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.

Street Perspective...

Black and White. Ink. Texture...

i love color -but these last months have been dominated by inks and gray.

The following are shots of my latest perspective drawings. Practice in 3 point worms-eye perspective. [better seen as "dead prostitute" perspective in this particular project] Don't get too excited about the content of these pics. They arent really serious work. They are seriously committed to, and seriously executed, but for fun.  Call me sick, but we all cant have the same sense of humour. Take it lightly.

the whole "thang".  19"x 24" ink on canson vellum

detail 

detail

detail in sky.

The characters are simply sheep humans. of course you could attach some social metaphor to it, but really  - the "sheople" are just for kicks.

MELTING

Lately I've really been "biting off more than i can chew". I say this because I get it all done, at the expense of my health/ sanity. However i cant help but feel i HAVE to work this hard. It isnt worth it if im not. Anyway. Heres a piece from illustration class.

the model is my best friend Renee. Isn't she a doll?

shadowy photography. my apologies. ill reupload soon.

The work is a good 16" x 40". It was an effort, but I was happy to work on it. As soon as i get winter break you guys will get some color work. Black and White can only hold my interest for so long. 

Now as for picking my brain. I guess this one was about feeling crowded. Pressures. Im not all that social, i wonder why i think about this kind of stuff so much. haha.

practice.

Here are a couple of practices for the semester. 

this one was done really early in the semester, on a cover of a small sketchbook. Acrylic on cardboard. Roughly 4 x 6. A fun little painting practice.

Kerri

although this semester has been great for illustration, due to the lack of a painting class or figure drawing class... i havent gotten to practice much of either. However I did get the chance to draw Kerri for Artistic Anatomy. We usually do muscle/anatomical drawings, so it was a real treat to get to actually draw the figure.

so fun. ill practice harder.

Illustration.

Heres an eyeful of a handful. The images uploaded are the works in progress, until I recieve my finished image back from my instructor. These particular images show the preliminary thumbnails and the sketch. Later Ill upload the actual inked and washed image.

the thumbnail. compositionally decent. but it needed work. when i post the newer one, youll understand more.

heres the sketch. cleaned up.

and a detail. 

ill explain the meaning of the piece when the completed version is up. 

-time to update-

Well well well.

its been quite some time since I've updated this old blog o' mine. However this is because things have been moving at a rapid pace for the past 6 months or so, and there hasnt been much time, nor reason to update this site. I'd like to get a new one up and running, but that will come in due time. This will do the job for now. I will be posting works in progress for the meanwhile. Stick around. [until i make something better.]

Studies in the Past III

majority of studies done in the past, done in oil. these are roughly three years old or more. with the exception of a few of the figure drawings.

Studies in the Past II

Studies in the Past I

BNW 11: Empathy

When i was painting this i thought of all the ugliness in the world. All the ways i could portray animal cruelty, and when drawing the concept sketches for this painting, i thought of some pretty gruesome imagery i couldve made. But instead i guess... this world has enough ugliness in it, so i figured a way to say what i had to say, in a a softer voice. sometimes whispers are better received than shouts.

and really now, what we need to stop all malice is more empathy.

BNW 10: Simulacra

simulation is now reality. what we imagine is now as real as what is. Our simulation is now as tangible as our reality. I guess this is a image of our dreams interacting with our physical states, and vice versa. i kinda hate this one though to be honest. :P