Kirjoitellen ja väritellen // Writing and Colouring

And here I go again, colouring my own colouring book. #illustrator #illustration #colouring #colouringbooksforadults #colouringbooks #coloringbook #värityskirja #värityskirjat #jyväskyläntaidemuseo #JKLtaidemuseo #jklartmuseumshop #coloringbookforadults #illustrations #jklartmuseum #copic #copics #kuvittaja

Kuva, jonka Päivi Hintsanen (@paivi.hintsanen) julkaisi 16. 01ta 2016 klo 5.17 PST

Aamut olen aloittanut pitkällä aamupalalla ja omaa värityskirjaani väritellen, suurinpiirtein kuva per päivä. Ihana hidas ja kiireetön lasku kaikkien työrupeamien pariin. Sen jälkeen päivät ovat kuluneet sormet näppäimistöllä kirjainten parissa. Viime viikon sanaprojekti lähinnä liittyi viime syksynä kirjoittamaani Väri ja kemia -kirjaseen, jonka editointia nyt yritän tehdä samalla, kun kokoan kuvitusluetteloa ja kirjoitan kuvitusten täydentäviä kuvatekstejä. Nimi on hakusessaan edelleen. Ajattelin tehdä raakataiton valmiiksi, ennenkuin lähetän apurahaselvityksen eteenpäin, jotta voin liittää mukaan jotain näkyvääkin jälkeä, mutta sähköinen julkaisu venähtänee kiireisen näyttelykevään jälkipuoliskolle, ellei kesään saakka. (Raakataiton jälkeen kun kirja lähtee vielä faktantarkistuskierroksellekin, kun se on sitten vähän selkeämmin luettavassa muodossa). Aika venähtelee, kun taas tullut peliin mukaan kaikenlaista muutakin häiriötekijää - mikä toivottavasti kyllä muuttuu vielä ruokkivaksi tekijäksi ajan myötä.

Viime viikon olin keskittyvinäni siis kirjoittamiseen, mutta huomasin, että olen samalla tehnyt lukuisia luonnoksia uusista teoksista ja monet prosessissa olleet hahmottuivat päässäni tarkemmin. Hullulta tuntuu, että kun viime viikolla en keskittynyt lainkaan kuvataiteelliseen työskentelyyn (lukuunottamatta päivittäisi jäänkuvaussessioita), saavutin valmistelevan työn osalta enemmän kuin monen kuukauden aikana viime vuonna.

Jos jatkan tällä linjalla, niin ehkä saan projekteja viimeisteltyäkin lähiaikoina.

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I've started each morning with a long breakfast, colouring my own colouring book at the same time, approximately one picture per day. A wonderfully slow and easing beginning before the working day. After breakfast I've spent my days with my fingers on keyboard, pushing a letter after letter. The wordy project of last week was about the small booklet about colour and chemistry, which I wrote last autumn with a grant, and which I try to edit now, at the same time when I'm making a plan for illustrations and write some captions for pictures. The title of the book is still unclear. I thought that I would finish the raw layout of the booklet before I'll send my grant report, so I can attach some visible results to it, but the electric publication of the booklet will propably take until the end of the very busy spring. (After the raw layout is finished, the booklet will then go to the fact checking round). It takes time, because I have added again some new distraction to my life - which will hopefully turn out to be a constructive operator in my life later.

I thought that I concentrated on writing the whole last week, but I just noticed, that at the same time I have made several sketches for my new artworks and many of the artworks in process just took a clearer form in my head. It feels somewhat crazy, that when I didn't concentrate on my visual art work at all during the last week (except for the daily ice photo sessions), I propably achieved more with the preparing work that I did last year in many months.

If I continue like this, I hope to get some projects also finished soon.

Jääleikit jatkuvat // The Icy Play Continues

Muutama päivä sitten muistin joskus vuosia sitten näkemäni rantaan jäätyneen ruostuneen raudan palan, jonka punainen väri näytti aivan huikealta jään läpi katsottuna. Joten heitin jääsoppaan mukaan punaisen rautaoksidin, sekä vesivärinä että jauheena. Ja sitten olen kuvannut, kuvannut ja kuvannut, paitsi yhtenä harmaana päivänä, kun valo ei vain riittänyt. Tänään aloin lisätä jäädytykseeni päälle vettä ohuina kerroksina, uusi kerros aina jäätyneen päälle, ja kenties sävytän osaa vesikerroksista jossain vaiheessa. Jatkan tätä hyistä puutarhurointia ainakin vielä huomisen. Onneksi pakkasta on luvattu jatkossakin, eikä tämä jäinen ilo heti pääse loppumaan.

