Boobies got folds yo.

The other day I was watching that documentary/ film about the four different babies growing up around the world, appropriately titled Babies. One of the kids was from the Himba tribe in Namibia where the women coat their bodies and hair in a red clay that not only tints them a beautiful earthy crimson but also protects them from the sun that constantly beats down on them. They're jewlery is also very practical, particularly their tall metal anklets that protect their shins from poisonous snake bites! Plus the baby boys have these adorable little braided mohawks. Overall visually the tribe is visually fascinating and has earned a steady stream of tourists that borderline fetishize the proud women who walk around bare-chested regardless of age or body type.

And who can bloody blame them! I wish I could walk around shirtless, or at least wear sheer clothing. In New York it was actually legal, but how could one even fathom it when just wearing a skirt garners so much innapropriate male attention? How much healthier would the world be if women were allowed to bare it all without the fear of a sharp pinch or even sharper yelps? Though giant breast implants are now on the outs trend wise (hurrah!), what a breast actually looks like seems to still be a mystery to most. Since women arn't encouraged to be shown the breasts and bodies of others (because of society's rampant fear of homosexuality or honest sexuality of any kind) everyone just walks around thinking they're hella freaky and constantly apologizing, when really they're totally fine. Better than fine, BANGIN'!

At some point western (primarily American) culture decided that it was unnatural and unnatractive to be human... aaaannnddd to be alive.

It's wrong. They're wrong. The end.

Lots of Lions

Thought I'd try out my *cough* parent's *cough* new scanner on a little water color warm up I did awhile back thats just been tacked up above my desk for personal pleasure. Currently I've been finding prisms, diamond shapes and partially transparent substances really visually interesting, sort of to the point where its become like an obsession. Anything that allows for the warping of light really. Fleating apparations. If it had to be explained a prime example would be that burst of untouchable color out of the corner of your eye that blips quietly out of existence when you turn your head. Or when you see the tips of your own eyelashes.

Camouflage

Second week illustration for a poem containing wolf packs and sharp toothed loves. Was very jumbled when it came to this assignment and after a lot of inward childish huffing decided to just work on simplifying and actually planning out some sort of composition, because I lack any and all design skills haha!

Before leaving for class I looked at the image from a distance and my eyes couldn't really focus on the picture as a whole, like the last assignment there were two competing elements. In this one I really loved the wolf figure, and guess what? My teacher basically said the same thing, saying to further improve the picture by completely eliminating the back figure (which I may do later on).

The idea that this woman from the poem gained access to another culture through her loved one was really important to me. What was odd about the story is that she seamlessly is able to interact with them, when really no matter how much she would try there would always be her and them tenuously linked by a romantic relationship.

 Right now, at least from the perspective of someone living in an extremely liberal and open city,  people often want to push culture to the side so that they can take part in the surface culture of the American mass. However, even though we are told not to point out the obvious (and mostly beautiful) differences between each other out of a fear of being labeled either judgmental, naive or even racist, there still exists an overall insecurity in having an identity that automatically becomes exclusive because of natural differences in upbringing, religion or economic well being.

I'm not saying that everyone should link arms with "their own kind" and turn their back on everyone else, just that it's useful to understand that there's a power to being and insider and an outsider. That a person should ultimately be able to tread between the two without feeling guilt or shame. 

lols lols lols HARK!

Alas, fall is swiftly approaching, if not sitting unobtrusively upon our heads here in the city. Each day I wake up and the air is a little bit chillier making my bed a little bit cozier which leads to the ever pushing of the snooze button on my alarm clock. It's time to pull out all our lovely knitted hats, wooly tights (the boys call them long johns) and secretly retrace our steps back to that very first crunchy leaf we accidentally tread on a block behind us.

because yes, that first leaf is a doozy, a lone crunch that is sweeter than a million friend request on facebook. So go out, put them layers on and don't feel embarrassed for ordering a hot chocolate instead of your double shot-nonfat-foamless-soy monstrosity. Guys, I just don't want you to miss this!

Whoot whoot!

Hurry and count to 30! *EDIT* with color

Here's the value sketch for one of my assignments that required us to have an artificial light source. The entire process of developing this idea has been such a good learning experience. Just the vast amount of work I have to put in to stay a float in my classes has gotten me a little down trodden and frustrated with my limitations, but the product seems really worth it you know?  The final colored version is due next week, and here I increased the contrast and darkened it to get the effect I want in the final. Am so scared of redoing it again though, me and coloring do not get along :)

Oh and here's one of the reference photos of my roomate, its almost if not more beautiful than the sketch! Just look at those shapes refracting off the wall.

I love monsters so much. I know they're not supposed to be real, but I swear to god they existed at some point, if only when we were all little kids stranded atop our beds, in fear that if we ventured out for a glass of water, the moment our bare feet touched the ground something would grab us. That something was so tangible and real back then! And yet even though it was the darkest part of our psyche we could somehow protect ourselves by either not opening our eyes or taking refuge under our unpenetrable blankets.

To bad the monsters arn't as easy to find now.

Am so tired.

*EDIT*

Oop the final color! Ugh, so just between you and me I really don't understand the purpose of gausche (guasche, gauche?). My roommate said that it may help to get the same dreamy and smooth quality as the sketch, but I, like always, just ended up using it as watercolor! Gaah, what a fool. But really, the only upside to using it seems to be that the colors move around a bit when touched by water, but it ends up becoming just as transparent as watercolor. 

