Egg tempera paintings

What is egg tempera painting I hear you ask?
So quick painting 101 on this technique is -
Egg tempera is one of the oldest painting medium, examples survive in amazing condition from the ancient egytpian times. Powdered pigments, usually derived from mineral sources are mixed with the yolk of an egg and water and then painted on a board coated in gesso (which is rabbit skin glue mixed with a white pigment eg titanium dioxide, marble dust, chalk). The paint is applied in very very thin coats so a luminosity is achieved through hundreds of layers of paint.
This was primary method of painting until about 1500 when it was discovered that you could mix oil with pigments and paint on canvas which was easier to transport, store, and you could also paint very large ....

So I have started to paint in egg tempera, wanna see some paintings ?
This is one I am working on at the moment, it is a copy of a self portrait by George Tooker. It is an exercise in learning the traditional way of painting tempera style.
1) draw a fully realised picture in black and white on paper. (skipped this bit)
2) transfer this drawing onto gesso board and do a fully realised painting in india ink

3) Use the colour Terra Verde (or bad green) to add base coat to all skin areas

 

4) start to build up layers of Verdacio (baby poo/ calf diarrhea colour) over the green

5) add cadmium red (light) to fleshy areas and sponge in colour to background and clothing

This is where I have got to so far. You want to see the original?

I will update you more as I do more to this painting. Wanna see some finished paintings?

Buzz the Hermetacist

This is a tongue in cheek homage to a Magritte painting I really like. It is in honour of Buzz the Dog.

Harry Torczyner or Justice Has Been Done 1958

This next painting is of my previous bunny friend Mr Fuggle the Angora Rabbit. He was a cool rabbit dude.

Mr Fuggle Gentleman Explorer

Well   "ttthats alll folks" till next time.

A.Muse

Paper Jewelry

I have been having fun designing Jewelry out of unusual materials, using the concept of Bricolage. In this case the material is mostly paper.

Bri·co·lage - to make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand (regardless of their original purpose).

The practice of transforming found materials by incorporating them in a new work, or simply the juxtaposition of strange and foreign objects beside more mundane counterparts.

Bricolage takes an object beyond its immediate use. When an item is removed from its usual context or usage and adapted to another form, it presents a cognitive dissonance which, at the most basic level, can contribute to feelings of shock or unease.

Bricolage can also be used to describe the spontaneous action and characteristic patterns of mythological thought. Since all mythological thought is generated by human imagination and is based on personal experience, the images and entities generated arise from imaginer's mind, borrowing from the text of a heritage, which may be left more or less coherent, or ruined and disassembled into a new discourse with a completely different meaning.

Bricolage jewelry is the re-interpretation of unusual objects with the desire to dignify the undignified. By taking objects out of context and incorporating new, untraditional elements, it is possible to transform and create jewelry in a different way.

Each piece of jewelry is designed to be a unique and individual item.

 The A.MUse Emporium of Loveliness will condense into physical form on the evening of Friday 5th August 2011 at the New Britain Museum of American Art. Enter a world of delight at the First Friday Night.
See The Emporium (Anna Murfin) as featured artist for the evening.
A selection of the Emporium's work is available to buy in the Museum Shop.

Music for the evening will be provided by Peter Hand Trio with Harvie S on bass and Steve Johns on drums .
The food theme for the evening is 'a summer picnic' with Avery soda available, and other delectable nibbles will be available to devour.

For more info on the First Friday Event look here.

http://www.nbmaa.org/index​.php?option=com_content&ta​sk=view&id=83

www.adotmuse.co.uk

Book autopsy

Brian Dettmer  is work is post modern deconstruction at its best. Dettmer books are radically altered by slicing away parts of the book, page by page to reveal complex three-dimensional sculptures that suggest at alternate histories or faded memories. He calls this process reading “but in a visual and visceral way.” He never adds implants or re-locates anything only removes. “My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.”

