Look what I found...

...while looking for something else. It would be nice to finish this.

Coptic Binding

Did a little playing around with string/thread and the strips of fabric. I love the mustard yellow combination with lavender and coral.

The Masks We Wear

Falling back in love with the detail-orientedness of graphite drawing, and playing around with gouache a bit. Hoping to make a series of this.

Sakura Collage

Finished! A long time ago actually. Not totally in love with the stuff in the bottom right hand corner, so I might re-do that at some point.

Sumi-e

Got a little carried away with the largeness of her body, though she does have a wonderfully massive body. Ink is fun!

Nightmares.

Originally this was for an assignment about dreams, but I feel like its color scheme is a pretty good descriptor for me right now. Just going through a little heartbreak.

WIP: Sakura Collage

Toys in Monochrome

Still lifes done in class: the assignment was to draw objects all of the same color (there was a study in yellow, too, but I don't like that one as much). The teacher usually sets these up, but today she was late and some students (all full-grown adults, mind you) set it up themselves and started fighting over the same objects, trying to set them up in their own little corners to draw! I guess high school never ends.

I like the frog drawing the best. His belly was a challenge because it's a lighter color than the rest of his body...but it was in the shadow...so that had me a little unsure of what color to make it. But when I figured it out (and I'm sure there's more than one way to get the same effect) I was surprised that it was this grape color that did the trick.

Oh, and new-found old love: Nu-Pastels. They're hard enough for detail work, because sometimes you need a good sharp edge to keep your drawing in control; but soft enough to play nicely with Unisons and Senneliers. Hey, if they're good enough for Wayne Thiebaud, they're good enough for me.

A watermelon surprise

Watermelon closeups in pastel on toned paper.

Remember Jolly Ranchers (or do they still exist)? I used to love those things. Not sure when it happened, but now, the idea of all those mysterious flavor and color additives sounds kind of gross; that's why red velvet cupcakes freak me out--WHAT is the point of all that red food dye?

Eeeeeeee...

I appreciate the cream cheese frosting. I just don't understand why the cake needs to be red; it's not like it makes it look yummier. I mean I read in some recipe that you need like a quarter cup or something of dye. Dye. Scary. And isn't red the one food coloring that can make kids crazy or something? Sorry. I seem to feel quite strongly against red velvets, and somewhere many people are thinking me a heathen. But probably not right now at 3 in the morning. Good night!

Herakut

via RomanyWG's flickr

Wow, I just discovered this German painting duo Hera (Jasmine Siddiqui) + Akut (Falk Lehmann) = Herakut, and I am in love with their art. They present one solution to a question that I've been struggling with recently: How do you make figure drawing modern?

One problem I've had with my work in figure drawing is that although I love the drawing process itself, and find it so much more exciting than still lifes, the end result after a session with a model in class looks only like a successful exercise at best; there's nothing more in it to tell a story. I do think that figure drawing is a genre most appreciated by other artists...the naked body (even if nothing explicit is exposed) can make people uncomfortable. I mean even on my first day with a model, I had to take a deep breath; and I had a classmate who, even at the end of the semester, still refused to look at the body, working only on the head!

Our last project involved our drawing a dream or memory. The end result (not really done, in my mind, but see last post) finally had me finding a happy balance between figure + other, and between careful rendering + modern spirit. In my opinion. :]

Anyway, I wanted to mention Herakut because they've found this balance. In this article, they talk about how the guy does the super-rendered body forms, sometimes so photorealistic that I was convinced they were magazine blowups collaged on, while the girl does the more expressive painting. And then there are all these great pencil (?) drawings by Hera alone, which was great to see just at the time I was working on the mushroom project and had fallen back in love with graphite. I won't say too much more about these two because you can read about it for yourself, but here's another article with more pictures of their awesome work. Love!

via RomanyWG's flickr

Mushroom Dream

Not completely done, but as done as it was going to be for an assignment. I fell back in love with graphite with the last project, which also made me reevaluate graphite as a perfectly respectable drawing medium. I wore down so many 6B Tombow pencils that my mom used as a student, some to a one-inch nub!

Anyway, this is a dream I had where I had mushrooms growing out of my arms. The actual scene in my dream had little fluorescent mushroom caps (think enoki) studding my arms, but I didn't think that would be nearly as fun to draw. Google and this crazy mushroom book were a huge help [I learned about mushroom sports!] but it was a new challenge to piece everything together and make them look like they weren't just collaged on. I might build a model next time, too, and use that as yet another reference. Sounds like a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of work to figure it all out in your head.

Back to still lifes.

(Not toilet paper.)






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When you take the time.

Quite beautiful, no?

san francisco: 50% off at pearl art!

Yes, 50% off EVERYTHING at Pearl Art & Craft in San Francisco! Sadly, it's because they're going out of business, but... I guess it's been going on for 2 weeks already, so go with an open mind and lots of money in the meter. All the paintbrushes were gone, and really, not a single one was left, but there was still a lot in the pastel/charcoal department. And tons of scotch tape and embroidery floss. Unfortunately, I got the wrong size blades for my rotary cutter, which at 50% was still around 26$, but lesson learned for being too greedy.

