The March to Tashkent

Here is another piece from my show at the Rothick Arthaus. Entitled The March to Tashkent, it is based on a time when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, while still serving time in the labor camps (gulags), had to go to a hospital in Tashkent because of a tumor. His tumor was removed, but the cancer was not diagnosed for a few more years, almost killing him (I know what that feels like). This hospital in Tashkent was the inspiration for his novel Cancer Ward, a story where he used tumors as a metaphor for  the problems in Russia. The novel is also the basis for most of my artwork in this show.

The March to Tashkent is ink, acrylic, and newspaper on wood panel. 24" x 32"

Portraits

Vadim (lives!)

Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov

Friedrich Federau

Aleksei Filippovich Shulubin

Oleg Filimonovich Kostoglotov

These are all small 8" x 10" portraits of some of the characters in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book Cancer Ward (the same book I used for the background of Aleksandr's portrait). I was originally going to make eleven portraits to coincide with the eleven patients in Cancer Ward, (which also happens to be the number of years Aleksandr spent in labor camps and the number of flowers I made for exactly that reason) but I ran short on time after having quite a few complications... so there may be more of these to come.

Each portrait is ink, oil, and newspaper on wood panel. 8" x 10"

Inking in the Outline

My next step, once I got everything in its proper place, is to ink in the outline. I am doing the whole portrait in ink because 1. its not thick like black paint 2. it blends really smoothly 3. it dries flat and doesnt show brush strokes. So basically Im going over all the lines I already drew, but with a bottle of ink and a very fine tipped brush. This actually took me most of the day to finish because this picture is huge and there is a lot of detail to it. Eleven days until opening night at the Rothick Arthaus!

On this day in 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away. I hope this portrait will both honor his accomplishments and inform more people about who he was and the relentless stand he took against the Soviet Union.

Tools of the trade.



You can see there is an area I still have to do on his chest. Im adding a flower in there and I just haven't figured out how I want to do it...



Detail shot of the sleeve after inking in the outlines. Can you find a penguin, a polar bear, a whale, and a map?

A Complex Drawing

Now that I got all the pages pasted on a board, my next step is to start drawing Aleksandr. It was a full day just to get the outline and placement correct, and another half day for his shoulder. By the evening of the first day I was getting pretty tired and should've called it quits. Instead I got the idea to shade in the dark areas with a light ink wash so I could get a feel of how it will look. Afterward, I had to paste a few pages over the areas that should have stayed the page color...oops.

Penciled in the outline, and started to wash it with ink. Even there I had already painted over vital highlights. A few pages pasted over fixed it pretty easy though. You can also see the shoulder here is still pretty basic.



Finished shading the big areas. These will be black. Although it was a bad idea, at least you can see what it will kind of look like... its hard being patient.



His shoulder has so many little parts to it. It took me a long time and a lot of erasing to get it to look accurate and correctly shaped.

Beginning the Portrait

It is two weeks before the art show at the Rothick, and Im creating things like mad! I have a lot of things I want to do for this show and of course they are all big, detailed, and take a lot of time. So the first one I am starting with is a portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is a Russian author and Nobel prize winner. He had a pretty crazy life living in Soviet Russia, and writing all of his books in secret. Read his biography on the Nobel prize website.

I started researching Aleksandr a few weeks ago. I stumbled upon his biography while reading up on Russian history. I ordered a few of his books including "Cancer Ward" (which I am currently reading) and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". I also ordered an extra copy of "Cancer Ward" to use as the background of this piece. Below you can see what Ive done so far, and I will keep posting up my progress daily.

So far I have cooked up some wheatpaste... its super easy, cheap, works really good, and you can eat it (it doesnt taste very good but its just flour and water).
To make your own follow this simple recipe:
for every 3 tablespoons of flour, use 1 cup of water.
heat up water on stove without bringing to boil.
in separate container mix flour with a little water to make it pastey.
then pour into hot pot of water. mix for a few minutes.
I like to strain mine afterwards as I pour into a container, just to make it extra smooth.



Then I cut out pages of the book "Cancer Ward" and began pasting them to this a board. I use an old gift card to press them on there and flatten out any wrinkles.



There you have it.... more coming Monday!

Art4aCure

I just finished this piece for Art4aCure. They are a non-profit organization that sells donated artwork to raise funds for stage one cancer research. This is the cutting edge research that explores new ways to fight cancer with less harm to the patient. It is a great NPO and I wanted to contribute something to them for a while. A lot of the artwork gets hung up in Premiere Oncology, an infusion room in Los Angeles.

I designed this piece specifically to be hung up there and used cool, calming colors for it. The meaning of flower itself is calming and relaxing and you are supposed to send it to people you admire. The white spatters project purity and cleanliness (from cancer), and encourages us to clear obstacles. The blue background invokes rest and serenity. The newsprint that is barely visible stands for all the things that gets put on a back burner while one fights through this life threatening disease (at least thats how it was for me).

Quite an explanation, but hopefully this helps some of the cancer patients who go to Premiere Oncology for chemo infusion...

Related Posts: