I just made that up.
I think it's funny. I go around and assume the persona of artist, bang! I'm artist. A shopkeeper asked me how he can get ahold of one my hummingbird feeders. At length, when I returned to the shop with my favorite feeder to send off he was gone. So I would leave the feeder with another attendant and I introduced the situation and myself to the clerk, "As a representative of Denver art community..." Complete b.s. We're right at the art museum so that kind of talk is not outrageous, nor is the self-image exceptional, except in my mind it's hilarious and I'm cracking myself up and trying hard not to show it.
The necks of the storks are exaggerated and too long to fit so they are bent into an impossible shape so that three such exaggerated stork necks with accompanying regular bodies and heads will fit inside a small bowl. This is daring artistic insistence in defiance of nature and all that is real and true. See? I just make stuff up. It's all about stork necks. Exaggerated stork necks. Stork necks, stork necks, stork necks. The bird heads, beaks, bodies and legs are attached to those. A stork neck on a live stork is more like a teardrop that can stretch and turn this way and that, but these stork necks are nothing like real ones, more like snakes.
There are fish all about, the same fish on the outside, filling the blank space between birds and giving the impression of birds amid infinite fish within the space of a small bowl.
Mmm, you have to use your imagination a little bit, okay? And try not smudge stuff up all over the place. This is art!
Rough pencil sketches on bisque. I found this bowl in a closet. Sketched a long time ago then I moved here. Spaced it right out.
See the little fish, innit cute? It's a goner.
If I paint the fish faded, as it is faded now, then it will look far away by accident on purpose.
Feet and beaks converge, on account of it being a bowl. I haven't bothered drawing the birds' other legs in. We artist-types do that too, just leave off legs when we want to. Maybe they'll be suggested. They can be drawn with the leg stretching back instead of straight down unlike a bird standing, just draw them into the following bird's space. That would tie each triangular bird-space together as a Celtic knot. Even drawn behind everything shown, three more legs encroaching on each other's space would entangle the birds, form crosses, and disrupt the apparent propeller-like movement. I just keep making up stuff, I can't stop myself. Sorry.
Like a double necklace of little fish. All peace and tranquility on the outside, no indication at all of the straight up existential drama occurring inside. (It's a sketch, not a drama, somebody stop me before I hyperbole again.)
There is a ceramic supply place not far from here. I can go there and pick up a few colors and paint this and finish it. I might even already have them. I'll dig around, now that I found this.
The thing is, some ceramic pigments are mineral that melt suspended in gray gunk and it is like painting with mud. I'll have to be careful not to get that kind. I think how it goes is, paint the detail colors, fire it, then paint a clear coat, fire again. But I'm not sure. Sometimes it's all in one shot. This is already fired once so it won't melt if it gets wet, and it is useful as unglazed bowl too as flower pots are. So that is a lot of back and forth for supplies and for firing just for a little bowl.
9 comments:
Fire it up!
Just do it already! I must see the finished product. Must. See.
Last night was a marathon session of catch up TV . . . The Big Bang Theory.
I don't recall the setup, but it had something to do with his father being a gynecologist and Raj say, "What are you talking about? I can't even look a woman in the eye!"
That's gold, Jerry. Gold!
My wife loves the glazing. We had a kiln in our basement until I learned the fumes ruin your furnace. A 3k mistake!
Don't do boring and paint the fish blue and the birds pink. Do the reverse. My two cents.
Like the saying goes...
You can lead a hummingbird to your feeder but you cant make them feed from a bowl.
I saw a cool painting once of koi just under the water surface. I thought I might try that sometime. I need your artist opinion, Chip...is it cheating to paint the fish and then layer over it with paint :)
deborah - layering (or glazing) can work. The danger is an opaque muddy result where one thin layer of color covers another. If, for example, the koi are red-gold and you layer blue-green for water color over them I think you'll get mud. I'd run tests of what colors over colors leave a darker but clear color and which result in mud. Just a thought.
Thanks, ricpic, great point.
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