Week Three and Four - SNOW!
I said, I would post again, once there would be a cold spell of weather. For the past ten days, I have been battling with the Siberian blizzard and the ice and snow whenst trudging to work - and I have been thoroughly been enjoying myself!
So, without much adoo, let's dive into the production weeks three and four for the end of January and the early days of February respectively. We kick off this LJ entry with the obligatory photo of my workplace!
This is where we left off last LJ entry. The design for the front had been transferred and I had started to put down my base tones, progressively growing darker in colour.
So it was high time to start to do the same with the other side of the lantern. For the sake of showing the progress better, we will focus on that side. Transferring sketch and cleaned sketch to the canvas is quite an ordeal. However, modern technology comes to the aid here.
Namely, you can observe my fully operational out door office heavily at work: My old iBook with an old Photoshop Version feeds the beamer, the MBP is for entertainment (Films, Music) and at the same time the main Computer with all the files I need and tinker with. My iPad is the mobile sketchpad with reference photos, close up from the sketches and so on. Via a small local WLAn created by the MBP, I can access the reference stock and sketches from either iPad or iBook, should I need them any time.
The MBP is also the machine recording the time laps videos such as this one Once the design has been transferred, on can start to paint. One still needs to take precautions on the inside and the outside of the canvas and cover up unpainted areas against spills and splodges.
It was the End of a fairly mild and wet January, when the weather forecast threatened us with the Siberian high pressure. This usually means two things: Dry clear days and deathly fruzz temperatures far below the positives. Given there was still a lot of damp air around, this would result in snow fall. Now, the place I live isn't very high above sea level, so the climate is fairly mild. We rather have freezing rain than snow at the best times and white winters are a mere memory of my youth. However, my new workplace on the outskirts is up on the hillside. So I was reckoning with a powdering of snow at home, not lasting long and a bit more of a sprinkle further along. Grumpy for the lack of sunshine I set off to work in the Afternoon and found my expectations met: Hardly any snow in town...
...a bit more round the work shop.
All in all, looking out at the courtyard, it was a fairly miserable day
But that didn't matter much to me - I had a lot of warm clothes on, numerous heaters and heat emitting light sources :)
The next day was an entirely different kettle of fish... Apparently it had been snowing all through the night and the temperature had dropped even further. The busy street I live on was defiantly much quieter. Also, there was far more snow at the entrance to the work room.
The courtyard was still gloomy and you couldn't see very far either for the snow and the overcast sky. Traveling became a real adventure: Half of the Public Transport was either late or not running at all despite their preparations for the cold temperatures. Especially some of the older trams weren't coping with the low temperatures.
The progress was steady, hatching in different shapes, setting tones, accentuating brighter colours. Slowly the colours crept all over the frame, covering the canvas and the doors. Whenever I finished work on a certain area, I was quick to cover it up with plastic to protect against unwanted splodges and splotches. You can observe my work in this Time Lapse here, where I start work on the sides of the frame.
The first days of February brought the bitter cold and dry high pressure weather from arctic Russia. The temperatures outside were nigh unbearable, but the landscapes were gorgeous. I simply had to jump around outside in the snow and take some photos.
With some help from my friends, the nitpicky work progressed in a swirl. I would like to conclude this entry with some of the photos from the last stages of work.
The last part of the long process was the final inking, which took place last Sunday. Two days ago, on Monday, I passed my oeuvre on to the happy client. Apart from a day or two when the lighting will be fit, I won't see "The Big One" again till the days of Fasnacht at the End of this Month.
Oh - I just noticed, I never mentioned the topic: It is a caricature of the proceedings leading up to the last year's general election. The Swiss right and far-right parties especially have been very vocal about how unpatriotic it would be not to vote for them, generally speaking "behaving like pigs" towards those who dared to oppose them. It was my client's request to depict pseudo-patriotic pigs, ready to knife each other on one side and a prominent right wing politician chopping up the government with his sword on the other, cutting short the majority of the magistrates.
