Week 10 Work

Continuing in the same vein as last week, I produced another miniature embroidered portrait, another dye painting, and began work on my Peruvian gourd this week.

This portrait is different from the others before it in that it is the first full-body miniature I've done, but it's also the first figure I've rendered in this particular body of work that is at all stylised.  I really drew from the elongated and elegant forms of fashion illustration for this piece.  Portraying the female body as so slender and fragile is sort of something I've been fighting against, because of how women are portrayed in media and resulting body issues in girls and women, etc.  I wanted to portray average, healthy, and imperfect female bodies throughout my work up until this point.  However, for the fabric I chose and the style of this piece overall, I don't regret my choice to stylize the form.  I think it works with this piece, and I don't necessarily think that it causes an aesthetic or moral problem for me in regards to issues of body image.

I also began sewing into (finally) the second larger embroidery piece I had drawn out for the last critique, then painted over spring break.  I added "gold" leaf to it and then embroidered in a fabric with a metallic print to it, which really sets it apart from the flatness of the space princess and emulates older forms of this style of art.

dried

The piece in progress, at the point at which I had just decided I was done painting it.  Afterwards, the bleach continued to work as the piece dried.  On a positive note, the continued bleaching and the natural lightening of colours that occurs as a piece dries caused this piece to become less horrific as the red faded out.  Sadly, the continued bleaching also means that the beautiful little blue splotch in the bottom right corner disappeared.

I quite liked working on the dye paintings, and I did yet another one this week.  This one is the first one I've painted vertically, meaning I had it hanging as I worked on it.  All the others I have painted on a flat surface, usually the floor.  I wanted to further relinquish control while making this piece by allowing the dye to drip and run (although I did use the bleached muslin, which I know bleeds less than the unbleached, because I didn't want to just make a flat out mess).  I also used bleach on it, which created an interesting effect because it not only lightened the colour of the dye gradually, creating a gradient, but it also caused the dye to run and spread differently than it would on dry fabric or on fabric that was just wet from the dye.  The bleach also continued to lighten the dyes beyond the point at which I was finished working on the piece, adding another layer to my lack of control and producing results which were, at the time, unpredictable.  The colours were also, in general, more subdued than the colours I have been mixing with dye, especially, for example, her skin tone.  I also had never used green before and I'm oddly attached to it in this piece.  I think I felt it was necessary because I found the blood red of her hair quite unnerving while painting this in my bathroom, alone, in the middle of the night.

The gourd is something I've wanted to do for a long time, ever since I saw one on display at the UBC Museum of Anthropology several years ago.  I actually really wanted to travel to Peru and learn the art from an Inca, but alas, the trip to Peru is on permanent delay until my family and I are able to get used to hiking in high altitudes.  I remember seeing the gourd and feeling in awe.  The first one I saw was probably a foot in diameter and almost as high, with an incredible amount of detail carved into the bustling scene on its surface.  It was one of the most beautiful pieces of folk art I had ever seen and I knew that one day I wanted to learn how it was made or to try doing it myself.  So a couple of weeks ago, I ordered some gourds off of ebay and bought myself a woodburner.  This was something I actually hadn't thought of doing for BA, something I just sort of forgot about until I think I saw a picture of one and thought, why on earth don't I do that as part of my own work?
I have only been working with the nib that came with my woodburning tool, which is a "detail" nib, but is still quite large.  That is okay for this section, but once I get into the content, I will need finer lines.  The difficulty is that I still want the burnt lines to depress the surface of the gourd, effectively carving and burning at the same time.  I went out this afternoon and bought some additional nibs, so I should be able to get a better line quality with those.