Ink – No Freedom

Jul 16, 2012 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Another recent ink painting. The words read “There’s no freedom here”. I’m excited by the combination of phrases or short poems with artwork. This one will need to be done again as the ink has feathered slightly on the poor quality paper. I’ve been experimenting lately with different types of paper, looking for something archival quality that handles well with the inks. I used to have a paper that worked really well, but it seems they’ve changed the creation of the paper and it is no longer suitable, which is a shame. Still, there’s a lot to be gained from the process of experimenting if you don’t mind a few projects that don’t work out.

I have been working on creating a process for my ink paintings that streamlines everything. At the moment it’s very chaotic, I don’t have a preferred paper that is quality, I paint very different sizes which can make framing the works challenging, I don’t have a proper place to store the works safely, they are all over my studio in different boxes, files, drawers and nooks – which also makes laying may hands on a particular work tricky. I also lack a safe and simple system for transporting them once sold, or to galleries etc. Not good enough, I find creativity happens best for me in the space between order and chaos. I need both in the right quantities to function best, and at the moment inks are being overwhelmed by too much chaos. I want a paper I’m happy with, a storage system, a presentation method, and a transport system that is all simple, inexpensive, easy for me to remember, and where I can stock up on everything I need so when I have an ink obsessive week I can paint, draw, dry, store, present, and transport without needing to interrupt the process to go and buy supplies or problem solve weird sized paintings etc.
I am getting very excited because I’ve thinking about this challenge, as well as the making of prints from the ink paintings, for quite some time now, trying different ideas and approaches. I think I am on the cusp of sorting it all out into something that I’m really happy with, that frees me to create to my heart’s content. A few more tests and trials and buying some supplies here and there and I think I’ve got it. Whee!
The next challenge will be buying some more pens to use different coloured inks in, some more sample pots to paint with diluted inks, a set of the papers I finally decide on, the materials to store/present/transport the inks, and some full size ink bottles of the colours I’ll use most often – at the very least I need a new Noodlers Black. If I’m sensible and brave I’ll investigate arts grants to see if I can get some help to do that – but admin terrifies me so I’ll just see how things go. Also, to learn how to work the adobe software and create booklets of ink paintings or poems, get the printing of prints down to something I’ve trialled properly and can easily do, and finish my first digital story using ink paintings and a voice over… So much to do! How I love it.

Back to ink

Jul 12, 2012 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I spent wednesday at home weathering a lousy day. I have a neighbour making my life difficult and that’s done my brain over a bit. I was looking forward to a shrink appt in the morning, but unfortunately they were sick so the brilliant timing of ‘depressing problem’ + ‘person to talk to’, turned into a frustrating morning of ‘up unnecessarily early’ + ‘can’t think straight’ instead. I have admin tasks banking up again I’m too anxious to handle and I’ve stopped answering my phone. A couple of persistent people are calling me several times a day. I’ve stopped carrying my phone around with me too. I’ve been having trouble with minor vandalism and some thefts happening when I’m away so I didn’t leave home all day. I did manage one critical admin task – to ask Australia Post not to leave parcels on my doorstep anymore, and to tuck my mail all the way into my letter box. Hopefully no more mail going missing now. So far $25 worth of inks have been stolen.

I tried to paint my journals today, I’ve been looking forward to that all week but when I’m not in a good head space sometimes it doesn’t work and just increases my stress. Today was one of those days so I stopped part way through when my head started to crash out.

Went to inks instead. I don’t know why, but even when I’m distressed I can usually make ink paintings. I ended up making three, and then cuddling up with Zoe on the couch to watch some sad movies. I’ll keep my head down until things settle internally. I have to leave the house tomorrow as I’m out of a medication that reduces pain.

Fire Journal

Jul 10, 2012Nov 29, 2013 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

My new decorated journal. I textured the background with modeling paste, embedded glass beads, then added layers of acrylic glazes in yellow, brown, and red. Last touch was to burnish with gold. I think it’s beautiful.

New Ink Drawing

Jul 7, 2012Nov 29, 2013 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Another art commission finished! I am very proud of this work. The brief was very specific, a little child, in the style I call my ‘potato-sack people’, asleep tucked safely in the buttress roots of a large tree. All line work with no shading, all black no colour.

I tried several different inks and papers before settling upon a watercolour paper and Noodlers Heart of Darkness ink. This ink is a gorgeous true black with no grey tones but excellent deep rich colour with no tonal variation at all. (ie you don’t get different shades and tones within the pen stroke – highly desirable in some circumstances but terrible looking in others) It has not only a lovely poetic name but is a bulletproof ink, meaning it will last extremely well without fading etc, and has been engineered to absorb as much of the light spectrum as possible, making it a beautiful intense black.

I researched trees with buttress roots and found one in particular I felt was perfect for this situation. My drawing is inspired by the Tulip Kurrajong tree (Fransisco dendron laurifolium),which is found in tropical rainforests in Queensland. The roots on this tree are ribbon shaped with lovely striations in colour that appealed to me and translated well into the line drawing.

I did a number of studies (test runs) until I was happy with the composition, agonised over adding in the leaves or not – but decided that they gave that touch of fine detail that really finished the work, and the single leaf on the child gave a sense of time passing and peace. It’s always risky when you go outside of the brief, sometimes they love it and sometimes they don’t. The fine details are often what anchor a work, little clusters of leaves evoke eddies of wind and the breath of air that brings the work to life.

