The film is about a young boy, Brendan, who lives in a monastery run his uncle, Abbott Cellach.  Brendan is not allowed to go outside of the monastery walls because of the impending invasion of the Vikings.  Then one day, Brother Aiden arrives, after fleeing the Isle of Iona to avoid the barbarian incursions and protect the Book of Kells manuscript, which had been started by Colum Cille (St Columba).  It is Brother Aiden’s intention to finish illustrating the book.  Abbot Cellach feels this is foolish and insists that the priority is to finish building the wall surrounding the monastery, and young Brendan must assist.  However, ink is required for the manuscript and Brendan gladly offers to go outside of the walls into the forest to retrieve the berries required to make the ink.

It is in the forest that he meets Aisling (pronounced Ash-link, and meaning dream in Gaelic), who is a fairy and protector of the forest. What follows is the boy’s determination to see the beautiful Book of Kells completed, and Abbott Cellach’s struggle to protect them all from the outside world.

This is a hauntingly beautiful film, and the animation is nothing short of breath-taking.  It is old-fashioned hand-drawn animation, but it is also much more than that.  You can see the mark of the Book of Kells stamped all over this film, from the Celtic knotwork to the triskeles, and the stooping figures of the Abbot and young Brendan are instantly recognisable from figures within the manuscript.  For any student of Celtic History, so much of the tale will be familiar to them.  It is the reason I myself am so drawn to it, having studied Celtic History at university and studied much of the artwork.  I gave a lecture on the artwork of the standing stones of various schools such as Iona  and Oronsay from the 5th to the 14th century. So, I have a great deal of love for this particular subject.

However, this isn’t just a film for historians or history enthusiasts.  This is a film for anyone who loves to see beautiful artwork and for those who find CGI graphics just a bit too sanitised and soulless.  I have included images from the film and from the original Book of Kells MS, as well as two trailer for the movie, including the beautiful song sung by Aisling in both English and Gaelic.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get the whole song clip on video, but I hope you love what you do hear.

The lyrics are as follows:

(Apologies if my translation isn’t exactly right, but it is sung in Irish Gaelic, and I can only speak Scottish Gaelic, but it is very similar.)

You must go where I cannot,

Pangur Ban Pangur Ban,

Nil sa saol seo ach ceo,

Is ni bheimid beo,

ach seal beag gearr.

Pangur Ban Pangur Ban,

Nil sa saol seo ach ceo,

Is ni bheimid beo,

ach seal beag gearr

Roughly translated:

You must go where I cannot.

Fair Pangur, Fair Pangur,

This world is nothing but mist,

And we will only be in it,

For a short, sharp time.

Animation Stills (Click to enlarge)

Manuscript Leaves (Click to enlarge)

I showed you a couple of ideas I had for composition yesterday, and I started out this morning with a fixed idea of what I wanted my painting to look like.  I thought to myself that it probably wouldn’t turn out anything like I expected or wanted.  It so happened that it didn’t turn out quite how I expected. I even told my tutor in detail what I was going for, and she liked the sound of it. I did too.  However, as most of you will know, nothing ever really turns out how you expect it. That’s not to say my day wasn’t productive.  It was.  It was extremely productive and I felt much better today.

I went into class, and started on my work immediately, while people were still coming into the class.  I was desperate to get on with my work.  I laid down my background, and it looked hideous! I then attacked it with my graphite stick – quite frantically, I may add. Then I started adding paint.  I kept my palette really controlled – just using burnt umber, mars black, zinc white, and cadmium yellow.  I was trying to keep it fairly monochromatic.  However, it was feeling rather cool even though I liked how it was going.  So I added alizarin crimson into the mix.  Adding it to the cadmium yellow and burnt umber.  This made a huge difference.

By the time class ended 2 hours later, I didn’t want to stop.  I was in the zone! I was worried that I wouldn’t get my mojo back in the afternoon, after my second class.  However, I was able to get back in the zone. Then I hit ‘the wall’. You know that stage when you know it needs work, but you haven’t a clue what to do about it?  So I got a bit of expert advice from my tutor, and I added a touch of colour in small areas and voila, it was done!  Three and a half hours of bliss, and this was the result.  Click to enlarge.

Acrylic on paper (42 x 60cm)

Now it is actually a bit darker than this in reality, but that’s down to the camera and the light. I think it has changed quite a bit from the original Dali and Picasso images.

