Christy and Julia are making art! That’s not really news, they’re always doing that, but now they’re going to collaborate on a larger scale installation. The Banff Center has invited them to spend a month making this work. How do a pair of emerging artists get the resources for making a large piece and shipping it 2,000 miles away (and back)? They put up a Kickstarter!
Go check it out and send them dumptrucks full of money! They rock!
We’ve been going on hiking trips roughly once a weekend (as soon as my workload allowed it again), which has been just a ton of fun. We’ve recently been exploring Cuyamaca Rancho State Park which is a stunning park just south of Julian. It takes us about 45 minutes to drive there from near downtown, but it’s totally worth it.
This morning we hiked up Stonewall Peak which I totally recommend. It’s about two miles each way if you go straight up and back, and it’s an easy hike (almost all of the many hikers we saw involved small kids, which is rare for most of the hikes we take) with a fabulous view at the top. Naturally we took a side road back down which some random book had told us would only be half a mile longer although my glance at a map earlier had me suspecting that was a tad short. We ended up hiking a bit over 5 miles total, which is a great way to spend late morning and early afternoon.
While we were near the peak, we stopped for a bit and Christy took a few minutes to sketch out:
Yeah, she’s good.
In related news we’ve had a number of friends inquire about where we hike, so we’re thinking about getting together groups of people maybe once a month or so for a hike. Our first will probably be next Sunday, so if you’re in the area feel free to join us! Our downstairs neighbor will probably come along and maybe a few other friends and we’re actually thinking about doing this same hike again (probably straight up and back, without the bonus detour). Christy and I have really been enjoying exploring the greater San Diego area and it will be fun to hit some of our favorite hikes again with some of our favorite people!
This is another one of Christy’s special “sketches” made by putting oil pastels on top of india ink and then scratching down with a razer.
This is the first one she’s done that wasn’t about people. Instead, she took pictures of the lilies around our apartment complex through the winter, and then based the sketch on those. It’s pretty fun, and she knocked it out from scratch to finish this afternoon!
This piece is also titled, “Self Portrait As A Zombie.” It’s the last in this series of three sketches (“Sick” was the first and “Everything Hurts” the second) all using layers of India ink and pastels, then scraped off with a razor blade.
Zombie Hands! Otherwise known as: one of many reasons joint pain sucks.
“Everything Hurts” is another sketch by Christy done in two sessions over a weekend. For a while, every joint in her body was causing her pain.
A detail shot:
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Christy has had a rough few months, and a couple of weekends ago she took a break from the portrait to do a quick “sketch” about that period. She titled it “Sick” and created it by adding pastels on top of India ink, and then used a razor blade to draw by scraping the pastel off.
A zoomed in shot, showing some of the detail:
I added another version, taken in the sun, after the jump.
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The main reason we took pictures as Christy was working on her portrait of me was so I could try and give setting up time lapse a shot. We had some difficulties since the aisle floating around a lot during painting, and the camera was also in use between paintings. We rigged up some masking tape to mark where the aisle should go, and how things were positioned, and this helped a lot. Unfortunately, things still shifted from shot to shot, especially when one of us would forget to set everything up right before snapping that set of photos. Even worse than these was the lighting. With our sliding glass door in back of the aisle, the painting would look totally different during the day or night. We could usually get away without a flash, but we never had enough light sources to really show the depth of color without it. Unfortunately, the flash almost always added glare (using a tiny hand-held camera with fixed flash), so I tried to use mostly ones without the flash.
All that being said, I hacked together what kind of time lapse I could. This shows the process from poorly assembled, stock canvas, through disassembly, rebuilding and painting. We hope you enjoy it.
It’s done, and a heck of a thing it is, too. Here we are in the home stretch:
and then she finished it up, added a signature, and the thing is finished. In reality this took her maybe ten sessions total, which seems like working at light speed to me. I’ll have a time lapse version of all of these posted in the near future. For now, enjoy the finished product:
There’s more art to come (she did another piece the other weekend), but for now we hope you’ve enjoyed watching it come together!