Feedback was minimal, nothing I didn't expect. Composition was wack, said my colors were washed out etc. etc. I seem to lack that whole sense about how to use composition. The major complaint from the teacher was that it was so busy, and yet seeing that I left just some open space that I guess I thought made it all right. Plus idk, detail just seems so attractive. I want people to roam about my picture with their eyes, not sit like a lump on a log.

and, AND (!!!) all right guys, I didn't want the focal point to be the child, the monster is the character I care about because the child is ITS monster! Maybe becoming penpal's with ones teacher is advised, because I didn't realize how frustrated I was until I started editing this entry and writing about the critique.

I wish I were at Versaille.

Hello everyone out in cyberspace. Sorry about the lack of updates, I've moved and have no internet! or scanner! But thats okay, to tell you the truth i havn't really done anything creative because of all the running around. However since it is the last day of summer before school starts, an entry seemed to be appropriate. Thus lacking art i've been combing my computer for something interesting to share with you and came up with these pictures from not this summer's, but last summer's trip I went on with my french class

As you may have guessed this is the Palace of Versaille in France. I don't often take photos, but having been threatened by my mother to bring photo documentation of everything on the trip I snapped more pictures than I had snapped in my entire life. What was so great was that once I got used to wielding the camera, i was no longer sure what was picture worthy and what wasn't. I didn't want to miss one moment of the entire trip and so everything from candy, to errant squirrels to funny old men were captured on my camera forever.

I was watching Two Days in Paris (which is a super cute movie, I highly recommend it) and the main character, a photographer complains about her boyfriend constantly taking photos on their super romantic Europe trip and that he became a bystander instead of participating in this great adventure they were having together. This is so true! You don't know how many masses of tourists I see walking about New York just globbed into groups with their cameras out.

Are we all this terrified of forgetting? That was the reason I took photos. Being a little more forgetful than the average person, I'm bewildered to know that so many moments are lost to us once gone and that the only way we will ever be able to find them is if somehow they're fished out by some smell or song. Its all so random. 

So be careful folks! If something amazing happens write it down! Take a picture! But have faith in your memory too. Anyway, wishing everyone a great first day of school/ work/ life!

I don't like it cheap.

Ok... so I epically fail at the sexy thing all right? Yeah I do. I cower in forfeit, especially after reading such comics as Chester 5000 XYV, Curvy and the few pumped out by Junko Mizuno. What they all have in common is this simple, attractive style and type of story telling that appeals to the romantic and sexually frantic. Having seen my fair share of smut, I like these artists, and others like them because unlike the billions of videos and pictures that can really disenchant one about sex, they leave you feeling naughty but totally not ashamed. Feeding the mind and body is a much more hollistic approach to erotica. Though, yes, the situations depicted are often super dramatized theres still this inkling of truth that the old shag n' bang industry just doesn't have. 

Lets switch gears a little bit. So yesterday I went to go hang out with a friend and we saw Afghan Star, a film about the first talent based American Idol-esque show to air Afghanistan after the rule of the Taliban. This is a huge deal because apparently music (!!!) had been banned, MUSIC!! and people could call in and vote, HELLO DEMOCRACY! Anyway, there were two woman contestants. When the first one, Setara, was kicked off she had to sing a farewell song. 

And so she starts, sort of swaying side to side from foot to foot to the beat and sings, and throws her head scarf off and continues to dance with all this emotion. Behind the scenes an entire country is shaking its head. Though music has been grudgingly approved dancing is out of the question. She is considered a floozy, loose and a huge threat to morals of the country, such a huge threat that there are death threats. All this for dancing! And not even sexy dancing! It's insane that such small actions are so revolutionary, but I guess they're not that small in such situations.

So I don't know. I was super humbled when I walked out of there and relieved that I have the potential to become this full human being in the open. Just looking down at what I was wearing, thinking of what I write and read and talk openly about with those around me, dang WE ARE SO LUCKY! hahhhh am glad I have the freedom to show you my badly photoshopped art :)

The creepy entry.

Like many, I practice the ancient japanese art of cute phone accessories, and my newest little tidbit is the little bugger pictured above. Many would look and go "oohhh how cute, an animal in an animal suit!" Now don't be so naieve! What I wear dangling about my cell-phone is no vapid sentiment meant to make me look "kawaii". Oh no, what you see here is really a totem of how warped our society is! It has become all the rage to depict folks wearing animal suits, but it's really a barbaric idea to STRIP the skin of another living creature and WEAR it. Humans I think are the only ones who actually do it anymore as a means to decorate out bodies, however back in the day of course we were literally wearing the fur of others because we had no fur (and still don't)! 

Human's are a definitive fail in the area of cool body structures like teeth, fur, whiskers and claws. Maybe this is why people so like to differentiate themselves from nature. We close ourselves in our houses, move via wheels and communicate without talking or body language via text. Thus our bodies don't need the same survival mechanisms because all our best evolved traits are outside, aka our tools and technology. But take a step back and you see that instead of us evolving, our technology does. Computers advance, medicine evolves etc etc. I'm not saying that our bodies arn't changing at all over the eons, just that it is more evident in our technological advances. Natural selection can be applied to how far we make it up the social ladder, and if you take even another step back you see that all of humanity is just a hive of sorts. None of us really know that much at all, or make much of a difference, but together we are a force to be reckoned with. Oop, ranting again. Sorry about that! 

Anyway, seeing another animal do the whole skin stealing thing would just be disturbing. For instance it would be quite scary to see a a wolf actually actually wearing the clothes of a sheep. I think the visual of wearing another's skin conjurs up this whole malicious bloodthirstiness and cunning that either screams silence of the lambs (!!!) or a metaphorical struggle for survival.

See this is actually what my keychain looks like:  

Now what would happen if an animal challenged our superiority and stole a human's skin?