Tag Archives: Collage

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The Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera and Pollination (version 5)

The Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera and Pollination (version 5)

Version six of this image was posted back in September. In that post, I explained that it truly is a hybridized mixed media project. Bits and pieces of creation, whether if by the hand of nature, or by the hand of eVan, were gathered together and integrated on to an electronic canvas.

One thing that I didn’t describe to you, however, is that bulb-like flower with a blue stem on the right side of the picture. It’s actually from a diagram depicting the Bio-Savart law. This law is basically an equation describing the magnetic field generated by an electric current. An electric current, its proximity, length, direction and magnitude are related to a magnetic field in the equation used to compute the Bio-Savart law.

Explaining math to you wasn’t the intent of this project however. Even the title of this series is quite long and requires some attention. I thought of shortening the title to Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera, but I already posted a previous version (version 6) with the long title, so I decided to roll with what I originally started with in the title.

Dust can be found on butterflies, moths, and on the ends of stamens of flowers, and the colors of these naturally occurring dust-like substances are often a pleasurable sight to witness. Colorfully compacted dust is also used in oil pastels for artists to create art works.

I used a piece from my Wrecked Tangles (Encircled) series for the background of this work, which involved the usage of oil pastels. Dust is symbolic of time, as in the sand that is used in hour glasses, or, the sand that resides on beaches which seem to continue on forever into the horizon.

Dust is also symbolic of taking many small steps in order to complete a project. When you finally complete a detailed and lengthy project, you can relax at the end of your constructed beach and enjoy the beach-scape built by your own efforts.

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December 28, 2013 · 4:06 am
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The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

I made this image back in June, 2013. It started out with using magic marker on paper. There was some bleed through from some rubbing alcohol I applied to drawings on previous pages. I incorporated the designs into the stains.

What you see here is a digital manipulation of the original drawing. It’s basically the drawing times four. I use mirroring techniques to accomplish what you see here, as well as in other images.

I realized that the process that I take in many of my creations is the process of unfoldment. Unfoldment is different than development in the sense that unfolding is organic, and flower like, whereas development is more machine like, and each machine developed can’t develop more without a designer making a new model.

Unfoldment is a process that takes place from within a living organism or being. So growth, life, and will come from within a living being, not a “lifeless” machine.

I titled this piece The Feather Swept Sky. I imagined all the feathers of birds sweeping the skies of earth and magically sweeping away all the pollution. This image reminds me of some Native American art and jewelry. It also reminds me of ancient Egyptian art work and jewelry.

I suppose it’s a religious and mystical image bringing us all back a reminder of ancient religions, tribes, and civilizations. It’s the wisdom from our past, and the magical beliefs people had. Especially the belief of respecting and honoring the earth as a living, breathing being, not a dead rock to be used up by the never-ending greed of one percent moguls.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:38 am
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Yellow Tide (version 1)

Yellow Tide (version 1)

It looks like a lot of people liked Purple Tide, the last image I uploaded here last night. Well, this is Yellow Tide. It’s actually the predecessor to Purple Tide. It’s the same design, but the colors are inverted.

To be sure, this is part of a drawing I created with mixed media on paper, including magic marker and rubbing alcohol. Thinking of rubbing alcohol gives one a cool feeling, as this is how it feels when you rub it on your skin.

I used to live in southern California, and would visit the beaches there on the West coast every once in a while. The colors in Yellow tide remind me some of the memories I have of going to New Port, Dana Point, San Clemente, or Laguna.

Yet, this image is abstract enough to merely suggest a beach scene. In fact, if you get a totally different impression, then, by all means, let yourself explore that line of thought into your own imagination, and use this image as a doorway to help you get there.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:32 am
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Purple Tide (version 1)

Purple Tide (version 1)

This image here is a fragment chosen from Ploidy the Diploid, which is another image in this album. As I often do when I get a chance, I pull out previous works I’ve done and see new things in them that intuitively look like they could be independent art works in themselves.

Creation has a tendency to morph and grow out of what came before, even when it seems completely unrelated. The subconscious mind is a lot less discriminative, and categorical in the sense of conscious classification systems. In fact, chief editors of newspapers and magazines know that the positioning of supposedly unrelated ads actually contribute to an article you may be reading. It actually gets digested in your subconscious mind as one interrelated kilobyte of information.

So this image here looks to me like an ocean wave under a purple and red sky. My fascination with alien planets makes me think of an ocean somewhere else in the universe. Though it is independent of earth, the properties of this imaginary place are connected and related in the sense of liquid, and high & low tides.

It’s just a very liquid picture composed of relatively basic abstract shapes, another one of my approaches to creation. That’s the thing, I really like to embroil my audience with intricacies and complexities in my art, but I try to point out the basic and simple shapes that are used to construct such elaborate labyrinths.

It’s the idea of perfection versus imperfection, and all of the intuitive visual equations that I subconsciously work out in the water of my mind.

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November 20, 2013 · 7:37 am
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Pastel Dust of Pollen and Lepidoptera (version 6)

Pastel Dust of Pollen and Lepidoptera (version 6)

Digital material from one of my original oil paintings, some of my mixed media pastel drawings, ball-point pen drawings, and some real butterfly wings went into the creation of this piece.

I used some of the scanned material from my Wrecked Tangles (Encircled) A series project as the background. Also, the design from Industrial Mandala was used. Again, Industrial Mandala is a digital manipulation from my original oil painting: Of Which I Am a Part.

I incorporated some text on Wikipedia’s definition of a butterfly in the background. You can make out a little bit of it, but my intention was to add some filler to the background design, and I thought a scientific description of the butterfly was fitting. Lepidoptera is the Latin term for butterfly.

The butterfly wings were actually some remains of a butterfly that one of our cats dragged in after stalking it in our backyard garden. For some reason, I hung on to the wings and put them up on a shelf. Later on, I had this idea that I should scan the wings on to the computer so as to use them for a future project.

Well, here is that future project. I’ve been wanting to explore some more of my ideas using the mandala design format. This is another result of that. I feel that I’m getting a better feel of what I want to master. Eventually, I want to start experimenting with using diagrams and drawings of parts of plants, animals, people, and machines. This image I’m sharing with you here is where I’m at for now however.

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September 9, 2013 · 7:50 am
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Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version B8

Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version B8

A lot of different media went into the original drawing for this image. I manipulated the image further after scanning it into the computer. It doesn’t have as many mechanical diagrams integrated into it as I’ve done with some of the previous Wrecked Tangles series.

There really isn’t a profound meaning I was consciously trying to communicate here. I just like the shapes of letters and alphabetical symbols. I like the patterns that they create, and I take note of compositions found in magazines and newspapers.

I cut out pieces from magazines in order to integrate them into the imagery characterized by my Wrecked Tangles art project. It’s really an ad hoc adventure that is open ended, and I often stumble upon new designs in the process of manipulating the collaged drawings I create from traditional materials.

Some of you whom I’ve met before have given me some of those materials, such as the old books on foreign cars and so forth. I plan on exploring more in the area of alchemical and mathematical symbols, as well as Greek characters, and, perhaps Chinese characters in future projects.

For now, please enjoy exploring the structures and nuances maintaining themselves within this image. It is intended to be displayed as a print. It is 15 inches by 24 inches, or 38 cm by 61 cm. Un-matted on archival paper, it is $200, and that includes shipping. Framed with a glass cover and matting is $400 including shipping. Please contact me by my cell phone number provided here on my art page here and leave a message.

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September 1, 2013 · 4:49 am