Franz Marc, Laurel Burch, and Me

Franz Marc, Blaues Pferd I (Blue Horse I ), 1911

Another blog post, another note about forgetting to publish this when I drafted it, almost a year ago... I know, my blunder is old news.

Don't worry, we're almost through this old batch about last year's Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse project. I just couldn't allow myself to trash all this content, even if it's old. I really love sharing my inspiration with you. Please stay with me just a little longer?

I'm still embarrassed, but I take great comfort in the fact that you're still here, reading all this. I appreciate the support, more than you know!

I promise, new content will come soon. I've got some really exciting things headed your way... more art, more poetry, more everything. In the meantime...

Franz Marc rocks.

Not sure who he is? No worries! I'm going to talking about him today so if you're curious, keep reading. If you're not curious, well... I really hope you keep reading anyway?

Laurel Burch, "Indigo Mares"

Okay, back to Franz Marc. Franz Marc painted lots of subjects, but he was especially fond of animals, and of all the animals, he painted horses the most. As one who has grown up with a love for horses, I can't help thinking of Franz Marc as "the blue horse guy".

Growing up, I tended to prefer realism. As my appreciation for expressionism has grown, so has my enjoyment of Marc and his colorful cubist critters.

Nevertheless, there's a connection which didn't occur to me until I opened this old blog draft. I was preparing a basic piece on Marc and his animals, but I realized that Marc and I seem to have something in common... And we're not alone.

Enter Laurel Burch!

In one fell 16-page swoop starring a blue horse, I managed to accidentally echo both Franz Marc and Laurel Burch.

I would be mad if they both weren't so great!

Detail, "Meeting," Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse.
Watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry paper on paper
cloth. March 2019.

Oops, did I say that? Yes, I'm also a Laurel Burch fan! Not the cats; I'm not a cat person, but I'm all over her horses. Her use of colors and shapes is gorgeous.

Between the two of them, Marc and Burch managed to capture animals in entirely new ways, using vibrant colors, shapes, and patterns. They both favored cats and horses and created dynamic compositions with them.

They also both felt strongly about the meaning of art and the feelings they could evoke with their paintings.

"Today we are searching for things in nature that are hidden behind the veil of appearance... We look for and paint this inner, spiritual side of nature."
- Franz Marc

Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky, and some of their avant-garde friends formed an organization called Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911.

This group was deeply interested in spiritual meaning within art. Their mission was to get away from the long-standing art traditions and returning to a raw, primal, spiritually meaningful art. They were deeply invested in symbolism and spiritual representation in art. Kind of a kooky bunch in my opinion, but we all have different beliefs. I won't fault them for being a little kooky.

Cover of Der Blaue Reiter. Design by Wassily 
Kandinsky, 1912.

In 1912 Der Blaue Reiter published a journal of essays by the artists and almost 150 reproductions of primitive, children's, and folk art.

Marc, like many influential artists, had some traditional art training early on. He fell in love with the work of Vincent van Gogh, and left art school in favor of developing his skills alongside other avant-garde artists.

As Der Blaue Reiter focused more and more on the spiritual meanings of color and form, their work continued to drift more and more toward cubism and the abstract, leaving their traditional art education behind.

The start of WWI brought an end to The Blue Rider organization and publication. Franz Marc was drafted into the German cavalry and killed in battle in 1916.

However, Marc and Kandinsky sparked something that lasted far longer. Der Blaue Reiter led the way for the Abstract Expressionists, 20th century "modern artists" like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko.

"My paintings are the most intimate portrayals of all that is precious to me, my greatest joy is to offer them in forms that enhance and brighten the lives of kindred spirits all around the globe."
- Laurel Burch

Like Franz Marc, Laurel Burch felt strongly about the meaning in her art. She used color and form as tools for spreading joy, building her career on that mission. Whereas Marc and Kandinsky were focused on the spiritual and mystical, Burch's focus was on the mythical and fantastical, creating images of cats, butterflies, horses, and other animals in sparkling jewel tones and geometric designs, ignoring fashion trends and instead drawing influences from folk art and her imagination.

Laurel Burch started out as a young single mother making jewelry to sell in shops in San Francisco, but quickly outgrew her humble beginning. She made jewelry, painted, and experimented with many art and craft techniques.

Laurel Burch with one her numerous cat paintings

Burch had a bone disease, osteopetrosis ("stone bone") and passed away in 2007 due to complications from that. Her bones were very hard and brittle, and she broke over 100 bones in her life. She knew pain, and strove to outweigh her pain with vibrant, joyful art.

Like Marc and the artists of Der Blaue Reiter, Laurel Burch's influence went beyond simply painting. Burch was something of a pioneer— she was one of the first Americans to partner with Chinese manufacturers, in the early 70s when China was generally considered a closed market. Burch stood up for the integrity of her work, politely but firmly insisting that every product reproduce her images exactly, with no change or interpretation.

