Animation Continuation

Step 2: Research

I’ve been working since last September on a drawing project that uses stop-motion animation. You may recall that I began this project last summer with a 19 second animated video Train Sequence. That was Step 1, a mini-movie to test the stop-motion process. My goal at that time was to incorporate the 19 second piece into a 4 minute animation, to be completed by August 2012. I  begin shooting and editing in July so I thought this would be a good time to look back at the production process up to this point.

I’ve completed 26 drawings which are the basis of the animation. Similar to the way illustrations accompany a picture book that are tied to a narrative, the drawings are motivated  by the text of Josh Ritter’s song Wings.

Travel

In addition to online resources and library texts, I visited some of the physical sites mentioned in the song.  I began with a trip to the Cataldo Mission, near Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. Originally a Jesuit mission, it’s said to be the oldest standing building in Idaho. Most of my life I’ve lived no more than 50 miles from this historic site, but this was my first visit.

Inside the mission are wooden statues on either side of the vaulted dome ceiling. Carved and painted to resemble marble, they were made by Father Ravalli, a Jesuit priest who was also a sculptor, painter and designer of the mission. Like an elaborate stage set, the building’s interior is full of his faux-finished structures and ornamentation: hand-painted newspaper “wallpaper,” tin can metalwork “chandelier”,  and faux marble carved wooden altar and baptismal font. Working with Schitsu’ umsh tribe members, Ravalli used only the tools and materials that were available, including cat hair paintbrushes, and paints made from plants and berries.

In January of this year, I wandered into the CREHST museum in Richland Washington, looking for a little information on the area since the Columbia River Basin is mentioned in several stanzas.  Not only does the museum cover the history of the Columbia River drainage,  it also has a special collection  of paraphernalia from the Hanford Plutonium Project, enabling me to skip the research trip to Hanford.

The museum docents, former employees of the Hanford Project, encouraged me make the 25 mile trip to Hanford and tour the site.

They said it’s quite safe… hmm. They also said, that as a “downwinder” I’m more likely to die from the affects of radon gas, than anything leaked from Hanford.

And finally, I needed to research the process of how a tree becomes a board. So last week I joined a group tour of the Hull Oakes Sawmill, near Monroe Oregon. It’s one of the last commercial steam-powered sawmills in the U.S.

Scene 17 begins with a drawing of a lumber mill that comes to life with animation. I grew up in a mill town so I’m not clueless about the process, but I thought I better double-check.

My plan is that  trees will “leave” the hillsides, move through the water, up a conveyer, into the mill, and become stacks of boards in the lumberyard.  Of course Hull Oakes has several people (not computers) involved in these steps: unloading the logs from trucks into the river, running machines, grabbing logs with a spiked tool, directing the cuts,  shunting jagged boards to the waste bins, lowering the circular saw, etc.  I have the luxury of leaving people out…it’s only an 8 second scene.

Next animation post, Step 3: Storyboards.

Art about Agriculture

Field Burn #4

I’ve been invited to participate in Oregon State University’s annual exhibition of Art About Agriculture, along with 13 other artists from the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. Two drawings from my on-going series of Field Burns  are in this show, which runs from April 2-27.

Field Burn #7

There will be an artists’ reception April 5, 6:00-8:00 pm, at the Giustina Art Gallery; located on the OSU campus in the LaSells Stewart Center, Western and 26th Street, Corvallis Oregon. The show travels to Madras Oregon where it can be seen at the Art Adventure Gallery, June 1-26.

Ch-ch-ch-changes in Charcoal

Untitled (Crowd)

We’ve been busy here at Black Thumb Studio, just like Santa’s workshop, trying to make that December deadline.  I’ll be delivering and installing 20 drawings at Columbia Basin College in a show of Drawings and Ceramics that opens January 9, 2012. Sculptor Carolyn Nelson and I will show at the CBC’s Esvelt Gallery through February 2, and we’ll both be on hand at the opening reception January 10th, 7 pm.  Come join us if you’re in the Tri-cities area.

Crowd drawing, early stage

This drawing of a crowd has an obvious compositional problem -a bit busy on the right side – but I resisted the need to make dramatic changes to this drawing.  I liked the hint of landscape and quiet pastoral setting.  Why can’t this crowd just live here, happily shoved up against the right edge of the paper, absorbed in something that’s happening beyond the left edge?

Sometimes you can’t have what you want… after six months of unsatisfactory solutions, I transplanted them to the city and they’re much happier now, though they may need a new title.

Contour line ritual

I started several drawing projects during last month’s residency Artists @ Work. While most of these drawings involved charcoal, I had one daily ritual that required clean hands.

Every morning I began the work day with a blind contour line drawing. Using a fine point marker on square sheets of paper, I drew what I saw in front of me with a continuous line, moving around and across the surfaces of objects, architectural structures, and people.

          

-list from illustrator Tim Dose

What makes these drawings quirky (some would say ugly) is the “blind” part of this process. Here are the rules: Do not look at your paper, only at the objects you’re drawing. Start at the edge of the paper and move slowly along observed contours, with your hand and eyes working in tandem. Do not stop or lift the pen until you run off the edge of the paper.

My goal was to create a 2-D representation of the 3-D space and a record of our residency, by beginning and ending at the same point. Instead, I started with the piano in the southeastern corner of the building and ended with Hester at the computer, in the northeastern corner. I spent too much time hung up on the ceiling.

I’m now in the process of connecting the 19 sheets in an accordion format. Using a sewing machine with white thread, I’m having fun linking the pages together with sewn/drawn shapes that describe what I can remember of the space – windows, podiums, a ladder, etc.

