[Previous post was harder than the first three. Current post was harder than the previous post. I hope next post won't be harder than the current post...]
It's really quite frustrating trying to track down... well... some random preferably-nice-looking drawing made sometime between the end of World War II and the year 2000 AD. Mainly because most artists are painters or sculptors, not using drawing to produce a finished product.
Web #1 by Vija Celmins,
1999, charcoal on paper.
Hey, this might work. The page I found this on is happy to gush about fragility and the universe and something something something. Um, okay, that's nice.
It is kinda an interestingly shaped spiderweb. I wonder why it is shaped so. The outer frame looks to be held by three to five objects, with plenty of lines radiating in towards the center. The cross-silks show up a short distance along the way there, but eventually give way when nearing the center for some reason, only to resurge in a tangle at the web's center.
Well, it looks like a tangle from here. The picture of the work's not very high resolution, even though the original is, by my calculations, 15.8494112 feet across diagonally. I'm pretty sure my calculations are wrong, since it's officially about 17 2/3 in by 21 in. Oh well. Guesstimating the thing to be about the size of a nice computer monitor, and also by consulting my 18 in by 24 in drawing pad, well, maybe it's not really big. I still can't tell from the pic if the tangle is more detailed than a simple blotch of white.
I do wonder how Celmins got those lines so fine, especially on the cross-silks or whatever they're called properly. They're not even pencil-line, but instead erased out of charcoal, presumably. How do you get a really fine line when using an eraser? Use the corner of a really hard one?
But the real reason I'm talking about a work by this artist in particular is another work of hers. It's an etching, and doesn't really have any business being in this post according to the assignment I'm working to, but it just fits in so perfectly with my previous post.
Constellation - Uccello by Vija Celmins,
1983, aquatint and etching on paper
The contrast of a perspective-heavy psuedo-3D drawing next to a very-much-flat batch of stars is not helped by the two portions of the piece being of different dimensions. But some people appreciate this sort of thing. I just appreciate stumbling across something while doing this assignment, which has to do with what I stumbled across and ended up using while doing the previous assignment.
