YOURE ALL INVITED!

the gallery in which 3 of my pieces will be showing in, is opening this week! reception is on August 4th.  keep your eyes peeled for these three:

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invite your mothers! invite your cats!!  just kidding. no cats allowed. :(

more summer work.

so.. when i go home... i see family, and paint. one of the paintings for the summer was a small donation to the community church, for an event.[ an altar to be specific]. 

the painting is basically an oil painting version of this medallion the prayer group wears around their neck.

 

and here we have a few w.i.p. photos (pretty much the beginning stage):

 

i meant to post this before the last post... simply because i like the other one better and wouldve liked it more to see them stacked differently on my page. oh well. :)


anyways. the church liked it. 

HUBRIS!!!!

just kidding. but -no-really... im slowly growing prouder of my work, which is a good thing... and when i say prouder, no i dont mean im in love with it. it means... i feel it works as what a painting should be for a few days [versus a few hours] before i change my mind and decided its kind-of-crap and i can do better. i know its a bit self-depreciative... BUT it's the only way to keep going. to keep getting better. can't stay satisfied. 

with that in mind, heres a piece i'd been working on during summer [along with the 793 and oc fair piece]
  this one was an oil painting. small one. 

i checked out some books in the library and one, which im almost done reading was about time and one of the chapters kept making me think about how data, ideas and information in general will be gone eventually. even things like our cds, computers, basically all forms of memory become obsolete [sooner than we think too!] and arent as permanent as we think they truly are.  during the term i had to do a sight-size painting [which drove me insane! -but i DID learn alot] and i wanted to try it out outside of class. at the end of the class one of the students who'd finished her painting early was working on a perishable... which is fruit and stuff that WILL eventually rot. this idea though, at least to me, could technically apply to anything. :o righhhtt??

even people. haha.

anyways. so. summer started. and i was homesick. so i painted these cds. i take them back with me most of the time i go home,- a friend made them for me [mix cds].

at home i cleared up my garage to work in:

 

its really cold in there. or really hot depending on the weather. 

wip:

                          sorry about the yellow tint.. the light was bad [haha..shouldnt be painting in bad light!!!]





and  the finished piece... which is on my wall now..until further notice.:)

sketchbook practices.

i enjoy painting in acrylic. very much.  i LOVE painting portraits. mostly of people i love.

lately i had been painting with watercolor as my medium... for the bulk of my personal projects. I miss opaque paint, paint that's more visceral.  

while watercolor is beautiful, its spontaneity is kind of contained... or its released in a different way than the energy that thick paint exudes.  at least for me. the way i paint, which will hopefully get better...   [http://www.guanweixing.com/2010en/2010en.html] [THAT guy's got it goin' on! -watercolor btw]  


anyways. so. i did a small painting of Steve...which youll see much more of in the future [ i have pretty big plans for that guyyyy... working on larger paintings...]

this painting was done in 3 hours of him in my sisters coat and cat-eye-glasses. very chic.

 

    anyways. this was done sometime over winter break... and  this summer, i did one of my friend/roomate Ryleigh Belion.  We did an exchange. I sat for her 3 hours and she sat for me 3 hours. it was nice. [the painting she did of me was pretty dead-on too! rad.]  anyways. this is the sketch i did of her...

                                                    she was watching something on her laptop.
                                      

so yeah. just some practice for the love of art.  more to come. promise.

OC backf(a)ired

so. i made a piece for the orange county fair.  its a watercolor, however, after i had finished and turned it in, we (students who submitted) were told the wall was small and oversized paintings were to be picked back up; -could not be hung. :( SADFACEEEE.....  but its okay.

as hard as i worked on my painting, im not completely satisfied, and therefore not as butthurt as i should be about this whole thing. besides, it isnt their fault they didnt know how big the wall was before-hand.  i used this painting as practice with large-scale watercolor work and tried very hard to photograph it along its way. which was successful.

heres a photo of the piece finished and framed.  [it looks better upside down ...and am thinking about getting it rewired...for hanging purposes]

 

and here are some photos of it while its being worked on.

i was out of town visitng my parents and had to work on our dinner table. its kind of sucked.

my work station will always consist of my laptop and paints, thiners or water canisters and a shitload of napkins [not-pictured]. if im working with watercolor sometimes ill have my hair-dryer there... but i think i didnt have one while i was visitng here. back to the w.i.p. photos:

drawing + first wash. i screwed up right away. it was like 2 shades too dark, value-wise, which messed things up for me later. 

wokring in my shadows... 

the following will just be a BUNCH of layering. i think youll be able to follow without explanation.

so yeah.

watercolor class and 793

so. i took a watercolor course this term [betty shelton's ... id still love to take the other teacher's watercolor course though.], it was really interesting. i didnt know what to expect, but i had reached some sort of epiphany about contrast and how to use it and shape and color, and it seemed applicable to all mediums. so i experimented.


i have some in-progess photos of one of the following pieces, however i'm not sure where they are, and its only of the first few stages, therefore, not really worth posting. I have pretty much the full process photographed of a different piece, to look at after this post.. [or a few posts].

these pieces were created in class over the span of some 7-12 hours... which seems like a long time, but i dont really feel it is.  the first is of a stranged i met [kind of... more so...coherced into modeling] and asked for her photo, and the second is of... renee. of course. haha. this is getting kind of embarrassing to type  out-loud... ANYWAY...

th

there she is... and here sheeee... is:

everything on this blog SHOULD be clickable  ...so if you want a closer look, help yourself.


these two pieces were submitted into the 793 gallery for summer [should be on display now actually] and are for sale... as well as one other. which ill post along.

this one was done after school ended, and was more of me confronting the fear that i still have it in me, when the pressure is off... which is always a concern.

picking up where left

okay so heres a photo i meant to upload before this last semester... its the finished product of the w.i.p i have of some hands over a girl. [which happens to be my sibling...or modeled after her anyways.   this was done for illustration class first semester... which was a while ago, but better late than never.  as for in-class work for this semester [spring ] my courses included a still life [sight-size] class, a painting class [which means mostly learning was done, with pretty much nothing to post.], a watercolor class [also dont like posting  pure classwork.. but i got a few good ones out of that class worth sharing-ish],and  completed a project with my peer and best friend [will be sharing].

last semester,... things you missed... i think i entered the best of the best competition, and won something!! the winning piece... was a picture of one of my childhood/adolescent friends... and was sold. unfortunately i did not take any photos of it. and therefore cannot show you. i have a few crappy ones on my camera phone. so maybe. if i feel brave.

  i also painted a small painting for a fundraiser for japan, which also was sold! it was my lucky month. this was a painting done mostly from life, of my friend Renee, -it seems i paint her every term, its kind of funny. we joke about how someone liked her face so much they had to purchase it. and that was one of the few paintings ive felt really good about making. i wish i took a photo to show again. haha. ive gotten better at this documentation thing, after these two incidents. youll see in a few posts.

anyway. heres the photo i owe: 

its been a while.

so, its been maybe... 5 months now, since my last update. Ive built a site but i feel thats more for finished work, which means this blog still has a purpose. and that would be just to show progression. works in progress... that kinda thing. you know.  

im going to try to post in order of if i had been posting them as time went by.  but this is my disclaimer, that states, its been a busy 5 months, so sorry for the absence.  okay. here we go again.