Ukelele

DONE! DONE DONE DONE! :D This is my submission for The Rabbit Hole June Poster Exhibit and it's fiiinaaally done ^.^ Clearly Mucha inspired ^.^;; The background is watercolor and the foreground is gouache. I used masking fluid to make the frame and the white splotchies. Phew. I'm so glad this is off of my to-do. Now I can go up to Burlington, VT and graduate in peace (yeah right XD).

Update: my pageviews are already higher than they were last month and there's still a week and a half left! ^.^

Cochlear Implant finished

As promised, I'll explain my Body Modification series today. I started with the Prothese painting as a parody advertisement for Art Nouveau mechanical limbs. To push the idea further, I'm working with body modifications that are both real and imagined. I may extend the idea into art deco style posters but I've been having a lot of fun working with Art Nouveau so I think I'm going to continue this series in this way for a while longer. This is the second in the Body Modification series. For this one, I wanted to juxtapose a cochlear implant with other forms of body modification, such as gauges, tattoos, unnatural haircolor, and assorted piercings. Mucha worked a lot with circular motives so I worked on a circular canvas (made from an 18" repurposed embroidery hoop) and threw some steampunky gears in for the background. Her hair is also very indicative of the Art Nouveau aesthetic.
I didn't want to scream it at the viewer but I want to see what people think of having a controversial "bionic ear" (seriously, google "cochlear implant", they're wicked cool and very real) with socially questionable alterations to one's body. Please let me know what you think.

Double post, ftw!

So, I had an assignment in painting not too long ago that had to fit into at least one criteria ("beautiful", "insults the viewer", "barely visible", "monster machine", "fearful/fearsome", and a couple of other things that I forget now) and during the critique we had to guess what the painter had in mind when they were working on it. At this point I was already getting pretty frustrated with this course since my style is much more illustrative and literal (*snarl*) than what "real painters" would like (*doublesnarl* elitists). Being the ever-patient person I am, I bitterly decided to do what I wanted to paint for the assignment so if the prof. and class didn't like it, forget them. would at least have a painting I wanted. As it turns out, the prof. LOVED it and raved for 20 minutes about both pieces!! He then continued to reference the larger picture for the rest of the crit session!! :D FTW!! Needless to say, I'm pretty pleased with myself.
For this one, which is about 10" x 17.5", I wanted to do a Mucha-esque advertisement poster for mechanical limbs and organs. I'm really pleased with how it came out and I thought I handled the nudity tastefully. Our next assignment has to be a series and I decided to base my series off of this. I'll explain more about that in tomorrow's post.
For the next one I need to explain something: I only recently started swearing (Sorry, Mom, but I do) because it was really difficult to be taken seriously as an adult when I called people "dumbface" and "butthead" when I was mad. That being said, I chose to use a swear in this piece because of the assignment and because of the verbal punch it could pack. I needed this piece to be as "in your face" as possible.
This piece is HUGE! It is 30" x 42" and her head is about life-size. When you're standing in front of it, I'm proud to say, it does in fact look like the fist is coming at you. I painted this quickly and furiously, which was a nice change from the Prothese painting. The biggest thing about this that the prof said I should change was having the speech bubble recede into the space, like her body is. I almost had my series as this but I didn't think a series of these would pack the same punch as a single one (maybe different paintings like this in different locations, but not all together in the same room).
I think my personality comes across strongly in different ways in these two paintings (which I guess is why "Dumbass" unintentionally looks like a self-portrait). I hope these go over well out there.

Ok, so

Phew, I actually took some pictures and got a couple of pictures in raw form on my computer. If I can make this a habit then maybe this blogging thing will actually work. Eventually, I might even get a new domain and crank out a better website. Or at least update the gallery on the site I already have. If I miraculously get access to a large scanner, I'll go back and update these pictures but for now, my Olympus and shaky hands will have to do.
This piece was what the sketch in my 3rd post was for. My final piece for my Figure Drawing course had to combine two artists who draw the human form. I chose Alphonse Mucha and Loish, two artists who greatly inspire me. I used Prismacolor markers (again, you rock Jennie ^.^) on 18x24" paper. The lines for the border really are straight, I just can't keep my hands steady.

o.o two in a row!

This one is kinda old but I've been wanting to get it up here for awhile. I'll try to take some pictures later today so I can keep this posting streak going. This one I did with Prismacolor markers (thanks Jennie ^.^) back in Sept. I was looking at a Mucha poster when I sketched it.


Later: So instead of sitting down at my computer to JUST check my emails (never happens 9.9) I ended up finding this amazing book I had never heard of. I've been ogling the "Art of Princess and the Frog" for awhile (heck, I remember longingly thumbing through "Art of Pocahontas" when I was itty bitty) when I came across this: "The Art of The Disney Princess". Different interpretations of the princesses by different artists across the House of Mouse!! I'll have to add this to my "when I have money to burn" list ^.^