Open Drawing #1

Finally got to scanning these. This was the first open drawing session of this semester. Each pose was 5 mintes. I quickly sketched each out and did an equally fast wash in watercolor. Yay watercolor Moleskine!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

Still tired from Boskone. Got home at 5 this morning. Fun as hell!

Quickie Oil Portrait

Alla prima, comin' atchya. Just finished this now, took me about 45 minutes. Just a "sketch" to accompany the necklace I made earlier. Oil on treated watercolor paper, 8"x 12".
I'm afraid I came down with the flu. All achey and sore and vomiting, no fun. :(
That's all for now, my bed is calling out my name, and I need rest.

Color Wheel

So Alik gave back our color wheels. Of course I went way above and beyond with mine, as everyone else pretty much just created a circle of fanciful shapes. But noooooo, I had to drink too much workahol and get cracked out and whip this baby out in a week. I had fun though. :3
Unfortunately this is a poor picture; I will have to scan it because this is just too washed out and dull... But you get the idea. It's on a 15x15 inch piece of illustration board. The color wheel "pools" are gouache and the rest is primarily watercolor with diluted gouache here and there--I will never use illustration board for watercolor ever again, by the way. I used iridescent medium I got from a crazy painting teacher I had years ago on the runes so they are all shiny when it's seen in person. It actually looks pretty darn awesome. Everyone needs glitter every once in a while! I'm just channeling my inner little girl.
So Alik loved it, and left a sticky note on the back pretty much saying how I went above and beyond the requirements by incorporating the color wheel into a narrative piece. What can I say? That's how I roll. :D

Necklace Mock-Up

Finished my mock-up pill necklace today. Presenting this on Thursday along with sketches and my thesis proposal to get approval. I'm pretty confident I will sell my proposal and will be on my merry way and be able to move right on forward. :D
So this necklace is pretty much a cheap, rather weak piece I bought at the store. I popped out the plastic jewel in the middle and played around with pill combinations to fit in the center nicely. Unfortunately I had to cut the top three in half, but it's only a "sketch"per say, and I will be designing the pieces myself around the pills in the future, rather than taking pre-made shitty jewelry and working around the limitations they will present. The pills in the center consist of one ibuprofen and the rest are antihistamines. I just hope the actual medication I will be focusing upon will be as colorful as these... I know Prozac is a nice teal/white combo at least!

NYCC 2009!

So yesterday I hit up NY Comic Con '09. Left at 7 in the morning, got back this morning at 1:30, still tired, yawning, wishing I were still in bed...
This was my first Comic Con, and it was as big, if not bigger than how people describe the convention. Fucking huge is an understatement. I primarily kept to the Artists' Alley, but there were really only a handful of people I talked to, considering 90% of the artists were strict, hardcore comic book illustrators who eat and breathe superheroes.
Amongst the small handful of people I engaged contact with was Marko Djurdjevic, whose handshake is as hardcore as his mohawk :D I also talked to Steven Belledin for what I think was a half hour about most everything that has to do with fantasy illustration and if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's an elf; always an elf.
Like Eric Fortune poked at me to get myself some business cards (which I did!), I think Steve will be the one to influence a consistent art blog from me. Cheers to that!

As much as I would love to sit here and vegetate, I have some assignments to work on... I should finish one of them tonight at least, and I'll make a post then.

Epiphany

So yesterday instead of having our 6 hour full-class meeting for Degree Project, Margot had us meet with her individually to talk about our thesis progression. I met with her at 2:20 and no sooner had I sat down it was already quarter-to-three, accidentally going 5 minutes into another student's meeting time, not to mention my train was at 3:25...
To give a little backstory regarding my thesis, I want to focus on the sociology behind the abnormalities of man. I split it into 4 subcategories: physical, mental, actions and modification, as per Margot's suggestion to help my mind sort things out and clear the mental fog.
I let Margot know that I wanted to hone in on either the physical or mental, with a stronger interest towards mental abnormalities. Through a long conversation with my brother over the weekend during dinner I came to the conclusion that mental illness would be a topic better suited to my aesthetic and interest in visual and psychological dichotomies. I just thought that physical deformities would be too shocking or ugly-for-the-sake-of-being-ugly... That and I don't want to encroach upon Helnwein's territory. :D
So after talking with Margot about research, progression, my (obvious) enthusiasm for the topic I had to run to my studio and grab my stuff and head to Back Bay to catch my train. I got there with 7 minutes to spare before it left! Close call!
I always love riding the train, as 3 hours really gives you time to think and daydream. I can't for the life of me remember my train of thought (lol, pun) but after Providence I just thought: pills, and the flood gates opened. Thinking of how so many people now are on medication for one reason or another, and how commonplace mental disorders are now. I originally had these pictures in my head of drawings of people with pills in speech bubbles, but then I thought of the phrase "badge of honor" in connection to how people may treat their conditions/medication, and how I wish I had worn another necklace for some weird reason... Then I thought: jewelry!
Pills!
Jewelry!
Pill Jewelry!
That's all I shall reveal now, as further pondering and research must be done. But by golly I think I'm on to something! I'm so stoked!! :D