Mary and Jeane's Entries in Jemina's "Refraction" Book

Mary's interpretation.

When wondering how I would interpret "refraction", I looked around my room and found a postcard of Velazquez's "Las Meninas".  This is not your average postcard, but one equipped with glasses that when looked through, makes the image 3 dimensional and come alive.  I bought several from the Prado so I can continue to enjoy "Las Meninas".

Angela entry / Mary's "Small" book

Jeane's Book / Petr's Entry

I gotta feeling Eric's gonna be jealous of this one. It might look like I've gone nuts lately with how may spreads I take for my entries but the fact is that Jeane's book looked so empty when I got it that I simply wanted to fill it up a bit. And things just grew so naturally as I was "building" these peeling off facades from all sorts of old scrap papers I and my school kids use when spray painting and stuff. I almost feel like taking this further, into the world of some large scale painting ...

Eric's entry in Petr's book

OK, I admit it.

I hogged 6 pages in Petr's book, but it's only Jemina left in this rotation.

Q: What do baby powder, glitter, ashes, and varnish all have in common?

I encourage Jemina to go bananas and make a 12 page entry to blow away the empty spaces....



Otherwise, I had a fun time playing with all kinds of materials in this entry.... What type of space was I trying to create? Is there actually a story being told? I suppose that depends on the viewer and what they may or may not see into the piece... Is that a flaming ball? Where is it? What kind of space could that be? Why would TRUE STORY be printed?

Mary and Jeane´s entries in Eric's book, "DIY"

 Mary's entry is a lovely transition from Angela's entry when light shines through.

My entry with random experiments from days gone by.

Jeminas entry into Lydia's book

Love, love LOVE this book! A very creative idea Lydia. I kinda wish it was coming back to me in the end -)...

Angela's Book / Petr's Entry

For Angela's book on communication I decided to go mostly with collaging using various resources - Dino & prehistoric stickers I got in supermarket, Dürer's etching, biology textbook images, illustrations from an old book on medicine and more. I decided to once again remix visual motifs from previous entries - thus the straight coloured lines, a mouth, a newborn/foetus, letter stencils, blue as a dominant colour ... I had a lot of fun working into this flawless book.  

Mary's Book / Petr's Entry

Mary's tiny book is so absolutely gorgeous - what a treat to find such a beautiful artefact in your mailbox. It arrived with one "panel" left and some flow of not that related ideas and visuals. And so I picked a few previously used motifs to work with. Stitching, black cat, colour moustache ... I used a very old looking portrait photo that I found in a paper recycling bin in my street to start with, the rest came along.

Jemina's entry into communication

I do apologize for sending off my last two entries without taking a picture first. I always get them all packaged up and then remember. BUT not today!  Today I am communicating with you all via Blogger -)

Jemina's Refraction - Angela's entry

I looked up different types of refraction & liked the mysterious quality of using sound waves to "see" what we otherwise cannot. As usual, this took me on several enjoyable tangents:

"Seeing" with the tongue  http://discovermagazine.com/2003/jun/feattongue#.UkVew2TTV0o  

Buoys which collect sonar to describe rock/earth density. http://youtu.be/9Kp1fKy9kOo 

Sonar as harmful to dolphins, whales and other marine life.  http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0060953 

For Jemina's Refraction book (top), I used a relaxing, paint-by-number  sort of approach. When finished, I wanted to continue and so I did another version for myself (bottom). Happily, it may also help me toward a solution for my first MA Fine Art challenge. Thanks esketchers!

Jeane's entry in Petr's book

Who has looked through a photo album and thought about how nice it would be to experience that moment again.  This would be my idea of a "book that does not exist".

Lydia's Entry into Jemina's book

I got hooked on Jemina's beautiful coloured lines and metallic swirls. I looked up the word 'Refraction' and saw a diagram of a straw going into a glass of water being distorted.  It reminded me of the funny way mouths and teeth look when you look at someone drink through the bottom of their glass (ok, that sounds odd, maybe it's just me that does that?).  Anyway, this image takes Jemina's rainbow stripes and swirls them into the bottom of a glass, them sends them out at a new point - like the straw.

Eric's entry in Lydia's book

RAD!

September 1st, and I am only a tiny bit late putting my entry in the mail to Jemina.

Lydia: this book is awesome, and I was eager to contribute since I first saw it!

I made a rubbing of the sidewalk, scanned it, hit "pattern generator" in photoshop and then printed it out. What would an entry be from me, unless it had some splatted watercolor and gold/ silver spray-paint before collaging?

I am stoked to see how CONNECT keeps on going....

Lydia's Book with new entries from Jeane and Mary

 Here is the entire book so far... unfolded.

Mary´s entry.

Jeane's entry.  Inspiration taken from the clematis which is in full bloom on the back patio.

A close-up of the entries.

Eric's DIY sketchbook - Angela's entry (and 4 others)

The video is a bit jiggly or otherwise awkward in places because I'm holding an iphone with one hand while trying to manipulate the sketchbook with the other.  :)

Angela's entry into Petr's book cover theme

Hello Friends!