Burch's colorful, fun-loving art and her mind for business led to a worldwide market, expanding to license numerous companies to create products using her original artwork. She made her art accessible to all, with everyday products like jewelry, accessories, and clothing, sold at inexpensive prices. Laurel Burch, Inc. virtually exploded in the 80s and 90s, and is still known and loved today, especially among cat-lovers.

Am I breaking some rule by comparing Franz Marc and Laurel Burch?

Did an art critic somewhere in New York, London, or Paris just start inexplicably crying?

I really don't know, and that's the thing about the art world. I've barely dipped my toe in with a few art shows and that awesome RAW: Columbus experience, but from the outside I see so many unspoken, unwritten rules. So many "shoulds."

As a child I fell in love with Norman Rockwell's paintings, and as a teen I discovered that many artists and critics claim he was "only an illustrator" or "only a cover designer." Apparently he didn't count as a a "real artist"...whatever that means.

Detail, "The Dance," from Silhouette Girl and the
Moonhorse. Watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry
paper on paper cloth. March 2019.

As if being an illustrator or a designer is somehow not being an artist? Somehow, I don't see the logic there...

For a long time I grudgingly believed that pretentious, long-held, harmful idea that if an artist is not devoted to making it in the fine art world of galleries and agents, cocktail dresses and auctions, they don't belong. Grudgingly, because I don't like the idea of being boxed into that role.

Finally I found my mistake, and suddenly I felt free to have an Etsy shop and design on Redbubble, and still call myself a serious artist.

I had spent so long wanting to "be an artist" as if that were a dream job to work toward, not realizing that I was an artist simply because I made art!

I now believe the purpose of art is to build bridges and bring people together, not divide them. Art is meant to open the eyes of those who cause hurt, and to heal those who are hurting.

Whether the artist is Franz Marc, Laurel Burch, Norman Rockwell, Leonard da Vinci, whoever - our art exists to try to bridge the gaps between all of us.

I believe that when two people who are otherwise opposite—upbringing, nationality, age, religion, class, education, values—become lost in the same painting, feeling the same emotions, longing for the same things, utterly eclipsed by a single painting, song, book, or movie... that is why we make art.

-Cailey

Some sources on Franz Marc, Der Blaue Reiter, and Laurel Burch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Marc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Blaue_Reiter

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Der-Blaue-Reiter

https://www.theartstory.org/movement-der-blaue-reiter-history-and-concepts.htm
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/arts/20burch.html

https://colorfulcritters.com/whowaslaurelburch.aspx

https://www.wikiart.org/en/laurel-burch

Mars, Bryce Canyon, and the Sketchbook Project

Detail, Mars Landing. Watercolor, ink, gouache, and
mulberry paper on paper cloth. March 2019.

It's almost exactly a year later, and I just found a few drafts I wrote about Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse last year! That's a little embarrassing, but I'm embracing it. It's not late and disorganized, it's time-travel. So, kick back with your device and get ready for a few throwback posts about the art project that kicked off my 2019. Ready, set, go...

One of my favorite things about art is a little thing called "artistic license."

Artistic license means I can change how something looks just for the sake of aesthetics I have the freedom to be realistic or abstract in my depictions. I especially love surrealism, art that recreates the impossible in a life-like style.

I used a lot of artistic license in my paintings for the Sketchbook Project last winter.

For example, obviously we haven't found extraterrestrial life, especially not lunar life, but I invented a Moonhorse.

Obviously you can't fly to Mars in a night, at least until they solve the problem of faster-than-light travel. When that day comes, you better believe I'll be vacationing on Mars!

I've never seen or heard of a horse walking a tightrope, and even the deepest craters are more like gradually-sloping bowls than the straight-sided pit I painted Hellas Planitia to be.

Nothing in my story is possible, but I still drew inspiration from reality.

I modeled Silhouette Girl's steampunk shuttle after the NASA shuttles of the last few decades, changing the color to bronze and adding just a few "steampunk" details of my own. The terrain of Mars is based heavily on Bryce Canyon, Utah. 

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, October 2018.

The Mars we see sometimes in the early morning, like a large, untwinkling star, is a planet humans have long been interested in. It's our second-closest neighbor and bears many similarities to us.

We're tilted on similar axes, share similar seasonal patterns, and the geography of Mars has many of the topographical features we have - mountain ranges, valleys, deserts, canyons, plains, and polar ice caps of frozen CO2 (we're familiar with this as dry ice). Mars even has water, amounting roughly to that of Lake Superior, frozen underground. It also has many craters like our moon.

Speaking of our moon, Mars has two lopsided moons, named Phobos and Deimos. 