Picasso – Seated Bather

Picasso – Dream

Dali – Pierrot Playing The Guitar

Picasso – The Studio

I’m really chuffed to bits with this painting, as you can probably tell.  I have one more painting for this subject, and that’s me finished.  The problem is that I still have almost 5 weeks left to go.  So I’m thinking that I will create some more based  on all of the paintings I selected for study.  That will at least give me more paintings to take in for my interview at uni!

I’ve also done some initial quick sketches for Contextual Studies, where I have taken the works of Picasso and Dali and made them my own.  These are the 4 ideas I’m playing with, but I’m not sure which one to go for.  Really they are just compositional sketches and I have a fair idea of the actual imagery.  Personally, I prefer the first two sketches. I may actually paint both.  I’m undecided yet.  Hey-ho and on we go.

I got a book on Frank Stella from the library on Friday, which has really helped me.  I was totally stumped as to how to make a 3D piece into something like a painting.  I have been playing about with different things for the past 2 weeks, but without actually seeing some examples, it was really hard to visualise anything.  The book was a godsend, and very inspirational.  Frank Stella’s work is more like construction on canvas.  Here are a few samples of his work:

As you can see his work is very colourful and leaps right out of the canvas.  His work has given me lots of ideas. So today the ideas finally started flowing.  I have to create a drawing, and based on those drawing I must create 4 prototypes from the following:

1. Paper
2. Card
3. Wire
4. Mixed Media

I already have some wire and paper pieces in class, but I managed to create some more at home.  I also created some card pieces today, but first here is a drawing I’ve been playing with:

There are lots of overlapping materials here.  First of all I created a sample ‘canvas’.  For this task I took a piece of copper wire woven material.  It’s quite a thick ‘fabric’, but very jaggy and I’ve slashed myself several times on it! I then wove in 12 wire like sticks, then covered with wire mesh.

After that, I placed on several pieces I created to see how they fit together.

These are only basic ideas, but I really like where they are going.  I have lots of accompanying drawings which I hope to get further mileage out of. I think it will be interesting to see where it ends up, when I finally get them onto canvas!

I contacted the band and Catherine has kindly allowed me to put the video up on my site.  You can check them out on their MySpace page: www.myspace.com/holdyourhorses or on their website: www.logre.tv. See if you can figure out the names of the artists and/or the names of the paintings.  I will post the answers in a few days!

I also wanted to share another link to some artwork that I was completely blown away by.  This is the work of Dave Devries, who has worked at Marvel and DC Comics.  Essentially, he was watching his niece draw one day, and he wondered how it would look if a child’s work was painted realistically and turned into a work of art.  He projected the child’s image and then traced over it exactly, then rendered it.  Here are a few snippets of his work.  You will see the child’s drawing and his beside it.

You can see all of them at PulpFactor.com.  You can also visit Dave Devries’ website.

Oh, I decided to challenge myself and bought myself a bunch of flowers to paint a still life. Never done flowers before!  It’s a work in progress, so here’s what I have so far:

Obviously that is the photo, because there’s no way I could paint like that!

I’ve managed to block in some of the colour and there’s a long way to go on this painting, but I managed to knock this up in about an hour. That was the easy part. The devil, however, is in the detail!

This one I knocked up whilst sitting have a cup of tea in the canteen.  It’s photographic paper which I drew on, then I added coloured ink and ran it under the tap, to let the ink drip off the paper.  I added more ink and repeated the process several times.  I am thinking that some of the patterns can be knitted into a textile piece, such at the chain pattern running through the centre.  That’s very easy to do.  Thankfully, I’ve been knitting since I was a child so it should take me too long to do.  I can add in stitching using the sewing machine to get the branch pattern.  Not sure how that will turn out but I’ll give it a go.

I showed this piece the day before yesterday, but I added some stitching into it and covered in PVA glue and liquid latex, which will protect the fabric dye.

This piece was created using devore material which I soaked in liquid latex.  I blowed dried it then covered it in layers of fabric dye.  Now it feels like a stretchy latex material, but the patterns on it are quite interesting close up.

