June 1 2010

My main goal with this drawing was to show how basic our normal body positions are. Each position is realistic for the average person. None of them involve complex movement. I showed myself how far I expect myself to go when it comes to physical movement which is unfortunate that I expected so little. I'm now encouraging myself more to go beyond what I was able to do before. I don't want to live my life only able to do the most basic bodily movements and I didn't even realize it until I did this drawing.

pie cave

During this, I decided that the next drawing I do, will be a large picture. I think it was great for me to start out small and with silhouettes so that I could find the basic shapes in the body structure, but now I am a bit past that so I can really push myself to be really uncomfortable. I was beginning to get too comfortable drawing small figures to the point that I knew it was wasn't expanding my skills and therefor caused me to be uncomfortable, if that makes sense to the reader. I once again found new textures to play with but I drew the people positioned in the same basic way which was in my comfort zone. This summer, I plan on keeping up with this blog because it really does help me out to write about what I've drawn. It almost always begins as Bullshit but by the end of it, I really have expanding my sense of what I did in this drawing and what my mindset was before, during, and after. Reviewing the process is humbling whether it was positive or negative. For the past couple days, I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to work on this summer. I think art will be a huge part of it. I am going to begin doing one art piece a day, at first. I will also be reading a lot which I always get off track of during the school year, like I said in my past posts I will work on doing handstands and getting freckles in my armpits, and meditate.
This blog is not my artblog anymore for school, its more of my blog of aspirations for myself. Preferably, I won't have people looking at it, but I feel that I need to write them down somewhere. Perhaps, Ill just begin a journal in my sketchbook again.

sheep

The sheep's fur is an example of trying new textures for me. I'm encouraged with how I tried out some new textures. That is one of the important aspects of drawing animals because of their bodies hold so many differences to humans, which I am used to drawing. I would like to begin putting these textures that I find on animals and especially insects onto humans. Not necessarily to give them an alien or animal look but to just exaggerate details normally found on the human body.

May 27th 2010

With my moms smallest drill bit, I embellished the results of my sugar craving. After eating all these dates, I kept their seeds and strung them onto some embroidery thread. I made this because I've been working to look like I really want. I took my habits and surrounding materials and transformed them into something practical and beautiful. Its the very very beginning of SO much from me. I've also found multiple used really interesting. How that relates to this, is that I've been using it as a necklace and a headband. I'm just waiting to find more uses. I guess this paragraph was just as much of a statement of intent than a reflection on what I've made.

May 30th 2010

This was drawn with pencil. When you click on the picture, it goes to its original size.
The part that I am happiest with is that the position of the people are reflected in shapes below, the peoples objective, and the detail of the people. Their objective shows my own for the summer. I want to be able to do handstands and I want to get freckles in my armpits. If the viewer is able to look close, there are speckles in the armpits. As I try to boost myself up in the air, I find myself hesitating because of the fall back down. I unintentionally made the people hesitating but I'm pleased with how it did turn out because I think it shows my own position in the beginning of this summer and goals. I didn't really decide whether it was actually one person stuck in the process of the handstand or if it is many people in a row at different places in the process of the handstand. I prefer the second just because its more of a collective yet everyone is focused on their own ideal ordeal. The people have so much more detail than they had in my past drawings. I am happy continuing on the body structure and detail still.

southeastedge

This drawing encouraged me to work with height more. This drawing was used for the background of a poster for a benefit we were holding at the school. I need to work on the human figures and how they move, not just profile drawings. Here, most of the figures have the same back leg position which doesn't help it them to look like they are creeping up, but more just hanging around looking for bugs in the cracks of the rocks (which isn't bad but I intended it to have more motion). I'd also like to have more going on. It would be great to add more drawings to it, along the side for instance. It would create more of a story but still, this is probably the most attractive trait of this drawing to me because it encourages stories so well.

Sketchbook, beginning of May

My favorite is the little catman. He has a choppy and scratchy meow, mew, mow.
Texture Texture. I hope to expand on that and detail. Freckles and wrinkles are the most comfortable yet challenging to draw. Well, I suppose that not drawing them makes it harder because I have to pay more attention to the basic shapes and shadings so that it will look full and finished even without them. Both the people were pictures from library books. A book on Julia Margaret Cameron provides profile pictures that im very attracted to draw. I prefer to draw elderly so working off her photos provides a new practice for me of drawing youthful people.

Stay under the tent (statement of intent)

I aim to use as many textures as possible. Recently I've been wearing my magnifying glass around my neck in search for textures that we would not normally see and have also been paying attention to the small strip drawings in children's books at the beginning or end of each chapter which has encouraged me to add boarders around the drawings. These are the sorts of small accenting drawings I plan on creating. Some more things I plan on practicing though my drawings, collages, contrast (to help understand the middle grounds of light and dark), still life, and most importantly, will be practicing the basic human figure (in the form of Native North American clowns). 

Clowns/Sacred fools

links

The Song of Sixpense illustrated by Walter Crane

Walter Cranes Illustrations for Grimm's Fairy Tales

Harrison Weir

Edward S. Curtis

A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers

Harrison Weir and other illustrations and photos

Kudu horn!

Balzac

My two new favorite illustrators are Walter Crane and Balzac.

Symbionese Liberation Army project

This is a drawing 6in by 3in that I did to go along with my presentation over the SLA.

pecans

I feel like there was not much intention behind the painting on the right. I have learned a bit more to create a focus for the painting before I begin and this painting didn't necessarily have one. I began with imitating the texture, shape, and size of pecans (lower left corner) and from there I was just looking around my room for ideas from different textures. It is too congested for my liking but I do like that all the parts seem to be connecting and that they have a wide range of colors. At the time I painted it, I felt that a wide range of colors was necessary. I was sitting listening to music ( a tape with Native American chanting) next to an window which was open to the early spring weather at the time.
I wasn't able to crop this picture, so there is another painting on the page that I didn't mean for it to be put up.

not able to crop

the pictures

Seeds

Along with my rattie's finger paints, there are two separate paintings on this page.

