Rust drawing

"A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust"
~ James Stephens
Irish poet and storyteller, 1882-1950



This is my Charcoal drawing for the latest ArtOrder challenge, which was to create an illustration from the above quote. I LOVE these sorts of challenges because they demand that you think outside the box. I knew immediately that the first rule for this piece was to avoid swords and spades as imagery. I thought about it for a while and then, randomly, picked up my favorite book The Neverending Story and opened up to the chapter I was currently re-reading. (I have plans for this book, but in the words of Ende "That's another story and shall be told another time.") Anyways one of the characters has an army of metal giants that she controls with her will. Towards the end, when her evil plans have been thwarted, she looses all control of these giants because her will no longer has a purpose and they kill her. I thought, 'well this is all just too serendipitous'.

"They were puzzled, because they knew it was Xayide's will alone that had moved the hollow giants. So, they thought, it must have been her will that they should trample her to death."

The giants are the personification of Xayide's twisted thoughts and desires. But because all her plans involve manipulation and power, her thoughts are hollow and they prove to be her undoing.

"For years the hollow, black-metal giants stood motionless on the heath not far from the City of the Old Emperors. Rain and snow fell on them, they rusted and little by little sank into the ground, some vertically, some at a slant. But to this day a few of them can be seen."

Now onto the paint!

The Waterhouse post

(Disclaimer: First attempt to write anything of large scale on two days of cold medication and fever. Please be kind.)

So over MLK weekend a large group of us (artists, art directors and art enthusiasts) pilgrimaged up to Montreal to see the massive Waterhouse retrospective that is showing there until February. I could go on and on about the joy of the train ride up and back with such titans of the industry and inspiring folks as Irene Gallo, Greg Manchess, Kurt Huggins, Zelda Devon and Scott Brundage, the added fun at the Biodome, and the pleasure of sharing this show with so many people I admire- but Irene has done a much better job than I could and taken nicer pictures over at her blog. And her amazing photos here. So I will mostly just show stuff from my sketchbook and talk about a few things that I took away from this retrospective.

Saying this show was inspiring is an understatement. I always liked Waterhouse just fine, but looking at his work up close and seeing what a master storyteller and handler of paint he was humbled me. In his early works especially, his attention to detail and handling of every aspect of narrative from facial expressions to body language to value to color to brush strokes to edges only made it clear how much I have yet to learn. When at his best, not a single aspect of any given piece was thrown away.

Of course, being the portrait lover I am, I spent a lot of time swooning over his faces. Waterhouse knew how to capture an expression that told volumes, and several times I was as entranced with what was going on with the background characters as with the main subjects. Such as the two old men in Mariamne sitting in quiet judgment and whispering amongst themselves.



Here are some more faces. Many from Waterhouse, some from life and one from my head, while trying to illustrate "Dark Light" (thanks for the term Kurt!) at lunch between viewings.



I first saw "The Lady of Shallot" in London in '08. I won't lie- I might have cried a little that first time. But seeing it again after nearly 2 more years of training, and amongst all his other work- it didn't pale one bit. I noticed a hundred more details on the second viewing that just made it that much better a piece to me. The thing that most impressed me this time was, perhaps, realizing that the only thing truly in focus in the piece is her face- and as you move further out from that point, the paint and edges blur more and more. It's very subtle, (not something you can spot in reproductions) but it speaks volumes about the mastery of the painter and the story of this isolated woman he was telling. Of course, I had to try and capture her haunting expression.



Even after spending nearly 6 hours at the exhibit saturday, I went back Sunday for some more. The Magic Circle was another really popular piece at the exhibit. It was one of his simpler works, but that just made the details he included more effective. The dust on her skirt, the hint of fire from the circle, the live ouroboros around her neck and how drinking in all these details meant you didn't even notice the cave of people around a fire in the background until the 4th viewing made this piece especially riveting.



One of the things I think that I most appreciated from this exhibit was the way Waterhouse was never afraid to throw a main figure's face into shadow. The way he could hide features, and still not loose any emotion of the piece really got to me in a good way and is one of his devices (among many) I look forward to trying. It will no doubt be years and years before I can effectively use (or even fully understand) many of the things I appreciated in Waterhouse in my own work, and certainly I will notice all new things should I see any of these pieces again...but I think that is part of the joy of this whole artistic journey.

