Christmas Dr. Sketchys

I'm pleased to post something so recently after my last post. Perhaps, 2010 will be a year I resurrect my blog? Heaven forbid!

At work we got a little bit of a competition going on, and hopefully in the next month I'll be able to show some progress shots from that little deal. In the meantime, I once again hit up Dr. Sketchy's Baltimore, incensed by the warm praise on their blog and from others I've shown the work to. Tonight the model was absolutely gorgeous, and shamefully, I must admit that I captured very little correctly. I wish some of the 2-5 minute poses she held could have been the long ones, the light setup and the subtleties of the female figure were intoxicating.

Here is a butt:
Frustrated that I wasn't doing her justice immediately, I decided to try to go straight for speedpainting in color during the shorter poses. Disaster, friends, disaster. Only two sketches are worth showing. My mind was in another place.

THE LEG!

And this lil torso thing, which poorly represents anatomy, but here I was focusing on color.


Eventually we got to the 20 mintue poses (sadly only two) and in this first one she was mostly covered by a gigantic furry coat, so I decided to attempt a face.


Unfortunately I made her like uh I dunno 40 years older than she was. (Sorry Nicolette!!) Sigh, I wish there were longer poses, I'd really like to see what I can accomplish with more than 20 minutes. I think I might take an open model class next semester at MICA.

Finally there's this:


I was somewhat happy with it, though the arm is far too spindly for my tastes. (its resting on an umbrella btw. The image as a whole creepily resembles one of my earlier paintings, which kind of bothers me.

Overall the night, while somewhat frustrating was a rejuvenating, refreshing experience, as it always is. Sadly, I must wait more than a month for another Sketchys (Jan 25th, poop) Until then I suppose I'll just have to ride on the high I got off of the complements of fellow sketchers (thanks again :) )

Dr. Sketchy's

Went to Dr Sketchy's Baltimore tonight. As always, it was a wonderful experience! I had particular fun because compared with my last Dr Sketchy's post, exactly one year ago, i feel as though I have improved much, especially considering I haven't done much figurative work at... work in the last couple months. The following are 20 minute sketches, and yes, she was wearin' pasties.
The event moved from Dionysius to the Windup Space, which is much bigger, though the stage used can really only be viewed from one direction, which is a bummer if you get there late - you'll be behind 5 or 6 people.
I think that one was my most sucessful. Don't look at the horrible head, gah, I need to get good at drawing faces quickly!! Next sketchy's, in two weeks, I'll try to remember to work on the face during the 5 minute poses.


She wasn't actually looking away, but it seemed like a quick easy solution to my head problem :)

Quite enjoyable, the whole experience, despite the fact that I think i'm coming down with some sort of cold (ffffff) I'd like to do some life drawing with the computer that last longer than 20 minutes, that way I could finish more parts. Spring semester I think I'm going to try to sign up for the continuing studies life drawing class. Of course, by then I'll be far into my new body of sculptural work but more life drawing isn't a bad thing! It was great tonight though, artistically re-acquainting myself with the female body.

Good stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Stepping up to the threshold

Life's been super busy. And I've done that on purpose. I haven't had a chance to just sit down and write on this thing or even update with simple images. In addition I haven't updated the blog because I haven't had anything worth updating it with. The Anagama stuff was sort of a barsetter as far as my sculptural work, is concerned, and everything past those has sort of felt like an echo, or a doodle. I haven't felt as though there was something worth conveying, which has been troubling. The Anagama work was a life-changing event, and it has been hard to follow that up. Furthermore I'm in the deepest point of self-transformation that I don't quite know who I am or even where I am going, so I've been unsure and uninspired. My illustrations outside of work haven't kept my attention long enough for me to get them to a point of being complete.

I did this guy last night though, as I've decided recently to go heavily back into figurative work


More of a character sketch to get me warmed up than anything, but whatever, he makes me laugh.


This was a piece I made a couple weeks back, and I'm particularly happy with how the hands came out. I woodfired it in Clayworks' Noborigama, which killed it, I'm afraid. Such metallic, shiny surface treatment has seemed to injure the feel of the figurative work. I've tried glazes in the past, but I haven't found one that has complemented my style yet, and I don't think I will. The best, by far, has been the Anagama treatment.


I don't think that, if I continue down the figurative sculpture path, I'll ever be able to not fire in anagama for the finish. I'm definitely going to be doing figurative work. The last week or so has been rough for me, for a variety of reasons I'm not going to get into. That broke, however, last night when I began to do some more thinking. Freshman-year me would scoff, but I've begun to realize how important critically analyzing oneself is towards making fulfilling artwork. So I'm in research mode right now, and I've begun to formulate a couple of ideas of themes and elements to spit out and re-arrange and re-examine, and I'm energized.

I think I'm done with thrown work, for now. I can't justify using them to myself, unless they are purely functional, and I've got plenty of mugs and bowls. I think its high time I got good at sculpting the female form, and its time for me to discover wood again.

Thats it for now. No hints about the themes, I'm still figuring that all out myself

Its going to be an exciting winter!

Dead Blog

Well its been far too long since I've posted here. My life is a whirl of activity and because of this damn NDA i have been unable to post up any of my art! Furthermore I find it hard to do more digital painting at the end of the day after doing it for 8 hours straight, so I don't really have anything on the side to post up. I haven't been able to take pictures of my more recent ceramic work either because I've been too busy to remember to take photos when the sun is at the right arc in the sky to make for good lighting on the back of my porch.

Rest assured, though, I am still doing art!

I think it'd be a copout not to show at least one image for a post on an art blog, so I figured I'd put up a face of mine, a "Port'o'pa" that I absolutely adore. I've got an odd fixation with sculpting old men :3

I have a couple plans in the works for the future. Some extremely geeky, others cool, others CONCEPTUAL ooh. Considering how busy I've been I don't expect to get to half of them, but who knows!

exhumation

Now that they're online and in one place, it feels like somehow I've not done enough.  I was debating adding an artist's statement, but I figured more important would be posting the work somehow.  The statement isn't even complete, as I'm in the process of writing a lot of things. 

I will say though that these are breakthrough pieces for me, artistically and personally, and from greenware to gallery, they have closed doors that needed to be closed and opened a great deal more.

Show!

:) 

Tomorrow I flood the office with postcards!

Apparently I like the 'dusk/dawn' time of day

More 30 min color experiments. 

a relaxed day ... I should have been more productive

More Color Experiments

I'm working towards broadening my color understanding by selecting colors based off of what I see outside my window, or if at night, what I see in the room around me, then modifying that palette to suit my needs. 

This is another 20 minute quickie i did, this time its from a dream I had, that I may be developing into something more detailed and greater. we'll see.

This was another hour long quickie where I decided to channel Jon Foster, I think (badly, I might add)  ... just a scribble 

More to come!