I was cleaning out my e-mails and had almost forgotten about this piece. As a housewarming / late wedding / general life present to my goodest friends Dina and Erik I rendered their house Carson Ellis-style.
Completely ripped off her cover to Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society. I had missed Stewart’s discussion of the book at the Blue Manateeдивани (world’s greatest children’s book store) but picked up the book based on owner Sandy’s recommendation. The cover is just as quirky as the book — filled with interesting characters and a fun story line. (My favorite character: Constance Contraire.)
Call it what you will: rip-off, derivative or homage, I know it’s not perfect, or even good, but I had a great time drawing it and highly recommend sitting down and drawing every leaf on a tree to anyone looking for a little pen and paper meditation.
Every day I drive past the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower. (I didn’t know that was its name until a few minutes ago when I looked it up.) I’d noticed the doors and balcony on the front of it and asked my co-workers if they opened. I was answered with a resounding, “No, they’re painted on.” Yet today I took my lunch in the park near the tower and when the chimes rang for noon I heard talking begin. Walking over to the tower I walked over saw a row of mice scampering out one door and in another. Apparently every hour the bells chime and the mechanical figures move onto the balcony to act out the 13th century story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Oddly enough I’ve been in the mood for fairy tales lately. I’ve just finished reading Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales, and then revisited Pullman’s dark fairy tale Clockwork : Or All Wound Up. The Pullman tale involves an under-skilled apprentice clockmaker and clock tower that is like the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower on steroids.
Of course, this re-ignites my obsession with automatons and clocks. There’s a beautiful clock in Brussels but nothing quite like the mechanical figures my imagination conjures. I guess it’s time to learn how to really work brass.
Another photo and a video of the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower in action after the jump.
That sound you heard? It was me, screaming with joy over my new Spy Fly. Through some eBay mojo and the identification skills of a friend (who needs to finish a questionairre — nudge, nudge) I happened to pick up one of the static or test Spy Flys from the Golden Compass film. I had held out hope that Noble Collection would complete their replica, but after months of delays they finally canceled it.
I guess I’ll have to make the box for it. Photos after the jump.
This weekend was filled with great projects. First, the Greater Cincinnati Calligraphy Guild meeting presentation was on flipping our perceptions of background, foreground, and mid-ground. Calligrapher Karen McMannon was the presenter. As always, she did a great job of combining instruction with hands-on activities.
Toward the end of the meeting, Ann Woods showed off copies of her book, A Trayside Handbook of Marbling. Ann is a book maker, calligrapher, and marble, and I can honestly say that her love of the arts is infectious (a little Web research turns up that she’s been one of Columbus Ohio’s Artists-in-Schools for over 23 years). Her book is no less impressive. Everything about the book has been designed to make it useful. From the spiral binding (to allow it to lay flat) to tipped-in samples of marbling (shown above) to an additional reference sheet to be mounted above your workstation. There’s a copious suppliers list, bibliography, and she even includes directions on making your own equipment. In the book’s preface, she refers to it as being “a working manual for the serious beginner.” I love that. Serious beginner. Unlike so many art instructions, she doesn’t assume the reader is there to dabble. She assumes that the reader is there to go from beginner to master. It really sets the tone for the book and turns it into a piece that will travel with the student throughout their learning process.
Alas, I looked to see if Ann was selling copies on her Web site, but I couldn’t find them. She did say she was setting up an online store soon. Her e-mail address is aimiaart at yahoo dot com.
Long-time Madame Malkins lurker and YouTuber RogueS0ck has posted a couple of videos profiling some of the Potter replicas Noble Collection has released.
Once he gets warmed up he gives a nice review of the Horcrux ring and locket from the latest film. The pieces are beautiful, but for accuracy’s sake, I prefer the locket on the cover of the UK book. I still wonder what act of artistic direction caused them to not put an “S” on it.
Propnomicon has some intersting thoughts on the process of aging paper. He notices a more brownish-green tinge when aging with walnut ink and a more yellow tone when aging with tea.
I don’t get the green tinge when dying with my inks – I switched to making my own ink a couple of years ago and it is a rich golden brown color. I did notice a green tinge on the walnut ink made by Making Memories, but I didn’t notice it on the ink made by 7 Gypsies. Perhaps it’s a brand related issue?
Propnomicon also mentions that he doesn’t like the greenish tinge because it implies to him that the piece is dirty or grimy. However, I prefer a moldy look to pages because the reality of aging is that cotton rag and vellum do not contain lignin and therefor don’t yellow. In fact, the page is going to stay relatively whitish unless it sees moisture damage.
When I need to make something look yellowed — like a pulp novel or an old newspaper I use liquid yellow watercolor. It works great as a dye bath (like the walnut ink) or can be brushed on to build up aging on the edges (as in a page from a book). I can also add other colors to it and do subtle washes to build up the tone (or even add a little mold).
In the end the technique you use depends on the feeling you’re trying to evoke. In reality, the basilisk page wouldn’t be browned and moldy through the entire page. It was torn from a sealed book. However a crumpled sheet of clean paper pried from Hermione’s hand wouldn’t evoke the same feeling as a scuffed and moldy piece of paper.
Propnomicon and I are lucky that the paper pieces we create get to be held and felt by the end consumer — as opposed to viewed on a screen. It’s a full sensory experience — the eyes, the hands, and even the nose come into play.
Just a little teaser for the new project my dad and I are working on (he’s an electronics engineer). The project contains brass, wood, LEDs, and a touch of Benjamin Franklin.
I saw Coraline this past weekend. It should come as no surprise that I loved it. Driving home from the theater, I pondered over the previews for the CG movies (Ice Age, Monsters vs. Aliens) and how they seemed fun, but elicited little to no excitement from me (I will confess that the Ice Age trailer was pretty darn cute). There’s just something to be said for reality — for creating things in our space.
The Coraline Web site hypes that everything in the movie was made by hand. Everything was made by hand. It makes me a bit sad to think that making things by hand is so uncommon that it is something to be touted, not assumed. Now, I know that the computer certainly played a part in making Coraline, and there isn’t some magic computer that spits out the latest CG movie — tons of people work by hand on those films too. But I think that stop motion speaks to that little voice in me that whispers, “you could make that.” My thoughts during the film flip-flopped between “look at the detail on . . .” and “oh, I want to make that when I get home.” It doesn’t hurt that the world was full of such things as glowing blimps and a preying mantis tractor.
I was utterly inspired by the movie and am already planning a variety of crazy projects. Want to hop on the inspiration train? Get started by watching this video where model rigger Oliver Jones discusses how found objects become other-worldly moving flowers. I’d be surprised if after watching it you don’t want to go out and make something.
, and then revisited Pullman’s dark fairy tale 
. The Pullman tale involves an under-skilled apprentice clockmaker and clock tower that is like the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower on steroids.