Friends and fellow resident artists Gale and Julia joined me for a group blind sketch: 

Mike Bergen's drawing of Carol

 

Animated drawing

Artists @ Work week 2 and 3:

I switched my focus the last two weeks of the residency from “crowd drawings”  to an animation project, based on the process used by South African artist William Kentridge. I’m animating a song lyric, 4 minutes in length, and this 19 second sequence is about half of the second stanza. It’s like a ”rough draft” that allowed me to experiment with the process.

Draw mountain valley, “click”…

I layered multiple drawings and erasures on the same sheet of paper, usually making incremental changes that I photographed at each stage. After 6 days, I had 103 images viewed at 3 frames/second for the train sequence.

Draw gray smudge, "click"...

Enlarge gray smudge, "click"

Use eraser to make white rocks fly from smudge, "click"

It may be fortuitous coincidence, synchronicity, or divine intervention, but the public component of this residency turned my little project into a truly collaborative work. These guys wandered into the Arts Center and shared their knowledge: artist Bill Shumway, animator Matthew Coffin,  film editor Paul Ahrens, and Chris Gray, single-gauge railroad aficionado.

Josh Ritter my Muse

 

Field Burn #5, Tensed Idaho

       Here’s the thread: Josh Ritter tunes were my background sound while in the drawing studio this spring and summer (Hello Starling, The Animal Years), with a little Tom Jones and Yo-Yo Ma for variety.  In June, I chose Josh’s Bone of Song as the text for a workshop assignment to create a 32 page illustrated machette, at PNCA’s “Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books”, in Portland. Like many of his songs, it’s a poetic narrative lyric, full of visual metaphors…and it made my job easier to focus on illustration and skip the writing part for now (only a 4 day class).

Preliminary thumbnail sketches for the book dummy (machette). I imagined a boy, about 10 years old, as the narrator. But you can't have a boy wandering through the Palouse fields and woods without some kind of companion, a dog perhaps?

While at PNCA, I found out Josh was coming to Portland in July for a book reading at Powells –he just released his first novel Bright’s Passage.  Soooo Greg (my other muse) and I took off for Portland yesterday, early enough to grab two front row seats at Josh’s reading. The energy in the standing room only crowd rose when a Powell’s dude placed a glass of water and a guitar at the speaker’s podium. 

Josh interspersed the readings with 3 songs and I will sound like a goofy fan if I gush on, but it was AWESOME!  Do not miss him if you get the chance to see him in any venue: bookstore, concert hall, poetry group. Got my autographed copy of the book and I’ll read it when we get back to Idaho in a few weeks …at the cabin, up the St. Joe, with a bottle of Guinness draught.

 

Artists @ Work: week 1

Blurred charcoal drawing "Two Bills"

I worked on small drawings of groups and crowds this week, and  had a good response to my request for posers. 

Great they're already blurred!

 

Usually people sat on the bench and I shot a few pics. Sometimes they gave me more than I expected…

  

I share the gallery/studio space with three other artists: Kendal Hathaway, Julia Lont, and  Gale Everett.  Kendal is a mosaic artist, using glass and recycled materials.  Julia works with photos as transfers on fabric and as a base for layered egg tempera paintings. Gale is building a wire armature to be covered with her handmade paper.  

Kendal, Julia, and Gale working in their spaces

For more information and photos of our progress, check out Kendal’s blog at kendalhathaway.com and Gale’s blog: sticksstonesnpaperstew.

My Summer Residency

Untitled drawing, in progress

Black Thumb Art Studio will be operating out of The Arts Center in July for a month long residency called Artists @ Work.  I’ll join three other artists in turning the main gallery space into an open studio where we will pursue our individual work and interact with the public.

I’m working on a series of drawings that investigates group dynamics and the subject/object dichotomy with drawings based on overheard conversations. There are two public components to this work, and I’m soliciting your help:

Sketchbook gesture for drawing above

Photo references - I’m looking for a variety of bodies to use as references for the drawings. Come by the Center and I’ll shoot your pic.

Eavesdropping - what odd, funny, crazy … bit of conversation have you overheard, unintentionally of course?

Artists @ Work • The Arts Center • 700 SW Madison Ave • Corvallis, OR • 12-5 Tue-Sat • 541-754-1551

Un-speak-able Book Arts Exhibit

The national juried exhibit
Un-speak-able opened last week at The Arts Center in Corvallis, Oregon. A year ago I submitted the idea of an artist book show to the Center’s Exhibition Committee during their Request for Proposals, 2011 season.  Several committee members shared my interest in the art form, and in hosting their first exhibit of book arts.

The 64 books in this show present a wide range of shapes and forms: altered books, bindings, unique pieces, samples of small editions, calligraphed books, and conceptual work.

My thanks to the Center’s curator Hester Coucke for inviting me to work with her on this show; our juror Barbara Tetenbaum, Professor and Book Arts Department Head at the Oregon College of Art and Craft; and the 48 book artists who graciously share their creations with the community.

Here are a few of my snapshots from the opening. To view complete descriptions and high-quality images of all Un-speak-able entries visit this link at The Arts Center.

“WMD”, Robert Rowe

“I Row”, Elaine Green

“Sheets”, Jessica Spring

“With the Naked Eye”, Roberta Lavadour

“Transparent People”, Jill Pollock

“Fear and Greed”, Gregory Martens

“REP-HAIR-ATION”, Diane Jacobs

“REP-HAIR-ATION”, detail

“REP-HAIR-ATION”, detail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Thumb show pics

Thanks to everyone who made it to the opening… good to see family and friends again! Special thanks to photographers Matt Green at spokaneimage.com and Christian from Woods Photography and Design.