The Twins

Gemini, Watercolor 2012

Here's the latest illustration in my zodiac series. Hope you enjoy it!

The Bull

Taurus, Watercolor 2012

This is the first piece in a series of illustrations for each sign of the zodiac. More coming soon. Thanks for looking!

a still life

Requisites, Graphite 2012

This is another one for Lawrence Yun's drawing class. It's about gender conventions and it's also about how much I love to render hair.

Lawrence did a demo for us on applying graphite powder, which is what I used for the table. I cut a stencil and applied layers of powder with a brush until I got it as dark as I needed it. I think it was pretty successful, it was fairly quick and probably the best way to get an even tone.

That's about all I have to say about this one. In my last post I wondered why I don't draw like this (photo-realistically) more often. Now I remember why. I takes ten thousand years, it's fucking boring and I will probably never do it again once this class is over.

a preview

 These are two pieces I did for a collaborative project I recently started with a few friends and friends of friends. We are working on a title and a few other logistics, but we should have the blog for that project up within a few weeks, at which point I will link to it here. The basic premise of the project is a conversation through artwork. So each person created a piece, dealing with the theme "identity" and then we randomly swapped pieces and created response pieces to each other's work. 

We plan to repeat the process indefinitely and just kind of see what happens, sharing the results on a blog as we go. I'm really excited about it because I love working collaboratively, it reminds me of my high school Literary Magazine (which is where I met two of the artists from this project) and it's awesome because there's a lot of variety in terms of work. There are other visual artists as well as writers so I can't wait to see where it goes.

 Literally, I can't wait. Which I guess is why I am sharing these pieces here, now. This first piece is about trying to understand how many people there are living right now. I can read the number, but it's difficult to really grasp what it represents. This is about trying to relate to that number and the what it means to be one of seven billion unique individuals.

Everyone; No One, Watercolor, Ink, 2012

This piece is a response to a poem called Counting Steps, Counting Breaths by my friends Annie Le. The poem will be on our project site and I will link to it here once it is. I know she is inspired by Buddhist teachings and Thich Naht Hahn, who is totally amazing. You should all read his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness. 

Only Peeling; Watercolor, Colored Pencil, 2012

That's all for now! Thanks for reading/looking!

perfume

Perfume; Graphite, 2012

This is a piece I just finished for Lawrence Yun's descriptive drawing class. The class is all photo-realist style rendering, which I actually really enjoy, but I don't do it unless forced to for some reason. It's kind of brainless and fun to do while watching/listening to television shows I've already seen. So this piece is brought to you buy seasons one through three of Weeds. 

The spray pattern was an experiment which wasn't terribly successful, but I spent a stupid amount of time cutting out this intricate stencil and I felt obligated to use it. Why is she spraying perfume in her face? Because it was the style at the time. Because her face stinks. Because I wanted to render her face, okay?

Special thanks to my model for this piece, my little sister Sam (who's amazing BTW, 23 years old and she's already lapped me for a bachelors degree and is kicking ass in law school. Sorry, I can't resist bragging about Sam whenever I mention her, it's like OCD or something.) As beautiful as she is, Sam could never have a career as a model, because after the first 20 frames or so, this started happening:

See you next Friday!

Oh, did I not tell you? I'll be updating my blog every Friday from now on. There. Now that I have promised the internet, I can't disappoint.

Thank You?

from my sketchbook: last week of january

Self Portrait; Ballpoint Pen

So pretend this is a riveting explanation of my reasons for neglecting to update my blog over the last few million years and a promise to myself and the internet that I will henceforth post something new every week from now until eternity.

more or less the same

For this piece I was exploring the relationship between memory and identity. I was specifically interested in the way a person's identity is, at least in part, comprised of his or her experiences or memories, while at the same time the way in which a person stores and recalls those experiences is largely influenced by that person's beliefs and expectations about his or her self.

More or Less the Same, 2011; 30" x 40"; Oil, Encaustic and Collage on Panel

More or Less the Same, Detail

More or Less the Same, Detail

The finished piece is a self portrait collaged from photographs taken at different points in my life, from baby pictures up until this year. It was a really interesting process for me, looking through old pictures, deciding which ones to cover up as I layered them to build the figure. The title is taken from the "missing verse" of The Boxer, which came on while I was sketching for this painting during one of those awesome moments when Pandora is totally reading my mind.

I've been trying to remember to take process pictures while I'm working on a piece, because that's the kind of thing I really enjoy seeing on other artist's blogs, but I always forget about it while I'm working so the following is a pretty shotty record of my process:

Reference Photos

Sketch

Not Pictured: building the panel, (which honestly I'm no good at yet so it's probably better I didn't document that mess) gathering photos, and stealthily making photocopies of the originals I couldn't use at my office's copy machine.

Underpainting: Acrylic

More Underpainting: Also Acrylic

Collaging: Photos, Matte Medium, Oil and Encaustic Medium

Almost Finished: Same Shit as Above

...so that's it! Thanks for, you know, reading and/or looking at this. See you guys later, bro.