Friday, October 5, 2012

drawing the mountain


Now that the map wall is finished, scheduled to be installed tomorrow, I'm working on the drawings for the mountain wall. The graphic artist did a lot of work on the image before he sent it to me, breaking the black and white photograph down into 5 tones and then converting that into a line drawing.

It's my turn now to turn that line drawing into something I can use to cut the stencil and make the diagram from. I had both versions of the file printed out and have the 5 tone print hanging up on the wall in front of me and the line drawing on the table before me. I'm tracing the line drawing, doing some simplifying as I go. If I can't see it on the shaded print 7' in front of me, it doesn't go on the drawing I'm making.

turning this...

into this

To tell you the truth, I welcome the need to focus my mind on something because I am weary of the presidential election. It's just non-stop. I know who I am voting for and paying attention to the fray only makes me feel fearful of what will be if Obama is not re-elected. I will cast my vote and if more of the population agrees with me than not remains to be seen.

So.

I have iTunes on shuffle, heavy on the blues, I have my pencil and eraser. My brain struggles to make sense of all these jagged, squiggly shapes, lines weaving in and out and so I visualize faces and animals and aliens and funny little cartoon fish and birds and poor little deformed creatures and body parts; feet, noses, long fingers, elongated legs.

a duck headed fish?

don't know what this is but it looks happy





8 comments:

  1. Dang Ellen, you are so talented. The work you do amazes me. I'm glad you have this to keep you stimulated and creative. And, to pay the bills. :)

    Seriously, there is only so much most of us can do when it comes election time.

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  2. all those shapes would have me drawing smiley faces and bubbles from fish mouths, etc. :)

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  3. I would go blind! What a process. I also can not wait until Obama wins...it must happen.

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  4. Love the process...talk about tedious!! Wow!!
    Hugs
    SueAnn

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  5. Wow! What an amazing process. It's funny how our brains try to make sense of shapes, isn't it? I guess it's the same instinct that helps us see things in clouds.

    I agree about the presidential race. In fact, I've already cast my vote, so it's even MORE pointless for me to pay attention. But it's hard not to, even from here!

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  6. Something to do. What I need right now. I think I'll go sew and listen to a book for a month.

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  7. Very interesting how this is taking shape.

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  8. I so agree about politics. Ugh.

    I like to figure out creatures in random shapes too. I do that with the weird tile in our bathroom - ha!

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.