Piece of the Week

Another piece from the Hex series.

watercolor

9x9in

2012

Series: Hex

Colors and Light

Color and light are very important, and not just in your art but around your art. In college it was drilled into me to always use natural light when working and depending on what you're doing, one light source. Light effects how your colors look, artificial light had different colors and that effects how your colors look to you. If you make something under one color light and get it to look how you like and then display it under a different color of light, it could look funny.
Colors also effect how other colors look. Just the lighting and the background you have/use when taking a picture of/displaying your art can make a difference in how it looks.
Exhibits A and B same piece.

watercolor
6x6in
2012
Series: Hex

Piece of the Week

A lot of Hex pieces in the works lately. This was a crucial key in the unlocking of a pattern.

watercolor

6x6in

2012

Series: Hex

Hex Artist Statement

In my studies of traditional arts and craftsmanship, I was delighted to discover sacred geometry and hand drafting with compass and straight edge. These techniques were crucial to the art and architecture of the golden age of Greece and later the renaissance. I first learned about working with a compass and straight edge in college, studying with Wulf Barsch. My discovery of sacred geometry has since blossomed into a love for geometric patterns and designs and lead to an increased interest in Islamic art through the geometric patterns so prevalent there. In this series I have been exploring the possibilities of the number six or the hexagonal shape, in so doing I have relied heavily on Islamic art and other geometric traditions and thrilled as I’ve learned the secrets to these beautiful patterns and designs.

I love what I do over all but there are a few things that I didn't expect to come along with this job title. I've been getting a show application ready and in doing so I've taken what feels like a million pictures of my work which I've then cropped and picked the best images, resized etc. I've been wondering if I should have taken a photography class or two in school. Oh well, it still beats sitting in a cubical somewhere.

Sacred Geometry: A Primer

Alright, there's a lot in today's post. I'm running out of orthogons (there are only 12 after all) but the good news is that there's a lot more to sacred geometry than just the orthogons. Today is sort of a continuations of last weeks post, how to draw a hexagon or a six-sided star and the how-to on those opens up a whole world of possibilities.
Anyway, start with a straight line, I went horizontal but you could also go with a vertical line.

Draw a circle and sort of center it on your line.

Draw a circle with the point of your compass on one of the points where the original circle and the line cross. This is the same step to create a vesica piscis. P.s. don't change your compass setting.

 Draw another circle at the point where the two circles intersect.

Continue until you have six circles around the original circle.

Draw connecting lines between each intersection of the original circle.

The hexagon.You can also draw the star from this point but I did not.

If you want to simplify things, you can get the same results without drawing all the extra circles. Just draw the points where the circles intersect.

When you've done that you can make a hexagon or proceed as follows for a star.

Connect two points leaving another point in between them.

So there you go, now go and experiment and find out what you can do with all this.

Piece of the Week

I'm not sure that this is the pattern that I started out to create but I like how it turned out, especially the overlapping yellow lines that make stars.

watercolor

9x9in

2012

Series: Hex

Sacred Geometry: A Primer

So on Friday I had the opportunity to go to this workshop with Dr. Lisa DeLong. I was really excited for this workshop because it was about geometry, because I've gotten to hear Lisa DeLong before and because she got her doctorate at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts and she now teaches there. It was indeed a good workshop, probably what I was most excited about was getting instructions and cheat sheets (if you will) for some patterns based on four, eight and a seal of Salomon.
I really liked something that she said, she was talking about how with a compass and a straight edge you can make about anything in geometry because when you connect or overlap circles, straight lines become possible and from there the possibilities are endless.
She also talked about how rules or laws, rather than being restricting as is commonly thought, can open up all sorts of possibilities, I agree, in fact that's sort of what my series Hex is all about. These are three of several examples of variations on the same design/pattern.

Untitled
Watercolor and Sumi Ink
9x9in
2011
Series: Hex

Untitled/Pattern
Watercolor and Sumi ink
9x9in
2011
Series: Hex

Untitled
watercolor and sumi ink
9x9 in
2011
Series: Hex

PS You should also check out this lecture on the Beauty and Belief exhibit.

Piece of the Week

This is one of my most recent pieces for Hex. I'm really excited about the pattern/design. A few weeks ago I was looking through pictures on google for inspiration of patterns I could use, I found a picture of several hexagonal tile designs from the Victoria and Albert Museum and this was one of the designs. My colors are different but I like it. It's thrilling to figure out a pattern that's new to you.

watercolor

9x9in

2012

Series: Hex

patterns unlocked

I have been wanting to use this pattern for a long time but I haven't been able to figure out how the pattern works. On Wednesday I came across a picture on the website for The Prince's School of Traditional Arts. Which gave me a starting point for figuring the pattern out. This was my first attempt after looking at the picture.

