Works In Progress

I am leaving for a trip to Miami tomorrow to celebrate the start of 2013 on the beach, where it is warm! As always, my watercolors and paper are packed and ready to go. 

I wanted to squeeze in one more post for this calendar year, but I don't have anything completed at the moment. I do have a couple of paintings in progress. They are both at the point where someone might look at them and think they were finished, and that they were just really boring. But do not be confused! They are not done yet! I have plans for their finishing touches, plans indeed!

Kiley Portrait

One of my co-workers at the USS Constitution Museum commissioned me to paint a portrait of his dog, Kiley as a Christmas gift. It was a great project and I was honored to be asked to do this painting. I also got the chance to meet Kiley in person last week and she was so excited about life!

Visit the Future!

The final assignment for my Illustration class was to create a 16" x 20" poster. To prepare, we looked at different styles of posters since they began to be a popular method of advertising in the 1800's-- the modern poster began to rise as printing technology improved. 

I have always been particularly drawn to travel posters. I think they are gorgeous! I was inspired by vintage posters, but wanted to apply the style to something whimsical so I made a travel poster for a time machine using gouache on paper. I've got these two old-timey people stepping out of their time machine (named "The Flying Laboratory" after Amelia Earhart's plane) and stepping into the City of the Future! 

In my original sketch, I had a lady scientist stepping out of the time machine and a man in old fashioned safari gear front and center, but when my class critiqued my sketch, they agreed that for female empowerment and strong women everywhere, I should put a woman in the front, boldly stepping into new territory. I liked that idea, so here she is! ...And her Victorian man-companion gets to carry the bags. 

My classmates were pretty awesome. 

And now, dear readers, where would YOU travel if you had a time machine? 

Ula Installation

Today was exciting because I installed nine paintings at Ula Cafe in Jamaica Plain. This is the first time I have ever put work up in a cafe and I am very thankful for the opportunity. I would not have been able to put up the show without help from my friends Kat and Hel, who are both fantastic people! 

I snapped some photos of the work hanging up on the walls:

All of these paintings have appeared previously on this blog except for one. The largest one with the prominent leafy tree and the colorful fences is a piece that I started last Spring and then put on back burner. When this opportunity to show work came up, I decided it was the perfect time to finish the piece. It is based on my backyard in JP. Our neighbors have a lovely, multicolored fence that I had to get onto canvas. Here is a closer look at the painting:

And finally, I wanted to include part of my artist statement that I hung next to my self portrait:

I am primarily an observational painter and no matter where I am, my work is inspired by my immediate surroundings. I love capturing a place and then committing it to canvas or wood panel. The collection of oil paintings I am presenting is inspired by views from the windows of my house here in JP and the streets I walk every day. Because these paintings are all snapshots of my life, I have also included a self-portrait to complete the narrative.

Night scenes are particularly interesting to me because of the extreme contrasts of light and dark, the heightened importance of shape, and the way every color stands out, illuminated against the dark. Trees, houses, and clouds are some of my favorite subjects and it is fascinating to see how they change with the light at different times of day.

Thank you Ula for giving me the opportunity to show my work, thank you to my friends who have been incredibly supportive of my art, and thank you to my housemates for putting up with the smell of oil paint and my brushes taking over the bathroom sink. 

No Firing at Random!

This Saturday I completed a painting for the USS Constitution Museum, where I now work one day per week. Because our visitation is slowing down with the winter season, we took the opportunity to focus on developing new programs and improving on existing ones. My project was to paint a battleship to accompany our educational program Boom which teaches museum visitors how cannons work through hands on demonstrations. Don't worry, we are only firing alka seltzer cannons, no shrapnel here! My battleship painting will, believe it or not, be used as the target for the alka seltzer cannons. I painted it in acrylic on a 46" x 70" (or so) wooden flat. I also included one of my initial sketches.

I am very happy with the way my painting turned out! So happy in fact that I may paint with acrylic more often. I studied painting with oils in college and I am also fond of watercolor. Two opposite ends of the spectrum of paint behavior, I know. Painting with watercolor is like controlling chaos, and while you can re-work it as much as you would like, every layer will be visible in your completed piece. The layers, transparencies, and unpredictability of the medium adds to the overall effect. Oils on the other hand, once you have the hang of them, give you complete control over your image and you can do so many lovely things with blending and texture. I like to mix some of my colors directly on my painting surface when I use oils. 

