pixels, light and hot wax

I knew I’d get to do book covers eventually. (Actually, through A La Carte, I do tons of book covers, but they don’t usually have pictures I’ve made on them.)

Book is a poetry memoir by a friend, I designed the cover (at her request) around a mixed-media experimental piece from my “sketchbook” involving a photograph of my oldest and a great deal of white gouache.

4 new covers are now available at Anthology Builder!

All are also available as prints, and will be added into the galleries shortly:

(030909_132) Rock, Oregon Coast. Photograph. 2009.

Variant of CherryBomb encaustic. Giclee. 2007.

(030909_158) Lone Rock. Oregon Coast. Photograph. 2009.

(030909_132)Hollowed Rock, Oregon Coast. Photograph. 2009.

So, after years (er, decades) of photography and digital work, I decided to really dive in to more traditional media, just to expand my options. So, about 6 months ago, I started learning to draw, and have definitely fallen in love with ink (particularly via brush, sumi-e style) and compressed charcoal. And even though I barely have a handle on either medium *really*, I of course can’t resist diving into the ultimate aim, which is combining the photography/digital with the traditional.

So last night’s experiment was charcoal over a digital underdrawing (a hot mess, largely because I forget that I can’t do really small scale charcoal, but still a success because now I know I can do charcoal succesfully over my favorite matte giclee surface.) Tonight’s was ink over giclee on charcoal paper, and still nothing I’m going to stick in my portfolio (or sign), but interesting (to me at least) nonetheless for how the ink interacted with the remnants of photograph:

Maybe I should post some of my drawings that don’t suck…

Red/Spin, 2006
Acrylic on photograph

(The base photograph is the one from this post last week

Body with Blue and Green, 2006.
Acrylic on photograph

I just sent a few pieces, with “befores”, off to Tracy Cornett, for her Fantasy Photography panel at Dragon. (Tracy rocks) I’ve been meaning to do proper before and afters/tutorials on the site for a while, but until I have time to do it properly, here is a little taste:

Summoning Luna (finished):

Summoning Luna (main source):

This is the first really complex composite I’d ever done, pretty much simultaneously with Throne of Fey and Planet Eater, and while there are certainly things I would do differently now, I’m still pretty pleased with it, especially as it is the first complex digital piece I’ve finished that started with a sketch, rather than looking through a shoot and going “Hmmm, I bet I could do something with that….” There were three different photographs combined with digital painting and the most persnickety layer masks ever. (I’m pretty sure this piece took in the neighborhood of 60 hours to finish.)

Poseidon’s Bouncer (finished):



Poseidon’s Bouncer (two main sources, out of 4 photographs)

Images like this are why I need to get myself to shoot more landscapes, even though I don’t particularly enjoy them. (Of course, that’s also why I started learning Vue, so I’m not limited to the landscapes I’ve shot.) I do have a plentiful supply of photos of fish bits, however (which also explains much of the Space Whimsy series; I just can’t resist flowers and sealife.