Ramires Book

Dear Robert, when you finish, please send my book directly to me, I'll send my postal address by e-mail.
Thank you so much.

Robert's Book ready to go

Dear friends, I did a collage extracting a little piece of Dana's  work  and I did a exchange for a portrait part. Dana I hope you don't care about my invasion, I did it looking for integration between our works.
I think the better part of these exchanges is exactly this. The opportunity to make coletive experiments.
My "x ray" self portrait can be folded to play with the shadows.
I used pieces of Moleskine red label to harmonize with the red oxide I did used in the painting.
How I said wednesday morning I'll send it as a priority mail to Omar in the Arab Emirates because tomorrow is a Holyday in Brazil.

Yelnoc's Book Making Of - The last (I promisse)

 

 And a little preview over my "test jap fold"...

I purposely wanted to do a dark piece, with little contrast and definition, it talks something about my last weeks.
Well, some small details will be made directly in the book shipped by Dana during assembly.

Roberts Moly

So I started working as soon as Ramires told me the idea. First of all I choose a picture
I will work with that one with robert and his son on the mirror but just a close up of the face.
second I did some sketches over cardboard. I like to work over cardboard, the brown backgroud serves a middle tone and creates more dramatic effetc working over with black and white colours. I though about a dark background that now that I know that ramires is also using a dark grey i will try to make it similar. the dificulty maybe in this portrait is how to include myself in it. But the white marker gave me the idea to make just a siluete of myself, but I still have not decide from wich image. Then I tried some of this Gold Callygraphy marker and it is wonderful....I make some lines, simulating constellations and geometry patterns, I added also numbers and symbols. I am still playing arround with the idea. Next step will be to use some pages from a Moly I got home to start working the portrait. I will like to try (since I still have time) with acrylics, but since I still don't feel sicure with them, at the end I could choose something else.

Robert's Book - MO 2

Maybe the x-ray is the most honest and deeper self portrait I can imagine :-) Here are some photos of how it is possible to play using transparencies and shadows on an x ray film.

Robert's Book... Making of

To avoid wasting the voyage time of the Robert's book between Dana and myself, I decided to use some time last Saturday to do my part. 
And as in a surrealistic history the book is ready even before arriving here :-))
When the book gets here I can use only a few hours doing the assembling and sending the book to Omar. He is now also doing something similar (yes we have a small conspiracy in favor of speed  :-))) so that the book will be even  richer for the exhibit at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA).  
Omar also will not stay that long without seeing a book, so I imagine that this will keep everyone happy.
We've done the accounts during the weekend and we believe that this way the book reaches Marty Harris before the end of November (Using express shippment).
Is it a bit daring and challenging? Yessss, we are artists !!! :-)))

Now and in the coming days I will publish photos of the whole process and this might be interesting to see how I create and produce these small jobs in his books :-) And how is this fun for me :-))

1- The first step is the idea, it seems too obvious, but I always like to think of ideas that fit in the available time, in this case was within a day.  
I also decided to make his portrait on the original moleskine paper, so cut out a page from an old notebook (the paper is thin and easy to assemble later). At this stage I choose the photo and other references that I'll use.
I wanted to use acrylics in Robert's portrait, but to my self portrait I thought of something to express some of my current "blue feelings" and I decided to use an x-ray film to make a collage. 
I cut the Robert's picture in the same proportion of moleskine page, it is helpful to use the photo as reference
  

2 - The choice of x-ray film for my self portrait determined the color palette for the Robert's portrait. 

Basically it's almost a black and white" palette , but I do not use black on my palette, my gray is born from the breaking complementary colors (in the middle of the plate). In that case I used Prussian blue, burnt sienna and a little bit of red oxide.This approaching cold gray tones of a  x-ray film . (I took these from the same color palette study of a larger work I am doing).
Tomorrow I'll tell you more :-))

Robert's Moly finished and ready to fly!

Spent the last few nights working on Robert's moly (don't worry Heidi, I'll get back to yours soon!) and it's all finished and ready to go...but to who? (Tiffany, are you still in? I don't remember seeing anything from you on the blog.) If I don't hear from Tiffany I think I'll send this on to Suzette, I know she's been moly-less for a long time now.


I thought I'd try a different technique with this one and have always loved France Belleville's drawings. So, this is my Ode to France. I'm not really happy with Robert's portrait...I think I screwed up the proportions in the underlying drawing and was well into the crosshatching before I realized it. Mine came out a bit better but the sunglasses hide the toughest parts.

Fun fact: In the photos I worked from Robert is standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and in mine I'm on a mountain opposite Breckenridge, CO.