Other than stocking up on boring essentials like my favorite pad-paper, Windmill Power, I also got two sets of Unison Pastels, and a walnut wood empty Schmincke (I love spelling that, and I mean it) pastel box because I need to take better care of my loose sticks. And because it was 50% off.

forgotten drawings

Hey, look what I found while packing up for my new drawing class!

Finding these two still zipped up in my carrying portfolio was kind of a shock; last night I was running around, getting all my materials together, I yanked my drawing board out of my bag, and there they were. Like time had frozen in there. I didn't even recognize them at first, but they were the drawings I did on the day I decided would be my last class. I guess the class just got old for me; I felt stuck, and was no longer interested. Normally, you can take these kinds of classes over and over, because more practice will only make you better—it's not like repeating the same math class—but it was just too much of the same: the same exercises, assignments, people, and teachers. Though I do miss S + D!

My camera "intelligent auto"-focused on her breasts as the face!


What Santa would look like nude. Possibly wearing panties. Sorry.

Bent Objects

Hee hee, have you seen these? This guy Terry Border takes fruits and leaves and things and makes them into little characters. Kind of like Play With Your Food [I loved them for many years] but with more of a storyline, and with a more clever sense of humor.

There are other funny ones on The Huffington Post and posted on his own blog (brain-eating peanut zombies, cupcakes being dangled by their feet over a bowl of sprinkles for an OXO campaign), but my favorite is this one with the lemons. He calls it "Mail Order Bride," which I guess is a euphemism for a blow-up doll... But it's so cute—I mean check out the chair wedged under the doorknob!! Ha! So eager yet innocent. It's Lars and the Real Girl.

...Ooooor not.

So everything had to come back down 2 days later; after an hour and a half of measuring, math, and ladder climbing that night. Why? Because the owner of the location remembered that they'd wanted to put a mirror there, but actually chose not to tell us before, or even while we were working because he--get this--felt bad! Felt bad because we "were working so hard"!

I guess he'll feel better now, now that we have to do it all over again?

The background story, though, before I forget: One of the owners of a soon-to-be-opening restaurant mentioned giving me wall space for my art after she saw some of my work. I was excited, but didn't want to get tooo excited until it seemed a little more for sure, so of course when she wanted a confirmation from me 10 days before she wanted them hung up, I had nothing ready. Since I mostly draw (on paper), I knew I'd have to get stuff framed if I wanted to use something I already had, but the last time I took something to a professional framer [Frame-O-Rama, and it turned out beautiful and awesome, with the best customer service ever!], it took about 3 weeks, so I knew I didn't have time for that [though I later realized that that was mainly because I'd had a frame custom made], so I thought I'd do a painting instead. A pair of paintings, even. Because that wasn't overly ambitious or anything, especially not for someone who'd dropped her second and last painting class partly because it was too scary.

Those 10 days were sleepless and stressful, because of course they centered right around the new year, and it seemed like all anyone wanted to do was get together and hang out. I did not have time for this! It took everything in me to not to spend any time doing nothing (a direction my body and brain tend to gravitate towards); if I wasn't playing hard, I should be working hard, and after a lot of good work, frustration, and lessons learned (there were some tears), I finally ended up with two pieces I was happy with, and just in time. [And I learned to mat and frame, too! It was actually a relief to do something so black and white by that point.]

So the night of, I took Tom to check out the restaurant so we could figure out how we were going to hang everything, but the wall she showed me last time had a gigantic blackboard on it now. I was like oh my god, what if she didn't think i was doing it anymore because i hadn't kept her updated enough? It turned out she'd decided to give me this other wall, which I wasn't initially happy with, but Tom brought up the good point that the pieces would be more visible from the outside here, so when we were done I was all excited and proud, but not as whew! i'm done! as I'd expected.

And now I think my body must've known we'd have to take everything back down in less than 48 hours! AND find a new place for it.

The restaurant, being mostly windows, actually has very little hangable wall space, and the biggest piece of wall left is behind the bathroom door. The owner was like, "Oh, I thought it might be a cute wall for the painting, since it's smaller and will fit the painting better," and I was like ...n--no. Yeah, as she pointed out, the door's not going to stay open ever, but it's still...The Wall Behind The Bathroom Door. I felt kind of hurt that something I'd worked on so much was being stuffed in this little dark corner. Insulted. So I decided I had to speak up for myself and my work and I said that honestly, I didn't like the idea at all and that I preferred the pieces right where they were, but since she was the boss, I didn't think she was really asking for my permission to move them. And then the little drawing she suggested would be "great" on this other skinny column of a wall, in front of which there'd be counter seating. I said but it'll be right up in someone's face, and way too close to food for my comfort, and she was like, "Well we can just hang it up higher," which would make the halfway height of it at around 70". I mean the little drawing, as she herself pointed out earlier, has to be seen up close to really be seen, and wasn't the whole point of this project to give me space to display--and hopefully sell--my work? They are not here for your decor!

Anyway, I cut them down and brought them home, to be hung after the restaurant setup is closer to being finalized. At least I can take pictures of them now! I can't believe I didn't manage to get any photos of them finished before I took them in, but I guess I had a million other things to think about near the end. Just waiting for a bright day; it's been really grey here lately.

The deed is done!

Details to come. Time for some ramen.


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Ballpoint Lilies

Ballpoint pens are really fun to draw with! Paper♥Mate blue is my favorite.