Whiskers, finished

I decided I like the sumi style of this piece too much to actually go in and do much more to it. I fixed it, dragged lines of black chalk pastel over my charcoal, and very gently touched in the eyes and lips. And it feels done, so I'm going to leave it like this until it tells me otherwise.

(Inclusion of my fishie windsock on the corner is pure, excellent coincidence.)

Self-Surgery

Got whacked with the desire to work into a new piece tonight and since I'm in dire need of self-care, it started along the path of being somewhat therapeutic and introspective.

I've had the idea of a figure with a heart cut out in my head for awhile. When I still had a studio space, I had the idea for a full sized human cut-out from butcher paper tacked to the wall with a 3D heart-shaped box of some sort in the appropriate place that I could place things in. I can't make boxes, heart shaped or otherwise, so it never came about, but the idea stuck in my head.

I played around with the human form as a physical space for inscription and incision awhile ago in this post, "Parts of Me Were Broken Long Before My Heart Came Into." I'm worried I'll run into the same roadblock with this one as I did with that one, shading large expanses of the human form that isn't the face or hands. I never actually finished that piece.

Some initial sketches and thumbnails for the idea. I'm trying to find my balance between exaggerated and realistic here and it's a struggle.

Second layer, chalk pastel

I finally took a moment tonight to work chalk pastel into this. After a good week not allowing myself to steal the time to get into it, I finally gave it half an hour and brought some depth out. Still on the first, roughed out layer of shading.

Naked people Friday!

Not my best depictions of naked people this Friday, but I still dragged my ass out of bed this morning and made it to the studio with a few hours to spend on drawing. The first pose was frustrating as hell, and it didn't really mesh well for the rest of the session but I just focussed in on shading and worked it the best I could.

The little hand drawing says "can't draw today. bad hand!" I thought chastising it might help.

When I get blocked doing figure studies, I generally just zero in on one part, but the hands were coming pretty well so I sketched out some of the figure too. She's holding a mannequin head, so I decided to leave her real head out to balance it.

Last half hour pose, and I didn't trust myself to make it a single good piece, so I split it up into three. The yellow one is the most life-like, but the blue was the most fun.

Better stuff next week, hopefully!

NAKED PEOPLE FRIDAYS!

Figure drawing Fridays would be more alliterative, but most of you reading this probably know by now that I'll take any excuse to talk about naaaaaked people. That I get to draw. Naaaaaaked!

I managed to roll my ass out of bed by 10AM today, so I caught two hours of figure studies this morning. The model was good, and inexplicably wearing make-up, which struck me as a bit funny. I grabbed my 24 pack of prisma nupastels before leaving the house meaning I had allll the colors ever to work with; so, of course, I started with grey. (Can you tell I threw that chair in at the last minute? It is physically improbable to the point of collapse, unlike its real life counterpart.)

Shading! Where the hell did THAT come from? Apparently my ability to produce tone developed when I wasn't looking, because this was a 15 minute pose and I managed to squeeze a lot of color gradation into it. She had great proportions to play with, too, which I couldn't resist exaggerating with her face and hand.

This was the hour long pose, which I split into 2 sketches. The top one is dedicated to my friend Jason, who was on the other side of the room doing these great exaggerated comic-style drawings that I snuck a look at during the break. I want to challenge myself to break style more during figure sessions and play around some with other techniques.

This one's my favorite- something about the model said "pink", so I ran with it. 20 minutes, and huge pile of pastel dust when I was done getting those dark tones.

HELL YEAH FIGURE DRAWING

OH MY GOD, I MISSED THE NAKED PEOPLE SO MUCH.

I love figure drawing. Loooove it. But, thanks to Evergreen's wonky budget cuts and my schedule (namely, the only offered figure session is the morning after Designated Drinking With my Circus People night), I haven't been able to do it since....jesus. Last year.

Well, this morning I dragged my sorry ass out of bed, fought the hangover demons (and WON. for the morning, anyways), dredged up some newsprint and my dust-collecting chalk pastels, and went in. I only caught the last hour, but I was rewarded for my efforts by this great model- good proportions, solid poses, didn't spend the entire time with his hand on his dick. Which is a thing I've noticed with almost every male bodied model I've drawn. Don't get me wrong, if my genitals were external, I'd feel a little vulnerable being scrutinized by a room full of people too, but occasionally it'd be nice to see some poses that didn't revolve around "INSTINCTIVE PROTECTION OF REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS".

Anyways.

The only spot open when I showed was the unenviable foreshortened top-of-head-tips-of-toes angle, but eventually I maneuvered around to get him from the side. I only had an hour to play with, so I think I put 20 minutes or so into this one.

Now that I realized how much I miss staring at naked people while clutching pastels I'm going to kick my ass into going to the rest of the sessions this term, hangover or no.

I LOVE YOU, NAKED PEOPLE!