Though it's smaller then Earth, a Mars day, called a sol, is about 40 minutes longer because it rotates much more slowly. Orbiting at a greater distance from the sun, however, a Martian year is 669 sols, or 687 Earth days.

No planet's orbit is a perfect circle, and the oval-shape of our orbit causes the seasons.

Sol 343 on Route to Mount Sharp, Mars. Curiosity Rover, NASA .
July 24, 2013.

On Mars, the seasons are almost twice as long as Earth, and tend to see slightly more dramatic temperature shifts because Mars' orbit is more eccentric, or oval-shaped, than Earth's. This means that even if Earth and Mars were the same average distance from the sun, Mars would have greater temperature extremes.


Negev Desert, Israel. April 20, 2007. By brewbooks.

Earth is covered with a strong atmosphere that burns up approaching space debris and blocks the sun's most harmful rays. We rarely even think about space debris even though it's flying around us all the time, because virtually anything that hits the atmosphere is incinerated.

Mars also has an atmosphere, but it's very thin and provides little protection. Mars has craters like the moon because its atmosphere isn't enough to burn up all of the space debris flying at it.

In the research stage of my project, I was surprised to find that on top of all these scientific similarities, most our photos of Mars look quite a bit like any number of Earth's own rocky deserts.

In fact, a quick Google search brought me to the Negev Desert in Israel—some of the pictures of Mars and the Negev Desert are almost indistinguishable, aside from the blue skies and a few signs of life. Sparse vegetation dots the landscape, dirt roads criss-cross through it, and animals like leopards, gazelle, hyenas, tortoises, and birds.

However, I wanted to make Mars look entirely foreign, while still echoing patterns in nature. It is, after all, an entirely different planet!

Bryce's otherworldly hoodoos were the perfect model for my Mars.


The main amphitheater of Bryce Canyon. The edges of the thousands of
hoodoos are a little difficult to make out in this direct light. October 2018.

Hoodoos like these are found on every continent, but Bryce is the largest concentration of them in the world.

Bryce Canyon is a national park in southern Utah, famed for its bright orange rock formed in strange towers and walls, like castle ruins.

Bryce is a beautiful park. Less popular than its neighbor Zion, but definitely worth visiting. If anything, being less popular means it's easier to find a parking spot so you can get out of the car and enjoy the park.

The main part of the park, a huge natural amphitheater, looks a little like a giant bowl holding a stone army, all wearing pointed gnome hats.

A series of smaller amphitheaters and hoodoo outcroppings are lined up north-to-south from the main amphitheater, extending about 20 miles to the highest point of the park, Rainbow Point.

When my family and I visited, we drove all the way up to Rainbow Point and then made our way slowly back down, stopping at most of the viewpoints until we reached the main amphitheater. Once there, we hiked down into the canyon. This seemed like a fine idea, except that once you're at the bottom, you have to get back up. It turned out to be a much tougher hike than I was prepared for! This really dampened my experience, but I try not to hold my own lack of fitness against Bryce.

Bryce Canyon National Park, October 2018. This is the photograph on
which I based the scene below. 

Months later, back in my basement-bedroom in Ohio, I turned to Bryce's alien terrain for Mars-spiration.

Watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth. March 2019.

I transferred my initial sketches onto the sketchbook pages, painted the dark sky and orange-brown watercolor landscapes, and added line details in gold, yellow, and black ink. I painted the stars and moons with white gouache, which is basically opaque watercolor paint.

The poetry text boxes were the final touch before packing up my sketchbook and mailing it to the Sketchbook Library in Brooklyn.

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse irreversibly ties together Bryce and Mars in my mind. This is the power of artistic license. You can arrive at entirely new connections, create new ways to envision and understand reality. Not that I've forgotten what I see in photos of Mars, but that there's a vast gap between reality and my creative depiction of it.

There's a little irony here—Mars looks so much like Earth that I instead based my fantastical Mars illustrations off a geological feature on Earth. Granted, we've only seen a tiny fraction of the red planet. I'm certain there are hidden wonders on Mars, just as there are on Earth. But still, we live on a spectacular planet, indeed.

I wonder if a group of Martians and a group of Earthlings switched places, the Martians might be much more shocked by our terrain than we'd be by theirs.

-Cailey

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, Part 2: The Finished Sketchbook

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse Cover

Hey all. Last week I finished a book for The Sketchbook Project!

The Sketchbook Project is a collection of mini sketchbooks housed in the Brooklyn Art Library. Artists from all over the world can order a sketchbook, fill it with art, and mail it back to join the permanent collection.

I was just notified that my sketchbook has been delivered safe and sound in Brooklyn! Thank you, USPS, for taking care of my baby. Pretty soon it will go on a short tour around the country with the other 2019 sketchbooks before returning to its new home on the shelves of the art library.

In my previous post, I walked you all through some of the decisions and artistic process for my sketchbook.

