Note No. 14

I will begin this discussion on the topic of my poster print series with the: Forum posting at Beinart Surreal Forum:

A little information about the process for these poster prints.

The drawings are done in several stages

1. drawing with technical pens

2. black ink wash to lay out shadow areas

3. watercolors to begin color selection and placement

4. washes of Winsor Newton color inks

5. washes and glazes of Liquitex acrylic inks.

6. A section of the piece is scanned at 600 dpi

7 scan is taken into Photoshop and duplicated

8. duplicated pieces are turned back to back to create a symmetrical design

This series is another evolutionary stage of my Dream Matter series. At this time, I do not have titles for the poster prints. I am still working on that.

I have tried to create the symmetrical images without the use of the computer but this was a task I could not achieve with the precision I wanted. The use of the computer in these pieces is very limited.

I have always been fascinated by the images produced from photographs or scans of my work when taken into photoshop and flipped back to back to create the symmetric designs as you see in these poster prints. To me it is like taking ancient tablets of a lost language and putting them together as they were intended so the hidden meaning could be revealed.  

My Dream Matter work is created spontaneously without any geometric rules in place… Now to bring that into a geometric realm is like what man does with his vision of the universe. Fitting it to our rules of physics and mathematics.

 3/14/09 

 This evening Debbie prepared the files and sent them off to the printer for the poster print you see to your left. I should have the order back by the end of this coming week. I can’t wait to see them.

3/15/09

I started a store at Cafe Press today called Dream Matter Designs. I have not gotten the store set up at this point but I plan on creating items with my Dream Matter designs printed on them. Not sure how this will work out since I have never used Cafe Press before. 

Dream Matter Designs / Cafe Press Store

I believe if I can take these designs and apply them in the correct way I could come up with some very interesting items. These designs are a combination of influences including Surrealism, Visionary Art, and Mandalas. 

I also can’t help but see a Persian rug influences in the designs. I would love to see these designs sewn into cloth. This would be a task of huge undertaking tho and I doubt that this could be done unless there is a machine and computer combination that is out there I do not know about at this time. 

 

March 17, 2009

Today I began work on a book with the Blurb program BookSmart. I am going to use the images from my ink drawings to create this book. The book itself will be the piece of art. I think if I sale this book anywhere I will also include one poster print with the book. This may be a good idea..anyway I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of this project. 

Below is a screen shot of the book’s dust jacket in the design mode. 

The book is 8×10  with the title of ” Artifex Incrementum” a Latin word meaning artistic growth or art growing. ( I find out later this is not correct.)

Another project I have underway is The Art Symposium blog. I have had this blog on hold since January of 2008. My initial idea was to create a blog and begin interviewing artists but every time I sat down to begin working out the idea behind the interview process I would end with no ideas that I cared for…so only a month ago I came up with the idea that I would ask several artists to be apart of a panel. The panel would be sent one question pertaining to art once a month and the answers would then be posted into the blog. The panel of artists are being put together at a group on Facebook. Once the panel reaches 15 to 20 artists we will begin with the first question. 

 I asked Debbie to be a part of this project with me. Then, while we were writing out the basic info on the group page, Debbie had a good idea–wouldn’t the replies from the panel make a wonderful book? If the correct questions are asked…this would be very informative for students, artists, and other people interested in the thoughts and opinions of modern day artists.

If the book is created and sales are good, the proceeds from the sales could be divided between the panel evenly to help with the costs artists are burdened with.

Of course, this is only an idea and I am not sure at this time how well this project will work out. 

Debbie brings to the project an enormous amount of design, editorial, and web development skills that could come in handy if this project does spawn a book or some web related project.

1:30 a.m  Working with Translator to find proper title for my book.

I have spend some time working on the Latin title of my book and have come to the conclusion that Artifex is not the proper word to use since it has the meaning of artist, author, artisan, and maker. Incrementum means growth, increase, offspring, augmentation,  and increment . Now what I would like is a Latin work meaning Dream Matter offspring or growth..so I will keep the work Incrementum. Now I will see what I can come up with for Dream Matter. 

Dream translated gives me Somnium. Matter translated give me Res, Res Rei, Materia. Putting materia back into the translator gives me material, substance, and matter. so then..Somnium Materia would be Dream Matter.

Now let me see what I get when I put offspring into the translator set on English to Latin. This gives me suboles, proles, progenies, progagus, posteritas, liber, and incrementum. The only words out of that string that I like would be incrementum or progenies. 

Putting progenies back into the translator and setting it to Latin to English gives me descent, lineage, progeny, offspring, and descendants. With that string of translations I choose to use  Somnium Materia Progenies. 

This gives the meaning of lineage of Dream Matter or an offspring of Dream Matter. 

 

 

~ by Steve Smith on March 18, 2009.