It was not a great attempt, but after looking at it more closely I was able to replicate the first piece of the tessellation (is there a term for that?).

After making the beginning of the pattern I had a hard time figuring out how to make it tessellate, short of cutting it out and using a pattern. There's a lot of extra lines and circles in the picture above from failed attempts.

After more trial and error I seemed to be on the right track, except that my page was too small.

On the bigger sheet I was able to make the pattern work! In this post it doesn't seem so exciting but it's been very exciting for me to finally have figured this out.

Tip: patterns like this have a lot riding on accuracy and so I use the attachment on my compass that lets me use a mechanical pencil so that the lines are small and accurate.

Let me know if you'd like more info on how to draw this pattern.

Sacred Geometry: A Primer

Sacred Geometry tip: making complex designs can get confusing. Example:

Hard to tell what it is I'm going for with that and to get lost in all the lines.

In this one I was working on the same pattern/design but with the colored pencil I was able to separate elements of the design.

Sacred Geometry: A Primer

This week, how to draw a dodecagon/do-decagon (a twelve sided polygon). Start with an axis.

Draw a circle around the center point.

Make the vesica piscis on either side of the circle.

From there make circles on the pints of the vesica picises (sp?).

When this has been completed it should look like this:

Then go around and connect the points in the inner circle to create a hexagon (this is the sort of thing that I've used a lot in the Hex series).

When that's done, make lines through opposing sides, I don't really know how to explain it well but I hope the pictures will help show better what I mean.

It should look like this when finished, note the six sided star.

The center rectangles are and orthogon shape I believe, the double square if I'm not mistaken.

Then connect the lines on the outer circles.

There you have a dodecagon.

Piece of the Week

Here's the piece of the week, a different pattern direction from the majority of the Hex pieces. Thoughts?

watercolor

6x6in

2012

Series: Hex

Piece of the Week

Another piece from Hex. I love how versatile this basic design/pattern is, I think at least half of the pieces I've done so far for this series have been based on it.

watercolor

6x6in

2012

Series: Hex

Piece of the Week

At the workshop that I talked about in the last post, we did a little art project at the end and talked a little about sacred geometry and we were supposed to make something with some meaning. I decided to make a design with a six sided star or star of David, making up the star are two equilateral triangles going in opposite directions, overlapping to make the star. The symbolism with that is really powerful and also a bit flexible, I've used it to represent man and woman united, in the project I made each triangle a different shade of blue, this time I wanted it to represent man/myself and God. In the middle of the two triangles I added yellow/gold to represent light.
This piece of the week is not so much a star of David but it's a part of the Hex series and I just wanted to share some of the motivations behind the Hex series.

Untitled
Watercolor
9x9in
2012
Series: Hex

Piece of the Week

Another geometrical piece from Hex for this weeks piece of the week. Happy Memorial Day!

watercolor

9x9in

2012

Series: Hex

Piece of the Week

I've been really excited about geometry lately and  so another newer piece from Hex for the piece of the week. This one is just the beginning of the design but per a suggestion I hope to make a bigger piece with this pattern expanded. I don't know how soon that will happen though. I should really try to figure out or put words to why a cool pattern or design is so intriguing. If you know why I'd love to hear it.

watercolor
6x6in
2012
Series: Hex

P.S. I went back through the Islamic art exhibit again and I still love it and one thing I love is looking closely at paintings etc. and seeing lines and patterns that aren't completely perfect, these pieces were done by hand not by computers etc. and they are beautiful and wonderful but they aren't totally perfect. My pieces are not totally perfect either and sometimes I feel like they aren't good enough if they're not totally perfect but it's good to see that I'm not the only one.

Piece of the Week

I was really excited about this piece when I was making it and then didn't love it so much when it was done. I was really excited by the possibilities to the pattern and really I suppose it's more of a pattern study than a finished piece. After giving it some time I've decided I do like it and I'm still really excited about the pattern and how it sort of changes depending on what you focus on.

 Watercolor and Sumi ink
9x9in
2011
Series: Hex

I was going through older posts and found this picture from the National Museum in Rome and I think I'll be making my own version of the design in this mosaic.

Piece of the Week

This week's piece of the week is from the Hex series. I've recently been remembering just how much I love geometric/Islamic designs and how beautiful they are. I'm planning on working out some of my own to add to the Hex series.

Untitled
Watercolor and Sumi Ink
9x9in
2011
Series: Hex

PS Over the weekend I saw a really cool sunset with something a little unusual. I'm planning on painting it so be on the look out for that in the future.