Parts of me were broken long before my heart came into it

I came home from a midnight showing of Inglourious Basterds last night (SO FUCKING WORTH IT GO SEE BRAD PITT KILL NAAAAATZIS RIGHT THE HELL NOW), and I was so hyped on alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and the usual stimulants that keep me up through midnight movies that I didn't get to sleep until 6 AM. So I started to work into this piece, which I've been rolling around my head since I finished the pedestal one from yesterday. I'm going to have a jagged cut bisecting her chest, possibly some reference to a heart around it, and the title that I'm working under is "Parts of me were broken long before my heart came into it". It's a therapy piece (like, oh, everything else I do), but I'm trying to strike a balance between too needlessly introspective and making work that's appealing to a wider audience.

There is a lot of shading that needs to be done on the chest, and I am not looking forward to it because outside of faces, my ability to shade figures is pretty useless without naked bodies in front of me.

I've been living in the print studio 9-5 (or later if Judy locks me in) most every day this week, so working in chalk pastels was a nice break. My four layer screenprint and letterpress assignment is three layers away from done, and I'm wrapping that tomorrow, hopefully. The fruits of my inky labor are to come.

On a Pedestal

Mmf, the first thing I've worked on in chalk pastel since getting home (save one shitty attempt that was more to channel angst than make art). I was shooting for a Grecian look, an interpretation of putting women on pedestals. Alternatively, I just couldn't get her legs to look right.

Dr. Sketchy's Part Two

There were two 20 minute poses at the end of the set, both of which I did in pastels. I like long poses- if I can get my work to "click" early on, I really enjoy working into a piece for a long time. When I can't get something to work from the start, it feels more like fighting an uphill battle to drag my art into something mediocre, but I'm loathe to abandon something and be stuck with a shorter length piece. Both of these clicked in an enjoyable way, though.

The second piece was a challenge to interpret The Windup Space, which is the name of the bar where it was held. I was not to only person to come up with putting a turn-crank into the model, but I WAS the only one to add a tag that said "For a good time turn crank". This piece made it up to the stage too, but it was model's choice and she went with another one.

I leave for Puerto Rico on Sunday, armed with a new vellum sketchbook, chalk nupastels, watercolor pens, and markers. I am full of pleasant fantasies involving the beach and exciting plants and doing naaathing but art for a week. Mmf.

Dr. Sketchy's Scantily Clad Lady Emporium

I went out to Baltimore's Dr. Sketchy's (if you are unaware of this phenomenon, Dr. Sketchy's Anti Art School has your answers) on Monday night. I have mixed reviews- on the one hand, I missed life drawing, I like gimicky shit like this, and drinking accompanies drawing as it does stretching and MST3King in the rest of my life. On the other, the only thing more pretentious than hipsters are ARTISTIC hipsters, the mc really didn't impress (I have high standards from circus work, but still), and the soundtrack to the evening was pulled directly out of a Wed Anderson film. The Darjeeling Limited, to be specific.

Still, I got some good marker practice in, and I'm groping my way to understanding shading with prismas. I forgot my beloved chalk pastels in Pennsylvania, but Heather lent me her pastels and I went to crazy town and back with them.
There were contests, one of which was to draw the model in spaaaace. This next one got me in the running for the prize, but I didn't win anything that night. It was nifty getting picked the hang out on stage and get cheered for, though. More my scene than being an audience member.

They also did the opposite hand drawing, which I understand is a staple of Dr. Sketchy's fun time. I did it in charcoal, and carefully specified some elements to make it obvious.

One of my quickie warm ups I liked. I shyly started out with my faithful charcoal before I went media crazy.
They also did two 20 minute poses I threw some real work into, but I'll save 'em for tomorrow because this is already the Art Blog Post That Ate Texas.

Katie

Oh man, I have disappeared from blogging, but it's only been because I'm overflowing with screenprinting ideas and I'm pretty much in my studio degreasing and prepping screens like a fiend. Also, it's summer which means work and gigs and adventures and excellent people coming to visit, like my lovely friend Katie who I convinced to sit for a quickie sketch this morning. I'd like to do a sketch of everyone who comes to visit me during the summer so I can have a gallery of the fucking awesome people who populate my life. Plus then my art gets to travel all over the place with the people who're in it- a double plus win.

Forgiveness and studio shots

Three days sans art posts! Believe me when I say that I am the soul of humility and contrition. But in my defense, I turned 21 on the 12th, and we're in the midst of Evergreen's graduation, of which three of my housemates partook. There's been excessive cooking and outings and parties and heavy, heavy drinking many nights in a row. Less time for art than usual, although my life'll no doubt empty out next week and I'll be producing work at a stupid rate yet again out of summer ennui and my emotional failings.

To make up for it, here's a shot of my newly organized studio space! I spent today re-doing my walls, which are crammed full of as much art as I can fit on them. I like to keep lots of figure studies around my easel for reference, but it was getting up the three layers of paper and ridiculousness. It's more nicely spread out now.

Note that all my supplies are crammed on a tiny two inch wide shelf jutting out of the wall. It's a pain in the ass it's a good way to make sure my space doesn't get too cluttered!

Emotional blackhole

Six minutes past deadline, but this blackhole opened up under my feet and kept me from doing most anything.

Super Fucking Art Star

Super Fucking Art Star!

