Mixed Media Mayhem - Of Mosques and Mausoleums

Do you know how artists say, "I just waited til it spoke to me?"  I always thought that was euphemistic speech for I had no plan.  This journal page, however, is exactly a progress of listening to the page to decide the direction.

The final images in this journal pages are inspired by my visit and my photographs of the Green Mosque (Yeşil Cami) in Bursa, Turkey. The Green Mosque, commissioned by Sultan Mehmet I Çelebi and finished in 1424, is an architectural gem of marble and mosaics in the rich blue green that is my most treasured color.

Faced with two blank pages I started where I often do...smushing gesso between the two and opening the page to reveal a texture.  Still enchanted with my new Dylusions inks and a new stencil, I randomly sprayed purple, green, turquoise, then dried and sealed the result.  I looked at these pages every day for weeks...where to go next.

The more I stared, the more I began to see architectural elements, specifically dome shapes.

Then, an epiphany...the colors and shapes brought back my trip to Turkey.  I rumaged my stash, my clip art, my photographs and came up with the domed mosques of Bursa and Edirne. To get some of the design on the page I tried transfers of clip art.  First I used several gel medium transfers which suggest a design but they are blurry.  Then I went to the old reliable packing tape transfer and enhanced them with gold leaf backing.  I used the transfers to collage a composition.

I let my pencil go to trace the outlines of domes and towers that I could see in the background.

I am not confident in my drawing skills, but as I let loose, I could draw in the shapes and components of the mosque forms.

As a historian by training, I had to ground this in some accuracy of representation so I used images of the actual mosque, photos of Mehmed I Çelebi (Ottoman: چلبی محمد, Mehmed I or Mehmed Çelebi) and my photos of the architectural details of the mosques and mausoleum.