A few days ago I remembered seeing a piece of rusted iron stuck into the shore of the lake a few years back. I remembered how the strong red colouring looked when viewed through the ice. So I decided to add some red iron oxide to my icy soup, using both aquarell paint and powdered pigment. And then I have just taken photos, again and again, except in one grey day, where there just wasn't enough light. Today I started to add thin layers of water, a new layer after another frozen one, and maybe I'll tint some of those layers at some point. I'll continue this frozen gardening at least still tomorrow. Luckily it seems, that the weather just gets colder, so I'll have some good frozen days ahead.

Jään kauneus / The Beauty of the Ice

Koko syksyn odotin pakkasta, jotta pääsisin toteuttamaan hiljalleen materiaalikuvauksia ensi vuoden tammikuun näyttelyäni varten. Viime talvena jäädyttelin parvekelasiani ja kuvasin sitä pohjiksi tuleville töille, mutta jälki ei ollut aivan sitä, mitä kaipasin, joten piti odottaa vuosi eteenpäin, jotta pääsin jatkamaan projektiani. Malttamattomana jäädyttelin vettä pakastimessakin viime syksyn aikana, mutta se jäätyi eri tavalla, eikä pienessä pakastimessamme ollut tarpeeksi suurta tilaa sille, mitä tarvitsin. Nyt sitten, ensimmäisten oikeiden pakkasten sujahtaessa lämpömittariin, olen muuttanut parvekkeen jäädytyslaboratorioksi (aivan kuin taloamme ei ympäröisi tarpeeksi suuri kylmyys ilmankin, kun patterit eivät oikein tunnu lämmittävän tarpeeksi).

Joka päivä olen kuvannut tiiviisti aina ne muutamat valoisat tunnit (en halua käyttää mitään keinovalaistusta tähän, kun edes luonnonvalolamppuni ei tuo samanvertaista valoa kuin mitä luonnon oma kirkkaan hämärä valo on) ja pitänyt lämmittelytaukoa sen aikaa, kun kamera toipuu hyytymisestään. Tämä ei tee ehkä hyvää kameran akulle, mutta tekee omalle, mielelle. Olen hämmentyneenä seurannut, kuinka pienet muutokset valossa vaikuttavat näiden jääkuvien sävyihin: keskipäivän kuvissa sininen saa vallan, mutta vain puolta tuntia myöhemmin värimaailma on aivan erilainen.

Kuvatessani en ole keskittynyt turhia tekniikkaan tai edes tarkentamiseen, koska en aio esittää kuvia sellaisenaan, vaan ne ovat vain tulevien teosteni rakennuspalikoita kymmenien muiden palikoiden joukossa. Silti melkein jokaisesta kuvasta löytyy piilotettuja maisemia - merenrantoja, vuoristoja ja metsikköjä - ja epätarkat räpsäyksetkin muuttuvat kuvapinnoiksi, joita katsellessa aika unohtuu. Kuvaaminen on kuin meditaatiota, jolloin huoli kevään tiukasta aikataulusta ja niukasta kassanpohjasta unohtuu ja sitä uppoutuu vain näihin kuviin, jotka itselleni näyttäytyvät melkein jonkinlaisina visuaalisina runoina.

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The whole autumn I waited for the frost to come, so that I could start taking "material" photos for my exhibition next January (2017). During the last winter I took photos of the frozen balcony window to be used in my future artworks, but somehow the result was not quite what I was seeking for, so I had to wait to another year to continue with my project. I was impatient enough to freeze water in my freezer already during last autumn, but it froze in very different manner, and there was not space enough in our small freezer to get what I wanted. Now, right after it went below zero, I changed the balcony into some kind of ice laboratory (like there wasn't enough coldness around our house before that, especially when our radiators don't seem to warm enough.)

Each day I have taking photos for those couple of hours when the sun is up (I really don't want to use any artificial lightning to this project, when even my day light special light fixture won't create same kind of light that the outside dimmed and blurry and cold winter light is). I've kept a warming pause when the camera has stopped working because of the cold, and I've had to wait until it works again. This maybe doesn't do any good to its battery, but it does do some good to mine, to my mind. I've been following how the small change in light fast affects to the tones of these ice photos: in midday photos blue takes over, but just an half an hour later the colour scheme is all too different.

When I have been taking photos I haven't been taking care of the technique or even focusing, because I won't be exhibiting the photos as themselves, but they are just mere building blocks to my future artworks, among dozens of other building blocks. Even then there is some kind of hidden sceneries in almost every shoot - the sea shores, mountains and forests depicted - and even the unfocused snapshots turn out to be image surfaces that you can just watch to forget the time. To me this kind of photosessions are like meditation, when the worries about the tight schedule of the spring and the too rapid emptying of my bank account can be forgot, and I just get absorbed in these pictures, which are almost like some kind of visual poems to me.

