Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sharing...

Browsing through the internet a bit tonight, I found (amidst looking for pictures of pond snails and snapping turtles) this:

Which I thought was quite neat and features some art inspiration (or involvement) by Andrew Jones - whose art (I also found today) is really cool and can be found here under 'Android Jones'. His use of images of people and things as repeating patterns reminds very much of an artist's work I once saw in a San Jose art museum, but can't for the life of me remember what his name was. Makes you feel like you could just sit and enjoy a piece of art for a long time, working in and around all the forms and such. I love art that makes you stay a while, gets you involved.
Anyways, I'm going to stop doing work now, because a) it's a sunday night and b) I require sustenance!

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Little Mermaid

Yea, I totally just watched The Little Mermaid. And it was great ^_^ But what if Ursula had won??

...and she'd had a kid and lost a couple pounds....would she still be really, really evil?

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Squeeee!

I have just learned of FLASH CS4!! And let me tell you: It. Looks. Fabulous.
View a demo here.

Monday, September 22, 2008

"Take a Good Look Around You"

Tonight, most bizarrely enough, I was inspired by A) my kitchen, and B) the book I just finished reading this afternoon - Girl, Interrupted by Susana Kaysen (highly recommended - great read). And thus was born: Kitchen Monsters.

Now, I'm not exactly sure why my kitchen decided to prod my creative juices into action, but I found something inspiring about its tacky-sixties feel and vomit-yellow tiles (sorry, there is absolutely no other way to describe that color!). Although none of these sketches are in color right now, I plan on doing some illustratory things with them I think. Certainly the above sketch begs some serious dramatic lighting. And that font? How perfect could that be? Weeee!


Susana Kayson's book actually isn't about monsters or anything to do with kitchens...it's more along the lines of a trip into the insane. Literally. I thought it was all very profound and provocative when she talked about reality and our perceptions of it with regard to different people. Each person's reality is different, so who's to say whose is right? What is the definition of a 'normal' reality? I've always wondered if people see the same colors as I do - artists are all attracted to different sets of colors that they use in their art....so maybe the copper-red you use looks more maroon to me. We'd both be right according to our own realities.
I could probably waffle on and on about that sort of thing, but its late and I have to watch Heroes (woo season premiere!). So I shall say that the ending of the book is absolutely fabulous and really gets your mind going, so go out and read it if you haven't already! :D

Saturday, September 20, 2008

North End Part 2

Coupla sketches from today's escapade to North End (version 2.0!).

As luck would have it, there was some strange group of people all wearing headphones and mp3 players who would do random acts (presumably according to instructions through their headphones). They all froze for a good 7 minutes in rather nice poses - Sweet! I thought and started sketching them all. teehee.

Old dude in a wheelie-chairy thingie.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

North End/Wharf

Big news this week: I became a UNITED STATES CITIZEN! Finally! Officially! For the first time in my life I have all the rights every other U.S. citizen takes for granted! Watch out Election Time, I am SO voting! Of course, there's something to be said for the naturalization process - the phenomenal amount of hoops you have to jump through and dough to fork over just to become part of a 'free' nation.
But I shall not complain! Instead, I shall move on to this week's sketches: Yesterday I spent a fabulous day out in the North End. Whereupon I rekindled my love of sketching architecture *_* I've always loved perspective and designing buildings. I'm planning on going back there next weekend to do some longer drawings, pending the weather forecast. These were done so quickly because I was with a bunch of very nice photographers, who of course can capture an image within a fraction of a second- while I'm sitting there frantically pencilling away. Also I think I'm going to try using darker pencils, the F's are just not working for me anymore (either that or just straight out use pen)....it may have to do with cheapo paper I'm using too (yeah $7 sketchbook from Barnes and Noble, haha).

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Rainy

Kind of in a foul mood tonight. Nothing like having one of your future in-laws grind down your self confidence to nothing. Yup, fabulous.

Anyways. Went to the MFA and saw a really lovely Winslow Homer exhibit today. I had no idea his chalk and white watercolors were so brilliant! He could really make you feel fabric and form. I suddenly realized that his paintings have a lot of dark, dark tones in them, with small use of brilliant bright light as contrast. There was one particular piece that I liked because it sort of invoked an uncomfortable feeling when viewing it. Three kids laying/sitting in a field with a pretty puffy clouded sky above. It wasn't rendered in particular detail or anything, but the interesting thing was the way the light played on the figures and the background. The figures looked like they had been painted at noon, with strong light coming from directly above, while the background looked like dusk - dark shades so you could barely make out grass and trees. It was such a bizarre effect, and yet the painting held together to give off this anxious feeling for the kids. 'Get home quick!' I thought, 'before the night comes!' The blurb to the right of the painting kept waffling on about the innocence of youth and all that, but mentioned nothing of why he used such dark tones all the time. Guess he just liked painting in the dark!

Oh! One thing that did inspire me at the MFA was a wonderful installation I'd seen at the ICA a while ago. A glass case with mirrored glass bottles in it! It's hard to explain. They're reflected to the nth degree, everything reflecting in everything else to give you a sense of inifity in a closed space. Like viewing a hundred tiny cities. I wanted to take photos and use all those beautiful green and blue and grey colors in a painting.

No art of a worth-while nature to share today unfortunately. Been doing crap artwork this week. On the plus side I joined a boston group of comic-creators. So I'll have to put an ad up with them looking for a writer and maybe I can get a comic going and get it printed up all fancy-like!

Lordy, its oppressively hot tonight. Good thing I don't have A/C, that'd be totally refreshing right about now. >.<;