Tings

So this week in drawing class we had to A.) draw our self portraits from the neck down. ( which by the way is the cruelest possible assignment in the world. I was also the only girl to go for the gusto and do it in my skivvies, two guys in my class went shirtless, but i was the only one nearly nude.) The professor said that it had a strong pose, and a good sense of line. The really good artist in my class said that it looked like it had attitude. Later that day we had to draw the person next to us for an hour so I drew this girl. She kind of reminds me of my friend Rebecca, who was run over by a police officer when she was 14. We were best friends.
On a lighter not I have been accepted to the University of Wales at Newport for the Honors Design for advertising program. So, school starts September 17, meaning I will be moving to another country at the end of this summer. I was also admitted to the Mint windows show for March. I pick up my window Sunday evening. I have a really awesome idea.... you'll have to wait to hear more about it though. Also, I took pictures today of the house that I was talking about before, the one with the deer in the yard.So when I get some more down time I'll begin work on the painting of it. Tomorrow I have to turn a pile of sticks into not ONE but TWO a grade A 3-D design project for crit on Monday. On Tuesday I'm going to see Ann Hamilton talk at the Rialto, and the Wednesday morning i get to have coffee with her in the gallery. Um ... what else.... I'm editing the book as well this weekend. I got tattooed last night by Mark Magee ( longest working tattoo artist in Atlanta) and I'll have pictures when its all healed up and pretty. Right now my arm slightly resembles battered fruit. Oh and I took Blood Lust over to the Highlander ( a hole in the wall strip mall bar) for the manager to look at to put on the wall and he said ... " is this it?".. seriously dude, see ya! Okay, I'm out. Leave me interesting things.

Drawing II Assingment

So my hot drawing II professor gave us awesome home work: Draw you self as a super villain. Best homework assignment ever. So I kicked a few ideas around, sex fiend who whips people into submission and get what they want through sexual prowess, complete with hooker boots, leather gloves, and a corset of course. But after I drew it it just seemed a little contrived. What girl wouldn't want to be seen as a sex-goddess/ super villain? SO , I drew another picture, this time in a space ship pointing a laser at the planet earth, about to push the little red "total destruction button".
Also, I finished my painting, Blood Lust,
you can take a look and see for yourself. To the right is a detail of the hand which, as I mentioned before, I re-worked to be more in line with the graphic quality of the face. The true colors are those depicted in the right, detail picture. The color in the full sized picture above is off because I kept getting a big shine flare from the flash of the camera and so it was taken in ambient light, which is crap. So basically, its mostly lavender and red and coblat, not orange and pink. Also, the heart took longer than I thought. It was actually a little challenging, it;s something which I would like to reference again, in a future work, more successfully. I recently heard that a bar here in Atlanta, The Highlander, is looking for new artist to have work displayed, so I think I'd like to get in touch with them to see if they would be interested in displaying this for sale. Normally I'd rather not sell it but it looks like I might not have a place to live in a few months. I heard back from the First National BFA/ BA juried exhibition in Tampa, and my Anvil Girls











were declined, along with The Farewell, some of my most successful pieces. I have to admit that I am disappointed.
I still haven't heard anything back from MINT, so I'm starting to worry that I got declined for the windows show as well, and I had a really great idea. I wont let anyone one in on it yet since it don't want to disappoint anyone in case I'm not chosen. I think I'm going to take a break from all the face images that I've been painting and work on backgrounds from classic cartoons like O'Laughlin's backgrounds in The Pink Panther. I'm really drawn to the simple use of organic shapes that represent trees and clouds and rocks. I think he used a stencil made from animation cells, and sponge painted over them and then inked in lines for representational objects. So for my next project I think I'm going to paint my neighbors house. They have the BEST concrete deer in the front yard that has always endeared me to them. Once they had this dog and it got pregnant and had puppies ( i mean come on what else would is have, kittens?) and all the puppies ended up in my back yard and I begged my dad to let me keep one. He said no, of course. The puppies grew into the UGLIEST dogs I have ever seen, they were like... chow and dalmatian or something. They were basically awkward, HUGE, and spotted black and white. Once one of them got out and was hit by a car in front of my house, and I watched them put their dog in a garbage bag and toss it in the trash heap. So much for man's best friend. So this is the house that I'm going to paint, dead dog, concrete deer and all. I'd like to have something to remember the old neighborhood by. So that's the next big painting. Today's drawing homework is to do a self portrait from the neck down. Since i don't have a full length mirror I was thinking, that maybe just this once I could draw from a picture. I have a digital camera, and I don't have money to buy a full length mirror with so I think, resources being what they are currently( nothing) it's honestly the best I can do. Unless anyone has any suggestions, not that anyone reads this anyway. But if by chance there is someone out there who has a suggestion, by all means please feel free to chime in. On a completely un-related note my dad is going to put my cat to sleep if I can't find a home for him. Does anyone want a White Persian? He's a purebred, and he's old and sweet and healthy and I don't want him to die. He's fixed and de-clawed.

