From clockwork to digital

 

The classic Bolex 16mm Camera

I started out in film at the age of eight, drawing my own animated film strips on rolls of post WW2 heavy duty toilet paper and viewing them on a projector that I had made out of a cardboard box. Fifty years ago, I progressed to a clockwork Bolex 16mm camera. This classic camera has been the choice for documentary film makers and it still retains a dedicated following. Twenty years ago I updated my equipment to early digital format, and this week I moved up to high definition digital. 

My "new" (already out of date) camera has none of the romance of my clockwork Bolex, nor the creative ingenuity of my cartoons on toilet paper. And although Sony have ambitiously enabled me to digitally set the date up to 2079 I doubt that the camera will last that long - but then again, neither will I. 

Furthermore, my Sony is not as photogenic as the Bolex.

My Sony HDR-FX7 Video Camera

My return to the moving image has been triggered by needing to capture the "movement" of my paintings, sculptures and fashion designs. None of my work is static. 

The poet Dylan Thomas, who was all for taking the highfalutin nonesense out of poetry, claimed that a reader's response to a good poem should be the same as viewers responded to the first motion picture: "By God it moves, and so by God it does!".

Getting caught: hook, line and sinker

When I was at a loss for what comes next in my Bare Mininum fashion designs, my wife caught me: hook, line and sinker. The word crochet is derived from the Old French croche, meaning "hook" and the pictures below show what she's been up to.

Forty years ago I may have been the first to hit on the idea of crochet bikinis. My insperation came from old ladies in the Virgin Islands skilled at fine crochet work. Since then crochet bikinis have been all the rage, but not as I originally conceived them. Today's versions are made from heavy threads in all colours and the end result is more suited for the North Pole than for the tropics.

Using the smallest needle and the finest thread Denise created Mk1 of a Bare Minimum version. They quintessentially follow my theme of subtly revealing the beauty of what lies beneath.

No sooner said than done!

On the banks of Shibden Brook

My brother's latest blog post makes reference to the countryside of our childhood and to a stream that we played alongide. His memory was prompted by the old picture postcard shown below. He adds, that he has yet to see any artist transpose its features to canvas, although he strongly suspects that he will receive an e-mail within the next few days to tell me he has done so several times. 

Well, if not on canvas, I've certainly painted the Shibden Valley, and the stream in question, on the best watercolour paper. Moreover, he can safely copy today's painting on his Facebook page. In more recent years my subject matter violates their stringent puritanical Community Guidlines. 

Long live the artistic freedom of Blogger!

 

Getting it right by letting it go wrong

One wet colour thrown down on another.

A watercolour can't go right until it has gone wrong is a truism all the more true when painting diaphanous cotton voile with fabric dye. The dye and fabric make a mockery of calculated control. The dye begs to bleed beyond imposed boundaries. It is when they are allowed freedom to interreact that the magic happens. As with watercolour, speed is of the essence and the best results are obtained by throwing one wet colour down on another.

Up to now, I have fraught shy of painting with fabric dye on cotton voile and have restricted myself to the tighten weave of cotton lawn. But the latter does not have the transparency of the former. And the veiled glimpse of what lies beneath the fabric is what I am after.

The subtlety of the design becomes all the more apparent after washing removes the surplus dye. The images below show a design before and after washing. The "before" image was photographed flat against a white background and the "after" image was photographed against the dark skin tones of the model. The final picture shows the imprint left on a paper towel used to absorb surplus dye during application - a surprising image created by accident rather than intent.

In watercolour the only white is the white of the paper. Likewise, when painting with dye, the only white is the white of the fabric. An added variable is the material's transparency and it's ability to cluster, drape and flirt in the breeze. 

At a fleeting glance

Light as a will o' the wisp.

Merriam-Webster defines diaphanous as "characterized by such fineness of texture as to permit seeing through", "extreme delicacy of form", and "insubstantial, vague".  

Diaphanous is derived from the Greek word diaphanes. The prefix dia- means "through", and phanous means "to show or to make visible". Thus, diaphanous translates directly as "to show through".

Shreads 

Both pictures refer to my Bare Minimum experiments. What I am after is not so much fashion, but a way of revealing at a fleeting glance the beauty of the human form.