Acrylic is a medium I usually fight with. It dries so fast that there is barely an opportunity to blend colors the way I would with oils and getting the painting wet again doesn't allow me to re-work the paint like I can with watercolor. I thought of acrylic as the worst of both worlds. However this time, I think I got the hang of working with it. I believe there are also products like acrylic mediums that I can buy to help the paint dry the way I want it to. Also as it turns out, acrylic is significantly easier to photograph than oil. It is almost impossible to photograph an oil painting so that the colors look right and there is no glare, but taking a picture of this battleship? It came out perfectly.

Brewery Nightscape

I just completed this painting last night, a nightscape from my front balcony. The building in the distance is an old brewery and it is a beautiful structure, very iconic of the neighborhood (at least for me).

Landscapes I forgot about until just now

Like the title of this post says, I have a couple of small landscape pieces that I found while searching through work from earlier this year and I wanted to post them. The first is the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain done in water color and the second is a view from the train in central MA done in colored pencil. They both have pretty interesting clouds.

Illustration!

Wow, that month was fast. I didn't post anything! How did that happen? I have no idea, but I wanted to write about the work I have done for my illustration course at the Museum School since October. We have been doing weekly assignments based on different contexts in which you would find illustrations. We had already done cookbooks, Times Magazine spots, and portraits last time I posted. Since then we have done illustrations for a short story published in a literary journal, an opinion piece for a newspaper, an article about deforestation from an environmental publication, a book cover, and an album cover.

For the deforestation article, I collaged together different watercolor paintings I did of landscapes and cows in Indonesia, where deforestation is currently a huge problem, as all the Greenpeace canvassers in the street keep telling me when I'm trying to walk anywhere. There is some ominous smoke in the background. My class felt that it was a lovely piece of artwork, but that it was not ominous enough for the article.

Next is my illustration for a short story entitled "Charger." It is about a teenager in Kentucky trying to figure out whether he will go nowhere in life like all of his classmates and neighbors, or do something crazy and different. The scene I illustrated is when he picks up his girlfriend from her job at the mall. His truck was an important element in the story, so I made the point of view from inside the truck. My classmates pointed out that the angle of the side view mirror is wrong. This is something I was not aware of, since I don't drive. I have spent so little time in a driver's seat, that I did not notice as I was creating the image. 

I think if I were to do this piece again, I would change the girlfriend's hair a bit. In the text, her hair is described as a bird's nest piled on this girl's head, but what I drew is just poofy ridiculousness. I would also have the two figures holding hands or something, because it is actually a very affectionate moment in the story and the way I have presented them, they seem still and distant. Other than those details, I'm quite pleased!

For our opinion piece illustration, we had two options of article. The one I chose was about censorship. Apparently, many years ago a large bookstore chain was accused of selling child pornography because they carried a book of photography by Jock Sturges, who is a photographer known for his completely consensual photos of families on nude beaches. Look him up if you would like. For some reason, I think his photography of figures outside on beaches is stunning, but when the photo is taken inside a house, it squiks me out. But for opinion illustrations, my own opinion doesn't matter. The goal is to illustrate the author's opinion. I drew this:

A book with a fig leaf, the classic symbol for covering up nudity. My class thought that it looked too much like a photo album, and that it would be effective in black and white, so I did another version in pencil. You can decide which one you think is more effective:

For our book cover illustration, we again had two choices of books to illustrate. The one I chose was a self help book about how to stop a procrastination habit. I focused on the idea of balancing time and all of the things you want to do, by collaging an old-timey brass scale with images to represent different things someone might do with their time. Once again my class thought that the image was well done, but the concept needed work. They pointed out that procrastination is about avoidance more than it is about balancing work and things outside of work. That's when I made the connection that balancing work and other things has been a preoccupation of mine for a while now. I guess subconsciously I was tapping into that instead of doing the assignment.

And finally the most fun assignment we have had yet, probably because it allowed us the most freedom, was the album cover. We could choose any band or musical artist we wanted and imagine that they were coming out with a new album and we had been hired to design the cover (or if it is an artist who is no longer living, perhaps a record label wanted to put out a new compilation of their recordings). Naturally I chose The Cat Empire, my favorite band of all time. Their album covers tend to be fairly simple and the all include the band's cat eye symbol. I happen to think of them as a fun, crazy, experimental, exciting, upbeat band, so I wanted to use watercolors because of their unpredictability, while keeping the design itself relatively simple so that it would fit in well with the rest of their albums. Incidentally they are recording a new album right now! But I bet they already have cover art for it... 

