Once upon a time

Once upon a time, somewhere between the water and the sky, there was an enchanted island that was not quite an island. To this magic land, in the dark of autumn and winter, our intrepid grey-haired adventuress was drawn in pursuit of her mythic late-life quest.

Laden with a knapsack of special wands and sustained by a custom-brewed elixir...

she explored the Not Quite Island, discovering many things there that were Not Quite what they seemed to be. She found a mermaid, locked in wood but still smiling:

and a school of silver fishes, flashing through the air.

She learned that seagulls could overpower humans....

...but that Genial Giants ruling the island's cement plant spread a benevolent influence over all.

She found treasure troves of colour and shape displayed in the open...

and came at last to the site where treasures were hidden and yet to be revealed:-- a creaking old building destined to vanish in the summer of 2017.

Here, she met with an unexpectedly congenial troop of comrades (most of them half her age), each of whom was pursuing her/his own quest. But under the guidance of a Wise Woman delegated to instruct them, they all learned together the Four Magic Questions that they could expect to be asked, again and again, as they continued their journeys:

- Are the negative spaces interesting?
- Is there an overall balance?
- Are the elements varied?
- And most mysterious of all: WHAT IF (this element were changed,
etc)..........?

Already, our heroine had proven herself through the many trials that had been set for her. (see here and here and here). Now, in these final days in the vanishing building, the Wise Woman assigned three more challenges. The first was to create a sampler of different textures.

 

The second was to add the element of texture to the shape of her elixir cup, the same design that had been used in a previous exercise.

This time, the emphasis was not on tone or shade but on how a pronounced texture will draw the eye.

The third and final task required careful preparation. Guided by the Wise Woman, the troop of seekers discussed, first, the symbolism of different colours, recognizing that these can vary across cultures, and second, the possible symbolism of various geometric shapes.

Then, their assignment was to recall a fairy tale, select a specific scene in it, and recreate that scene symbolically, using only two colours and black and white. This was not to be an illustration, but a symbolic representation in a composition that satisfied the Four Magic Questions.

In the spirit of the Not Quite Island, our heroine chose the story of Dvořák's opera, "Rusalka," based on a Slavic fairy tale akin to the "The Little Mermaid." The chosen scene was the unforgettable "Song to the Moon," when the Rusalka, the water nymph, sings to the moon of her love and longing for the seemingly unattainable prince. You can listen to this astonishingly beautiful song sung by the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and be thrilled to the core. (And you can view more delights from the Not Quite Island here).

In this final stage of her quest, our elderly heroine created this symbolic representation:

Now, with her trials for this stage completed, has our Canadian Goose turned into a swan?

Not Quite, but working on it.

Stone, paper, scissors

-- and colour! Give me paper, some kind of marker, and some kind of colour, and I'm happy. A pretty stone paperweight (taking a bow in the upper right corner), and scissors are nice extras -- and lately in my art class, I've enjoyed playing with all of the above. Are you ready to whisk through three weeks of homework with me?

Here's a nifty exercise in "reduction" -- getting down to how much of an object's detail is needed for someone else to recognize it. Here we go, in a series of 2-inch squares. First one: A simple drawing of a recognizable object.

Second: Reduce the object by cropping so that it can still be identified.

Third: Crop further so that an innocent bystander wouldn't have a clue what it was.

Fourth: Reverse the tones -- what was white becomes black, what was black becomes white.

Then, add another two squares -- one using black, white and one colour; the second using black, white and several colours -- and put all of them together into an engaging composition.

Okay. I did the project but I'm not wildly satisfied with the outcome -- despite hours and hours spent wracking my brain on what to choose and how to put it all together.

The next week's homework had nothing ambiguous about it, just a lot of hard labour doing something that looks deceptively easy:-- making a 9-step tonal scale from white to black. Last semester, we did this in dry media which was tough enough.

It's even harder in paint. But here's the outcome in all its glory:-- the 9-step grey scale, with colour chips matched in tone to the greys. On the right, an exercise in seeing how the same tone of grey (the small square at the centre) appears to be a different tone on each of several different backgrounds. (Some of these subtleties cannot be captured by the camera)

We're into colour now! Hurray! Our first experiment was reproducing some of Chevreul's theories on colour perception. We each made a simple design using two colour complements (opposites on the colour wheel).

Then we viewed our own for a minute or so as it hung on the white classroom wall, and then we turned our gaze to the wall itself. Voilá ! Against the white, the colours reversed -- my prominent red-orange leaves showed as blue.

With these colour exercises under our belt, we created a tonal series based on our own simple design. The first: Shades of grey. The second -- exactly the same object, in shades of one colour (tube colour + different amounts of white or black). The third -- same object in analogous colours ("neighbours" on the colour wheel). The objective was to match all the tones, from one panel to the next -- so that if you blur your eyes, the lightest shape in the centre panel matches the lightest grey in the first panel, and so on.

Even before I started, I knew I'd be longing for coffee -- and that image kept me going, especially the third panel with its warm orange/brown tones.

As I write this, I'm preparing for my 8th and final class. You'll be seeing the coffee mugs again and some much more exciting stuff. But right now, this is the moment I've been waiting for to share a picture I saved from last summer:-- a perfect 9-step grey scale that neighbours down the block painted on their front porch steps. It's a little distorted by the bright early morning sunshine and the shadows from the porch railing -- but they absolutely nailed it.