JRC-1135 'moifology' (moif's gallery blog): Rust

Showing posts with label Rust. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2010

JRC-1138 background tile part 1

The initial template, about half way finished

What began as an experiment to offset a single cog, soon became an entire cog assembly

Things are heating up now, both literally as the summer approaches and figuratively as I spend more and more time playing with my new computer and wacom tablet. Drawing on the computer never really appealled to me as I had so many other projects that were more interesting, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to draw 'third hand' as drawing on the computer seemed to me. The fact of the matter is, I am becoming quite fond of my wacom and I've even taken to drawing things in Illustrator. Since Wednesday (26th May) I've been painting a thematic background for my primary blog. In previous attempts at making a tiled back ground, I'd floundered, mucking about with layered montages and drawing with a mouse. Now, I've made my shapes in CS4-AI, painted them, and made the tile in individual layers using the offset tool in CS4-PS. The result is very satisfactory, though I'm not finished yet.

The initial tile design was just going to be three cogs on a 900x900 pixel tile, but this developed into a complex pattern of interlocking chains. This then turned out to be unfeasable however as I'd not fully understood the nature of the repeating pattern. Instead of two chains I settled instead for one and I also began to add a lot of other curious details, inscriptions, a gauge and various feed lines. The idea became to create a repeating 'machine pattern' of some complexity, without losing the sense of an actual machine, though with a touch og age and decay about it.

My primary inspiration, though I have deliberatly not consulted any of his pictures since I began this project, was Oscar Chichoni.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

JRC-1138 image

This is the main page background image in its entirety. I made it in Photoshop. The girl is from an illustration by Benjamin Carre (thanks Cyan). Click for a larger view.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Patina nr.1

When I was in my foundation year at Liverpool JMU we had a fine arts tutor, whose name I have forgotten, who sat us down one day and explained to us the differences between the three types of art. Basically, he argued that all art can be identified as being either objective, subjective or abstract, and in the 12 years since then I have found he was quite right. In identifying the differences and qualities of each he turned to the window behind him and pointed to the wooden cross piece that divided the window into four glass rectangles. This was England so the wooden cross was very old and had been painted white over white many times. Time had taken its toll regardless and the whole was a mess of peeling layers bordering on the pristine surface of the glass. "Look closer at this" he explained and you have a natural abstract image. "Everything is abstract if removed from all context".

My brain cracked wide open but I didn't feel it at the time. In those days I was stoned quite a lot and my mind was much more elastic than it is today. I learned the lesson though and ever since I've seen the abstract all around me. Being who I am, I naturally found the most beautiful abstraction was in the patina of rust and natural decay and so I began to photograph it. This became an obsession and for each summer during my years at art school I roamed always with an OM-10 camera my father in law gave me. Sometimes I had a 70mm lens on it, but most of the time I had a 28mm. I used Kodagold ASA400 film when ever I could get it since it seemed to give the best results. I only used to take pictures of rust when the summer sun was strong because the light was so good and I enjoyed the heat. I used to go on holiday with my in laws and I'd be clomping about in my army boots and shorts whilst they were all lounging on the beach. The Italians used to laugh at me, but never in an unpleasant way. Looking at these images now brings back memories of the warm afternoon sun and the smell of rusty metal in the heat.

The following images were near are all taken in that period. I haven't taken many such pictures in the last few years since my health has kept me shy of wandering about. Also, Denmark is a poor place to find urban decay. Nothing much is allowed to rot here and the summers are a joke. Everything is quickly reused so its not easy to find the aging detritus which is so bountiful in the UK.
Some of the images were from my father's collection of old machinary and metal artifacts, but I don't recall which ones. I have a lot more such photographs than just these and I'll post other images of decay in the future. For now, see if you can find the fly in this first image, and in nr.15, which is an accidental double exposure, you might just make out my face in the left hand side of the image.