This final piece was made using wallpaper.  Again I used the latex but I thickened it and poured over the underside of the wallpaper, then poured inks over and brushed with some dye. The inks and dyes tend to stick really well to latex and creates interesting patterns. I really like the effect so I have managed to nab some more paper from college to practise on.

So I thought I’d show some of things I’ve been working on this past week or so.  First up is a painting I did in life drawing, which I quite like even if it is a bit hot (colour-wise). I am quite enjoying Expressionism painting and the freedom that it brings.

I did this with a palette knife and it is the first time I’ve worked on such a huge piece with one.  Theres a few bits that could do with some definition, and other elements such as the outline that could do with a bit less line. Otherwise, I’m fairly happy with it.

The next items are all taken from my Creative Textiles class.  I based these pieces on the theme Rendezvous, which seems to have gone in the direction of secrecy and covert operations.  This has led me to focus on the all-seeing eye and the building up of layers.

The first piece is a piece of silk that I have dipped in hot wax and crumpled into a ball. I then flattened it by hand and painted on fabric dye.  This is supposed to be like a weave pattern (although unsuccessful) but it has a great texture to it which you just can’t see here at all.

The next piece was a piece of devore fabric that I had batiked onto giving the shape of facial features.  I dyed with red and black again, as I felt this was quite murky and bloody.  I then used devore paste on the material to burn out some of the fabric, making it transparent in places to reveal the layer underneath.  For some reason though, I think of the top layer as being very Banksy – completely unintentional!

The next two pieces are on the same material – some kind of cotton I think.  I dipped these into the wax pot, crumpled them, then dyed.  What I love about these pieces are that they remind me of papyrus and ancient Egyptian texts.  Particularly the second piece.  As you can see, the all-seeing eye is present in both of these images, and are repeated several times in the second.  As you may or may not be aware, the all-seeing eye dates back to ancient Egypt and the Eye of Horus. Funnily enough, I didn’t intend for this effect on my first piece, but when I saw how it turned out, I definitely want to push it further in the Egyptian direction.

This part was more considered, and I used the batik spoony/poury thing (that’s my technical definition for it as I don’t know what it’s called).  I help up the cloth after it had been dipped in wax, crumpled and dyed, and then used the spoony/poury thing to drip wax down the fabric.  I then turned it sideways and repeated the dripping effect, to get a nice kind of hatching pattern, but a few of the drips ran askew, which was absolutely ok.  I wish you could see how rich these colours look, as I’m particularly pleased with these two.

So I cobbled some of my pieces together on a large sheet of paper and painted around them with fabric dye, dragging a fairly dry brush vertically in the direction of the fabric.  I love how murky this looks.

The next piece was done by etching into a piece of polystyrene, then painted over with fabric dye.  I then pressed it onto a piece of calico giving a nice screenprint.

The final piece was done using the same method except this time I used oil paint and pressed it onto 300lb watercolour paper.  I etched a smaller piece of polystyrene with a weave pattern and printed onto the paper in blocks, then I overlaid with my main print image.  I think this has turned out not too badly!

So that’s where I am just now, and as you can see, my time hasn’t been completely wasted!

The first image is of a few of my class mates and my tutor, Angela.

Below you can see a couple of my paintings. The first is on the top row on the right hand side, and two others are on the second row.

And here you can see a couple more.  The very bottom right hand painting and the one above it are both mine.

Now I only have to come up with some prices for my work, which to be honest I don’t have a clue about.  I was approached today and asked if the painting were for sale, and how much they were going for, but I had no clue.  I really need to sit and think about this.  How do you value your own work, especially when you don’t think it’s that great?

As I mentioned, I haven’t got any work done, but I have my exhibition on Monday and I had to make business cards for it.  So this is what I came up with this afternoon:

The top part is the back of the card and the bottom is the front. It turned out quite well I think! Anyway, that’s all I’ve done so far.  Oh, and I’ve seen the poster for the exhibition, and it looks really great.  One of classmates’ posters was chosen, and has images of several students’ work on it, including my own. I’ll post it when I get a copy of it!

I haven’t been around for the past few days, and I’m going to be taking a further few days out, as I’m feeling really poorly.  I have a virus, which has knocked me for six, so I need lots of rest. I was supposed to be going home to see my family this weekend and took Friday off college to go down, but by Thursday morning it was apparent I wasn’t going anywhere. Typical!  Anyway, I hope to be back shortly.  See you all soon.