Saturday, March 16, 2013

Light and Shadow

I figured it was time to post some of my progress. This series of work was based off of the Shintoism idea of spiritual embodiment of every day objects. In this ancient Japanese religion all living things (and some non living like mountains and rocks) had spirits. In my recent work i have been depicting and illustrating these spirits.
 Here are some terrible pics of my sketchbook pages~


All three of these images became prints. I decided to use etching, because there is something very satisfying working with zinc and acid. The quality of the line is very fine and because i tend to do a lot of hatching and crosshatching, the medium fit my style.


I really like the way they turned out, the top diptych is called "Light and Shadow" as they are neither good nor bad, but rather opposing spirits of equally important things. I wanted to depict Light as shy and fleeting as it is always changing and moving. Her hair is straight and long like beams of light. Shadow is a lot more bold and daring as she is everywhere. Her hair is curly and flows like the edges of shadows seem to flow. The bottom etching is called "Air" and i wanted her to look like she is taking flight. I got the gradient of the background by doing several layers of aquatint on the plate, which is a process of covering the plate with resin, baking it, and then stopping out all the areas where you don't want the acid to bite. Really fun stuff.

I didn't want to stop there, though. I felt there was something really compelling about the balanced compositions of "Light and Shadow." I liked the idea of the dual portraits, and my mentor suggested that i take up the challenge and make them life-sized paintings. Challenge accepted. 
After many hours of work, i came up with these:
 She is "Light." I wanted her to look tired and worn, as if she has traveled all over the world carrying with her the heaviness of day, I know it is hard to tell from this photo, but there are stars in the background.
 She is "Shadow." I had a lot of fun putting in the red of her hair. Just like the prints, I wanted her to be more outgoing.


Here is the finished product! Each painting is approximately 56 inches by 35 inches in size and the portraits are life-sized.

Details: