Watercolor Class

For the last couple weeks, I have spent every Wednesday evening at CSMA taking a class about painting landscapes in watercolors. I work mostly in oil so I thought it was time to switch it up a bit. Plus, as I have said before, I love painting landscapes.

I have worked in watercolor plenty, but I have never been officially instructed in it and I am having a lot of “ah HA” moments in class, where I think, “ So THAT’S how you get that effect” or, “I could use this technique to do THIS.” So that's been awesome and I have a lot of new ideas for future artistic experiments. Sometimes I like to think of every artist as a mad scientist/inventor, laughing maniacally at themselves in their mad art/science labs as they create the perfect color or composition or concept to test out. Experimentation is important in life and in art, I believe.

On the other hand, learning about watercolors is making me long to paint in oil. Painting with oils is so smooth and easy and magical, whereas watercolors are unpredictable and well, fluid. Those qualities are part of the appeal of watercolors! I am just realizing that working in oil is like a language I speak fluently and I just don’t know how to say as much with watercolors yet. 

Let me show you what I’ve got so far:

We started by painting evergreen trees just to see what the medium is capable of and play with different effects. These are all my evergreens. My favorites are the top left corner and the yellow and red ones.

Then we used deciduous trees to play with washes and removing sections of paint once you put them down. Watercolor is such an involved process!

Here are more deciduous tree experiments. I dig 'em.

Then I did these practice trees at home.

I think I was subconsciously channeling this Counting Crows album cover (the Counting Crows being my favorite band from high school):

And Counting Crows aside, I completed one whole landscape, based on a photo I took in France:

Now that we have practiced all these fancy shmancy techniques in class, we are headed out to pretty places around Ithaca to paint en plein air, as they say, so there will be more watercolor landscapes on the way!

Oh, and one last thing-- I wanted to put up my latest oil painting for comparison with all these watercolors. It was so foggy and gorgeous the day I painted it-- magical!!

The Last of the Cornell Studio Ceramics

Well, it is official: The Cornell Ceramics Studio is being shut down after 54 years of use by the Ithaca and Cornell communities, artists, students, and anyone else who was interested so that they may transform the space into a "multi purpose room." Read: a room that will probably end up with some grungy couches and a broken pool table in about 6 years. There are no other public ceramics studios in Ithaca. I think this will be a huge loss to Ithaca as a whole.

Yes, even after a petition with OVER 1,000 SIGNATURES, many letters on behalf of the studio to the president of Cornell and the Dean of Student Life, and a spirited protest in the rain which featured me on a bullhorn chanting things like, "Make a bowl! Make a pot! Close the studio? I think not!" the higher ups at Cornell still decided to shut the studio down for good.

I am super bummed out.

I went to the studio today to collect what I think (?) is the last of the stuff I made and I am pleased with how everything came out! I have all these new ideas about more things I could make but oh wait... I can't because they're closing the studio to make way for a multi purpose room.

Anyway, here they are!

My mom chose the glazes for this mug with its little bird alighting the handle. I think she has been even more excited than I was for it to get fired! My mom is adorable.

This is the first bowl I have ever made that is is actually big enough to fit a meal's worth of soup.

I added patterns to this little mug using some stampy things I found at Ten Thousand Villages (I threw that picture of me holding them for reference). I am new at stamping wet clay and so I ended up with a very asymmetrical mug but you know what they say; if you want perfect ceramics, go to Walmart.

And below is what I have been referring to as my Wonky Pitcher. It's one of the weirdest things I have ever thrown. It is super lopsided, doesn't pour very easily, and the glaze came out... well, not quite how I expected it would, but the little guy has grown on me. Three cheers for Wonky Pitcher.

The following are my latest MAGICAL CERAMICS!!!

Yes, that is a unicorn mug!

It reads, "Just say NEIGH to people who don't believe in MAGIC."

Look at that glaze! How cool is that?

Ok, and I know you have been on the edge of your seats waiting for these bad boys to come out of the kiln and here they are-- HARRY POTTER POTION BOTTLES!!!!!!

Felix Felicis and Polyjuice Potion!! I also made Veritaserum but it is hard to read and the lid hasn't been fired yet, but when I get it, I'll post it up.

Anyway, to take my mind off of how bummed I am that I will never take another class at the Cornell Ceramics Studio, I started taking a watercolor class at CSMA. Soon to come: a post about watercolors!

