Quirky Dreaming

And then, the sun came out...

Today was the sort of day that makes the buds swell on the hedgerows, the daffodils grow another inch and the frogs flock to my pond to lay their annual mounds of gloopy spawn.

On a less romantic note, I phoned Plasti-kote this morning to ask about varnish compatibility. The gold spray paint I used is not actually recommended for sealing as this affects the metallic shine, nor for use out-of-doors – so that will teach me to be spontaneous! At a meeting in Sheringham last week, aimed at helping people with the technicalities of painting and decorating their crabs and lobsters, it was pointed out that the yacht varnish used on one of the North Walsham Hippos was peeling off in chunks and taking the colour underneath with it (my worst nightmare). This is because the colour underneath was water-based, so the varnish coat should also have been water-based to be compatible. However, my Brilliant Gold spray paint is not water-based, although the acrylic paint I'm using on the figures is... According to Plasti-kote, I will need to varnish with Plasti-kote's Super Gloss Clear Acrylic. I've been checking this out online and it looks as though it will work over both the Brilliant Gold and the acrylic painted figures – fingers-crossed that it does.

After the phone call I went outside to unwrap my lobster from its plastic covers, but found the wind overnight had already done the job for me. And I think there must have been rain, because the golden surface is looking rather beautifully weathered in places – this is clearly why the product is not recommended for use out-of-doors.

Interesting though this is, it is not really the effect I was looking for, so I am going to have to touch up the lobster with another thin spray of paint to tidy it up.

Anyway, I managed to drag the unwieldy beast off my drive where it has been wheel-deep in gravel since it arrived, and onto the middle of the lawn, where I had the space to stand back and consider my plans from every angle. I then cut greaseproof paper into templates to fit each of the back sections, blu-tacked them in place and roughly sketched my design onto them. 

So I now have a pile of greaseproof paper shapes on my ironing board, sketched with artwork, waiting to be transferred onto...

...these sheets of coloured paper. On Sunday I painted lots of pages of the EDP in bright acrylic colours so now I have a very pleasing stack of coloured sheets waiting to be cut into interesting walking characters, each, I hope, with a personality of its own.

I am increasingly aware that the lobster needs to be finished and in position by 9th April, which according to John Morgan, who is charge of PR for this project, is the day the Crustacea Trail leaflets will arrive from the printer, and is therefore the launch date for the Trail. This gives me 24 days. That sounds quite a lot, but I do have a series of clients with deadlines for me to meet at the same time!

My plan is to cut everything out and then have a couple of intense days of sticking everything into position and sealing the whole thing with varnish – 3 coats, I'm assured, is best. So I'm hoping that the weather at the end of the month will be as glorious as it was today.

 

Come Walk With Me...

Yesterday was my birthday and I treated myself to a visit to the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Not only did I think about the words to go on my lobster on the train journey to London, but I also got some colour inspiration from one of Van Gogh's brighter portraits, and bought some beautiful coloured and textured paper which I plan to cut and use selectively to illustrate the ground and the sea.

The sentiment of my lobster is, and has been ever since I conceived of the idea of putting it up on Beeston Bump, Come Walk With Me. I plan to repeat this line on each segment of the lobster's back, along with a short defining sentence eg Come Walk With Me... let us escape for a day, Come Walk With Me... we'll hunt for fossils below the mammoth cliff. And, of course, below the words, and holding them up, will be the figures walking. So here is a (very rough) page from my notebook as I try to work out which words to keep and which to discard!

It's difficult to decide how much or how little to include. The Norfolk Coast Path runs from Cromer over Roman Camp, down through the Runtons and over Beeston Bump, and then all along the coast through Salthouse, Cley, Blakeney, Holkham, Hunstanton, Thornham, Weybourne, Wells and Brancaster to Holme-next-the-Sea, where it joins Peddars Way and continues all the way to somewhere SE of Thetford. So I could list the names of these places, maybe on the many protuberances that litter the lobster's stomach.

Originally I thought my words would describe a specific walk; meeting on Cromer pier, running barefoot in the surf, walking hand-in-hand by Runton Gap to below the mammoth cliff to look for fossils, then up onto Beeston Bump to fly kites and to feel them fluttering and straining to be free. But as the Trail doesn't actually take that route from the pier to the Bump, I sort of feel I should be true to the route. On the other hand, I prefer the journey on the beach and walk it (or parts of it) a lot when the weather is a bit more favourable than it is right now.

The other thing to take into consideration, is to make the finished decorated lobster desirable so it raises as much money as possible at the auction – which means you need at least two people who want to buy it, so they bid against each other to get the price up. Which might mean making the words a bit more general, so that anyone along the coast might be pleased to own it.

So, it seems, I am still struggling to get the words right.

The picture that inspired my sense of colour was this one:

 
I feel the painting was much brighter in real life. I wrote down 'red, green, orange, turquoise (white)', which is pretty much the colours I used on my buttons. The red and green dominate this image, but the orange was really very strong in the centre of all the little circles in the background, and the turquoise blue inside her sleeves and in the background was also a striking contrast.

