Friday, February 24, 2012

This blue grey situation



Trying to work more here with atmosphere. This bottom one is really close. I swear. The top one looked better before I painted on it tonight, but also pretty close. ugh.

Spent a lot of time working on my book this week, but that's only a teaser because I don't have scans of the new pages yet. It's a lot more about collage than my other ones have been. I really like how it looks, but I also feel hesitant about it because the photographs I'm using aren't mine. Is that okay? Yeah, that's okay. Right? Yeah.

I got my third residency app in the mail today. It would be really awesome if one of them accepted me. Actually, it would be awesome enough if one of them gave me a personalized rejection.

Hey! Its spring break!

Timekeeping:
painting/booking:19 hours

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Hi Friends

Sorry for the post delay. I forgot my flashdrive on whenever and blah blah.

So this week, I cleaned my studio, and it's feeling like a much better place to work. I know where stuff is again and I have room to put stuff and almost enough room to move around, so that's good.

I spent a lot of time painting this week, but I don't think I'm going to show any of it because you might be getting sick of seeing the same paintings in different states. I'll let you know when they're done.

But I've been drawing too. The image below is an alteration of a drawing I did last semester. Part of my studio cleaning process was figuring out what I've actually done these past uhhhhfive?six?four?months? and what of it I actually like, and what can be worked on more or destroyed or given away. I added acrylic and watercolor to the image below and cropped it in photoshop. I think I like it that way better, so I may crop the actual drawing too. Oh and I flipped it 90 degrees.





Here's another drawing in the series I am tentatively titling "The Exact Location" (in reference to the human heart, or spirit, or experience, or whatever, because, where is it exactly, if we're always changing and moving around? ) But maybe that title is not good, and if it isn't, please let me know.

I was really excited about this drawing for maaaybee 2 reasons. I really like the emotional shift in the figure on the right. I think it's getting closer to what I want motion to express, because it's a movement, but here it's also an emotional change. It's like, shy affection, to distracted comment . . . Or something. That's not quite it.

But then the figure on the left is concentrated on something else entirely.  He's looking at the the other's wrist, and is maybe captivated by it in a way that also maybe seems insane.

But maybe that's not something else entirely, because it almost looks like the figure on the right is saying "look here, my wrist is broken" and the figure on the left discovered the secret of life in the vision of the broken wrist.

I don't know. haha. But I think there's something there.


I mentioned last week that I started altering a book. Here are a few pages from that. It's a little more lighthearted than the rest of my work, though still in a dark sort of way. Last year, words were a big part of my painting and drawing, but for whatever reason they seem to be absent this year. Maybe working on books again will bring that back.



Also, this face that I painted last semester is going to be on a TEDx poster. Look for it around town I guess. They all turned out really cool. To see the whole collection, go here.


Timekeeping
paintingdrawingcleaningcollaging:19.5

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Dead car batteries and misplaced jackets

Hi friends,

This week I worked more on this painting. I think it's going well, but it's still really early on so I don't know that I have much to say about it.




I worked on that other one with the two faces too, and I think I really brought it back to life, so that's good. I have a picture of it, but it's on my camera which is at the studio, and right now my car is dead and I don't want to take the bus because I left my coat at this party and it's life effin subzero out there right now. But honestly, I will probably do that soon anyway because I've got an itch to be a paintin'.

anyway.

I also made this drawing, which I really like:


And I went back over this drawing. I drew it as seen on the left a couple of weeks ago, right when I started drawing again on loose paper, but before I really knew what I wanted these drawings to be. It was okay at the time, but looking at it again the other day I really didn't think it was that awesome. So I went over it again, smudging and erasing and redrawing and then at the end using a little linseed oil.

I still don't really like it that much, haha, but it has more of the atmosphere that I've been looking for. It looks evil now, or something. Am I right? Yeah, kind of an evil drawing.



This one's more like it.


I'd really like for my paintings to become more like this, in that, the background isn't so much abstract as it is an atmosphere.

Someone who does this really well is this painter I went to school with in Ireland. Hannah Hill (http://hannahhill.4ormat.com/the-blizzard) makes these really haunting figurative paintings that exist in a sort of dream space. It's not abstract, but it's also not of this world. They are really great.

Oh! And as a final note, I've started altering a book again. I thought I needed one more thing to work on, because I felt myself getting stuck at times, and really, what a silly thing to do, to be stuck, because there's so much out there waiting to be created. Anyhow, I glued a bunch of pages together, and ripped out others, and soon I'll start painting and drawing on them. Hopefully I will have images by next week.

stay warm.

timekeeping:
painting/drawing/gluing/ripping:15 hours

Friday, February 3, 2012

blahit'slate

Here are some drawings I've been doing. They are coming more naturally now and I can make them pretty quickly. Maybe someday I'll be able to paint like that, ha. They're mostly done with pencil and linseed oil, but some of them have watercolor and ink.

I also started working again on the large figurative painting, but I'll post a photo of that next week. It's really messy right now and I don't love it yet. Those are both good signs. Lookin' good!










Going to 10 Degrees tomorrow!  Woo!

Time keeping:
Drawing: 4
Painting: 6