Tuesday, March 9, 2010

John, con't (6)


Now we're at the part where Jesus predicts Judas' betrayal and Peter's denial, and on right is another I am statement, in this case "the way, the truth, and the life."
The large illustration there isn't actually. It's a transfer of an old etching of gargoyles. I wanted a a nice big piece, needed to start a new visual for evil/bad things coming up, and to darken the page/whole tone of the piece. I also wanted something very different than what had come up before.

It's an acrylic medium transfer. Pretty simply, you put matte medium on both pieces of paper, stick them together, let it dry, and then wash the top one off. It get's a little fuzzy and lighter, but overall I quite like how they look. I've seen some awesome photos transferred this way, but you need to do it onto something porous. I wish you could do it on glass, I can't remember what one of my classmates used to that that but it was gorgeous, she made a chandelier among other things, but that's not really relevant. I get a little passionate when I start talking about art and go on and on and on!

Originally I had planned to use more of these transfers, but in the end this was the only one that ended up in the book. I'm not totally sure why, it didn't end up totally as nice as I wanted, but now looking at it I really like the look. I put ink around it to blend it into the page, that sort of thing will be coming up in the next few pages, and I seem to have erased an entire sentence too. No more covering up mistakes with gold leaf, that's saved for special parts, the tone is darker instead. I do have one symbol in gold leaf at the bottom, a very thin halo in gold leaf next to the bits about God. I really really like this part. In the first part of the book I likely would have done that with watercolour, it was much more traditional that way, but here everything is black ink with specks of gold used more judiciously.


And here's the close up of the second page. The illustrations are for that I am statement. A roads, map type things, and flowers/vines for life. But no colour, not in this section! The two halves of the book are pretty easy to distinguish in style, colour, symbols. The black background is creeping in, though I was still writing around it. Also, the calligraphy is not quite as precise as it used to be. It's going to slowly get angular and rough, but here I was just writing a little faster and not paying much attention to the edges of the columns.

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