Drawing, painting, drawing, painting,smoke, draw, draw, paint, paint (repeat) smoke

It's all in the title. Today was another fun filled drawing/ painting day here in Atlanta. First off I continued to work on my "Blood-lust" painting. I re-worked the hand to be more in line with the style in which I executed the face. I also managed to work out some of the afore mentioned kinks I was having with the cobalt, by simply sealing the layers I had completed with a gloss medium and then painting over it with nice results. You can see the ghost of the old hand if you look closely. I plan on taking care of that before I pronounce it done. I probably have about 3-4 more working hours left on this, so hopefully it will be finished tomorrow, and obviously it isn't finished. I just like being able to see the progression of how other artists work, and thought that maybe someone might be interested in how I work. Don't be afraid to fix something in a painting if you think it looks wrong the first time around. The extra effort involved is what can push a piece over the line from simply "okay" to outstanding. Not to say that this piece is outstanding. It takes years and years or hard work and practice to become Great and I have only been serious about painting for about six months. Not to say I started painting six months ago, but it was when I felt like I really needed to do this. I had this internal force that simply drove me to paint. It pains me on the days when I simply don't have the time or the resources(i.e out of town) to draw or paint. I come home and start furiously working on something.
Today while I was waiting for layers to dry I ran over John K's blog and took notes. He posted all these great model sheets from classic animations such as Tom and Jerry cartoons, Hiawatha, and The Reluctant Dragon. Inspired by some of my childhood favorites to draw I gave it a shot, here's the results
<-This is inspired by a squirrel that guest starred in a Barney Bear cartoon, only I interpreted the squirrel as a sassy female who is only out to steal your nuts. (note the nuts) The cute lil dear and pals are inspired by the Hiawatha cartoon which was loosely based on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem written about an Indian. So no, it isn't Bambi ( obviously). If I was able to work in the animation industry today I think I would create an old throw back to the Silly symphonies hay day and have similarly designed woodland characters set to the musical story of the William Tell Overture.


This was my attempt at using a clear line of action. As usual I probably over reached my own abilities with this one and tried drawing something I had never draw before. It didn't come out too bad, maybe some color it would pull it together. It was my first attempt at drawing a cartoon duck, and I only worked on this for about three minutes. I bet if i worked on it a lil longer I could clean it up a bit. This is the last one I drew, bare in mind I drew all three of these in about three minutes. The eyes are a lil stiff for me, but other than that it wasn't completely unsuccessful. The next set of drawings I did was taken pretty much directly from this model sheet. Actually you even see in this picture where I printed out the model sheet and and taped it into my sketch book and drew directly from it. The only original thing I did was change the rose around a bit to make it look a bit more... rose like, and give the poor gal a neck and bust.The rose is a little too big for my liking, but otherwise, I think this is pretty decent. I really love this style of old timey girl.
The finished version is to the left------->

The last thing I have to share from what I did today is a VERY rough, extremely tentative sketch for an Illustration of my up coming book, I have been playing with a bunch of ideas for main character design. I even looked at some drawings of pebbles and Bam Bam to get some ideas for little kid composition.
But this is what I just I tossed together while the paint dried.

Period of Waiting

So. This is my first blog on here. Today I stretched, gesso-ed, and sanded, then I gesso-ed and sanded canvas again. All in search for that perfect painting surface. I spent the rest of my time working on a painting. I will post a full pictures when it is finished, but for now, here is a detail shot for everyone to check out.




It's not very good. I was having issues with the cobalt's texture versus color. Golden has a better color, while Liquitex has a better texture, but lacks the brilliant pigmentation of the Golden. It took several coats to get it to look the way it does, and I'm still not 100% pleased with it. It will look okay when it's finished, but until that happens ( probably in two days) this is all you get. I just applied for Mint's next show, I had work up for their post card show that happened in early December, so I am hopeful that I'll be accepted. I also just applied for the First National BFA /BA juried exhibition at University of South Florida in Tampa. I find out whether or not I get that on the same day as the Mint announcements. I also just applied to Universities in England, and will be finding out in February whether I get to go or not. In addition to all of this I just wrote a children's book about painting. Now it's time to wait......
I hate waiting. It sucks.