Sounds Sketchy - Sacred Geometry

I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to host the first "Sounds Sketchy" a Local 510.  For a first night, it is always a bit scary that no one will show up, but I was happy to see people came out to fill the house!  Thanks to everyone who participated at the first "Sounds Sketchy" event last night!

I designed a fun class for any level of drawing experience. We worked on creating the sacred geometry pattern "the flower of life" using whatever we had, compasses, coasters, shot glasses and/or string.

Everyone had their sketch books ready to go and began with drawing a point and a simple circle. From there we built outward; the tripod of life, the genesis pattern, the seed of life, the egg of life, the flower of life etc.

The remaining pictures here were taken by Jay Woolley, who is also the event organizer. Here I am with the flip chart I whipped up the night before explaining each step on the progression.

I brought art supplies to share, a bunch of books as reference, and some copies of notes for those who want to grab them and learn more.  The best way to learn with this kind of work, is to learn by doing.  I'm standing in front of the start of my creation of Metatron's cube.

Here Linden and I are getting deeper into the meaning of all this fun sacred geometry stuff and discussing the platonic solids and how they all can be created out of the Metatron's cube drawing.

I was really impresses by how into it people got and where they took it, great job everyone!

I like this final pic from behind my explaining how to continue on with the drawing. Preach it brother!!!

If you'd like to attend a free session they are every last Monday on the Month.
Silas is hosting the next one in February and the theme is "Regrettable tattoos!"
Be there!

Spin me right round baby

 I set up a downward facing time lapse scenario while working on more abstract works based in sacred geometry patterns.

The first birch panel was primed black and the second gold. I worked on each piece in stages and crossed back and forth simultaneously so the two pieces would have a relationship to one another. Watch these short videos below, they are not only entertaining but they also reveal my process.

Its kinda funny, it seems that both times I made a painting just to paint over it again. Well so far, that is my process.

I hung both of these pieces in my Ramsay window for the neighbourhood to enjoy and then put them up at the Black and White Show at Studio Phi and House Galley's Black and White Exhibition. It was a fantastic show with over 60 artists. I was beat but had a chance to reconnect with many friends and artists that evening. In addition I created two new pieces to continue with this process painting for the exhibition which I will continue to develop.

Today I am working on developing some murals for the summer season as well as teaching Drawing at ACAD to a full class with two on a waiting list. I am super stoked!!!

Sacred heart

This is the final stages of my piece that I created for the Chatterson Drive project.  I took the piece home to put in a few more hours on it before handing it over with a nice thick clear gloss protective layer.

I revisited the sacred geometry portion and drew it back in with a very thin sharpie marker. I then followed along and filled in the vesica piscis with black gesso. From this view it resembles a heart.

I used golden acrylic gold paint to dot the connection points and to add reflectivity. Here is the final piece on my kitchen linoleum, I like how the grid looked in this composition so I didn't crop it out.

Here is the iphone/instagram selfie Mandy Stobo took of us the day we started in on this project. Fortunately, my beard has come a long way in the past week. lol.

Here is the finished piece:

preparation for studio shots

I hung hooks and anchors into the brick and mortar. Then I strung up glow rope across and overhead in order to be able to hang accessories and flowing garments during the modelling sessions. 

To the left is the black canvas for my Shiva painting. Above is the glow rope strung at about 240 cm height. The black pelican case is where the models will stand, slightly raised off the ground. I have lights borrowed from Emmedia and a few of my own to set up for each session. After doing this I spent a few hours preparing the canvases with the sacred geometry layout.

I made a central vertical and horizontal axis and two diagonals. I decided not to use graphite because it can lift into the painted layers. Instead, I am using colorerase pencils to do my initial planning lines. In the past masters would have used chalk lines.  I tied a string around the pencil and held one end in the center axis. By doing this I could draw circles like a compass. I also made measurements from the center to create the two octagons. I created many lines flaring out from the center because this will be a painting of Ganesh and I hope to have a dynamic background.

Beside the large Ganesh canvas it is another identical size canvas where I went about the same process. I made fewer radiating lines and changed the pattern but did create a large circle in which the figure will be placed. This canvas will most likely be used for one of the female godesses lakshimi or saraswati. I also worked on creating the geometry on a number of other canvases.