Aquarium Visit #1

Watercolor fish sketches in an aquarium. It sounds like a good idea. Until you figure out that the halls are dimly lit so that the children can scream "I SEE NEMO!" because they have a better chance of seeing fish with the tank being lit.

So when all the colors look like they're mud, I was working with basically no light.

Fish and some abstract... underwater.... coral? rock? background?

   

3D Modeling final

And this is the first drawing for my Maya modeling final. It will contain birth flowers, from each month, coming together in a bouquet. The flowers together in one place is impossible because of different growing seasons, but they come together to make a year. At the same time, they are fragile and delicate and are constantly in a state of decay. The vase sort of represents the world that contains this metaphor for time.

I think of this piece as a painting. I'll design how I create the petals/leaves first- what shapes I'll use and how I'll make a lot then tweak them to make each petal a little different.

I can change I can change I can change I can change

Women, do we marry our fathers and become our grandmothers? Do we end up living the same lives as everyone who came before us? Do we inherit our anxieties and pessimisms, fighting them back with diagnoses? That's pessimistic.

The housepainting project included a wall behind a very heavy breakfront, filled with the Nice Stuff. My mother explained where each piece came from. My great-grandmother's plates, made in England. An important Italian trinket given out as a wedding reception gift. Glass from Corning Glass Factory. A rock painted gold.

I got to go to a hardware store today. I just felt this overwhelming rush of potential. Each thing can be used to make something.

It's starting to get late. I wanted to read before I fell asleep from exhaustion. But a week of painting and reorganizing and changing furniture hasn't slowed my pancake quest.

I hope anyone's reading this. I think I'm just writing them to keep up with writing (I haven't even written a dream-record in at least a month) and keep a record for myself.

Keeping Busy.

It's been weeks, and everything is still a mess, except, for some reason, my head. One month till my birthday, another and I'm at school. I'm keeping busy:

Gardening. I borrowed a rototiller and cleaned up a plot in the backyard. It's midway through June, but mom already bought the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I even consulted my books (what's the point of having them if you don't read them?) to get the spacing and planting right. I love the work. I hope that some day I'll grow my own vegetables.

Painting. I have the paint, I haven't painted my room yet.

Cooking. I'm trying to make the core recipes for next year, make sure I can make real healthy food in a short amount of time with a few ingredients- how much can I do with flour, eggs, butter, sugar? Would it be cheaper to bake my own bread?

Asking Questions. I want to know how businesses and politics work. I love learning about it. What laws govern businesses and religion and politicians and real estate and how they are interpretted. I've become increasingly interested in corruption and I want to be able to understand the economy better than an art student stereotype. I want to have intelligent conversations with people. I'm also preparing myself for the upcoming presidential election.

So, tomorrow, I'll wake up early and make french toast ravioli.
http://www.newlyweds-blog.com/2010/09/23/stuffed-french-toast/.
I probably don't have ricotta, but I'm thinking of putting something else in there, like eggs or PANCAKE BATTER. Pancake in french toast. THIS is what summer is about.

Art.

LCD is over, so here is some of the larger pieces of art that didn't fit in the scanner. They're all huge files, and photoshop'd the same way- re-sized, cropped, and making the lights lighter and the darks darker (but not a contrast difference).
1. I think it was a self-portrait at one point, but this is the luminosity painting I did over winter break. Acrylic on Cardboard.
2. the third of the 3d glasses set, this is somewhat cubist. Charcoal and Newspaper.
3. Abstract cubist luminosity/chiaroscuro painting. Acrylic.
4. Foreground, middleground, background exercise, with normal, faux, and sfumato color palettes. Color-aid.

more arts

These are two of a set of 4, all based around 3d glasses. I love both of them for very different reasons.

some arts

it's about time I got some art up here. These are still lifes with flowers and patterns, based on Matisse. Nice-quality watercolor set, but the purples were difficult. The top one is better, but the idea behind the second is more interesting- a silhouetted bouquet against the sunlight outside.

watercolor, i miss you

I finally got my hands on a water-bush- a synthetic brush with a little water compartment in the handle. Osmosis doesn't work quite as fast as I thought it might, so I'm consistently misjudging the amount of water that comes out.
     The pigments are actually really nice and condensed (besides lacking purple). 12- black, white, lemon yellow, golden yellow, ochre, crimson, vermilion (blood-orange), light red (?), yellow-green, viridian green, cobalt blue, and prussian blue (darker, less intense). all in a little box.
     It also comes with a sponge, which is crap and will be replaced by paper towel or jeans leg quite shortly.

Technique:
I have a habit of picking up excess color/water with a dry brush. Because your brush is also the source of water, you can't have a dry brush. In my brother's words, Roar.

Too. Much. Water.

Well, I'll keep going. Pics edited in later.

on spirituality, nature/art, crossword discipline, being straightedge

It's Ash Wednesday, when Christians burn last year's Palm Sunday palms and draw a cross on your forehead. And now, I'm sitting in the computer lab wondering if my appearance is being disregarded, considered, or remembered. But at the same time, I'm trying really hard not to have an itch on my brow. I'm not particularly religious. But I think it's important, and there are times when you're walking on a trail and the trees move in a pattern and the grass smells just right and it's a special moment of beauty. That's holy.

