This a large sketch done in acrylic marker on a 4 ft x 8 ft plywood. The key is the raw intensity of the colors. Like good music, she flows smooth, beats to the rhythm, and sings her heart out.
As I was developing this sketch, I notice the intensity causes forms to get lost. Details are hard to make out and there is little sense of depth or scale. This is where I figured that the final work needs to have a balance between raw emotion and clear dialog.
Probably the most exciting event that happen to me lately was when I got an extremely generous gift from my hero, Makoto Fujimura. It was a package containing a signed copy of Golden Sea and a booklet containing the opening to his latest book, Culture Care. It was from the booklet Fujimura gave me that I learned about the generative dialog process.
Realizing that I needed to see the problem at another angle, I contacted Alan Wade, theater professor at GW and current interim director of the Corcoran. He pointed me to set designers Edward Gordan Craig and Robert Edmond Jones.
The Dramatic Imagination, by Robert Edmond Jones, has proven quite a helpful resource for me. Jones warns us not to get too carried away with technical complexity and convincing realism. He advises that a narrative world is like a mirror to the actors' souls. It defines them just as much as their names and faces.
These bodies belongs to Zoey, the super heroine of my NEXT narrative. Zoey is a young goddess in training who is rarely far from her husband, Noah. A life sized sculpture of Zoey would be 3 feet 4 inches. This scaled version has her height at roughly 7 inches tall.
Noah, Zoey's husband, is a little taller than her, standing at 3 feet, 8 inches. This figure scales his height down to 7.5 inches. Height is a great way to distinguish gender.
To get the anatomy just right, I studied several specimens of shoulders, necks, pelvises and the like from the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, MD. Robert Beverly Hale, author of Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters, would have approved with joy.
One of my favorite quotes is from comedian Milton Berle. "When opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." These words of wisdom became very relevant recently, as the wood shop at school has closed for the winter break. So instead of waiting for the opportunity to work in school again; my father and I built a wood shop at home.
I used 1 1/2 inch wooden doll spheres to make the head and barbeque skewers to make the neck. Model magic depends on armatures like we depend on our skeletons. Without these wooden skeletons, the clay would collapse into a messy glob.
Note how in the areas where there is no armature, the clay becomes brittle and breaks off. In this case, I used wood glue to bind these elements back on.
Painting is a beautiful example of relational identity. To paint well, one must understand that there is no such thing as a 'lone star' hue. Greens need reds and yellows while blacks need their violets and browns. Colors work best when they are working together.
I did not use any black paint on this. Instead, the hue was made by mixing quinacridone, burnt umber, and ultramarine.
The armature for the hair is made of crumpled up paper that's been wrapped with masking tape. Simply apply model magic around this and it magically becomes hair that is full and youthful. If only this worked on the hair on my own head. My bangs are fading from stress.
Layers of different glaze mediums are applied to make a shiny, polished, and smooth surface. Zoey's head and body are meant to be white, but note how I don't paint straight from the tube. The green base coat and the yellow mid coat will give the white ''skin coat'' its fragrance.