Also, as I do have a loose NDA en act with this contract, you won't find any of the youtube links made public or embedable. Just klick on the links if you want to watch. I am sorry for this inconvenience.
So, without much adoo, let's dive into the production weeks three and four for the end of January and the early days of February respectively. We kick off this LJ entry with the obligatory photo of my workplace!
This is where we left off last LJ entry. The design for the front had been transferred and I had started to put down my base tones, progressively growing darker in colour.
So it was high time to start to do the same with the other side of the lantern. For the sake of showing the progress better, we will focus on that side. Transferring sketch and cleaned sketch to the canvas is quite an ordeal. However, modern technology comes to the aid here.
Namely, you can observe my fully operational out door office heavily at work: My old iBook with an old Photoshop Version feeds the beamer, the MBP is for entertainment (Films, Music) and at the same time the main Computer with all the files I need and tinker with. My iPad is the mobile sketchpad with reference photos, close up from the sketches and so on. Via a small local WLAn created by the MBP, I can access the reference stock and sketches from either iPad or iBook, should I need them any time.
The MBP is also the machine recording the time laps videos such as this one Once the design has been transferred, on can start to paint. One still needs to take precautions on the inside and the outside of the canvas and cover up unpainted areas against spills and splodges.
It was the End of a fairly mild and wet January, when the weather forecast threatened us with the Siberian high pressure. This usually means two things: Dry clear days and deathly fruzz temperatures far below the positives. Given there was still a lot of damp air around, this would result in snow fall. Now, the place I live isn't very high above sea level, so the climate is fairly mild. We rather have freezing rain than snow at the best times and white winters are a mere memory of my youth. However, my new workplace on the outskirts is up on the hillside. So I was reckoning with a powdering of snow at home, not lasting long and a bit more of a sprinkle further along. Grumpy for the lack of sunshine I set off to work in the Afternoon and found my expectations met: Hardly any snow in town...
...a bit more round the work shop.
All in all, looking out at the courtyard, it was a fairly miserable day
But that didn't matter much to me - I had a lot of warm clothes on, numerous heaters and heat emitting light sources :)
The next day was an entirely different kettle of fish... Apparently it had been snowing all through the night and the temperature had dropped even further. The busy street I live on was defiantly much quieter. Also, there was far more snow at the entrance to the work room.
The courtyard was still gloomy and you couldn't see very far either for the snow and the overcast sky. Traveling became a real adventure: Half of the Public Transport was either late or not running at all despite their preparations for the cold temperatures. Especially some of the older trams weren't coping with the low temperatures.
The progress was steady, hatching in different shapes, setting tones, accentuating brighter colours. Slowly the colours crept all over the frame, covering the canvas and the doors. Whenever I finished work on a certain area, I was quick to cover it up with plastic to protect against unwanted splodges and splotches. You can observe my work in this Time Lapse here, where I start work on the sides of the frame.
The first days of February brought the bitter cold and dry high pressure weather from arctic Russia. The temperatures outside were nigh unbearable, but the landscapes were gorgeous. I simply had to jump around outside in the snow and take some photos.
With some help from my friends, the nitpicky work progressed in a swirl. I would like to conclude this entry with some of the photos from the last stages of work.
The last part of the long process was the final inking, which took place last Sunday. Two days ago, on Monday, I passed my oeuvre on to the happy client. Apart from a day or two when the lighting will be fit, I won't see "The Big One" again till the days of Fasnacht at the End of this Month.
Oh - I just noticed, I never mentioned the topic: It is a caricature of the proceedings leading up to the last year's general election. The Swiss right and far-right parties especially have been very vocal about how unpatriotic it would be not to vote for them, generally speaking "behaving like pigs" towards those who dared to oppose them. It was my client's request to depict pseudo-patriotic pigs, ready to knife each other on one side and a prominent right wing politician chopping up the government with his sword on the other, cutting short the majority of the magistrates.
Also, as I do have a loose NDA en act with this contract, you won't find any of the youtube links made public or embedable. Just klick on the links if you want to watch. I am sorry for this inconvenience.