What started as a plan for 16 pages of black and white ink drawings turned into a book of 8 full-color watercolor and ink illustrations. Each page also has includes a stanza of a poem telling the story.

Today I'll finally show you the finished product! The large-text portions below are each stanza of the full-text poem found in Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, so you don't have to strain to read my tiny handwriting on each page. The regular text is my notes and commentary, not included in the actual book. Enjoy!

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse by Cailey Blair

On a night long ago, I flew to the moon—
taking off from the highest hillside

in a steam-powered shuttle, 

—all clockwork and gears and dream-stuff—
with a clank and a buzz and a cloud of smoke

I left the earth’s atmosphere.

Page 1 - Flight to the Moon

watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry paper 

on paper cloth

One of my favorite parts of the brainstorming process was crowd-sourcing ideas for the girl's transportation. I hopped on Twitter and Facebook to ask for ideas, and the responses were amazing. It's been a while since I crowd-sourced like that, but I love doing it. People can be so creative!

Several friends said the girl should travel by unicorn, one said a space segway, another said a dragon covered in feathers. My brothers suggested an iPod, traveling by the magic of music, or an imperial star destroyer from Star Wars. One friend suggested a book, because that's how she travels the universe.

With so many great ideas, I actually picked two modes of transportation. The second one in particular quickly became an integral part of the story.

The girl would fly to the moon on a "steampunk" space shuttle, but on the moon she would meet a magical moon-horse with whom she'd travel across the moon and all the way to Mars.

As a kid and teenager, I was obsessed with horses. That's right, I was a "horse girl." I still love them, though I haven't ridden since high school. I felt that having the girl travel by horseback through space would make this sketchbook more personal, a nod back to my own childhood and my longing to travel the world on horseback. In recent years my fascination with space-travel has grown a lot, so combining the two felt very natural to me.

Spread 2 - Meeting

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

I landed on the shore of the Mare Desiderii, 
silver dust in my eyes, on my ragged old hat—
I found myself face to face with a blue Moonhorse, 
leader of the Lunar herds.
We bowed in greeting—manners are important 
even on the Moon—
in his bold eyes I saw a distant dance I 
longed to join.
He invited me to go with him
with a flick of his flowing tail.

From here, the girl and the horse travel beyond that unique balancing rock formation in the distance to take off at the highest point on the moon—the Selenian summit.

Spread 3 - Balancing Rock, Earth and Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

We rode far across the moon, far and farther still,
to reach that Selenian summit where surface and 
crater kiss—
higher than Everest or K2 could dream,
where space meets breccia. I thought we'd arrived,
but to my—shock—terror—delight—
the Moonhorse gathered his great legs under him,
galloped to the point of the summit,
and took off into the night—a capriole 
unlike any other,
his airs above the moon—we flew.

This is where it began to change a lot between the original intent and the finished product.

In my original 16-page sketches, I had a close-up illustration of the distant lunar rover, and an image of the girl and the moon horse taking off at the selenian summit.

I had to cut these and some other illustrations to lower the page count and compensate for the thick, stiff paper cloth.

I miss some of these illustrations, and I may still draw them one day, but the scenes I did include are much more intentional. Like a carefully edited book, the remaining content is made stronger by cutting out all unnecessary information.

Spread 4 - Flight to Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

We soared through space, and his coarse
mane whipped my bare arms and stung my eyes,
and his tail streamed behind 
—I now know the secret of the comets!—
we flew
      past Phobos and Deimos,
      past distant stars pulsing,
      past long-lost mysteries;
I marveled at blue dots and ancient suns—
and the red planet drew near.

Flight to Mars was heavily inspired by the famous Lipizzaner horses of Austria and their gravity-defying classical dressage. I've always wanted to see Lipizzaners in action, but have had to content myself with pictures and videos of those remarkable airs above the ground.

For this scene, I researched and sketched the capriole move for our moon-horse's long flight.

Spread 5 (center fold) - Landing on Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth, bound with purple thread

At last, with straining legs and quivering muscles, 
his hooves touched solid ground 
—racing—slowing—stopping—panting—
I slipped from his back - see my footprints on
sienna stepping stones?

Noses touching in kunik—eskimo kisses—we breathed 

great gasping breaths of the thin, icy Martian air

—air made for dancing— 

      I sensed it, 

      I knew it, 

      my bare toes felt it,

but the Moonhorse’s eyes told me this was 

not the place. We rode on, on, on until 

we reached the deepest crater, 

strung across with a tightrope. My hopes fell

—he still shook with exhaustion from his flight—

a tightrope? Could it be, could a horse— 

even a Moonhorse—walk a tightrope?

Originally, Silhouette Girl and Moon-horse's landing on Mars would only be implied—the first Mars scene was to be a close-up of the girl and the horse examining the red Martian dust. From there, they'd travel toward a Mars rover before arriving at Hellas Planitia, the deepest crater on Mars.

