Immortal Artist: The Revenant Cycle #4

Revenant #1 Working Notes
Revenant #2 Working Notes
Revenant #3 Working Notes

My apologies, these working notes are sort of in disarray. There are several working components to Revenant #4 and keeping them in order here is proving to be difficult. With that in mind, the first set of photos are the working shots for the body painting. The second set of photos are for the accessory sculpture that was photographed with the model. The third set are for the finished pieces for the set.

Set #1

Set #2

Each piece in the Revenant Cycle is considered Assimilation Art, in that the final resulting art is a compilation and morphing of three other artistic forms. Body Painting, Photography and Digital Art.. Revenant 4 will take this one step further and merge yet another art form into the mix.

I have a true love for landforms. I've done many pieces that incorporate natural landforms into art.

As shown in these photos, I've incorporated landform in both an earthly scale and a lunar scale with great success.

So with this in mind I am going to create a sculpted canvas that is 6 feet high by 2 feet wide. It will be a cross section of the earth including mountains, ocean, lakes, rivers and perhaps even a micro-sized city or two. It will be made from clay sculpted over a 3" deep canvas frame.

It will then be used in conjunction with Revenant 4. The body model will be painted to match and merge with the canvas. In theory creating a spirit image that hovers over the landform.

This will be tricky as I will need to create the canvas in basically the same steps I will create the body art. I will also create a background prop that is the same color as the ocean portion of the canvas so I can extend the ocean out from the original piece to use as a background for photographing the model.

So needless to say, this one will be tricky. Watch this page for updates during the week as the sculpted canvas is built. The actual body session is scheduled for September 20th, 2015.

The supplies needed to build the base canvas include three 6' x 3" boards, a matching piece of canvas and two sets of brackets.

Laying out the frame

A double reinforced frame

Freshly pulled 6' Canvas. It needs its ends clipped and then it will be ready for a primer coat to seal the weave.

The primed and finished canvas ready for use

Beginning the layout for the landforms

Here is the beginning clay work overlaid with foaming glue to create an ocean cliff and mountainous area.

Here is the finished section shown above. Its been black based back to match the canvas and a secondary section is being added to extend the mountains up to the caldera of a large volcano.

The upper portion of the canvas is starting to take some shape now with a rugged chain of mountains running along the ocean and dominated by the volcano in the center. There will be a road cutting up into those mountains and a small town at the base near a river that will ebb its way out of the lowlands. Its a slow process but should look amazing when I add a body model later.

In order to stay in scale, I've used some old circuit boards to create the illusion of a city in miniature. Once it is painted and retouched it should like a small port city nestled on the banks of a river.

Creating a miniature jetty & harbor & a river system with bridge crossing

Extending the volcanic cone to rise up majestically over the small town

Dual views of the sculpture

The mountain lake is now in place

Finished clay and sculpting work

The first color has been added to Terras Avernia.The ocean can now be seen and the large southern mountain lake as well as the river. You can now clearly make out the outlines of the city and the docks also as well as the jetties running out into the ocean.