Cat Empire: If you're out there reading my blog, what do you think of this album cover?

My New Love Affair with Ink and a Rundown of My Life

Hello there blog readers! I don't know how many of you there are, sometimes I wonder. Anyway, this weekend I did a ridiculous amount of things in a very small amount of time.

FIRST on Friday I went aboard the USS Constitution (the oldest commissioned war ship still afloat in the world) for a harbor turn-around, most of which I spent running around taking ridiculous photos with my fellow museum learning staff and drinking more than my fair share of hot cocoa provided by America's Navy. If you are not crazy about how much of our tax dollars go to the armed forces, perhaps it will make you feel a wee bit better that some of those dollars go towards providing me complimentary hot chocolate with delicious marshmallows. Then I worked on my Day of the Dead painting and went to a shift at the theatre where I work.

NEXT on Saturday I went to the Museum School bright and early for Part I of a weekend workshop on making comic books, taught by a fantastic artist-- Raúl González whose name would score a LOT of points in Scrabble if proper names were allowed and there was more than one Z included in a standard Scrabble set. I digress. Check out his work! After the workshop, I high tailed it to a fancy hotel to work at a fancy dinner to raise money for the USS Constitution Museum. I schmoozed, met a lot of great people, and wore a ball gown! A BALL GOWN! Then I took a lot of really ridiculous photos with my fellow museum learning staff. It was a good weekend for that.

ON SUNDAY I submitted my painting to the Uforge Gallery and took the bus to the Museum school for Part II of the Comic Book Workshop and after that, back to JP I went for the annual Lantern Festival where there is apple cider, live music, and hundreds of handmade lanterns. It was beautiful and lovely and a perfect end to a weekend of running around like a crazy person.

So what I actually intended to focus on in this post was the workshop. The Workshop! It was attended by a small but mighty group of aspiring comic book artists (who had all already made quite a bit of progress of their own). It was a lot of ground to cover in a very short amount of time. Raúl guided us through the steps that comic book artists go through to lay the groundwork for putting together a story-- character designs, storyboards, measuring panels-- with a ruler! I do exactly none of those things when I go to draw Girrrl!!! so I think it was great for me to have someone explain/demonstrate them.

We got a chance to try out every step of the process starting with character sheets:

I did one of Jenny but then focussed more closely on a character that Caitlin and I have not yet introduced in the story, but she is coming and she will be awesome:

We looked at examples of styles and mediums used by a wide spectrum of established comic book artists and, again, attempted them ourselves. This was the moment, as I wrote in the title of this post, when I tried ink for the first time in the context of cartooning. It. Is. The Best. I have often wondered how the work I do on this comic related to painting and I had never been able to connect it before. I think I am more of a painter than a drawer (is that the right word for an artist who draws?). In fact, my college professors told me pretty candidly that I'm not good at drawing. Painting and drawing are actually pretty different skills, and I think I'm generally a pretty rockin' painter (room to grow, but pretty rockin' nonetheless) but perhaps my drawing just isn't strong. But this weekend I learned that I CAN PAINT COMICS. Get ready for an ink explosion, guys. It's coming. I can sense it. These were my first tries at ink:

 Oh man. I'm excited. 

Also, since I imagine you were wondering:

Día de los Muertos at Uforge

I recently discovered the Uforge Gallery in Jamaica Plain, which presents gallery shows on themes that change from month to month. November's "assignment" as they call them is Day of the Dead. I was super excited to make a Day of the Dead painting and here is the completed piece:

This was one of the most challenging compositions I have ever attempted. About halfway through I was like, "what have I done?! Why didn't I just do like two people and one light source?!" But it was all worth it in the end. It came a long way from its humble beginnings:

I hope Uforge does not mind wet paint, as I just finished it this morning. Also, my camera is getting old and the quality of the photos it takes is worse every time... I know what I'm saving up for next.

If you are local to Boston and would like to come to the opening night of the show, it is Thursday, November 1st from 6 to 8 pm at 767 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain!

Melfina the Mutant Fawn-Giraffe Bio-Android Easel

This is a post about my new half French easel-- I bought her a couple of weeks ago and she is gorgeous and I love her. She looks like some kind of strange and beautiful three legged wild animal, like a mutant fawn-giraffe. 