For the new version, however, I cut out the Mars rover entirely, and replaced the close-up with a wide-angle landing scene. I felt this would better tie the narrative together. I took the background from a scene in which our two characters are riding across the Martian plains, and replaced their simple ride with the more dynamic landing action that you see above.

Spread 6 - Hellas Planitia

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

Indeed—brave eyes sparkling—he nudged 
me on, and the dancing Martian atmosphere 
lifted my chin,
—and we stepped—onto—the rope—
to cross Hellas Planitia,
deeper yet than any Himalaya could fill.
The rope trembled under the Moonhorse's hooves,
and I clutched a long lock of his mane;
arms stretched wide for balance.

Like I said, I cut out a lot of planetary travel, but I couldn't bring myself to cut out the scene above! For a long time I've had a mental image of crossing the deepest Martian crater, Hellas Planitia, by tight-rope.

In reality the downward slope of the crater is much too subtle for a tight-rope, but the entire book is lodged firmly in the surreal—there's nothing realistic about it! Being fanciful to begin with, I indulged myself and stretched a rope across the crater.

Finally, after that long tight-rope crossing, our interplanetary travelers have reached their destination...

Spread 7 - Final Destination

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

At last on the far side of the crater we stopped, 
labored breaths clouding
like wisps of smoke in the frozen air—
the Moonhorse and I looked up.
We arrived—we arrived!—The Moonhorse
tossed his great mane, stamped his giant hooves,
and with a leap, abandoned gravity.
I, too, could ground myself no longer—
I gave in to the thin air of Mars;
gave in to the growing dance in my heart.

This scene was inspired by Bryce Canyon in Utah, where orange towers and columns ("hoodoos") rise from the ground, creating natural arches and spires like a princess's castle. This was one of the first sketches I made, and it changed the least over the whole process.

I read somewhere that since gravity is lower on Mars, there are rock formations there that would be impossible on Earth. I don't know if that's actually the case (it makes sense to me), but I definitely had that concept in mind when brainstorming Martian geography. While this particular scene is very reminiscent of Bryce Canyon, I still tried to imbue it with that mystical, low-gravity feeling!

However, this final scene is where weightlessness truly comes into play. The gravity on Mars is about 1/3 of what it is on earth, so in reality our beloved travelers would still be bound to the ground. Even the moon's gravity, 1/6 of our own, doesn't allow floating like this! But this is anything but realistic. They traveled all this way to dance, how could they not dance in mid-air?

Spread 8 - The Dance

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

The Moonhorse and I, 
we rose above the rock formations,
      dancing
      spinning
      floating
on cold beams from the distant sun.
We're all of star-stuff, dancing above the dark
slope streaks!
In the magic of Mars we danced forever...

Final page - Morning

watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry paper 

on paper cloth

...Or so I dreamed. 

This last page came about weeks after the rest of the images were complete. I kept this final page blank, unsure if I'd write the full-text poem on it, leave it blank, or add one last illustration. As you can see, I chose the latter! I only knew what I wanted to do with it when I started writing the poem and that last line, "or so I dreamed," came to mind.  

I hadn't intended for this adventure to be a dream, exactly, though it has all the characteristics of a dream. But when I had that line, that's what the story officially became. I envisioned the girl waking on a hillside, as if she fell asleep stargazing and woke with the sun. 

This project was both challenge and game for me. I indulged a lot of fancies in this book, and the result is everything I never knew I wanted. Magic and fantasy set in space... a simple but highly unlikely journey, to say the least!

For most of the creation process, I held off on painting the girl - I seriously considered whether she would be Silhouette Girl or someone else, someone with features and visible details. But I think in my gut I knew this would be Silhouette Girl. Who else could manage an adventure like this? It was truly made for the girl who holds the tail of a tornado, conducts wildebeests like an orchestra, and releases a cloud of butterflies from her hands!

I kept telling myself it could be anyone doing this - any little girl could dream this up. Why lock it down for only Silhouette Girl?

My two babies, Stars & Seas and Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, with a
delicious mocha from my favorite coffeeshop. This is the very mocha that
powered me through writing my previous blog post.

That's where my thinking has been skewed. For a long time, I've thought of Silhouette Girl as an individual. Where is she going next, what fanciful thing is she doing this time? 

However, she's not an individual. She's a concept. Any little girl can be "silhouette girl," because it isn't about the things she actually does. It's about the metaphors. The Silhouette Girl series started as a reaction to tragedy - innocence and weakness against one of the greatest forces on earth, a little girl holding the tail of a tornado. 

The series has grown and taken on new metaphors with each drawing and painting, but the core must remain the same - innocence overcoming the impossible. Weakness overpowering the greatest powers. Childhood and imagination conquering reality. If Silhouette Girl remains as she should be, a concept instead of an individual, then she really can be anyone.

