poetry

Magnetic art (…also known as fridge magnets…)

| Anna Cull
‘Be Yourself ‘

It has been fun making these teeny tiny art prints and turning them into magnets (that’s proper magic, that is : ) I have listed a few over on Etsy and will make more if they are popular.

The hardest thing about the process was deciding on the colours for the stick figure magnets (final image below) and then coming up with names for them. Happy colours deserve happy names, so I have ended up with Sky Blue, Violet Blue, Strawberry Pink, Pumpkin, Sunshine Yellow, Spring Green, Lavender, and Midnight Blue.

‘Through the Trees’
‘A Quiet Corner’
‘Blue’
‘Butterfly Catcher’ ~ ‘Flower Gardener’ ~ ‘Stargazer’

And now that I have the little magnets all sorted, I think it must be about time I started painting again…

Welcome the Twenties

| Anna Cull

I’m really not one for New Year’s resolutions but given that this year is a bit of a big deal (and I love the sound of living in the Twenties), I have written down a few New Year’s intentions ~ the sorts of things I want to focus on and how I want to fill my days, encouraging me to find and create “more faith, more health, more art, more music, more… ” 🏡

The image above is an old one that I’ve edited slightly ~ originally created in Bryce almost 20 years ago (2002). It suits my current mood.

A new year drifts in,
Bright with possibilities;
Welcome the Twenties.

The very small painting with the really long title

| Anna Cull

Where shadows grow long at the foot of the mountain, ghost trees shine like gold. Acrylic on canvas, 102 x 102 mm, 2014
Where shadows grow long
at the foot of the mountain,
ghost trees shine like gold.
Acrylic on canvas, 102 x 102 mm, 2014. Sold.

Ghost trees, Arthur’s Pass, original photo, 2013 — Cropped and Photoshopped, 2014 (click to embiggen)
Ghost trees, Arthur’s Pass, original photo, 2013 — Cropped and Photoshopped, 2014 (click to embiggen)

The really long title is also a haiku. I’m thinking it may be the first of a series of mini canvas + haiku combinations.

The painting is based on another phone-camera image edited in Photoshop. Good old Photoshop!

Dear diary, part four

| Anna Cull

Beat book cover design – sketches and layout ideas Visual diary, two-page spread (student project, 2011)
Beat book cover design – sketches and layout ideas
Visual diary, two-page spread (student project, 2011)

'A meme that launched a millions trips' – final cover design
‘A meme that launched a millions trips’ – final cover design

For this project we had to use found images and a limited colour palette to design the cover of a book about the beat poets. My cover is a paper collage of photographs, censored texts and deconstructed poetry. The background features excerpts from the works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs that I have retyped, rearranged, printed, torn into pieces and transferred on to paper using an acetone printing technique (the same technique I used for my book without boundaries). The acetone transfer produced a wonderful, imperfect, aged sort of effect which you can see in more detail below.

Final cover design, detail
Final cover design, detail

The diary pages are from a journal I put together for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. Two years of research, ideas, word maps and sketches had to be reduced to a mere 72 pages. It was no easy task but I now have a beautiful, professionally bound diary that I’ll always treasure.