Dali and his Goose

This was the big day. Driving in Barcelona. On our own. Erica thinks it was a bit more hair-raising than I did, but it is definitely an acquired taste. Finding the rental place was our first challenge which included an early morning subway ride, three different information kiosks, and crossing a rather treacherous street. Once we got everything sorted, we were off to Figueres to see the Dali Theater-Museum.

I can say that it’s definitely worth seeing the museum, but getting there is really a toss-up. It’s expensive no matter what you do. So, just suck it up and do it if you’re ever in Barcelona. Describing the Dali museum is difficult. It’s Dali-esque, and if you know what that means, then you have a good idea of what an entire museum devoted to Dali would be like.

The ride back to Barcelona was pretty straight forward and easy enough. Our Garmin direction finder can be a bit of a pill at times, but it held up most of the time.

The rest of the evening was spent wandering the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona and getting rained on. We found some cool old cathedral structures and managed to avoid dinner again. We also passed on our chance to go to a Flamenco dance show tonight. We’re hoping to catch one later in the trip.

Dinner in Spain is kind of a hassle. You have a couple of basic choices in the tourist areas. Tapas and paellas. Tapas, despite the exotic name, are finger/bar foods served in portions. Paella is a massive rice dish with meat and vegetables. The other option is a three course meal including a dessert. So, we dodged all of these and opted for gelatos for dinner.

Crayon Painting

NOTE: I took a week’s summer vacation away from my blog. It’s kind of nice to get away for a couple of days and build up a backlog of material.

I’ve been feeling artistic lately, so I’ve taken up my tools again.

I finally got a good book of watercolor techniques, but I think I might need to get a book on starting watercolors. I’m also going to check out the local Community Education to see if there are any classes I can take.

Erica has a collection of watercolor pencils that I might also try out. They seem like an interesting idea, especially for fine detail. Not sure how they will work in practical use, but that’s the great thing about art. Even your mistakes can still be interesting.

I started work with soft pastels again. It’s strange using what feels like a softer crayon to draw things, but I do like the look of them. There are still a few tricks of the trade that I need to work on with pastels. I’ve gotten some of the blending and layering techniques going, but certainly not perfected.

Blending is the tougher one for me. Finding material I can use to blend is the toughest part. I used a rounded metal pen to blend this morning and it produced little to no effect, much as I suspected. Using my finger is a good method, but becomes to difficult to control in small areas. Maybe I’ll try some smudge sticks and see if those do what I’m hoping.

My attempt at designing the Major Arcana in a month has failed, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up. It just means I’ll need to divert more of my attention to the project in order to finish it up. I’m kind of tempted to incorporate my work in pastels and watercolors into the project though.

Work has been good for doing quick soft pastel drawings out the cafeteria window. There are plenty of interesting shapes and architecture to try different techniques. The next time I have something that isn’t just an experiment in colors I’ll post it up here.

Deconstructing the Coptic

I decided on a design for my CoreCon 2011 art project. I’ll be doing a Coptic-style book with the theme of Myth & Magic in mind. I’ve been considering my options and I have an idea of what I want to do.

My first thought was to use leather for the covers and as the stitching for the spine. I’d like to avoid using animal byproducts if at all possible, so that scuppers the leather idea. Although that did give me an idea to do a dragon-hide book. Without leather, I’m left with wood and plant products.

I saw a book design idea online that involved using hemp and that piqued my interest. Seems like a good idea. I’ll use hemp string and hemp paper for the primary book components.

I haven’t mentioned the covers yet, because I’m still searching for an idea of how to do those. I’ve considered pieces of tree bark, pressed plant fibers, and other materials, but nothing is really striking me as of yet. I’ll keep searching for a solution to this part of the project.

With hemp paper and stitching, those should give it good archival qualities. The next design piece is the size. This is where I’ll be deviating just a bit from my normal standards. Right now, I want to make this a big book. A “tome” of sorts. Based on the paper sizes I can easily get and for a reasonable price, I’m looking at making the pages at least 13″ a side. Working with such large sheets of paper should be an interesting challenge.

I want rougher paper to provide bulkier signatures. The signatures will each be composed of 4 folios (a folio is a single sheet of paper, folded in half), providing 16 pages (a page is one side of one folio) per signature. It will be a minimum of 4 signatures, more likely it will be 8 signature, making a 128 page book. The rougher paper will also make the book easier to use for water-color paintings or acrylics.

The final touch to make it an artistic piece is to decorate the border of each page. That’s as laborious as it sounds. I’ll build a template to lie on each page. Actually, a couple of templates would be a good idea to vary the design a bit.

All of this is pie in the sky, but the ideas are forming and it wouldn’t be difficult to accomplish in about a month or so once I got started. The sticking point at this time is the covers. Once I can get past that, I think I’ll be ready to start.

Moving towards Armageddon

After looking at last night’s photos of my bookbinding project, I really need to start using a tripod. Too many of my bookphotos are blurry from the slight hand jitter and the low light levels. From this point onward, I’m hoping to improve the quality of photos I’ll be posting on here.

I have a couple of different bookbinding projects that I want to try as part of the overall 27.5 Empty Buddha’s project. I’d like to try some coptic binding and other more artistic representations of books, but I’ll get through a couple of standard style books before I get too crazy with the artististic flairs. As it is, I think I’ll be spending the next couple of nights just trimming up the pages for the signatures. I have 48 of them to cut, and I can get about 6-8 per 30 minutes. Yeah, this will take a while. Fortunately, everything goes rather quickly after that.

