exploration

so i was playing around with Photoshop last night before i posted [ui] #8 "i'm sad that i'm flying" and i was really please with it.. so i decided to go back and play around with #7 "all alone"... the out come was kinda cool.. i'm almost considering replacing it for this.. any thoughts?

3 piece love & death

These are taken from photographs i took about a year ago. I printed them out at a lower quality then traced out the most distinct areas. From there i transposed them back to a canvas board and painted them in three different color schemes. The first is gray scaled with red accents, the next is primary colors, and finally the one of Cassie is a mono-chrome blue. I chose the colors for specific reasons:



The Grayscale is to dull out who died, which accents the intensity of the red; the blood is what was important to me in this painting. It symbolizes the passion of life and furthermore that of death; the idea i had while painting this was something along the lines that we all love, and we all have a passion for what we love, and often we will go to the extent of death (or risk of death) to fight for that love. This is why i wanted the red to stand out so much.



The primary colors were chosen to give it more of a comic-classic feel. idk what about the primary colors do this but it really made me think more of Cowboy Bebop; which the picture inspiration came from.




Finally the monochrome blue just gives a feel of depression. First off, the colors reminded me of her because she has this dark melancholy quality to her that i love already. On top of that the colors are rather symbolic for our relationship at the time when we were together. It was a weird period, i would assume in both of our lives, when we both moved up north. I was really depressed about a lot of what was going on in my life and in effect i was hurting her. The reason i added this to the other two in the collect was for this very reason. A large part of me died during that time. I'm in now way saying that she was the cause of this, but we were both in a way the catalyst of which pushed major changes in each other while we went through this. We both pulled the trigger on each other, and the melancholy i left her with and the death of a part of me was the result of that time of our lives.

Things are good now. :D

(i think im gonna do more touch ups on the cassie painting,, i dont feel its done yet)

been vinyl lovin'

Well, I've been rather busy. I went to San Fransisco to take a little vacation with Ana for a few days and checked out the Gallery 1988 Exhibit, which was pretty awesome. Kathie Olivas is now one of my favorite artist for sure! She does paintings on canvas as well as vinyl; i love any artist that explores Vinyl. :D While i was up there i stopped by Kid Robot in Haight and bought a few little figures. Hated them both... I decided to paint over one of them, which proved to be a rather huge pain in the ass. I'd really like to explore the art of working with vinyl but i CAN'T find any information on it online. After looking around on the internet for a while i found a few ways to do it... but don't feel like i was as successful at it as i was hoping :( Heres what came out:


(Coney in Acrylics on Vinyl Dunny)

After seeing Andrew Bell's exhibit in LA last weekend, I've REALLY wanted to get better at painting in general. I'm currently working on a painting that I'll probably post in the next few weeks, that i've been slaving over the past few days.

Anyway, as far as vinyl goes... I'm still stumped on how to produce/paint my own figures... i guess i will learn over time.

pink hell

Again as i sit in class i can't focus on the assignment... taking the colors of red and white i painted was feeling. This photo doesn't do this piece justice and I'm not a huge fan of pink but i really liked the way it turned out all the same.

orange, blue & green; who knew.

Well i rushed this out but i sorta liked the outcome. It's four different designs with 3 simple shapes done in four or 5 different basic colors.

love music

Well here it is. It looks nicer to me in the photograph then in real life, but it definitely portrays what i wanted it to regardless. I'm gonna probably repaint over this when i get it back from the teacher and do the same thing. What i forgot to do what to paint the canvas white first, the paint the shapes over the white... i messed up a few times and cover it up with white paint.. which now looks like i got white out or something (very tacky) and tried to cover it up. I was really bummed out about that... especially when i realized i spilled paint over it and then had to touch it up! haha... oh well. It still looks pretty nice.

hope other people like it. i love the idea, i just need to redo it again later.

winter anchor

At first glance you may see a flower, or more likely because of the colors snow flakes against a black winter sky. This is not what was my initial intention with this concept. I started with an anchor, one simple anchor which i repeated several times into a full circle. i like the way it was looking so much that i decided to incorporate that into a repetitious design. Since repetition can be rather boring i offset the entire thing, pushing most of the weight to the top corner of the design to the top corner.


When the teacher told us we had to take a simple shape, fill it in and repeat it i was rather weary about the assignment but overall i ended up really liking the "anchor flake" that came out of this.. If we ever find a decent company to do shirts through i may take this design and incorporate it into a shirt. It would more then likely not be that same repetitive design.. i have a few ideas (if i do it)...but well see.

ink washin' experiment

I really like black & white art; in particular black and white photography and paintings. Recently I've been learning how to use black ink pens. I've gotten rather tired of the way that ink pens would leave wierd lines that i didn't really like, if you look a few blogs back you can kind of see what I'm talking about. I decided to try a new technique called 'ink washing' .. which is basically taking black ink from a bottle and adding water it into it at varying degrees. For my class i need to do piece that deals with an astrological sign. I decided to do a Ram (since my sign is Aries) in Ink wash...