Dettmer starts by sealing a books edges to create a vessel full of undiscovered potential. Then in a hybrid of archaeology and surgery he takes exacto knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve down through layers of page time and history exposing layers of text and imagery cutting around that which is of interest. As he excavates never quite knowing what will appear next, he stabilizes the pages with varnish to give the work some rigidity.

Time lapse video of a book autopsy 

Brian Dettmers artists statement reads

“The age of information in physical form is waning. As intangible routes thrive with quicker fluidity, material and history are being lost, slipping and eroding into the ether. Newer media swiftly flips forms, unrestricted by the weight of material and the responsibility of history. In the tangible world we are left with a frozen material but in the intangible world we may be left with nothing. History is lost as formats change from physical stability to digital distress."

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of the information fades over time. The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge. This is the area I currently operate in. Through meticulous excavation or concise alteration I edit or dissect communicative objects or systems such as books, maps, tapes and other media. The medium’s role transforms. Its content is recontextualized and new meanings or interpretations emerge.”

Brian Dettmer has just finished a solo show in New York at the Kinz and Tillou gallery, which I sadly missed.
If you want to see more of his work then check out his website, his work really is something else.

briandettmer.com

A.MUse

Wearable sculpture for feet

Marloes ten Bhömer designs shoes that are unlike anything you have ever seen before. They are often described as "provocative and otherworldly" They have more in common with architecture or the Japanese art of origami than high street fashion.

grey glassfibre shoe

By taking art and fusing it with the cutting edge technology of CAM; Computer Aided Manufacturing, ten Bhömer challenges our pre-conceptions and allow us to re-discover shoes in new and interesting light.

Moulded leather shoe

The design language of these shoes is clean lines with the emphasis on materials, and construction techniques that are closer to architecture than women’s fashion. As the shoes do not conform to existing social codes and cliched styles they allow a rare freedom to explore design for art's sake and allow women to step outside the boundaries set in fashion design. The shoes then start to enter the realm of wearable sculpture or architectural forms.

Carbonfibreshoe #1 / 2003Materials: Carbon fibre
Shoes constructed from carbon fibre. The heels are placed on the side of the shoe, forcing the weight of the body to distribute of from side to side when walking.

‘In her efforts to change an object whose form has shifted only slightly over centuries and her wide-ranging investigations into unconventional materials, shapes and construction methods, Marloes ten Bhömer is a Hussein Chalayan for the extremities.’ (Wallpaper Magazine, 2005, edition 37)

rapidprototype shoe

The Rapidprototypedshoe, is an experiment in high-tech shoe making. The technology transforms a digital model of a person's foot into a physical shoe, with the click of a print button. Rapidprototypedshoe is built using an additive manufacturing technology, a three-dimensional printer using a laser to bind to together successive layers of a photopolymer material is UV cured. Rapidprototypedshoe is built in one go, but is designed in such a way, that it can be dismantled for the purpose of replacing parts.

Redmâchéshoe / 2003  Materials: Stainless steel and leather
The MARLOESTENBHÖMER™ leather-mâché technique is a leather laminating technique, which abolishes the use of a shoe upper pattern and allows for a varied wall thickness of the shoe. Redmâchéshoe uses rather big sheets of leather, defining the heel and abstracting the toe. The heel is a reinforced sheet of leather, attached to the side of the shoe curving down underneath the heel of the foot.

Beigefoldedshoe is origami like pair of shoes made of a single piece of leather folded round a stainless steel support .

‘Ten Bhömer’s experimentation with new shoes typology began when she was a child and slavered an old pair of her mother shoes in a paper-mâché to exaggerate their shape.

Twenty years later, when looking for a way to create a shoe of varying thicknesses, the Dutch designer remembered her mothers’ heels and began to experiment…’ (Wallpaper Magazine, 2005, edition 37).

Marloes ten Bhömer a London based Dutch product designer who graduated from the London College of Fashion & The Royal College of Art. She is considered one of the most promising designers of her generation and has exhibited worldwide. 

More of her amazing shoes can be seen here on her website    marloestenbhomer.squarespace.com 

Now just to find where to buy these shoes .....

A.MUse