La Chambre Rouge

This weeks kick about over on Red’s Kingdom is Henry Matisse – The Dessert: Harmony in Red (1908)

All I really want to do right now is draw. I latched onto the royal reds of Matisse painting and the quirky perspective. At first I was a bit intimated by the brightness and saturation of the red, I didn’t want to burn anyones eyeballs with these illustrations and with the first illustration of the bunch I had the back walls a much darker maroon but then with the second illustration I jumped in with the same Matisse Red determined to make its high saturation work.

After adding in the details such as the swirly designs, the gold rimmed edges and vaulted high ceilings I was able to make the vibrant red work and decided to switch the first illustration to match! I am glad I did as I usually don’t do a lot of interior illustrations but this bunch quickly become one of my favourite paintings thus far.

Painting With Light – Synesthesia #5

A few more ominous light painting experiments, taken in the hallway this time and giving a whirl of the intriguing dutch angle.

The Bogland – Ireland January 2021

I have been busy setting up an online shop for art photography prints and have been in the process of organising, selecting and editing a slew of photos to see what will make the cut. Here is some edits of photos that was taken back in January of this year, which feels like a lifetime ago. I can almost taste the clean air and feel my boots squelch in the rich peat filled trenches as my dogs watch cautiously in preparation for an almost face plant.

Art Forms in Nature Part 2

This weeks Kick about was Inspired by Ernst Haeckel and his botanical illustrations showing the intricate microscopic organic matter within nature that might otherwise go amiss. I have always felt sensitive to textures and colours but this year I actually had a camera to capture it with rural Ireland really ramping up my perception towards it. The merging of colours within a few feet of land can completely counteract the next a few feet further and always makes for interesting forms.

I love relishing in the patterns and forms that bloom on a log or that is sandwiched between the trenches of rich brown peat, losing a shoe in the quicksand esque mud with shite up to my knee to get some of these pictures is all part of the pleasure.

Witches broom deformities resembling sea urchins, little pastel snail shells with their inhabitants no more and reindeer moss resembling bleached coral reef all part of the treasures that are nestled within the designs resembling Haeckel’s pieces. Sometimes I would lie on the ground and aim up to the sky to get a certain shot of a branch, plant or twig without it being nestled with its family of flora so that it would be easier to edit and isolate the flora against a clean slate of sky.

A lot of the elements within my designs for this kick about were cut and pasted out of images like the ones above, then significantly editing them by changing the colour and then when all the elements came together I merged them as one and erased half of the image and then copied it one more time to then flip horizontally so they were in exact symmetry.

〰️ Resulting Ernst Haeckel Inspired Designs 〰️

Throwback – Dance of the Happy Shades and Sergey Cheremisinov

〰️ Dance of the Happy shades Film 〰️

Dance of the Happy Shades – a previous kick about over on Reds Kingdom was one of the most enjoyable Kick About’s thus far. I loved this prompt because it came very instinctively where I ended up making a little micro short, filmed from the inside of my bathroom’s poorly painted cabinet in my dingy west London apartment, where the light was shining brilliantly through the dusty bathroom window and in through a crack in the cabinet. I used my phone to film the light as I repeatedly opened and closed the cabinet door – making the light flow across the cabinet and then bringing those clips into after effects and mucking about by using some blend mode trickery, where lights and shadows started to materialise interesting shapes. To the precise eye some of them resembling a shodowy effigy.

The music discovered and accompanied this prompt is by Sergey Cheremisinov, which really drived this short and remembering that I went back to Sergey’s catalog to see if anything would fit the current short that I am working on. I found a piece that made me smile and shiver and after hearing the score it changed the periphery of the film into something a lot less dark, which I think works better (2020 is dark enough!) probably more sombre but I think that will be up to interpretation. Something about Sergey’s pieces with all its the creaks and fizzes overlaid sporadically invigorates a visceral reaction that make it feel like some thing is alive that shouldn’t be. I envision a lot when I listen to his music and like his music I want this film to have a replayability factor, so that really is the mission of this film and a whole new territory for me and one I’m excited to give a whirl.