I didn't want to just jump into it so i practiced with a few different things... So heres a sample of what the ram might look like for the final project:

This is just some random girl that i drew..

i think i like computer graphics

My first day of Computer Assisted Illustration started on Friday. It didn't turn out to be exactly what i thought the class was gonna be.. but i can see a potential for growth! In the first class i did these little graphics... i thought they were pretty neat.

frustration of knowledge (edit w/ scans)

I love learning... but sometimes its frustrating and difficult. It even at times makes me want to quit.. but its not till i get to that point do i start to learn. Often i actually do give up for a small period of time and come back to it and have a handle on it.

This is whats frustrating me:

My projects are becoming more and more time consuming... and I'm never satisfied with the outcomes. Currently I've been working on this one point perspective graphite drawing, which is on a 18X24inch sheet of bristol board paper. It is a rough drawing of my room, which a super imposition of some of the little creatures I've been drawing lately. The room on paper barely fits the description of my room and and i realized lately that i know nothing about shading.. When i was younger i used to blow off any type of art teacher when they would talk (lesson learned there) and thought i had a good hold on it it... Well, turns out i don't. I found that cross hatching though is a really awesome way to shade. Up close it looks too textured and almost like you don't know how to shade.. but from a distance i'm actually falling in love with the way it looks! This is where the learning has started.. i've gone from hating everything about the shading and the way my room looks to slowly enjoying it.. but this project is still taking several pain staking hours!

Whats the most frustrating is that i lost my Stylus pen! I need it to draw the Reeders and UI... but i haven't been able to find it. I have a spare but i hate the tip; its very smooth and allows the pen to flow to easily across the screen.. BUT from this i've learned that i can use that tip to make very natural lines that aren't over thought. After being frustrated for about an hour of drawing the last reeder "Lessons with that guy Death" i found my extra tips.. i went back to the type i like.. but I'm still not too sure about the spare pen.. its bigger and bulkier. =/ Out of all things to lose did i really have to lose that pen? They cost like 80$'s to replace!

Here are some scans of my first 2D Design project:

When i first started this project i didn't think this was gonna turn out cool. In fact i don't really like the originals as much as these ones. Whats so special about these? We'll once i loaded them on the computer i was trying to enhance the blacks, but along the way i stumbled across the invert function. When i did this it pulled out the texture of the black in and made it look more interesting to me. The Drawing on the top was actually my favorite at first still i did this inversion thing. now i actually enjoy the bottom one a little bit more.


Though i have the originals in black ink, I'm considering making prints of these on higher quality paper and maybe framing them for my room. I'm not sure. The gray tones really seem to make this image more effective and would actually accent some of the crap i have in my room.

the girl in the ink

In my class we started doing a project with black ink. I've always been scared to use black ink cos of the permanence of the medium but after drawing various lines and designs over 20times i felt far more comfortable with it. After completing the project i decided draw a girl (something I've done most of my life and feel rather comfortable with). I was really pleased with the result.. but still see a lot of room for growth.

eye in the wind

While we watched a video about different basic concepts of art i got bored and started drawing an eye. By the time the class was over i drew a woman with wind blowing her hair over one eye, unfortunately though... i don't really know what happened in class. I have some kind of assignment about drawing different forms of lines on 20 index cards. We'll see...

an artistic disorder

I signed up for a few classes again this semester, a last minute decision on my part which really is no surprise, lately I'm 'winging' a lot about life. I got into Illustration I, Computer Assisted Illustration, 2D Design, Programing in C++, and Personal Finance. I'm pretty excited! This will be the first time i have ever enrolled in classes that completely interest me for my own interests sake! Which should mean, no more moping around and complaining about how I'm bored with the way that teachers forget to teach. Now that i have my Bachelor of Arts i decided it's time to have a little fun with my education!

With me spending so much time on my website and constantly drawing on my new tablet i figured it's about time that i actually learn how to fine tune what I've been doing my whole life; art. I think i had a fear of criticism from teachers, producing stuff people might not like and a further fear that being forced to do art which could possibly make me hate it. Well... I was forced to do Psychology for 4years now and i still enjoy it, never lost interest in it, just my passion to do it as a career. As I'm taking deeper consideration about what I want to do with my life, it may not really be for me.

Since i will be enrolled in so many art classes this semester i will be scanning a lot of my assignments and posting them up here. So, this will not only be my blog but also an "art portfolio." I'm really excited about this all, for once i barely have time to do anything. I have so many projects and things i have to do everyday that i don't really have time to get bored...unless you count when i have to sleep.. i hate laying in bed alone. It's lonely, i miss talking to someone till i fall asleep and frankly its boring. Sleep is over rated.

I drew a really weird sketch in my business class today. If i have time I'll scan it tomorrow and edit this entry so i can post it...till then i gotta force myself to sleep! C++ in the morning!

here it is: