Final for the spring issue of Spellbound. Still deciding how I feel about that background color. Believe it or not, it was done with just one ink, a brown that bled out in mysterious ways.
To purchase an issue or learn more about the magazine, visit:
http://eggplantproductions.com/spellbound-magazine/spellbound-childrens-fantasy-e-zine-spring-2013-issue/
I hate waiting for things. The deadline for Modcloth’s latest design contest was just yesterday, and I am already gnawing my nails waiting to find out whether I made it even past the first cut (news that won’t be released for like a month). Yeah. I have no patience.
So at long long last the September issue of Art*Throb is being released, with my illustrations on the cover and feature story. Come to the launch party tomorrow at Montserrat Gallery, Thursday, Sept. 6, 5:30-7:30pm to get your free copy.
Prints can be purchased here:
http://society6.com/DanaMartin/France-comes-to-Salem-cover_Print
http://society6.com/DanaMartin/France-comes-to-Salem-interior_Print
I’m going to be in RAW Boston’s Ensemble show!
September 13, 7-10pm, The Estate
These shows are always a blast. RAW does an amazing job of putting them together, the venue is a welcome change from the whitewashed gallery, there’s a great bar, live music, and a fashion show to boot. And this time I will be on site with original pieces and prints! The last time I went there, it was packed, so my advice is buy your tickets early. You can get them through the following link:
I used this personal project to experiment with a lot of new techniques and to explore a fairy tale that has come to be known through several different interpretations. At first I was determined to focus on the ballet version of Sleeping Beauty (which is where the costume originates), but this immediately led to practical questions such as Was the painting set on the stage? Should I focus on the dance aspect or the story the dance revolved around? In the end it became a mash-up of several concepts, which, in hindsight, don’t entirely work together. The execution of the painting also gave it an unintended melodrama. I wanted the rose thicket to seem wilder, so I threw in some more colors and ink lines and muddied everything, probably a bit too much. In the end, it’s the initial sketch that best captures the mood I was going for. Sometimes it happens that way. Still, the technical challenges made this a fascinating piece to work on, and I think I will definitely try this color palette on something else.
In one of the rare Arabian Nights stories that deals with discrimination against women, a merchant hangs a sign above his shop that reads: Men’s wits exceed women’s wiles.
Soon a beautiful young woman comes to him, in tears, demanding whether he thinks she is hunchbacked, or pockmarked, or one-eyed. The merchant says that of course she is not, and asks where she got such a strange idea. The woman says bitterly that her father, who is the Chief Kazi of the city, turns away all her suitors by claiming that she is deformed, and that she is doomed to a single life. The merchant begs her to stop crying and vows to marry her himself. The woman warns him that her father will try to discourage the match. The merchant assures her that he won’t be moved by the Kazi’s lies.
He goes to the Kazi’s palace to plead for the girl’s hand. The Kazi, greatly surprised, protests that his daughter is hunchbacked, pockmarked, and has only one eye. The merchant insists that he doesn’t care. So there is a grand wedding and the Kazi’s daughter, heavily veiled, is brought to the merchant’s house. Whereupon he discovers to his horror that she is indeed hunchbacked, covered in pock marks, and has only one eye, just as the Kazi said.
The next morning, as the merchant sits in his shop, who should sashay by but the beautiful young woman, who is actually a blacksmith’s daughter. The furious merchant demands to know why she has played such a trick on him. The girl points to his sign and asks, “Who is smarter now?”
Humbled, the merchant agrees to change the sign if she will help him. So the blacksmith’s daughter tells him that he must hire all the gypsies and beggars in the city to come and sing the next morning, when he will be having coffee with his new father-in-law.
Accordingly, the horde show up the next day, startling the Kazi, who demands to know what all the racket is about. The merchant says what the blacksmith’s daughter has told him to say: that these are all his relatives who have come to wish him joy over his new marriage. The Kazi, aghast that he has married his daughter into such lowly company, immediately sues for divorce.
The merchant re-paints his sign to say: Women’s wiles exceed men’s wits. Eventually he persuades the blacksmith’s daughter to marry him in earnest.
True to the culture of their time, the tricks of the blacksmith’s daughter turn on some unpleasant facts of life in the 1300s. The Kazi’s daughter is the unsung victim in this story, as she is badly used by her father, the merchant, and even the heroine. The gypsies also get a bad rap.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything from this project, but I am still at work on the Arabian Nights. This scene comes from The Hunchback’s Tale, a comedy of errors in which the sultan’s hunchbacked jester chokes to death on a fishbone while dining with friends, who promptly act to rid themselves of the body — and the blame. A series of people stumble upon the jester in the dark and each one, unaware that the man is dead already, inflicts a further accident upon him and when they do discover he’s dead, blame themselves and rush to pass his body along. The story ends cheerfully when a barber pries the fishbone from the jester’s throat, bringing him back to life and absolving everyone of guilt.
While I did research Persian and Moroccan architecture for this project, my main inspiration was a little closer to home. Every Christmas when I was a child, the local walkways and rooftops would be lined with luminarios (basically paper bags placed over candles, weighted with some sand). They cast a dim, red-gold glow that transformed the adobe houses into something otherworldly. It was this light that I wanted to paint. The effect was more difficult to capture than I’d imagined, though, and the end result falls a bit short of the real thing. If you truly want to witness the magic of luminarios, you’ll just have to find a city lit up with them. The experience will definitely be worth the search.
There are few things more inspiring to the creation of artwork than having some other piece of art you should be working on instead.
While I was doing research for this other important project, I came across photos of withering Chinese lantern plants and so discovered that they actually contain little red fruits inside those papery husks; hence their other name, winter cherry. I’m sure this is old news to everyone who has the slightest talent for gardening, but I was pretty psyched about it. Even better was the way the veins of the husk formed a lacework cage over the fruit when the husk started drying out.
Prints of this piece can be purchased at:
http://society6.com/DanaMartin/Chinese-Lantern-Winter-Cherry_Print
Now I have to get back to my real work.
In preparation for the Beauty of the Beast gallery show (which will open toward the end of this month), I took a break from my Arabian Nights series and started painting animals. Namely insects. The compositions were much simpler than what I’d been working on, but they left me opportunity to experient with some washes and a lot of close-up details.
The story of Sinbad covers the merchant-sailor’s seven separate voyages, each of which ended in shipwreck and disaster. Though this is hands-down the most adventurous tale in all of the Arabian Nights, and though Sinbad’s many troubles (cannibals, giant birds, etc.) provided a wealth of imagery, the illustration that resulted is one of the more tranquil pictures in the series. At the end of every terrible voyage, Sinbad swears he will stay at home forever, but after a few months he can’t resist the sea anymore and he sails off once again. He pretends to be wholey optimistic at the beginning of these trips, but the reader knows it’s going to get bloody soon, and given his awful track record, it’s hard to believe that Sinbad doesn’t know this too. In every case, he is the sole survivor of his crew, and even then he tends to make it only because he has a high tolerance for starvation.
For this reason, I wanted the illustration to show Sinbad knowingly sailing into the arms of danger (or in this case, the tentacles of a sea monster), in a moment when he still has a chance to turn back, but refuses. As a bonus, I finally got to paint that Chinese junk boat.
Visit my website at
www.dana-martin.com
