Friday, January 16, 2009

Screw the Canvas!

So, I've been reading the book "The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting" by Daniel V. Thompson.  (Thanks for the Christmas present cousin Debbie!) It's a great read, and I highly recommend it. Anyway, I've never really liked painting on canvas.  It's a hard to do detail work with all those bumps.  Reading his book, I've found that the surface of choice back in the day was wood panels, primed & prepared with gesso and plaster and other stuff.  With glue made from cheese.  Thats just too cool!  Who knew that cheese and lime could make glue?!
I've been avoiding the whole making the canvas part of this project for a while.  I mean, canvas involves growing stuff, and rotting (er, I mean retting) and beating the crap out of it, then spinning it & weaving it etc. 
 
I don't know what it is, but I just don't like most fabric arts.  There was some really huge 'soft sculptures'  (let's be honest, they were stuffed plushies on steroids) at a modern art museum the first time I went to LA.  I was not impressed.  I just couldn't take it seriously.
Now wood is a different story.  To make a wood panel, I first will need to make some wicked cool metal tools.  That means I'll have to do pretty much everything except maybe the smelting.  Casting, forging, sharpening, trying to figure out if I really need to smelt tin to mix with copper to make bronze or if *ANYONE* on earth had tin back in 4004 BC.  That could be very cool.  
Cool, because this will involve fire, furnaces, hacking and cutting.  The artistic equivalent of shoveling the snow in the dead of winter while exiled in Siberia. I'm pretty sure I can work carving in there if I try hard enough.  Actually a lot of wood panels had carved inlays in the work.  So there.  I can.  
I'm much more excited about this now.  Anyone know the building codes of Seattle, and if permits are needed for kilns & furnaces and the like in one's backyard?

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Time to get back on the horse

Well, after too much time spent on video games and surfing the web, my computer recently succumbed to a nasty Vundo trojan.  (I'm writing this on my wife's Mac). 

Sidenote:  I recommend against surfing the web for the lyrics to Cyndi Lauper's "She-Bop"  Bigger waste of time than I could have imagined.  If you do, do it on a Mac, or at least have all your software up to date.  Vundo is nasty and now I need to nuke & pave my machine!

So, for the last couple of days, I've stayed away from the computer at home.  When I got home tonight, I had some late Christmas presents from my cousin Debby  arrive.  In addition to a very cool Richard Cheese CD & Golf Journal, I got the book: The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting by Daniel V Thompson. Talk about great timing!  I've already read the Lapis Lazuli section, and am hoping to make it through Azurite shortly.  Finally I can put that expensive hunk of rock to good use!