Happy Arting!

Gandalf!

So I've been working several things: one of which is a Gandalf portrait and thought I would share it in its "sketch" stage.



I tried a different way of working this one- just using some photo reference, and sketching first with a blue pencil and then with raw umber directly on a gessoed panel. There's something lovely about the freedem this warrants- much like drawing with charcoal. It's got some colors on it now, and perhaps I will share another progress shot soon.

Back to the easel!

Bits from the sketchbook

Time to start keeping up with posts more regularly! Here are a few things from the sketchbook:

First an old wandering wizard and his traveling companion.



I love winter for all the interesting layered fashions that people wear around the city. The bottom was a lovely woman on the subway with a great hat. The top figure was done from memory of a neat jacket a girl was wearing on the street.



I'm very lucky to be living in the heart of Park Slope, where there are so many interesting people on every corner. One of my favorite regulars is the Accordian Man. He sits out on various corners and plays some really lovely music- and I have always had a soft spot for accordion. So one evening as I was waiting for a friend, I sat at the Connecticut Muffin and sketched him for about 20 minutes.

Queen of Hearts finish

I love it when friends commission a piece and say "just do whatever you want". It allows me to experiment and discover new ways of working that I might not otherwise have a chance to explore. This was originally meant to be much smaller and simpler than it turned out, but I ended up having so much fun it sort of kept going. I posted a WIP a few months ago and just realized I never posted the finish, so here it is:



8.5x11 watercolor on Canson 140 lb watercolor paper.

Illuxcon Sketch Dump

So I went to Illuxcon this weekend with some amazing artist friends: Kurt and Zelda and Rob Rey. All you have to do is go check out the guest list to figure out what an amazing time I had. It's a small con, only around 200 attendees, but concentrated with some of the best artists in the industry, fascinating panels and lots of great conversations. In case you haven't heard me talk about this at length already: the people in the sci-fi/fantasy industry boasts of the most generous, supportive, down to earth sorts of folks around. I used nearly 20 pages of sketchbook during the con, so without further ado, here are some highlights:

Spot the art-stars! Sculptors Thomas Kuebler and Jordu are here...


Jordu and Thomas did an amazing collaborative sculpture during the con. Here's a pic swiped from Christopher Burdett's blog:


Here we have art directors Jon Schindehette (D&D) and Jeremy Cranford of (WoW) who both took time out of a very busy schedule to talk to me about my portfolio. You guys rock! Also Kurt Huggins.

Scott Altmann, another favorite.

A couple of Chris Burdett and Rob Rey.

Drawing people sleeping is fun- and creepy. Here's Kurt.

And Zelda sleeping in the car. Then while listening to Florence and the Machine's Rabbit Heart, I started sketching a rabbit and just felt like continuing the theme. Introducing Fungarabbit and Bunthulu:

© 2009 Kristina Carroll.

Some exciting projects on the horizon so expect more soon!

Amanda Palmer Tarot: Seven of Wands

And here is a teaser for my final piece for the Amanda Palmer Tarot deck: The Seven of Wands. The most challenging part of this project was combining my vision of what the card meant to me with Amanda’s music. I knew that I wanted to use “Astronaut” as my basis but do it from the perspective of the person flying in the face of science, not the one left behind. I went through pages and pages of thumbnails before finding one that felt right and after shooting reference, began a charcoal drawing. I was still finding difficulty in placing imagery from the song in my drawing that would marry the concept with the card, until a random smudge in the charcoal put in my mind the milky way swirling around this larger than universes figure and suddenly everything started working. Another smudge on the rod in her hand made it burst into flame and suddenly echoes of Prometheus tied the whole piece together. From that point the drawing basically finished itself. I started laying down oil paint up to a certain point and finished digitally. Now I look at this piece and see a universal figure overcoming a universe in her way to achieve her goals. To me it is an image of perseverance, courage and inspiration and I can only hope others might look at it and feel the same.