Anyone who values innocence and imagination can be Silhouette Girl.

With that realization, I inked in the silhouettes, covering all the loosely-sketched details like facial expressions and folds in her clothing. Our favorite girl has a ragged top hat and her new friend from the moon... she has everything she needs.

With this blog post, I put a close to this brief project. I had a lot of fun with it, and I was a little sad to tape the mailer shut and send my baby off to New York... but I look forward to seeing it again someday! If you find yourself in NYC, be sure to stop at the Brooklyn Art Library and see my sketchbook for yourself. Silhouette Girl would love to have visitors!

-Cailey

Updated 2022: in the time since this posting, the Sketchbook Library moved to Florida, shortly after which it closed and the books were distributed for display in various institutions. Unfortunately, during the move to Florida the trailer caught fire and many books were damaged or destroyed. I'm utterly heartbroken to share that my own Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse was among those lost in the fire. I'm thankful for emergency responders, the Sketchbook Library, and its volunteers who worked tirelessly to save as many sketchbooks as possible. I'm also forever thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of that amazing collection. Lastly, I'm thankful my work, though physically destroyed, still lives on in these photos. 

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, Part 1: Creative Process

Wow guys, I've been so excited to share this with you...

For Christmas I received a sketchbook to send to the Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn!

What is that? Great question. At the time I was only vaguely familiar with it, myself, so I spent a few minutes on the google machine and checked out the details.

The Sketchbook Project is housed at the Brooklyn Art Library, an amazing library of sketchbooks from artists all over the world. You can purchase one of their blank sketchbooks (a little 5x7 blank book) and fill it however you like. When you send your sketchbook back to them, they add it to the permanent collection, and they'll alert you every time someone looks at it!

I heard about it a few years ago but never pursued information on how to join the project, and forgot about it pretty quickly, so it was a great surprise to open up the package and discover this awesome opportunity.

Coffee and sketching with my little brother!

Every year they have different themes/inspiration cues, but it's pretty open to interpretation. The few rules pertain only to size and a couple of paints (gesso and acrylic) that aren't allowed because they make the pages stick together.

I got started on January 3rd, brainstorming what I wanted to pour into the sketchbook.

As you know from this blog, I work with a lot of different materials and media. Charcoal, pen and ink, paint, collage. My first hazy visions of this book involved collages of texture, color, and folded paper.

Pretty soon I decided to make it a narrative. I took my cue from everything that's been inspiring me lately... Astronaut memoirs, sci-fi novels and short stories, and astrophysics-for-dummies books.

I recently read "Physics of the Impossible" by Michio Kaku, and I was fascinated by his explanations of the science behind some of the "impossible" technology in sci-fi books. Things like teleportation, hyperspeed, and time travel.

Another great book I read was "Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut" by Mike Mullane. It's a funny, brutally-honest peek into the NASA's space shuttle program. Mullane doesn't shy away from criticizing NASA management, but he also conveys his love for space-travel and gratitude for NASA and the chance he had to fulfill his lifelong dream. He's also very open about astronaut culture in the '80s, and his personal struggle with accepting feminism (working with the first American women astronauts was a big adjustment for a man who attended an all-boys school and went straight into the military after graduation!).

With the help of these and other inspiration-boosters, my little story grew as a series of images in my mind. I had a plan for the narrative. As I started the rough sketches, I scaled back my intense collage-pages and chose to make simple line drawings in ink. I wanted the images to shine, not the materials I made them with.

Whenever I begin a particular art project, I start with an exciting mental image of it, and work eagerly until I hit a roadblock or two and set it aside (for a week, a month, three years, it varies!). After some time stewing in my mind, the solution suddenly hits and then begins the feverish race to create.

The same process held true for this one.

Once the idea for this journey from Earth to Moon to Mars came to mind, I started sketching away, determining each scene and each step of the way.

The sketchbook had 16 pages, so I had 16 scenes to create. I was able to sketch most of these over the course of a few hours spent with my brother at my favorite coffee shop.

Later, I got out my transfer paper and transferred each image to the pages of the sketchbook, and started drawing with ink... and that's where the big roadblock appeared...

The paper was too thin. 

My ink lines showed right through the paper, and even bled through in a few spots! This was not going to work.

I considered my options. Glue pages together to make them thicker? Prime each page with thin layers of gesso for a more opaque surface?

Gesso was out, since it's frowned upon in the Sketchbook Project rules. Normally, gesso is an awesome primer for art surfaces, but in a booklet format, gesso could cause the pages to stick together. I wasn't going to risk that.

I knew rebinding the book with different paper was allowed, but I wasn't feeling it... I didn't know what paper I wanted, and I didn't know how to deal with the stiffness that comes with thicker, ink-friendlier paper. Inspiration fell away and quickly as it struck.

