I'm making good progress on the work for my new Flora and Fauna series that will debut at the
PA Arts Experience this October. First up is "Fox and Hackberry". I started with the red fox skull, and fiddled around with lighting and camera settings until I had the images I wanted, like the shot above looking down on the inside of the top portion of the skull. More fiddling with the digital image produced the transparency, below, that acts like an oversized photo negative for making cyanotype prints.
Here's the print, with the stitching started. I had an idea of how I wanted this piece to look, and as sometimes happens, when I started to actually work on it, my preconceived notions were defenestrated and I started anew in a mad frenzy. What was going to be small and starkly simple ended up quite large and complex.
The top is finished and awaiting layering and quilting, and I'm really happy with it, it's very bright and cheerful. Here's another fox image--look at those canine teeth!
I'm making good progress on the work for my new Flora and Fauna series that will debut at the PA Arts Experience this October. First up is "Fox and Hackberry". I started with the red fox skull, and fiddled around with lighting and camera settings until I had the images I wanted, like the shot above looking down on the inside of the top portion of the skull. More fiddling with the digital image produced the transparency, below, that acts like an oversized photo negative for making cyanotype prints.
Here's the print, with the stitching started. I had an idea of how I wanted this piece to look, and as sometimes happens, when I started to actually work on it, my preconceived notions were defenestrated and I started anew in a mad frenzy. What was going to be small and starkly simple ended up quite large and complex.
The top is finished and awaiting layering and quilting, and I'm really happy with it, it's very bright and cheerful. Here's another fox image--look at those canine teeth!
5 comments:
I love the colors and the fabrics that you are mixing up in these pieces.
Where do you find the skulls, Sue? Roadkill? And what do you have to do to them to get them so clean? Boil them? Chemicals? Hate to sound macabre, but I am interested. (I was born on Halloween, so I'm a bit "dark" sometimes.) They are beautiful, structurally speaking.
If you say it's a fox then we will have to believe you but it sure looks to me like you found a dragon. Beautiful! anniedehgan@hotmail.com
Thanks, all! It does look a bit like a dragon, or an alien :-)
Susan, some of the skulls were found in the woods locally, after their presumably natural demise. They were cleaned by scavengers (on some you can see small tooth marks), insects, and weather. Some of these are in rough shape, which makes for interesting images. Others I purchased online from a supplier, who keeps a colony of dermestid beetles to do the cleaning.
Thanks for explaining the process- though I am disappointed that my printer will not print on tranparencies....I have just been doing leaves etc, but always wondered how to get the fine detail of a 3-D object...can't wait to try(as soon as I can find a printer nearby that will do the task). Love the skulls!!- I just spent time in Santa Fe where skulls are a very prominent feature in the art(think Georgia O'Keefe) and loved it all!
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