A Sense of Inevitability

The earliest known illustration of the Silk Road. A caravan is crossing the desert
of Chinese Turkistan, the camels laden and the merchants on horseback.
This is from the Catalan Atlas, a Spanish illuminated world map prepared in 1375.

When we listen to an enthralling symphony or see an inspiring piece of visual art, we have a sense of inevitability about these creative expressions. They could not be otherwise than as we experience them in the moment. In fact what we experience was not inevitable but is rather the result of a composer or artist being willing to take an arduous and even torturous path of trial and error.

In the eight-year process of developing his inevitable sounding fifth symphony, Beethoven produced 17 sketches for one section alone. From these he chose the one he felt worked best. He also created three different endings. He thought his first draft of the ending was too brief. So he did a longer version. That did not work either. But it convinced him that the problem with his initial short version was that it was too long! So he created an even shorter ending, the one that we hear today.

Persia Today

Laying out possible images for use on the Iran part of
the Southwest Asia alcove of Eve's Imprint.

A couple of weeks ago I began working on the Arabia and Iran section of the Southwest Asia alcove of Eve’s Imprint. I posted that moment on my newly created Facebook page. The Arabia and Iran section will hang to the left of the India and Pakistan section I began several months ago. Remember my tiger? For Iran, I had located maps, pottery sherds, and rock art.

Iran is a remnant of the vast Persian empire that once covered most of the Middle East as well as parts of India and Central Asia. The geographic region of present day Iran was one of the first stops after Arabia as our ancestors migrated out of Africa. Its rock art goes back to Paleolithic times. For me the pottery sherds represent the Neolithic revolution of agricultural settlements. Right next to Mesopotamia, Iran played a role in the spread of agriculture to Eurasia. During the middle ages, Iran was an important way station along the extensive Silk Road, resulting in the spread of Zoroastrianism which has several contemporary derivatives.

The Technique of Image Transfers

A page from LiDona's Book of Errors showing two of my
transfer experiments.

Because I want Iran to have a sense of fragility, I decided to use transfers of my selected images. However, my first attempt to transfer a map fragment showing a Silk Road caravan was only mildly successful and I ended up scrubbing it out. This experience led me to pull out LiDoña’s Book of Errors, a sketchbook in which I recorded a series of experiments.

Materials used for transfers.

Reviewing my transfer experiments helped me recall critical aspects:

• type of medium - Extra Heavy Gel works best
• size of the piece being transferred - smaller - about 3” x 3” – rather than larger allows greater control in assuring complete contact between the image and the gelled surface
• type of brush for applying gel - an old bristle brush with lots of broken ends seems to work best
• amount of gel applied - a liberal amount applied to both the surface receiving the transfer and the image being transferred
• how to insure complete contact - cover the image with a paper towel and brayer over it
• how the process sets up - a wet cloth over the transfer enables the transfer of the ink into the gel
• how long it needs to dry once the cloth is removed - until the paper is completely dry

• how best to remove the paper on which the image is printed - a slightly wet toothbrush does the heavy lifting and rubbing one’s fingers removes the remaining fuzz. 

So I made a new attempt. This time I did two small transfers – images of two Iranian pottery sherds.

I love the soft green in these two potter sherds.

Now the Fun Begins

These were more successful so I decided to cut my Silk Road Caravan in half to have smaller pieces with which to work. In doing so I decided to eliminate the Chinese-looking men behind the camels.

A transfer gives a mirror image. Look at the caravan above
to see how these camels were headed originally.

The transfer of the camel half of the image came out pretty well, but the half with the horses did not work. Even following optimum procedures, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t! As I reviewed my results, it occurred to me that I would like for the camels and the horses to be headed in different directions. What if the camels appeared to be coming from Arabia and the horses appeared to be coming from India and China?

Although I wanted a fragile look, this was a
bit more than I was looking for.

I decided to paint over my transfers and make another attempt. Luckily, I had made several copies of the Caravan in slightly different sizes since I wasn’t sure what I would need. I decided to have the transfer of the camels image touch not just Iran, but also Arabia and Iraq, the teal area that I will include in the Near East alcove of Eve’s Imprint. I really liked this result.

I like the way the teal surface under the left part of the transfer
creates a soft green similar to that in the pottery sherds.

I should mention that when you do transfers, they appear in reverse of the image you are transferring. In order to visualize what I will get with the transfers, I use a tracing of my basic composition. By reversing the tracing paper and placing my images underneath, I am able to get some idea of the result I’m going to get. This is especially crucial the further you go since there is less space with which to work.

In the Iran section, you can see that I drew around the
transfers that had already been done so I could tell where
to put the rock art.

Changing Direction

In order to get my horses going in the opposite direction, I scanned a smaller version of the Caravan image, took it into PhotoShop, and flipped the image horizontally. When I printed out the flipped image on my home printer, it appeared too light to transfer well. So I opened it in Preview where I discovered that I could do several of the things that I normally use PhotoShop to do, including color saturation. For good or ill, I now had an image that was slightly different in size and in color tones from the one I used for the camels.

You can see the Chinese men I eliminated behind the camels.  

Using the tracing paper to help me with placement, I decided to have the horses transfer overlap the lower pottery sherd and Pakistani rock art.

Remember that with the transfer my horses are now going
in the other direction.

Hodgepodge of Images

Next I turned to transfers of Iranian rock art. Using the tracing paper composition was essential in placing these transfers. You can see that for now Iran is a hodgepodge of images. I don’t think I’ve done 17 sketches yet, but I may well go beyond that before this area is resolved. Before I can tell what is needed to bring Iran together I need to go on to Arabia and the Horn of Africa.

A rock art human now stands between the camels and the horses.
I don't care for the yellow behind the horses so I will have to
figure out how I'm going to change it.

In speaking of the number of materials he tried for producing electricity, Thomas Edison said, I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Who knows? It may take 10,000 attempts to get the Southwest Asian alcove of Eve’s Imprint to the coveted sense of inevitability.