New Method

So I was figuring out the text on the pages that I had done in InDesign the night before crit. It was really REALLY frustrating because it didn't look great. At all. And in order to split the text up in a way that doesn't completely ruin the painting, I would have to do weird stuff with it and reading it became labyrinthine and confusing. People in crit agreed when I showed them the final printed off version. So I've made a decision. The text is no longer going onto the pages.

These paintings are different than anything I've done before. They are huge, but full of negative space. Because I was thinking that they would end with text on them, I decided to focus on a single central subject. They are also incredibly layered so I feel there is a lot of depth (visually, not subject matter-ily) to them. I couldn't stand to ruin this SPARSENESS that was creating such an atmosphere. I mean, the POINT of the paintings was to create an atmosphere to go along with the text. So, here is my new game plan:

I have extra white pages at the beginning and end because I was planning on doing twice as many huge painting pages. I even have extras on top of them because I was planning on having collages at the beginning and end as well as a title page, etc. SO. I am going to use these extra pages and fill them with the text. I'm not sure how I'm going to put the text on the page yet. Maybe screen printing still, maybe the old version of etching. Maybe Van Dyke prints. Letterpress would be the coolest but LORD I don't feel like dying at such a young age. The idea of setting all that type physically repels me. Plus my school has apparently decided that art students can't have access to the facility that has all the alternative process dark rooms and letter presses and etching presses this semester even though it's SITTING RIGHT THERE WITH ALL THE MATERIALS IN IT. Ugh. Seriously, how effing ridiculous that we HAVE resources and I can't use them.

Anyway. I'm still doing the collages of violent religious imagery--in particular of Joan of Arc and Jeebus--but there will be text on those pages as well. I will integrate the collages in with the text. Then the story will be split in the middle by the watercolor paintings I have done, which will have screen printed onto them just a sentence of the text that I find particularly powerful. I think I will begin the book with a watercolor painting that just takes up parts of a double spread, but has room on the bottom and top for text as well so the middle isn't strange and sudden and so you start to feel that sparse landscape atmosphere at the beginning.

Whew! Lawd, so much work to do, so many decisions to make! Hopefully I'll have this somewhat figured out by the end of next week. Now here is the painting I just finished recently:



In other news, The Office was awesome. Hurray for the return of fall television! Also, a post on my collage inspiration, Kara Walker, is pending, but there are SO many images that it will have to wait until this weekend. If I'm not puking all over the place, that is. I think I have caught something horrid.