I've recently discovered the Chinese word/concept of "li". Although, it was explained to me as a universal, uniting principle, rather than as a fundamentally Tao, or Neo-Confucianism philosophy. . .  If it is new to you too, here is a snippet from Wikipedia:


 In the Chinese language ... the character for li means the markings in jade. It also means the grain in wood and the fiber in muscle. We could say, too, that clouds have li, marble has li, the human body has li. We all recognize it, and the artist copies it whether he is a landscape painter, a portrait painter, an abstract painter, or a non-objective painter. They all are trying to express the essence of li. The interesting thing is, that although we all know what it is, there is no way of defining it. Because tao is the course, we can also call li the watercourse, and the patterns of li are also the patterns of flowing water. We see those patterns of flow memorialized, as it were, as sculpture in the grain in wood, which is the flow of sap, in marble, in bones, in muscles. All these things are patterned according to the basic principles of flow. In the patterns of flowing water you will all kind of motifs from Chinese art, immediately recognizable, including the S-curve in the circle of yang-yin. So li means then the order of flow, the wonderful dancing pattern of liquid, because Lao-tzu likens tao to water: The great tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right, It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.

— Alan Watts, Taoism

I felt pretty darn lucky this morning. Glorious sunshine and a cool breeze while I walked the 3 minutes from my new home, to what felt like my own private beach. While finishing my entry, from 9-11, only one other person walked by...   The atmosphere suited the theme of the entry perfectly and I can't think of a better way to start off my year away from teaching. Thanks for sharing my new beginning with me, Esketchers!

Lydia's entry into Eric's DIY book

My initial understanding of Eric's theme was to use found objects to create our own pages. I may have misunderstood this slightly, but it led to me reusing some art made by my students.  One of the privileges of teaching very young children is that they tend to love and adore you (whatever you have to offer). Through the school year my little friends have bestowed me with many tokens of their love in the form of drawings.  I have collected these by sticking them up on the cupboard next to my classroom desk.  When I started thinking about what to do for Eric's book, I thought I would use these drawing to create some pages.  I have cut out and stuck my favorite pieces together and worked on top of them with pens and pencils.  Thanks to little French/Cambodian Chloe and Spanish Elena for their contributions to my entry.

This was a quick way to keep up with the rotation and make sure Angela had something to take with her on her new start in Cornwall. I wonder what inspiration your new environment will bring Ang, we'll look forward to seeing evidence of it in our books - good luck!!

eric's entry in Angela's COMMUNICATION book

Communication!
Haven't we all had discussions like this? I wonder how many languages and cultures could relate?
Hmmmmmmm.....?

eric's entry in Mary's book

It's so teeny and cute, I was afraid to put something into Mary's book for a good while. Then I remembered some photogravure prints I have that remind me of landscapes seen from high above.
I also tried to choose one that echoed parts of previous compositions, then just for fun, I punched a hole in the book for good feng-shui!
Keep the entries comin'!!!

Jeane's Entry in Angela's Book"Communication"

 So many ways to work with Communication...  I used a bit of snail mail inspiration along with newer  technology.

Also included Mary's entry: beautifully flowing figures.

Lydia's Entry into Petr's Book

This isn't so much a book I want to see on my book shelf, as one I'd like to see on other people's book shelves.  I have been busy illustrating some historical/legendary stories of Basel for kids that a friend of mine is writing.  This is a snippet from one of them.  Fingers crossed something will come of it.

Eric's Book / Petr's Entry

DIY

Eric - your book is such a beautiful artifact! The cover and the overall concept is so wonderful! 

I kinda fell for collaging lately and the above entries play with the idea of making, creating, building ... The imagery is mostly cut out of an old physics workbook and the cloud repeats itself throughout your book as you see in the entries below. 

I made all the above pages in addition to my very first response ...

...which features a couple things I found. It is a 3D scene featuring found toys, a photo found in a paper recycle bin in my street and a rusty paint I peeled of last summer at our cottage. 

I truly had fun working "in" your book!

Eric's entry into Jeane's book

Hej.
I got all self-conscious that I was always counting on the same old tricks for my entries, you know, photocopies of my kid's butt, stencils, spray glitter, etc.

So, I decided to pose myself a challenge to only DRAW for this first entry in Jeane's book. I was actually really affected by the images on the covers.... your daughter looked so young, very clearly relater to you, honest, vulnerable..... FACADE. I didn't think too deeply about this theme, rather the look of innocence, which brought me back to some of Raphael's works, lots of baby-jesus'es floating around in the clouds, away from the Virgin Mary.

OK, so there are some butts depicted, but at least they aren't from people related to me....

Here it is ;) after a couple of days of battling with technology and accepting that yes, I am getting old and that, believe it or not, it is possible that your 9 year old students know more about posting on a blog than you do ;) I managed to upload my entry into Petr's book on Book Covers :) 

Mist in May!!!! Come on!!!

This is a view out the back of my village.  In my pre-bad-back life, I used to run through this landscape often. I miss having a reason to come here.  A few weeks ago, in the first warm and sunny day of the year, I walked up here just to soak up the vitamin D and take a moment to absorb the loveliness of my surroundings.  When I received Ana-Marie's book titled 'Landscape'  I decided to try and capture that view.  Unfortuantely when I went back today the weather was not so inspiring, who ever heard of a cold and foggy May day!  However, the white mist proved to be the making of my piece.  With the help of some baking paper, I softened the greens of the far off hills, pushing them away from the distant tree lined fields.  As Angela would tell you (she was here to witness my frustrations) I hated this piece for the first few hours, but feel very proud of it now.