Super Fucking Art Star cleaned the studio, hung her pieces for the gallery show, wrote a damn good artist statement, and survived the last critique of the year. Super Fucking Art Star still has to write an evaluation and put up a gallery of work online, but could care less about that crap right now.

Super Fucking Art Star has not slept properly in a long time.

Just a knock-off chalk pastel piece to try to get back into the hang of doing work for myself. I REALLY want to play with my new screens, but I pushed art-brain too far in the wrong direction and I can't come up with non-pastel ideas for the moment.

Emotional blackhole status: fighting this shit till the bitter end.

$pread final

This is the final version of the poster design for the $pread event- text and layout and photoshop cleverness by my friend Oz. I wish I had had time/energy to do one final version before we made this to clean up the legs, but it worked and the event was smashing. I fooking love making posters.

God forbid, the three days I took off touching chalk pastel actually got my fingers working for me again- on school projects no less. Half of my art juices are lingering with the screenprinting projects I started, but I'm going to reroute those to finishing my show until the term winds down.

Emotional blackhole status: still sucking. Stupid emotions.

Koi-maid

Ah, you lucky bastards, as I have a sudden inexplicable free half hour before I depart on adventures, I'm throwing this one up as my piece today.

I don't know how much art I can make it a day- I DO know that after a certain point my creative juices get sapped and trying to force stuff out of my hands is just pointless. I did this one the same day as the first mermaid piece, and I had a really good concept and color scheme in mind, but it just didn't work as well as it should've. Ah well.

I have such a hard on for drawing koi, I have no idea why it took me this long to think up a koi-person. Definitely a concept I'm going to keep playing with.

Mer

When I was living in the print studio last term, (I was a little ink-splattered serigraphy monkey for three months in Fall), I noticed all these scraps of heavy weight, expensive paper lying around the studio. They were all left-over from cutting paper down to size, and I always wanted to take advantage of their ubiquity around studios to make really cool art with weird skinny dimensions.

So the other day I took one of my cut-off scraps of butcher paper and tried to make an image that worked with the dimensions. And I really liked working like that, which is convenient, because now I'm never going to run out of nice paper to work on.

This is piece is really reminiscent of the illustrative quality I like to try to put into my work sometimes. And again, I was thinking back to a beautifully illustrated book I had as a kid. When I head east over the summer I'm going to raid my store of children's books and drag them back to the west coast with me.

I know the concept behind this blog is "a piece a day", but I never actually specified a POST a day (loopholes!). I'm still going to shoot for it regardless, but the internet isn't going to come crashing down if it doesn't happen. THAT said, I'm spending this weekend doing Cirk du Fantastik shows at Folklife, so there probably won't be any updates till Monday.

(Cirk du Fantastik will be performing at the very exclusive, VIP "sidewalk 30 feet outside the venue" stage all weekend if anyone cares to look for us. We will be the loud ones wearing silly clothes and asking for your money.)

Have good weekend adventures y'all!

Fuck yer audience rough

This is another in the dual performative self/personal self series. It's really just roughed out at the moment, but the character is holding a mask that'll have a cheesy grin on it, and the right bicep will have a tattoo that reads "Fuck yer audience". My housemate Michael sparked the idea for the concept this time, all thanks to their artistic genius.

I have a loooong, much-meditated on bit of writing to accompany this one to the effect of what I as a performer REALLY think of all those beautiful people I weasel money out of, but it's still taking shape and will probably hit articulation sometime when the art is finished.

Still struggling with the eyes, although they're not as bad as the soulless pits my camera makes them out to be in the shot.

Holding this facial expression so I could use it as a reference with the mirror was hilarious. I didn't even know cheek muscles could cramp.

WIP Sundays, Second Rough Mondays, Finished Product Someday?

Oh, yes. Very much yes. I had no idea that it was going to take this direction, and I was struggling with the bottom left corner, but then it all fell into place deliciously today. I'm still unsure where the detail on the face is going (suggestions anyone? I'm a fan of the facial star, both with make-up and compositionally, but I don't know if I should darken or lighten or how well it reads) but this piece has done such a good job of telling me where it wants to go thus far, I'm just going to fix it, toss it on my wall and keep my ears open to what it wants. Hopefully it has ideas about the hair, too, because I'm at a bit of a loss there. Ideas?

With sheer luck and any sudden unanticipated free time, I'll have prints of it to sell at Folklife with weekend when Cirk du Fantastik is performing.

Works in progress sunday!

This is the first rough of a poster I'm working on for class, thanks to some very clever parlaying of my need for circus promotional material into a homework assignment. All my class work for the rest of the rapidly disappearing quarter is going to deal with the duality of the self I promote for performance, and the self I experience while performing- kind of a backstage, on stage thing. The "I can't do this any more" piece I put up a few days ago was the first part of this series, it more or less sparked the whole idea.

I really want to do a poster that has us all looking bright and shiny and posed, and accompany it with a sketch of us all smoking and ranting about the audience backstage. My life is chock full of material for this concept right now (cough, last Friday's gig, cough).

We're Cirk du Fantastik (as in, Cirk do Fantastik things for your viewing entertainment), and we're here to shout at you and take your money!