Beautiful Beautiful!

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

So full of Lightning

I like faces a lot. Face design, makeup, fashion, ethno and cultural and biological stereotyping. Lip folds, eye twitches, acne pocks, smooth perfection, wrinkled noses perfectly arched ear lobes connected, dangling thrown over the shoulder.

If I could I would never paint anything except bony family trees.

Starless

One of us has to go

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.