On the left: the colors I use are more unintentional. I have a set of watercolors that have oranges, browns, greens, blues, yellows, and a white. I begin with one simple color and as I continue, all of the colors mix on their own. I began with simple lines and the further I went, the more I found that I was making round patterns. I noticed that I stayed away from to much layering compared with the paintings I've done before. The original size of both of them is about 3 by 3 inches. It took me an couple hours to paint but then again, I was staring out the window half the time. I enjoy the spacing between the lines.



On the right.

I was borrowing a necklace that came from the region around Nepal from a friend last week. It is used to cleanse your energy before you go to see a baby. There are seeds, bones, and beads hanging off of it and one seed in specific stood out to me. This painting was influenced by that seed. It resembles it with the sharpness of the edges mainly. I like that it resembles so much like bark to me and that there is such depth from the shading. My intention was to take characteristics that stood out to me from the seed on the necklace and put them into a painting.

fossilized bird

Collage by Alex Makenzie

headorn

This pattern of human faces is an example of what I have been drawing all over my assignments for the past couple months. I've been practicing to explore the different positions of the face. Drawing the average hair which falls to the shoulder doesnt interest me when I'm just drawing heads because it leads my eyes away from the face itself and makes it seem as though there is something missing. I'd like to look at these heads as just heads and not a piece to a missing body. The head piece is stretched and either wrapped around the head as a bandage or scarf or it appears to be shooting/shining out of the head in geometric shapes. The larger they got, the more I disliked them and ended up working them to much causing them to look scribbled out, which I dont mind. Because they all came without influence from the people around me, I find them to all look quite similar to each other, which I'll be able to work on because I'm aware of this habit now.

After struggling how I would describe this painting, my sister talked to me about concept art. I basically describe this painting as my mood for the day. I worked on this slowly throughout the day and I can see a difference in style as the I progressed. As the beginning there are much smaller lines in bunches and as I went on not only did the lines thicken but they began to layer. There is also a repetition of spreading and growing circles. The first half I painted(the left side),I was sitting outside. I used watercolors and the original size is 4in by 10in. This is the most humbling process because I able to see how I perceive my own mind without any self criticism. Simply contemplating the colors and my own movement that comfort me. Looking at it now, I feel that it is too concentrated but love that it tells me about my mindset for that day.

a druid little rat was she

Last semester, in my creative writing class, we had to write a self portrait. Here was mine.

A druid little rat was she.
A druid little rat was she.This quiet brown field rat had once acquired, in the prime of her time, specific skills known by man. One of which, involved searching, in the proximity of the humans, for the deceased (certainly not mutilated) critter bodies, who have dared with their lives with the step onto the solid stone path. Taking this whole little body and opening it, cleaning it, then transforming the furry remains back into its original, yet empty, form with a needle of an acorn stem and thread of the fresh leaf veins. She stitches all but the stomach closed. With this, she wiggles inside the hollow body mask. Each leg adjusts in each hide leg, the tail slides to fit its new skin. A comfortably loose fit, although the nose of the hide is too broad, causing her eyes to only see half of their view. Through the guidance of the new coat, she stitches up the stomach opening. Warm, is it certainly in the late summer forest, which is why she begins wearing the coats in the early Fall then until the middle of Spring. Each year, she plays with a different cover. She practices each type of animal's own habits, diets, behavior, living arrangements, and defense mechanisms (which of all the animal's characteristics, can be the most challenging bodily functions to adapt). For these next few seasons, her natural rat joggle would not be quite so distinct in this squirrel hide compared with the other forms she has taken before, for the rat and the squirrel have quite similar body movements (her time as a rabbit was quite the floppy mess). Her new rusty red coat was just the gem to spark her personality, which would not change through the wearing of the variety of coats. With this coat though, it had simply fit her true self. Depending on her seasonal suit, she would be treated differently, but would not effect her, for with each new look ,she develops for her own self and becomes closer with her humbled self.

February 25 2010

For while, I've simply been drawing heads in different positions and now I'm spreading down to the body. In the past couple weeks I've had a lot of school projects to do. Fortunately, every assignment involves an art piece. Drawing so often has gotten me very encouraged to draw constantly, especially when I do not have to turn something in.
I volunteer once a week to read to elementary students and the more I'm around younger kids, the more I become aware of other peoples quirks that make them like no other. With that, I find myself disappointed on any sort of pressures we put onto people(especially kids) that their art needs to look, be made, be influenced in a certain way. One more encouragement towards becoming a Montessori teacher.

February 15 2010

my favorite form of art is from ones sketchbook. What I have found that I enjoy most from sketchbooks is the process, thoughts, mindset, technique, formation, notes, sporadic pattern, interests, habits from the unconscious. Here is a drawing done with a Pigmamicron 01. The original size is about 5 inches wide.
I enjoy seeing the continuous movement, no beginnings or ends.
I also enjoyed kausik's immediate reaction towards it. "what is it!?". He said it quite freshly. "is it a nest?".
I responded in silence and began to rotate it in a clockwise direction after a few moments. Seeing the process of how you look at art, comparing immediate reactions to ones after more observing, and also how I see it compared to how others look at it. I don't care to tell what it is seen to me as because that would contradict continuous movement. This drawing is referred to as kausik's nest although, it is not seen as a nest to me.

art therapy has been interesting me.

immediate reactions.