My Sketchbook drawings stopped in their tracks, I set the book aside and stewed over the paper problem for about a week... until one day I was at work and the solution hit me.

Paper cloth!

I first made this a few years ago, at the suggestion of my art teacher. I fell in love with the unique effects of drawing on tissue paper, stabilized by a layer of cotton fabric. It's awesome for wet media like watercolor, acrylic paint, and pen and ink, and you can glue or sew on other materials to create a collage! I immediately knew that's what I wanted.

So what is paper cloth?

It's regular ol' tissue paper glued onto cotton fabric. I use about equal parts water and mod podge, but you can play with that ratio for stiffer or more flexible results - more glue for stiffness, more water for flexibility.

The sketches are transferred onto the paper cloth, ready to be painted!

You can also layer in other paper, threads, lace, sequins, paint, or anything else you want between the tissue paper and the cloth. Here's a link to a blog post explaining how to make paper cloth and the world of possibilities for customizing it.

I don't quite know why, but I hadn't used paper-cloth since that one project in high school. I was pretty excited to try it out again, so the minute I got home from work I dug some tissue paper out of the gift-wrapping supplies, got a large scrap of cream-colored cotton fabric from my meager sewing stash, and got to work. Yes, I have a sewing stash - I mostly do clothing alterations, with the occasional pillow or baby quilt.

With my paper cloth dried and ready, it was finally time to cut it all to size and get drawing... and time for a serious overhaul in my vision.

For one thing, paper cloth is one-sided. I suppose you could glue tissue paper to both sides of the fabric, but at this point I lacked that kind of foresight. For a brief time I was all action and no thought.

It took mental gymnastics to do this! Each sheet had two
different half-scenes, except the centerfold page.

I had several large sheets of paper cloth, thick but flexible. Being one-sided, I'd have to use twice as much if I wanted to keep all 16 pages, and that was going to be one fat little book. I needed to pare things down to the most important images.

Chop, chop, chop - out went half of my carefully-crafted scenes! This was a tough process, but necessary if I wanted to use paper cloth and keep the book thin enough to be accepted by the Sketchbook Project.

After transferring the remaining scenes, it was finally time to get painting.

Wait... Painting? Wasn't this going to be simple, black-and-white line drawings?

That's where the second element of my overhaul came into play! When paper cloth came to mind, the project changed entirely.

My illustrations would no longer be simple pen and ink. These would be full watercolor paintings, with line details inked in at the end.

That's the thing with art - sometimes you've got to be fiercely loyal to the original concept. But sometimes, you fall in love with one element and the while thing morphs to fit. That's what happened here, and I love it!

All painted, ready for ink details

It's nothing like what I envisioned at the beginning, but this process of adjusting the vision along the way was a lot of fun and resulted in a more creative, organic book.

The end result? An eight-page full-color book, bound with purple thread and with the edges of each page hand-stitched (cloth sides together, painted tissue paper facing out).

Work-in-progress, stitching together the pages

Don't worry, I kept the original cover with its all-important Sketchbook Project bar-code!

Stay tuned for my next blog post, where I'll share shots of each finished page. I've taken copious amounts of pictures - full-page, detail, and process shots. I've also kept all the original pencil sketches, including the ones that didn't survive the big chop.

Since I'm mailing the finished book to Brooklyn in a few days, these pictures and sketches are very important to me. I have to capture it all before it leaves me!

I hope to see it in its new home at the Brooklyn Art Library one day, of course, and I'm excited to be a part of the Sketchbook Project, but I'm going to miss this little book. We've spent a lovely two months together.

-Cailey

Little Cowboy Series

Today, I want to share a series of pieces I made using different media to create the same image. One version, the charcoal, is available for sale. However, if you'd like a print of one (or more) of the others contact me on Etsy and I'll see what I can do.

Anyway, I started with a photograph of my brother taken at one of my horse shows. He was about three or four at the time, and loved being there at the show because he was obsessed with all things cowboy.

my first step was to make a simple graphite drawing:

I then drew it in colored pencil in shades of yellow, green, and blue. This may seem silly and pointless, but it actually was a really good way to study the values of everything. I constantly had to think about which colored pencil to use, and I had to make choices and sometimes exaggerate the values to make it a clear image.

The next one, I used graph paper (8 squares per inch) to pixelate the image, this time with the original colors. With this one, I had to think about what color to use in each individual square, because I had to make each one a solid color. it was really difficult, especially on the boy's face, and the shading on the blue shirt. 

Next I made a "yarn painting" of segment of the original image. I used various colors of yarn and glued them on a piece of cardboard, as close together as possible. 

