Gothic bell tower — vanishing fore-edge painting (SOLD)

A tribute to Edgar Allen Poe, among the broodiest of poe-ts

          Hear the tolling of the bells—
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
  At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                 Is a groan.
        And the people—ah, the people—
       They that dwell up in the steeple,
                 All alone.

‘The Bells’ by Edgar Allen Poe, stanza IV.

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Hello, friends! Welcome to my newer subscribers. I’m glad you found your way to The Inky Corner.

I’ve been waiting months to share with y’all a vanishing fore-edge painting that I completed in April, on a black leather volume of collected verses by Edgar Allen Poe. The book is slender, pocket-sized (don’t you love a book that fits neatly in the palm of one’s hand?), and visually stunning. I’m hoping the effect of the hidden painting beneath its gilded edge will be equally so.

Ready? Here it is…

(Note: The background music in the video is ‘Truro Canticles: I. Magnificat’ by Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. She wrote the Truro Canticles during her artist residency at Truro Cathedral and I think her Magnificat and Turn our captivity O Lord are just lovely.)

Be sure to pass this post on to that one person in your friend group who either fancies themselves a Gothíque poet or would secretly rather be living in a tower with ravens for company than show up to their day job. :P The book was posted to my Etsy store, Beneath the Gild, but caught the eye of a lucky IUP archivist before long!

Let’s dive into the ‘behind the scenes’.

Of course, I always begin with research. The research takes an abominable amount of time especially now that AI images are confounding the matter, but do I mind? Nah. It’s probably the most fun part (except for getting to show y’all the finished pieces, that is). As a side effect of this project, I spent two weeks getting especially nerdy over the different forms of decorative window arches known as tracery.

Edgar Allen Poe lived between 1809-1849, but I couldn’t resist going a couple of centuries earlier and harkening back to the loveliness of Gothic architecture. He is a Gothic Romanticist after all. C’mon, Poe would have loved hanging around in these kinds of places.

'Work in progress' shots of the belltower (click on photos to expand them)

You can see here the draft sketch, done in ghastly purple ink because it was all I had on hand! (Back in the 1860s, the ghastly purple would have been termed ‘Mauve’, and it was the height of fashion because it was a new synthetic dye. Anyhow, moving on…)

All in all this piece took ~10 hours. I worked on it mostly with a size 4 round sable brush, and sometimes a size 1 sable brush for the details.

OH, and guess what? I used my new Windsor & Newton watercolours! I had my heart in my mouth during the colour mixing but it turned out more cohesive in the end than my other Kuratake palette. And the paints are just…so transparent and vibrant, even when you’re working in the kind of gloomy palette I have here. Put it this way: the colours didn’t get muddy, and I could achieve nice tonal contrast. One thousand percent worth the expense.

The finished painting while still in the book press.

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So there you have it! Sadly, though, I’ve been in a bad art slump since completing this. My motivation to paint must have gone into hibernation for the winter! ’Tis disheartening.

But to prove to myself that I haven’t been (ahem) lazy, here are some things I’ve been doing in the meantime:

• I bought bees! Thanks Dad for getting into the world of Flow Hives and beekeeping. :D I have two colonies so far, and I’m in love with my cute little bumbly ladies!

• Continuing to slowly learn Russian (I found a cool language-buddies practice app called Tandem, usable in-browser or on your phone)

• I’m scribbling away at a short story (which is getting so long that it’s upgraded itself to a novella!) on King Arthur and theatre and A.I. and human creativity

• Studying bookbinding (the sheer satisfaction in folding book signatures from scratch, I tell you…)

• Preparing a grant application to study fore-edge painting in the U.K. If you have anything nice to say about my fore-edge painting, drop it in the comments — I can use this ‘peer feedback’ to strengthen my grant application.

I also have (hush-hush) secret plans to start a fortnightly/monthly art livestream, along the lines of “Come make things with me!”. My dear wish is to make a spot where people can chill out to some lofi or classical vibes while they’re watching me work on sketches and fore-edge paintings (muttering crazily to myself all the while), and hopefully encourage the viewers to tinker on their own creative projects at the same time! Frankly, it would help me show up consistently for my own art, too. And I enjoy making community. <3

We shall see what eventuates. What do you think of the idea? Have you seen any artists doing something similar? (I’d like to get some tips.)

Cheerio, friends! Get some sunshine, get some SLEEP, and may the peace of God be in your homes and in your hearts.

xx The Inky Baroness