I’ve been reading Bookbinding The Classic Arts and Crafts Manual by Douglas Cockerell on my ebook reader. Being able to glimpse at the views of someone over 100 years ago about something like bookbinding is strange. Most of what the author says is fairly accurate even today. I’m hoping to glean some hints on how to do more traditional book binding with tapes and leather by reading the book. I have two other books that should be helpful in that arena too.

I settled on a design for my I – The Magician card. I have part of it sketched out, but again, I haven’t inked it. I’m going to ink 0 – The Fool card tonight.

I continue to have great luck with the Morgan Tarot. I’m not sure why I connect so well with this deck, but it really works for me. And once again, I have managed to select a deck that has off the beaten path artwork.

Intentions to Aspirations

There’s nothing like defining your commitment to a project by publicly announcing it. So, my next and concurrent artistic project is to design the major arcana for a Tarot deck. I will post the artwork as it is completed here in my blog. The artwork is going to be necessarily simplistic, because the second element of this project is speed. I want to complete this project in one month. So, by July 20th, just before our 15th wedding anniversary, I want to have this project done. It sounds a bit crazy, but I can do it.

I have the first card (0 – The Fool) designed, but I don’t have the artwork inked yet. Once that’s done, I’ll scan it and get it posted on here.

Critiquing someone else’s fiction to publication standards is not easy. For me, I have to operate at different layers, going through the material each time at a different layer.

The writing group tonight was great. Nice to work out some ideas and get some feedback on my writing. I’m going to contact another author friend of mine to see if she’d be interested in joining. It’s nice to have this impetus to produce something each month.

The Dresden Files RPG should be arriving late this week or next. The FATE system used in the game seems like it might be overwhelming for the GM at first, but like so many things, time and practice will make it easier. I used to own Spirit of the Century until I realized I just wasn’t interested in actually playing the game. One of our group is interested in running Dresden Files (as am I), but I’m more than happy to play too.

In between art, gaming, and everything else, I’m also refreshing myself on the basics of flight. I spend a lot of time thinking about flying, but not nearly as much time actually flying. So, I’m determined to change that in the next couple of weeks.

I got around to taking some photos of my first completed book. Erica provided her services as the lovely hand model. The exterior covers of the book. The cover is supposed to be a slate gray, but I’m still trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements.

The endpapers from the inside of the book.

This is the interior, the middle of a signature with the thread showing.

So, that’s what my first finished project looks like. Not terribly impressive, but I’ll do a better job on the next one.

Blade Math in a Straightjacket

I finished Empire of Blood this morning.

First of all, I should have set my expectations a bit lower than I did. I remember reading other novels from this time period (but not this series) and some of them are world-class. A lot of them are forgettable and a few are detestable. Empire of Blood falls towards the low-end of the forgettable category.

The framing story of Richard Blade is weak at best, or at least in its twenty-third iteration. They don’t explain much about his travels through the dimensions. The characters in 1970’s England are glossed over and strictly background fluff. They have little to no bearing on the actual story. This was a wasted part of the story. It could be used to draw out the characters and Richard more so there was a more defined world for the reader.

Richard Blade is transported to a new dimension with each book, this one being no different. In this one, he faces down a despotic, bloodthirsty ruler while making friends amongst everyone else. He beds every major female that appears in the story and doesn’t even waste a moment when one of them is tortured to death. That Richard Blade, it’s a wonder he isn’t married! Most of the other characters in the story are barely one-dimensional including a character who saves Richard’s life, an exposition laden love interest, and a key figure in the pivotal climax of the novel.

The writing is also a serious detractor for this book. I know that’s like saying Jackie Chan movies have bad dubbing, but it’s a point worth making. This type of book was churned out to keep the series going and to provide titillation for young men who could obtain them. It reads easy enough, but with just a little bit of work and editing, it could have been much better.

Overall, this is a book I couldn’t really recommend to anyone. It’s cheap pulp fiction with no real redeeming qualities except to perhaps teach fledgling writers how not to write.

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I watched Constantine (2005) last night. That is such a great movie in my opinion. They did everything wrong with it (in some people’s opinions), but still managed to make a great film. After seeing that, I’m looking to fill out my back collection of Hellblazer graphic novels.

I’m still stuck with my multiple timeline character story. I have a main protagonist who is taking definition, but I don’t have a story to go with the idea. Although an idea struck me just now to combine it with my universal equation story idea. A little brainstorming, some Earth music, and I might just have something there.

A very intriguing reading today. It was all minor arcana cards. It was a strange reading, but the future card was represented by the Ten of Rods. A card symbolizing hard work and possible overworking. Something I am familiar with, and could certainly explain my current state of mind. This week has been a whirlwind so far. Perhaps this weekend will be a nice time to cool off the brain and let things relax a bit. Get some reading and writing done.

Erica and I are in the midst of a new redecorating project. We just got back some of our art pieces and now we have to decide where we’re going to place them in the house. I think we’re going to use this opportunity to move our main rooms back to their original themes (travel, media, fantasy, etc.). No matter how we distribute it, we still won’t have enough walls to put up even most of our art.