July 27, 2008 archives
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July 27, 2008
#2 exchange sketchbook: mitchel hunt
by sven at 10:10 pm
The sketchbook exchange continues. Whereas the last sketchbook will ultimately return to me, this one is for Mitchel Hunt in Ontario, California.
It's going to be a little unnerving to let go of all these pictures. Some of them I like quite a lot. Oh well: training in the ephemeral nature of life.
(And I've got some mega-high-res scans. Heh.)
For "close my eyes..." I photocopied my face, then re-photocopied that image onto acetate. I distressed the toner using a wire brush. Then I used acrylic gel medium to glue the acetate onto a text-based under-painting.
The surface of this page is as glossy as if I'd poured clear resin over the whole thing. Very apt for something that references a mirror.
This one was originally titled "crab man" -- but I liked the typo better.
Wash of blue acrylic. Outline the mab in black acrylic. Fill in the negative space with white (a trick I picked up from Egon Schiele). Scribble shading with a pen.
And a straight painting of a tiny village underneath mile-tall blue fronds.
The first three sketches were loosely inspired by a poem I wrote this morning... So here it is:
the soul
close my eyes
and look in the mirror
the soul dissolves flesh
i am flower bulb
branching tendrils
ageless sexless
profoundly sensual
don’t mistake me for
inner sight and silent tongue
i am the whipping red threads
the bubbling swamp
lit by a watcher’s small candle
to be buried here
when the light goes out
when fragile roots dry brown
suspended in darkness
invisible intangible
open my eyes to a bright world
the other thousand-legged spiders here
clothe themselves in faces and skin
they become what they wear
and i feel so apart from my species
on the outside of a humanity
that lives with eyes wide open
that never seems to blink
July 27, 2008
posted by sven | permalink | categories: sketchbook, writing