Then, I made styrofoam prints. I went to the meat section at the grocery store and asked for two of their largest styrofoam trays. I've learned, secondhand and from personal experience, that you can get lots of things like that if you say it's for an art project! Anyway, I used a pen to trace a segment of the picture (in reverse) into the styrofoam, creating indented lines. I then coated it with ink and pressed it on the paper, leaving the indented lines white.

Next I did a melted wax "painting" in preparation for a batik:

I made the batik with white fabric, melted crayons, and black dye. It was a pretty poor quality attempt and didn't work out very well; I couldn't keep the wax at a good temperature, and the dye didn't work very well. However, here's the image anyway:

The next two are acrylic paintings done in the fauvist style, which basically means flat, unshaded areas of unrealistically bright colors. On the first, I made many of the colors simile to the original, and used the warm and cool colors to show light and shade. 

On the second, I basically inverted the colors. 

Next I drew it in pen and ink. I never used to be a fan of crosshatching (using lots of little lines crossed over each other to create shading), but when I got my first dip pen, I decided to practice and found that it wasn't actually so bad! 

My last and favorite piece was the charcoal:

 prints of this one are for sale on Etsy! Check it out--Little Cowboy Print

Which one is your favorite?

-Cailey

Throwback Thursday: C-Horse

In 8th grade, I went to an art class across town every Wednesday. It was a fun class and I learned a lot, but I was super shy so I hardly talked to anyone. As usual, by the third class everyone had their own "assigned" seat, and so over the school year I slowly found myself becoming friends with the girl I always sat next to. Her name was Jenna. She was pretty cool. Jenna and I had many giggled conversations as we sat drawing and painting in that art class. I wish I could remember one of those conversations, because that would make for a very entertaining blog post. Unfortunately, I cannot. However, I can remember making this print in class:

The assignment was to draw four 4"x6" print designs incorporating our first initial. Mine, therefore, had to have a C. The teacher, Mrs. Carabello, then helped each of us choose which design to use. With my horse obsession, it was no surprise to anyone when I came up with this "C-Horse". I made three other designs just because that was the assignment, but they were a formality. 

When we finished our designs, we transferred them and carved them into rubbery 4"x6" printing blocks. 

And finally, after weeks of working diligently on our printing blocks, it was finally time to make our prints. We took turns going to Mrs. Carabello's desk and carefully inking and stamping our designs on the paper. We each made five or six prints, and when they were dry we picked out each of our best work to display at the end of the year. 

It was my first experience with printmaking. I'l admit, I've never been able to keep the various techniques straight. I've read about intaglio and etching, lithography and embossing, but I have no idea what each of them are or what the differences between them are. I know one printing method involves etching a design into a metal plate with some sort of acid. I also heard that usually the artist decides on a certain number of prints, and then breaks the plate after finishing (I was too proud of my rubber block to want to break it. I still have it somewhere). That's the extent of my printmaking knowledge. I don't even know what to call the printmaking process I did in 8th grade! 

I happened to do a lower-budget version of the same printmaking method a few years later, using styrofoam and a ballpoint pen instead of an actual printing block and a linoleum cutter. Someday I think it would be fun to take a printmaking class, just so I can figure out what method is what. That's all I want; to be able to distinguish one from the other. But for now, I'll stick with styrofoam and pens for my printmaking endeavers, and maybe I just won't try to sell any of those poor quality attempts at that old and revered art technique. 

-Cailey

A Horse Called Rusty

When I was ten years old, my parents decided to lease a horse, Rusty, so my sister and I could spend time with it. That meant my parents paid Rusty's owners to let us ride him and clean his stall.

me riding Rusty

Rusty's glamour shot

Rusty and me

I wish I could say that Rusty was sweet, obedient, and a perfect horse for children, but he was not. He was spoiled, stubborn, mischievous, and had no respect for my sister and me. Yes, he was gentle with us, but when we rode him he pretty much did whatever he wanted. Of course, that was partly our fault--we didn't give him any reason to respect us or listen to us! But we didn't care how disobedient, silly, or stubborn Rusty was. We loved him, because he was "ours". 

Last year I made a pastel drawing of Rusty. My original inspiration for the drawing was not a moment of nostalgia, but rather the color of the paper. I bought a pad of pastel paper (thicker and rougher than normal paper, so the chalk pastel will "cling" to the surface) with several colors included: white, tan, gray, blue, green, and orange. 

The burnt orange color of the paper made me think of Rusty, and I knew I just had to draw him. So "A Horse Called Rusty" was born:

A Horse Called Rusty

You can see the orange paper coming through in many places, particularly the top and bottom left corners, and the highlights. I enjoyed using the colored paper because I was able to get nice, rich color without having to build up lots of pastel, and I could let it fade out on the left side and still imply the rest of the horse's body. 

Despite Rusty's personality issues, I'm pretty fond of this drawing. I think my favorite part is the highlight in his eye, like that mischievous glint he had in real life. 

-Cailey