Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Wash-Away Wall: Come Over!

Still working on wash-away illustrations with bink for our Trumptime ABCderian, Baby's First Resistary. 

Do you know this photo, below? 
I ask because I don't know how well-known it is, and whether we should include an appendix of explanations-- my librarian soul always says, yes, add documentation.

I had used Humpty Dumpty to illustrate "W for Wall" but decided I wanted a positive example rather than a warning, so I did it again, using the above photo (by Peter Leibing) of nineteen-year-old Conrad Schumann defecting from East Germany by jumping over what would become the Berlin Wall, in the first days of the wall's construction in 1961. 

People on the Western side called to him, Komm rĂ¼ber! ("come over").

There is a benefit that comes from making physical art---I have to pay close attention. Even just copying it, I enter into an image more than if I just stare at it.
And by using my hand on paper, I contact it differently than I do when I manipulate an image on a computer. (Not better, just different.)

Copying the photo I noticed all sorts of details--his boot on the wire--is he pushing it down so it doesn't snag him, or is that a photo illusion? and, especially, though I didn't include them, the onlookers in the background. 

Here's bink washing off my resist (the high spots are washable white tempera paint, the ink, of course, is waterproof):
it's like reaching into the Cracker Jack box--half the fun is the reveal.


 The results almost always need a little touch-up.
 
We need softer borders, not harder ones.

3 comments:

ArtSparker said...

On a very basic level, I find art making comforting because it is something I can control, unlike a lot of stuff both macro and personal.

gz said...

(0)

Fresca said...

SPARKER: Yes, sometimes I just doodle with watercolors---calming. I'm not accomplished enough in art to really control the results, but I enjoy making marks!

Hi, GZ!