Da Vinci's Inquest

 Hidy Ho, Blogging Friends. I want to thank everyone for all their kind comments about my ship collage from last post. I'm a hopeless geeky nerd sometimes, y'all! And today I have another piece with a story that I plan to frame. Do any of you remember a TV show called DaVinci's Inquest? It was Canadian. I used to watch it a lot, so that's what I named my latest 4x6 artist post card about Leonardo DaVinci, for the Sunday Post Card Art theme about the famous polymath. I'm late again but not as late as last time. 

I developed a bit of a thing for using deli paper after my last art piece, so for this art piece I completely gave into the use of it. I stamped almost everything on it for fussy cutting and paper layering. I think I'm over it finally, but you never know! LOL I chose a Violet and Yellow complementary color scheme. The bright red violet is Mulberry and I paired it with Plum, a blue violet. 

So, once I had my subject, I gathered up all my Leonardo-related stamps, except my Monas. I have a huge Mona stamp supply but I chose a Stamp Smith photo stamp of his Ophelia sketch. I ended up using his Codex Vitruvian Man, his codex sketch of the Armenian hillside architecture, his sketched ART doodle, and I created my favorite quote of his in PSE and printed out. There used to be a stamp vendor named MaVinci Reliquary, which is where I bought the man and the ART. There also used to be a vendor named Scrollsworks Stamps where I got the Armenian hillside stamp. The Key to Life stamp was made by another defunct stamp vendor, Leave Memories. The small Roman column is a Fiskar stamp and the large column is a Spellbinders die cut with deli paper and inked while still in the die. 

  

I also had a piece of recycled chipboard I'd cut to 4x6 and then painted a bright dark yellow. I had then dropped drips of Poppy Field red alcohol ink on that. And then it sat for over a year as I pondered making poppy blossoms out of that Rorschach haha. I decided instead to use this as my card base and keep working it.  I painted over it with some Titan Buff acrylic and then pressed a paper towel into it to remove some. Can you believe the difference it made? Wowzers! The color went to a red violet. I stenciled the leftover titan buff onto this spread in an art journal (Joggles stencil). Now it reminds me of a cemetery, so maybe I'll use it that way. Hmmm. Okay, back on task...

Long ago when I was a college freshman, I took art history. We had to research a classical artist and I chose Leo. I wasn't drawn to his paintings per se. As a journalism major I was drawn to his notebooks. My paper's thesis was that what made him brilliantly valuable to mankind were those notebooks because inside them was the future. Uh, believe it or not, that was mildly controversial back in the 70's. Anyway, I like to think he was helped in his IN{ner}QUEST (get my title pun now? haha) to know himself better through filling up those notebooks. In a nutshell, that's what I'm trying to document for myself. That's what this collage means to me. 

The artist is Armenian Agnes Avagyan. I have no idea if she just digitally combined the two sketches from Leo's notebooks, or if she recreated it by her own drawing hand. My guess is she sketched it from his. A formal art drawing education used to involve a lot of that! Anyway, I recognized both sketches and have stamps of them. I did not combine mine like she did but I was like, yes those images will work fine with my piece.

I have only a few progress shots of the beginning to give you an idea of the hidden layers in the finished piece. Remember, everything is stamped on deli paper and everything is hand stamped except for the large column on the left hand side which is a deli paper die cut.

    

The first dry mock-up, with the top words and the columns adhered. I laid out Ophelia and two stamps I decided weren't right (Leo was born in Italy and died in France.) I'd hesitated about using the Armenian hillside houses stamps, because that's another thing to this day that is controversial: did he really physically travel to Armenia, or just in his mind? Looking at his sketches, the copious notes he kept of meetings and Armenian architecture and customs, my belief has always been, how could he not have? Some scholars still think he didn't! Since Armenia plays a big part in his notebooks I had no other choice but to use those stamps and am so glad I did. The middle shot was after gluing down Ophelia and stamping a Green Pepper Press architectural square stamp. On the right is after stamping that square using my fingers as a block all over. At that point it looked like I'd ruined it. But hang on! I just added texture and interest in the end.

I then got into creating, so no other progress shots, but I found the notebook images on a Technique Junkies Christmas Choir stamp. The feather pen is a very old stamp by Pam Bell. I adhered those over the column that I used Pitt pens and Promarkers to shade and color. I left the frame around the Ma Vinci Vitruvian Man stamp, adhered it and colored him. I colored the frame with a gold metallic Posca Pen.

I added the Armenian hillside houses next. Aren't they gorgeous? I had so much fun shading them, mostly with greys, brown roofs and yellow and pink highlights on a few. I then spent time just coloring in where I thought it needed it, adding yellows to the mostly violet background. This is one of my favorite Leo quotes. I typed it out in PSE and printed on Springhill card stock, then colored it with a Lemon yellow Promarker.

Close up of the notebooks...

Close up of Ophelia...

His architectural ART doodle...

And a side view...

I will say that my favorite painting of DaVinci's is The Last Supper, hands down. Mona can smile seductively all she wants, but these peeps are real characters! The expressions! The body language! The DaVinci Code! lol It was finished in 1498 yet seem perfectly natural today. When I think about how human everyone is, his abilities literally blow me away. So, there is definitely genius in it. Yet, I still prefer his notebooks. :-)

Thanks for dropping by for a visit! This should be my last artist post card with research for a little while. They took the place this month of me creating an art journal spread, so I appreciate you bearing with me and my creative nerdiness! Hope you have a great week! We will be watching the weather to see if this Beta storm is going to hit us here in the Houston area. It BETA NOT! hahaha XXO

MY CHALLENGE PLAYLIST:

1.  Sunday Post Card Art: DaVinci -- late again but not saying never!

2.  Country View September Challenge: Complementary Colors -- Violet and Yellow

3.  TFJB Challenge: Staying in the Background -- I invite you to read my blog post for my process in making this vintage art piece.

4.  Paper Girls #207: Around the World

5.  Outlawz Color Tuesday 9/8-9/21-- I used all 3 shades of purple  I did not play the butterfly twist, unless you count Vitruvian Man ;-)

6.  Classic Design #9: AAG -- 

7. Crafts Galore Encore #79: AAG

8.  MAWTT #122: Create a Scene