I'm Adorable

Goodness Gracious, I was just awarded The Adorable Blog Award by Emily of the blog Because it's Way Past Blog Time, & Because I can!! Thank you so much Emily!!! Go check out her blog!

Here are ten things about me:

1- I am crazy good at pogo sticking.

2- I took the train from San Jose, California to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania last summer.

3- When I read a book, I make all of the same facial expressions that the author describes the characters making. It helps me get into the story.

4- I am one of the few people on earth who doesn't like pad thai or bacon.

5- I own a truly ridiculous number of scarves and I love all of them.

6- When I was 15 I dressed up as a giant vagina in the Ithaca Festival Parade. I just scrounged up some photographic proof (since I know you were wondering...!) I look so young!

7- I know all the words to the Ludacris rap in Justin Bieber's "Baby."

8- I am madly in love with Peter Doig's paintings.

9- ... and I am also madly in love with Nampeyo's pottery ever since I did a research paper about her in college.

10- I have appeared in 3 home made music videos, including a Justin Bieber parody, thus #7.

And now I would like to nominate the following blogs for this prestigious award!

Dropping Bob-ombs

Gary's Third Pottery Blog

Reverend Awesome

Things I like

If you choose to accept this award, rules are as follows:

-Thank the person who gave you this award, and link back to them in your post.
-Tell us 10 things about yourself.
-Nominate your bloggers.
-Contact these bloggers, and let them know they received this award.

Living on Borrowed Fame, and Girrrl!!!'s move to Wordpress

I check the site stats on my blog frequently because it is really exciting to me to know when people looked at my blog and how many and where they're from and all that jazz and I was psyched to see the spike in popularity of my post about self portraits.

I thought, "Woah there! I'm so excited that everyone likes my self portraits so much!" but upon closer inspection, I discovered that my blog is coming up when people search for Frida Kahlo or Pablo Picasso because I reference their self portraits in the post. I'm sorry Frida! I'm sorry Picasso! I'm apparently just jumping on your bandwagon of artistic fame. 

On the plus side, I also discovered that my blog comes up when you google, "art history and Harry Potter" and that just rocks my world.

My other bit of news is that Caitlin's and my comic, Girrrl!!! has moved to Wordpress, which looks way more slick and I think it will allow us better image quality. We have posted the first two chapters there as well as our brand new third chapter! Please check it out!! 

In chapter 3 we are introducing a few new characters, including Captain Cluck, pictured at the lower left of this sketch that isn't actually finished:

And here are my initial sketches for two of Captain Cluck's trusty minions, Gravy, and Biscuit:

Want to know more? Well I guess you better go to Girrrl!!!'s new website!

And just to give you greater incentive to go see it, I will tell you that you will also find some photos of me falling off of a chair. They are hilarious! See you at wordpress!

Collage, the Excitement! The Danger!

So, I am really into collage. I think it is a pretty cool medium when done right and I have spent a lot of time making collages in my day. During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college, I failed to get a summer job, so I spent months sitting on my bedroom floor making endless collages. It became almost like an addiction: I couldn't NOT collage if I had the time. I was happiest when I was surrounded by scissors and tiny paper clippings. I also noticed that over the course of the summer, the way I made collages changed. I started expanding my ideas and taking the images in new directions. I started using the images I found in new ways. It was awesome. 

These are collages from that first set I did that summer:

After that, I started getting into the idea of mixed media, that is combining found images with painted elements. My work started shifting in that direction on paper, canvas, wood panel, and found objects (usually found at the Salvation Army). The following are the next incarnations of collage in my life:

The most recent collage style I have been experimenting with is using figure drawings as source material for collage. I carry out a ridiculously elaborate process involving tracing paper, a system of sorting colors and textures I find, and incredibly tedious cutting of tiny puzzle-piece like shapes. The result is worth it:

My drawing and painting professor in college thought this one looked like paint by number porn. Thoughts?

Anywho, I think collage is one of the most exciting things you can do when you do it right! The danger of collage happens when you start using it as a way to avoid drawing or painting. When you start to rely on the found images to create your work for you, that is when it stops being a valuable medium. I know this because I went through some time when I fell into that artistic rut. Some of the best advice I got that helped me through that was to think about why I was attracted to the images I was choosing and figure out how I could express those artistic interests with my own hand and my own voice. The second piece of advice that helped me was simply to trust myself as a painter.

Oh collage, you fickle mistress.