This work was done with one of my new fountain pens, the Noodlers Flex. All of those lines are made with this one pen and none are worked over more than once. That variation in thickness is due to pressure on the pen, forcing the nib to flex open and creating a thicker line. I love this pen for line work. I’ve been having to play with it a little to break it in. I have never worked with a flex nib before so I’m still learning. I was having trouble with this one occasionally blobbing ink onto the page. Fountain pens with a very ‘wet’ writing style are occasionally prone to this. I did some research online and ended up carefully adjusting the feed myself, slightly bending one of the fins in the process, but it seems to have fixed the problem beautifully! I adore inks, I am planning to purchase some fine French papers to try next.

Art supplies

Jul 4, 2012 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I have purchased four plain journals and some new art supplies ready to decorate them. I’m glad I’ve new projects to keep me occupied because my anxiety level has been severe lately, and admin tasks are not helping.

On the upside, I have been playing more with my phone and now can not only take photos with it and upload them to this blog (so much less fuss than my camera) but also watermark them first! Some of the apps don’t talk to each other very well so I’m still working on streamlining the process, but so far I’m very pleased and hopeful this will add another element to my blogging that is simple and easy.

In the meantime, crying, journaling, and trying to breathe, and eat. Trickles of new art supplies are drip feeding me with enough moments of excitement and contentment to stave off crisis. Art may be expensive at times, but it is considerably cheaper than hospital. If only I could bill medicare for some canvas. 🙂

I recently completed a Film making Bootcamp, hosted by the Media Resource Centre and Mindshare. In a team with three other people, Steve, Helen, and Sue, we all wrote, filmed, and edited this short film, with support from the much more experienced Victoria. 🙂

Our theme was Mental Health and Community, which we chose to express through the development of a garden. We called it Regeneration.

If the video isn’t loading for you, you can click here.

It was amazing to be part of every step of this process, from the original cafe conversations about concept development and themes, to the writing of a script, then drawing a whole story board of every shot we wanted to take and working out what order we wanted them in for the story. Then, re-ordering them according to the best order in which to shoot them. This was very complex – we had only one day to shoot the whole film, and it took the whole day to shoot just 25 mins of film, which was edited to a 4 1/2 min final film! This presented us with some difficulties regarding weather, light and shadows. In fact, the very final shots of the cuttings in the door way were the very first ones we filmed while we had good morning light, as the doorway is in shadow for the rest of the day. We had to be very careful doing this particularly as our protagonist undergoes costume changes through the course of the film, and it was very easy to accidentally have her wearing a hat in a shot before she should be, or having nail polish that disappeared and reappeared. We also had a lot of complex scenery changes that had to be done extremely quickly so we could shoot all our footage before we ran out of light, Sue ran around potting plants and creating and unpacking sets while Steve and I set up shots. I have a lot of respect for the people who make all of these come together in full length movies! We grouped our shots according to costume considerations, the quality of the light, the type of shot (hence which lens we needed) and how important the shot was, so if we ran out of time and lost the last few it wouldn’t destroy critical plot elements in the film.

The filming process was so enjoyable, the very tight and highly edited silent style we went for was like shooting a visual poem. I would look at shots in the camera and suddenly shadows came alive and tiny details had great impact because each sequence was a single gesture or movement. We also chose to very rarely show faces so that the film became not one person’s story, but could be anyone’s story. We used a digital SLR camera so that we use a macro lens to take a lot of high quality shots less than 15cms from the subject. It was difficult to stick to the story board and not run about taking hours of footage of the breeze blowing through lavender or the way the light was falling on the leaves. It was quite challenging for Helen who did the acting, unlike theater which Helen is extremely experienced in, filming required redoing the same actions over and over, and getting tiny details like stepping exactly into a tight shot right each time. This film was also extremely bitty in the filming as we had only one camera and a storyboard that moved quickly from shot to shot. Much of the early part of the film where Helen was on the ground was cold and very uncomfortable for her. She did an amazing job of adapting from a theatrical style of acting where gestures and emotions must be felt by someone sitting forty seats away in a dark theater, to the very restrained and controlled style of acting required for a film half of which is shot with a macro lens.

Editing was stunningly time consuming but also really enjoyable. We did things a bit unusually by first choosing the best of all our duplicated shots, and arranging them in our correct story order. Then we went back to the music we’d already tagged as good possible matches for the story, and as it turned out nothing was quite right. We listened to many more tracks and late in the day discovered the track we used, 4 1/2 mins, moving through the 3 parts of our story naturally (isolation, growth, community) without being too maudlin or too upbeat. We then spent a whole day editing every shot down or removing it, rearranging it, and matching it to the music, which was not quite enough time for people like me who had never even used the software (Final Cut Pro) before. I have learned so many skills in this project and I am tremendously proud of the final result. My team were awesome, all of us brought considerable skills to the project but none us let our egos get in the way. We pulled together and put in a lot of extra hours to get each part right before we moved on to the next step. We were also really lucky to have Victoria mentoring us, who was a natural teacher, stepping in when we got out of our depth, and handing back the reins the moment we wanted to do things ourselves. The final result has a blending of all our skills and ideas. I love it, and I’m really looking forward to repairing my camera and making more short films like this.