For the first story + make in this new format I wanted to work with an Aboriginal Australian story. Aboriginal art is always associated in my mind with storytelling, be it in the older form of sand or wall painting or in the modern for pf dot painting on canvases, Aboriginal art is deeply connected with stories, so it seemed the perfect fit for the first work in this project.

I looked at several stories, but this one captured my heart and imagination, I immediately started imagining the peaceful smile of the mountain range formerly known as Budjah. This is his story:

The main version I found for this story is in a book by A.W.Reed, which was the base for the text you hear in the video. Reed associated this story with the Ugarapul people, but after some research I found variants of the story that were associated with other Aboriginal groups, so I decided to remove the specific attribution from the text to avoid any misinformation, if anyone knows more about this story - please let me know!

The main focus of the work is the mountain, and I really enjoyed creating this mountain range/human profile image. I purposely kept the rest of the image more abstract so that the finished piece can be viewed both horizontally and vertically. For me it still shifts back a forth between a mountain and a face, how about you?

Because the story, and storytelling in general, are central in this work, I wanted to have a text element. Aboriginal languages don’t have a writing system, I was trying to figure out if I can use transliteration when I came across this font - it’s English, and if you look close, the text is readable, but unless you really try, it looks like unidentifiable markings. I really love this effect, among other things, because it echos the duality of the mountain-face.

The mountain was built/painted with texture paste, and I’m really happy with how it came out! Even with the texture, it took a lot of layering and shading to get the texture to really pop. I think it’s easy to see in the video that before the coloring the face was a lot clearer than the mountain shape, but once I added the paints - boom! Mountain! Well, adding the “greenery” in the end made a big difference too :)

I wanted to incorporate images of the traditional weapons that are mentioned in the story - spear, waddy (club) and shield, and decided to do it with DIY stamping. I could have painted them, but I wanted these images to work as a pattern, and stamping is perfect for that because all the images are the same. I like the inaccuracies and roughness of these stamps, in the end most of the stamped images were covered with patterns, but I will definitely use them in other projects to - it’s fun!

I looked at images of the weapons for inspiration of the design, colors and patterns, and combined different styles of markings that I likes. The dots were made with a toothpick. It’s a trick my grandmother taught me years back, she used to paint flowers and for details like the stamens she’d use the base of a paintbrush or a toothpick for tiny details. It works surprisingly well :)

I hope you enjoyed this work and found the story as magical as I did.

Till next time,

xx

Naama

The Hero who turned into a Mountain