Take a moment. Take a look around. Look at the organization and structure and color of the spaces you occupy. Observe the way that vessel is filled by light. Today is the birthday anniversary of the greatest architect in the last 500 years.
“Space is the breath of art.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
(Hat tip to Dornick for the reminder.)
The Space Within A House from Jon Fuller on Vimeo.
Posting today under the influence of rather severe and demoralizing allergies.
I can’t explain why, but such moments strongly lend themselves to the confabulation of distinct, evocative images. When I’m sick or depleted, this one always comes to the fore: a figure standing at the entrance to a dark tunnel. It speaks of mortality, a search for sanctuary, the influence of unseen rivers, of tunnels and passages into darkness.
This image originally came to me as I descended into the grasp of a terrible flu last February. At the time, I was reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. (It is a terrifying book. Murakami — and his English translators — possess a gift for exactly relaying the more frightening vistas dormant within the human subconscious.)
In any case, there is a passage in the book in which a character describes a memory from her childhood. In the memory, she is playing with some other children beside a stream near a field. It has just rained. The stream is swollen with the rain. The other children are pulling her along in a small boat when they somehow lose their grasp. In a moment, she is swept away from them toward the mouth of a culvert. An entrance into the underworld, a mouth into the earth, a portal to the unknown.
(Apologies for these undeveloped thoughts — I’m not completely up to par right now. What imagery — if any — do you associate with your varied states of being?)
The Dark Mouth Of The Earth from Jon Fuller on Vimeo.
This week’s New Yorker cover was painted by artist Jorge Colombo entirely using that spiffy iPhone/iPod Touch app named Brushes which I wrote about in early January.
Steve Sprang — the developer of Brushes — also put together a neat companion application named Brushes Viewer which allows the replay of the process of painting.
Even though I’m still not used to painting on an iPod with my knobbly, misshapen fingers, I put together a little demonstration of this amazing software just for you. Take a look.
Outlaw Cat Via Brushes from Jon Fuller on Vimeo.
I flooded an entire fictional city last night! The draft illustration will be up soon. In the meantime, check out the faster-than-realtime video depicting the event above.
(Not incidentally, the soundtrack for this video is Revolve by hisboyelroy. It’s really the star of the show.)
This image captures the city in its ferroflex era. As you can no doubt discern, I’m still figuring out how to handle cityscapes effectively and have started to differentiate these ages by monochromatic tone.
Consider this a series within the series — an attempt to flesh out the world a little.
I finished up The Last Siege in the evening, then dove back in to Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn. The cliché, cheesy plotline of the latter novel is a real struggle — in spite of my admiration for the video game bearing the same title.
I’ll have to find something more compelling — possibly Jonathan Stroud’s Heroes of the Valley.
I painted this piece while listening to The Last Siege by Jonathan Stroud. While not his finest work, the novel intelligently handles a weighty subject and gives one a new appreciation for places of refuge and sanctuary.
(You won’t find much of either while crossing the swollen breadth of the dry flood, of course. Stability and settlements are rare until you reach one of the shore boroughs where water is still relatively abundant.)
This is the result of the two hour live painting session from last night. Looking good so far.
