Rhinos and pickles.

I'ts never about the Rhino.

Hmm, I don't know how to lead into this, but I've been looking at a lot of photography of Tribes in Africa for the totally shallow reason that they're stylin? They're pretty? But all those examples of colorful body painting, woven textiles and interesting body modification are in these books that are surprisingly old-school about how they portray people. In that they portray the people of africa not as people but as animals or a "species" that can become endangered. It's really wierd but like they'll have a picture of these kids "stampeding" or of a girl grinning wide with a camel behind her, and because she has a gap between her teeth and the camel has a gap between it's teeth they are suddenly the same thing? They don't have sex they "mate" etc. etc. 

It happens elsewhere too, obvious example: The Lion King and that new movie coming out, AFRICAN CATS! Africa doesn't have people, only singing lions haha

I mean, I can't talk. My sketchbook is full of blackface babies and fictional tribe people. The more I learn about all this kind of negative imagery the more I want to incorporate it into my work, just because it's sometimes so seductive in how it ungulates between benign and scarring.

Plus it makes me feel naughty, there is that.

Love affair in the gauche.

Sleeping woman

Here She Comes

Here's a mini something I just found, remnants from a class assignment that was nixed before it could be completely realized. I know I know, Awkward hand :)

Mooooom Are we there yet?

All I could think about today at work were monsters and Sea cucumbers. One would think that staving off boredom at a comic shop would be easy because of the mass quantities of stories and pictures available but the exact opposite is the case! haha I hardly want to pick anything up because all the inked drawings, large breasted super heroes and moody slice of life stories just end up blending into a big colorful mess that I've grown kinda weary of. Every once in awhile theres something that draws my attention, and in those rare occurrences I smuggle it off with me to read on the train or in the park far far away from work :)

Ahem, on the topic of art I have some sketchbook stuff lined up to show ya'll and am thinking of doing a little fashion mini project this summer so theres an outlet for my unhealthy need to shop. Uuum, and theres this painting... but it's kinda laying dejected next to me so we'll have to see about that.

Frankly Drawing comes more naturally than painting for me. Theres just something really mesmerizing and descriptive about markmaking, but there's this awful stigma against it. That it's a pre-art made to flesh out the "higher" art of painting. I don't know, it can serve that purpose but theres just something really natural and special about a fluid imperfect drawing. No matter how hard someone tries they'll never be able to recreate that moment perfectly. Maybe that's why illustration classes were so hard for me, because they asked for us to recreate the good in our pre-drawings and I had already given them all I had.

By the way, HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE :D feelin the heat!

A different kind of Venus.

This was a plate that was a good exercise but did not yield the results that were planned. Wanted to only aquatint without any drawn lines (only values/tones) which was done through putting the plate in the acid and covering the parts that were to be untouched with ground.

Unfortunately I didn't make it dark enough so it took me and my amazing teacher a little time to coax out some successful prints. It really goes to show that there's a mastery in just the process of pulling the print that is totally independent of what goes on with the plate.

As far as the image goes, I was thinking a lot about texture and calcium deposits, or how sea shells grow. How juxtaposition of two natural things can yield something monstrous and hyper-beautiful...Blah blah blabbity blah blah haha

Gettin there.

A try at the ol' photoshop. Had a totally different idea about this piece but for the purpose of an illustration assignment decided to zoom in... I handled this kind of sloppily and like always I reverted back to sticking the primary compositional element in the corner heh, oh well.

See originally I just wanted the forest and this sort of lone light hanging in the back obscuring things and sort of illuminating the only colors in a primarily blue, black and grey environment. But then yeah, for the class I figured nobody would get it, it's too abstract so I added the girl. Then after the initial feedback I went back, and started wondering who put the light there for the girl to find. So basically the inclusion of one character totally skewed the whole thing and made me overexplain things! Dangit!

Don't even properly care about this like the original so whatevs! Am trying to be more laid back about things and just ride out this last part of the year. A lot of times I take things really personally, especially grades and school work and stress out to the point of malfunction.

So if this blog lags for awhile, it's only because I'm gathering my wits, or going into a semi comatose state to make the journey through deep space seem shorter.

We like it here o___o