I wanted to get my creative thing done early today because my friend Steve Elkins was having the unofficial premiere and screening of his documentary “The Reach Of Resonance” tonight. I had to make it and I knew it was going to be a late night.
I decided to do another sunprint. You can check out an earlier sunprint that I did here.
I accidentally misinterpreted how the sunprint would work this time around. I thought that the holes in the stencil which let light through to the sunprint paper would be the lighter color. And that’s true when you lay it out in the sun. The areas that get exposed to light get brighter and brighter but after that step you dip it in water for about a minute and the whole image inverses. It took a little getting used to. I didn’t like the way they looked initially but they grew on me.
The process went like this: I took the Pulp Fiction photo that I downloaded yesterday of John Travolta and Sam Jackson holding up their guns and opened it in photoshop. I applied the Threshold effect and created a hard black and white image. Then I printed it out on some card stock and cut out the white areas with my X-acto blade.
Finally, I tested my stencil out by creating my first sunprint. Because the colors inverted on me I decided to make a few adjustments to the stencil to bring out the legs and waists of the characters. I continued this until I ultimately made three sunprints.
I actually think they turned out pretty good. My favorite ended up being number 2 (the middle one)
Note: I want to give you a heads up that Jenny and I are spending this upcoming weekend in Palm Springs so you may not see a post go up for Saturday until later. Not anything new, I suppose. If I can get onto the hotel internet and have enough time to post it then I most definitely will.
And a side note. As I write this I am currently on a wave of inspiration because of my buddy Steve’s amazing documentary. The impact I walked away with after seeing “The Reach of Resonance” is pretty hard to describe. It was just so good. I have no doubt that the film will ultimately go down in history as truly exceptional documentary filmmaking. My buddy Steve took what I consider an old and nothing special camera and made something completely beautiful and thought provoking with it.
The film covers an array of improvisational musicians and looks at the connection that music has to the world and life around us. My description is not doing it justice. It has no distribution and has only just started being submitted to film festivals but mark my words you will see this movie get distributed.
I am just jazzed up about it. I was completely humbled and inspired by the artists he followed. You can’t see this documentary anywhere at the moment but when I hear about future screenings I will post more info here on the blog. In the meantime you can link to his trailer or any one of the incredible artists he follows in the film from my previous post on Day 183.