haven’t had a lot of time to make art that is meant to be the sort that hangs on the wall. The few large pieces destined for retail applications are very commercial, and other work has been for alternative applications or book art, so doing something that has no other purpose than to hang on a wall is rather novel. It’s also nice to work on a subject that’s purely my own choice and for my own amusement.

Sandhill Crane Screen

| kirsti

Sandhill Cranes (details) | oil on gold leaf on panel by Margaret Fitz-Gibbon

This is a portion of one of the panels of a screen my grandma painted some years ago. It’s always been a favourite of mine. The whole thing is 12′ long by 6′ tall and made up of 6 individual panels.

My grandma paints intermittantly now and no longer in this style. She finds painting on gold leaf physically tiring – especially at this size. Much of the time painting is spent tipping the panels at just the right angle to avoid glare. The subject matter, however, is still very similar – birds and plants. It kills me how she can pick up a pencil to draw, sometimes after a break of 1 or more years, and produce an absolutley perfect little bird or bud or leaf. She insists that when I’m her age it’ll be the same for me and that even when she’s not drawing she thinks about it. But I do the same – I just find when I’ve had time off I need to retrain the muscles in my drawing hand and reconnect the line between my eyes, my brain and my hand and I just don’t seem to find the same ease with it as she seems to.

Finished Painting ~ Orphir Bay, Orkney

| kirsti

Finished Painting ~ Orphir, Orkney

Orphir Bay, Orkney | oil on panel, 12″ x 15 1/2″

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After spending most of the year not painting, this is a first getting back into it piece. It’s painted over an old oil sketch I did in college, on a badly primed piece of panel (that’s why the vertical lines). It’s meant as a bit of a *throwaway piece – something to do to get the feel back but not feel too precious about. The reference photo was taken in July during a trip to Orkney. I stayed with cousins on their farm in Orphir. Our room had a view of Scapa Flow, the church yard where the ruins of Earl’s Bu and the round church are, and the fields and fences seen in this painting.

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Happiness is…

| kirsti

Happiness is...

…new books for Christmas.

It was a booky Christmas. I gave some books, I got some books, and I just couldn’t help myself… I bought more than a few for myself in the process. We are now officially experiencing bookcase overflow.

Gift books from the top:

The Last Wild Wolves – Ghosts of the Rainforest, Ian McAllister, Greystone Books – I first saw the documentary and then some weeks later came across the book while Christmas shopping. I immediately bought it for a family member’s Christmas present. As it turned out, my mum had also bought me a copy. This is a beautiful book full of gorgeous photographs documenting the unique behaviour of a population of genetically distinct wolves. But, as it seems with any fabulously untouched ecosystem in this world, this place, along with its unique wildlife, is being threatened by human industry. The author Ian McAllister was interviewed on the Quarks and Quarks holiday book show on December 15th and he touched on this issue at the end of the interview. I am always amazed at how biologists can maintain their composure when discussing the possible demise of the corner of the earth where they have spent so much time studying, and in this author’s case, living. It must be incredibly heart breaking. It is from where I am sitting, hundreds of kilometers away in the city where the largest predatory mammals around a with unique hunting behaviour are cat-eating coyotes.

Play Pen – New Children’s Book Illustration, Martin Salisbury, Laurence King Publishing (there’s a review here with some images from the book). There are lots of inspiring illustrations and biographies in this book. It’s also nice that the illustrations are shown in page format with the typography. This book does make me a bit sad that we don’t have access to the more ‘brave’ European-style books here in Canada.

Jenny Saville, Simon Schama. Sensual paint. Brave, beautiful, loose, form-building, spontaneous-yet-intended brush strokes. Enough said.

Process Recess vol 2, James Jean. Some lovely draughtsmanship in this one.

I’m looking forward to putting aside some time to really get into these.

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Painting Detail

| kirsti

oil on canvas

The middle of the week came and went and I’m still working on it. But it’s much closer to being done. I started off painting it upside down, now that I’m working on the foreground unreflected elements I’ve flipped it the right way up. The previous photo is upside down.

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