And as for the paper, with its combination of colour, texture and slight sparkle, I couldn't resist buying this:

I saw the gold/green sheet first, and thought it would be perfect below the feet of my figures, to give a sense of them walking on grass, rather than just floating – and not too far removed from the background colour of the lobster itself. And then I found the blue which is perfectly the colour of the deep blue sea.

I'll leave you with some words that Van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother when he was working on his painting of The Zoave in 1888.

"I'd always like to work on portraits
that are vulgar, even garish…  It teaches me,
and that's what I ask of my work above all."

I hope my lobster doesn't prove to be too vulgar in the end, although I am already learning a lot along the way.

One thing leads to another...

It's strange how one thing can lead to another.

After a conversation with creative friends in the pub on Friday night, I found myself making little decorative buttons out of polymer clay on Saturday morning – something I didn't really have time for, but then, I often do things I haven't really got time for, and leave the chores for another day (or just leave them altogether). I've had the little packet of white clay sitting on my dresser for months, waiting for the moment of inspiration.

The polymer clay was OK to work with; not as pliant or responsive as real clay, drier and a little more prone to cracking – but then, like acrylic paint compared to oil paint, this is a plastic based product and is never, in my view, going to truly emulate or be as desirable as the real thing. The advantage, though, is that you can cook polymer clay for 30 minutes in the oven to harden it, whereas pottery requires the expense of a proper kiln and the gradual build up of heat over many hours to over 1000°c to successfully fire it.

So I cooked my little buttons in the oven and decided to paint them in jewel colours with acrylic paint. I then edged them with gold and varnished them. Here is a little batch of 16 that I managed to make all around the same size.

As you can see, they are assymetrical and a little curled – definitely decorative rather than functional. I'm just hoping I can find a needle slim enough to go through the holes!

I was very pleased with the colours once I had varnished them and late last night I wondered whether I should paint the people on my lobster in these mixed jewel colours, rather than boring old black. I have also been wondering how practical it would be to cut the figures out of newspaper. I like the idea of recycling one of the many hundreds of newspapers that my husband buys every year, all of which end up in the recycling bin, into something artful, bright and beautiful.

So I sketched one of my kite figures quickly onto a piece of yesterday's car section from the EDP, cut him out (this one is my brother Patrick, struggling to keep his kite up) and painted him green. The newspaper curled up rather badly as it was drying, which could be an issue when I finally get down to cutting out and painting figures en masse. Having flattened him out, I then varnished him and stuck him onto the piece of paper I had sprayed gold just before I rashly started spraying the lobster itself gold. So here he is:

I like being able to see the newsprint through the paint. I think it helps give the image some character and a bit of movement. And I think that with all the walkers, talkers, runners, hoppers, skippers and jumpers in bright colours, my lobster will look like a huge bejewelled piece of golden treasure; one of a pair, perhaps, recovered from guarding the gates to Neptune's very own palace somewhere in the deepest part of the ocean...

Paper cuts

I have always liked paper cuts. The history of paper cutting starts in ancient China, but the art form was practiced across the globe as paper became available. I like the intricacy of the designs and the uncomplicated flatness of the colour contrasting with the background. I particularly like the sense of movement in the image on the right below, and even the image on the left has the feel of an animated scene.

I am a fan of Rob Ryan's early hand-cut pieces, and particularly like it when his images are mounted and framed, but with the artwork not entirely adhering to the background, so the light forms little shadows behind the shapes. It is clear that someone has sat deep in concentration and cut out every one of the shapes in this book jacket design by hand, resulting in a quirky design that has a life of its own.

I am less of a fan of his laser cut work. Laser-cutting is perfect for mass production, of course, but I think the screen-printed laser-cut valentine's card below lacks the integrity of the piece above. The flowers are too carefully cut, too similar, lacking the human touch. There are no foibles; it is far too sterile.

 

My own Christmas card last year was a paper cut of a Christmas tree with a gathering of people below it. I was running so late that I didn't have time to print, write and post loads of cards, so I put it on my Facebook page and tagged all my friends underneath it.

 
So, what has all this to do with the lobster? Well, I am thinking that I would like to cut lines of people walking, running, trudging, climbing, hopping, skipping and jumping up to the top of Beeston Bump, and paste them onto the lobster as part of the decoration. The paper will have to be fairly thin to avoid creases, but I'm sure it will glue on just fine and a couple of coats of varnish will seal it in place. It will give me the perfect excuse to sit for hours with my cutting board and scalpel carving life and vitality out of an ordinary piece of paper.

If you email me claire@folio.uk.com a picture with a good outline of yourself I will try to include it in the line up – it would be good to have some images to work with, and you might be able to spot your silhouette on the finished article!

I have also been looking at what colours to work with, and I've been writing some words that will go on the creature, but I will save those for the next blog.

NB In an earlier blog I wrote that the date for the auction of the crabs and lobsters would be on the 23rd May. The organising committee have decided to change the date to the following weekend, so the auction will now be on Sunday 30th May.