Plankkon kuukauden teos / The Artwork of the Month

Teokseni Kyynelpuun taimi (2013) on Plankkon kuukauden teoksena. Lue teoksen taustasta Plankkon nettisivuilta.

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My print The Seedling of the Tree of Tears (2013) is Plankko Artwork of the Month in January 2016. I have written a short story about it in the Plankko webpage (in Finnish), here's a rough translation:

The Seedling of the Tree of Tears is an artwork that I can't get out of my system (and I don't know how to and don't really want that to happen). The work was finished in the beginning of 2013, that is about exactly three years ago, but it is still as current to me as it was when I made it.

The Seedling of the Tree of Tears follows thematicly the Fruits of the Tree of Tears trilogy, which was finished a year earlier, and these works and all the future artworks on this theme are fruits of the Tree of Tears work, still unfinished - it is my ongoing project, which I had planned to be rather big sized and which I have made on and off about ten years. (The theme itself is very clear for me and a general sketch is drawn, but after dozens of testings I still haven't found a right way to finish the work and I still have to make several material tests befgore I find the right way to go on.)

I have planned the whole Tree of Tears theme as a bigger whole, which would be installation-like, or maybe a different kind of garden-like installation at the exhibition. When I have gone round about the theme, I have also started to write a small Teargardener Memo book, to which I have documented my working process during the years, and now and then I have made some notes regarding the Tree of tears, and its seedlings and fruits - facts and fiction generously mixed. When I made the Fruits of the Tree of Tears trilogy in 2012, I actually made it as an illustration to this book, and right after I had printed the series, I realised that I would like to have a different kind of resonance to those other artworks, that would depict the seedlings surrounding the tree of tears. I tried about everything to find the right path. I tried to set up different kind of nursery gardens placing clay pots around here and there, and I tried taking reference phohos of real plants at flower shops and at corners of fields, but nothing seemed to work. In a way I had very clear in my mind what I would like to make, but not clear enough to just replicate the image and atmosphere what I had tattooed in my mind.

Until at the end of summer 2012 we travelled to Florence. The merciless heatwave was scorching the city and media warned about moving outside in midday because of the heat. There was no green anywhere: the sun had burned the grass and tree leaves of the parks to dry and brown, and because there was shortage of water, no plants could be watered. We saw the impact clearly at the botanical garden (Giardino dei Semplici), where the plants were swaying exceptionally colourless and where the grass crunched under our feet, even when the high and bushy trees made some shady shadown to the garden. The most sensitive plants and seedlings had been moven in the chill of the stone building, here and there around concrete wall several plant refugees tried to survive. I was very concentrated on photographing the mesmerizing light, that flowed in between the canvas shreds which covered the windows partly and tried to protect the place from the sun - and then I suddenly realised that I was in the middle of the garden of the trees of tears. There were some clay pots on the window board, that had some moist black soil in them, not scorched by the sun. There were no seedlings of the tree of tears of course, but next to them was a small notebook with some notes in them, just what I had imagined the Teargardener Memo book to be. The afternoon light sifted in in unspeakable manner, and I just saw the works around me, ready to be picked. I took dozens of photos, and one of them gave a life to the first Seedling of the Tree of Tears and ended up printed.

The Seedling of the Tree of Tears was finished as a "single" work, although that wasn't the plan originally: the two sister prints of same size are still waiting to be finished. Right after printing the artwork I had to leave my creative work for a while because of other responsibilities, and after that some other duties have kept me away from my Trees of Tears. But the process hasn't ended. After a three year break I visited the Giardino dei Semplici a second time in 2015, taking photos with a better camera and in a different light. During the autumn 2015 I sorted and indexed the pictures ready for the working process and I drew a significant amount of sketches to the Teargardener Memo book.

I also returned in very concrete way to The Seedling of the Tree of Tears artwork last year, when I had to make the last prints of the series (of edition of 15). Because the colour range of my new inks was a bit different, I had to readjust colours and I had to examine the artwork very closely and as pedanticly as I did when I originally made the artwork. At first repeating the same (different) process mostly irritated me, but after I got to work, I noticed that I'm looking at the artwork in very different way as I did when I made it first time. I found several details which I had forgotten, and I learned to structurise some technical solutions, which inspired to continue the series. I have left the test and colour adjustment prints in my work desk and they are filled with notes for the future. So, the artwork turned to be also my tool for the future works on this theme.

In a way The Seedling of the Tree of Tears is a key work to the whole Tree of Tears entity, in which all the works will follow the visual path this work has built. Then, someday, when it will be finished.