I asked the girl in the art supply store what made it a "half French" easel and she said that it is half the standard size for a French easel. I was hoping maybe one of its parents was French and the other was Turkish or Australian or Nicaraguan or Texan or Egyptian and that they had some kind of star crossed love affair that resulted in a bi-racial easel baby, but no, it is just half size.

French easels are cool because they have all kinds of screws you can adjust and parts you can move, so that you may fold it up into a box for easy transport. This is also how she was packaged when I brought her home from the store, so I spent a lot of time unfolding all of her gangly limbs from this box and it strongly reminded me of an anime I used to watch in Middle School and High School called Outlaw Star, which is about space pirates and alien cat girls and a bounty-hunter/womanizer, and many other things as well. 

Setting up my easel reminded me specifically of a part early on in Outlaw Star when our bounty-hunter/womanizer hero comes into possession of this mysterious giant box/briefcase thing, which turns out to be carrying a hot naked bio-android girl (one step more human than a cyborg, but still made with robot parts), who rises out of the box much like my easel rose out of its box to stand for the first time. She later goes on to operate a space ship and have an identity crisis. 

The hot bio-android's name in the show is Melfina, and I thought it would be suitable to name my new easel after her. When Cartoon Network aired Outlaw Star, they gave her clothes because kids watch Cartoon Network, but you get the idea.

And here is Melfina the easel, set up in my bedroom/art studio, surrounded by works in progress that I have not yet posted. Consider this a sneak peek. 

Homage

I just finished my latest assignment for Illustration class. The prompt was portraits in cut paper, black and white. We were supposed to choose someone iconic, someone people will recognize. If I have done my job well, I won't need to tell you who this is:

Veggies!!

This week's assignment for my Illustration class was cook book illustrations. I experimented with scratch board paper. Perhaps next time I should use real scratch board tools and not blunt scissors, and perhaps I should give myself more time and not wing-it on the lettering, but all things considered, I'm moderately happy with these.

New Yorker Spots

The second assignment for my illustration class at the Museum School was really, really fun-- we drew series of spots, which are the little images in the middle of magazine articles such as The New Yorker. The illustrations are in black and white and don't have anything to do with anything so we could draw whatever we wanted as long as it was tiny (3" x 3" max). Most people in my class did a few illustrations on one theme but I thought the assignment was awesome so I made it my personal goal to do as many as I could in a week.

Aaaaand here they are!

I did this candle and the small person with a giant coat and house plant in class:

Then I thought, "I should do illustrations on a theme. How about fluffy animals?"

In following the theme of fluffy animals, I drew the fluffiest animal I have ever met-- one of the dogs that belonged to my host family when I spent a semester in Mexico. Her name was Tonka:

Then I thought, "Woah-- ALL of my host family's dogs had so much character. I'll draw all of them!" so here they are. The wrinkly one is Jani (pronounced like honey), then there's Tonka again, and on the bottom row the black one is Pintocha, and the one looking away is Georgie.

(These dogs were not drawn to scale. See below.)

So then one day I was sitting in Copley Square with my sketchbook and I drew a series of spots of Copley. I did the dome of Old South Church:

The door to the Boston Public Library:

A house sparrow:

And a tree:

Also here is a shopping cart that is completely random:

... and a girl hugging a star. If she were hugging a real star, she would probably burn to death, but she seems ok.

And finally, I did a series where I messed with a bunch of famous art.

This guy with no clothes has stepped in yet another icky clock puddle while walking around in Dalí's masterpiece.

Someone is invading Mona's personal bubble here:

This is my take on the beautiful tradition of nautical painting:

And finally, I gave this guy something to REALLY scream about.

The assignment for next week is cookbook illustration, so get psyched for some food I'm about to draw! 

Also, I was enrolled in a second class this semester called Introduction to Adobe Illustrator but I have decided to drop the class for many reasons, the main ones being I didn't realize that I would find Adobe Illustrator so boring and I can't think of any way to apply it to any of my artistic goals. I think Photoshop would be more up my alley. Don't get me wrong-- Illustrator seems super useful and I'm glad we have artists and designers out there who can use it and enjoy using it. However, I am not one of them. Also, there was a wait-list for people who really wanted to get into the class and I figured they would make better use of it than I would. AND the class was on Zumba night and the thought of giving up Zumba for 14 weeks so that I could sit at a computer was very sad to me.