Spring break is next week, and I don't really have anything to do for a week, which is a pity. So I wanted to drive to Sand's Point and draw something. I should paint something. The least I can do is bring a watercolor set and get basic line and color down. I just need to do art over break, draw a landscape from life.

Crosswords are like hitting a brick every day. Sometimes you break it, sometimes you know how to break it, sometimes you just can't get a handle on it. But there's always a new brick every day.

I describe myself as 'straightedge', but I don't... there are people who.... there are things that just don't interest me, and they tend to be on the same plane of thought, even though common morals of society give them different values. Like, I don't smoke and my ears aren't pierced. I don't hate people who do things, illegal or not, but as long as they respect my decisions, I can usually respect theirs. If they're not killing themselves slowly.

I love the way people walk. Toes facing inwards, outwards, wide at the knees, one knee a little twisted. It's wonderful.

Paintings and Crayon Color Designs

In a proper title format.

These are last week's classwork and homework, as well as what I did in Light/Color/Design this week.
We painted a still life that had two opposing lights from opposite directions, then we recreated the still life with color-aid paper, aka veryexpensivepaperthatsmellslikechemicals and it comes in every color (unless it's second semester and you have a second-hand pack).

There's also designs, color ideas, and crayon tests for a design project. It's based on all the ways to use colors my class learned all year, and we have to create designs for the 4 seasons, on a 'grid' made of the diagonals and medians that occur when you make a symmetrical golden ration rectangle/square set. aka that mathematical swirl.

long writing, music

I keep discovering albums on my ipod, thanks to friends who give me tons of music that I never get around to. So, I've been listening to Love Below, Outkast, and Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne. Yes, the Stacy's Mom band. The atmosphere of 'sad NY office worker needs a drink but knows it's bad for him' is like a different face of Jonathon Coulton's 'sad office worker is too busy dreaming to have any relationships'. This is also contrasted with the Decemberists's 'Victorian peasant is sad, has a sad life, and drowns after falling in love'. I love this, it feels so unabashedly bias and incorrect.

Today was the DDA meeting for the freshman in my department. We are 2D/3D animation and 'interactive arts', which I don't understand but it sounds really interesting and important. The head of the department gave us an overview of the next 3 years of our lives. I can't wait. It's going to be so much better than this year's mess.

So, that leaves me with the summer. There are so many things I want to do, many things I should do, and so many options. I know, though, that I need to redo my room. It hasn't changed much since the beginning of middle school, and now that I don't live there, it'll mostly be storage for art supplies and a studio. With a bed. And a large desk in the middle of the room, with a great studded-leather chair, a bust of Julius Ceasar that tilts backwards to reveal a secret room behind a bookcase. At the very least, a desk with storage space, and a set of bookshelves in the hallway (to replace the sideways one and clear up my room).

Some LCD work

These are all from the last 3 weeks, selected works. Oil paint, unless otherwise noted. We did Chiaroscoro, Cangiantismo, and Sfumato in the same month. Chiaroscoro bottles from life, Cangiantismo indoor/outdoor scenery, and Sfumato self-portraits.
Okay. Chiaroscuro: bottles, abstract with same palate. Cangiantismo: stained glass flower design (gouache on paper, then cut and pasted), indoor/outdoor painting. Sfumato self-portrait in a grid. And last is the case I made, so that I can carry wet oil paintings from my class to my room without getting everything ruined. It's made of a Crispix box, corrugated and pressed cardboard, duct tape, rubber cement, and masking tape. It can hold six 11" x 9" pieces.

a calm off period.

I have 15 minutes left of an off period, and I'm realizing that the blog is falling into ruin. I've been extremely busy, and I've been waiting to hear from colleges. Especially CalArts. Things are coming to an end, and I'm moving on, but I want to keep going with this blog. A1-bqx. The name of a box from UPS.

I've been working on a sea monster painting. It's totally expressionist, except for the color choices (which are decently straightforward, when compared with pointillism's contrasting colors and detail). The peace is simple: a great sea-dragon, towering over a small steamship. The lighting isn't 100%, but I liked painting. I'll bring in a camera one day.

So far, the accepted portfolios for CalArts look really similar. A little pastel for color, exaggirated proportions, months or years of experience drawing from a model. I need to go back to the figure drawing classes. I miss drawing life. I don't want to draw sea monsters or sunsets or paint years of wear on a stage-bench.

I also don't want to lose myself in the realm of abstract expressionism. I'll go crazy. Yesterday, we did the charcoal abstract expressionist exercise in STAC, and it makes too much sense to me. You cannot turn words around the same idea, to see it in a different light. I can't, I don't know how other people think around issues or problems. It's much easier (and scarier) to turn a picture upside down, and look at things in a different perspective.

I hope I'm going to California next year. I know what I want to do, I know where I want to do it, but the latter decision is not totally made by me.


Totally. In total. Awesome. Full of awe. Terrible. Terrifying. Why aren't these words used correctly anymore?


Off to class.

250 ahhhh

250. The colors will change tonight. I'm looking at something plum and golden-yellow and red.
My portfolio. Warning: many many nudes ahead.