Back in December I found an old chemistry textbook (titled Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology) in a recycle bin at work. I grabbed it for some reason. As I flipped through the (900+) pages an idea emerged to do a mini-project in which I would allow portraits to emerge from some of the chemistry pages.
I am not sure where this idea came from, but I seem to recall (perhaps on Instagram?) seeing some really interesting art that was done on old newspapers, and some landscapes that were painted on ragged old pages of a long-forgotten and tossed aside paperback.
Don’t get me wrong, destroying books is NOT A GOOD IDEA! I am not advocating this – but, rather, can a book destined for the recycling bin be re-purposed for art? Why not!
So, in January I started doing at least one portrait per day on pages of the book. I ended up doing about forty of these over the month. Some of them I liked a lot, some of them were pretty awful. Some included colour (watercolour, even though the paper wasn’t well suited to that medium, or pencil crayon), others were just graphite, and some with brush pens or technical pens, some with simple shading done with an ink wash in a water brush. It was a heck of a lot of fun in the end, and a great way to hone some skills in drawing the human face – something I struggle with immensely.
I gathered ideas and inspiration for these portraits from social media, mostly – collecting reference photos here and there and then taking a few minutes to try to get the images down on the chemistry pages, trying to find a likeness. I learned a lot about the human face in the process, as well as shadows, variations, and textures.
I do not really know why, but I really find that the portraits done over the textbook pages seem to come alive and be more dynamic than what they might be against a white background. It just seems to work. And, heck, we are all just chemistry after all, right? I have over 900 pages still to work with, so maybe I’ll continue this project at some point in the future, or be inspired by another book from a recycling bin.
I hope these inspire (or intrigue?) you or, if not, I’ll be back to my more regular scheduled programming next week.
Nature's Reverie 