So, this week I'm finishing up a diptych of blind contours, arm to finger, filled in with diagonal lines that will change direction every section of arm....

colors are uncertain right now but I'm working on cream paper. I love printing on cream paper, but if I hadn't already ripped these sheets into 15x24s I probably would have used white paper for this one.

More to come...

'nother couple of hours in

Artist Emulation

I'm doing a direct-copy of Alex Kanevsky's J.F.H with Her Portrait for Painting 1. I started Sunday night by blocking in color and worked a bit more on Monday morning. All together I spent around 4 or more hours before I started photographing my progress.

I came into the studio again last night (Monday still) and started taking pics to document progress. My next painting will be the actual emulation--I'll be creating my own image but use his approach, subject matter, stroke, and palette...I'm looking forward to it

Kanevsky photographed his process here, it's beautiful, check it out.

http://www.somepaintings.net/JFH/index.htm



Here's my process so far, trying to work out the bugs...

Left

I'm trying to find the words for these works. All that comes is left.

A Shared Reality

Looking at different compositions for "A Shared Reality." Or at least that's the working title, which could very well change, I'm just trying it out.

If anyone's looking at this, leave a comment, let me know what you think of the composition, and especially if you read anything into it as a narrative. I'm interested in how the narrative reads without any suggestion from me, other than that it's a self-portrait.

Oh, and thanks Nina for handling the camera.

What I've been up to...

So...after life drawing ended, I stopped posting, but now I feel like I need a space to digitally review/post/organize my new work. Plus my midterm review is on the first. Not looking forward to it. I got it postponed once already because I dropped a bunch of studios after being in the hospital, and it took me a while to make up the credits.

Anyway. This is a found image, rather a found negative. It's medium format...I believe it was taken in the late 60s. I'm not sure who the people are, I'm guessing they were friends of my father since they were in his old photos/negatives. This was the key image for a print I finished up last month that included geometric shapes in primary colors, the negative and positive printed over in sepia and cream colors along with some supporting colors. The final image is difficult to read, which is something I was playing around with...I like the anonymity that it brought to the image. I'll post the actual print later, it's at school.


Here's a general composition for my next print. I pulled a bunch of images from the web just to piece together what I wanted to work with. I'm not sure whether it will be a key image or a composite, but I know I'll be working with warmer colors, with some cool offsets. I'll be recreating this scene tonight to take reference pictures (or a key image). Got all my props, I just need a bunch of cigarettes.



And finally here's a new photograph from last night. I'll also have some more photos coming up. I'm going to be playing around with a disposable camera and I'm also going to be doing some analogue developing. I've always wanted to try caffinol-c development, so I'm finally going to do that. http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/coffee-caffenol-film-developing/





not sure which composition of the two I like better...they both leave a little to be desired.

KE

Final

And so, and so, and so,

I really enjoyed the final project, I think it would have helped though to have done it two or three times first to get a better feel for the size of the image and the ink. I do feel like the size really gave me the chance to make some bold strokes in wash, and really get my whole body into the movement. At first mapping out the image seemed a little difficult, but I made some compositional decisions to not include all of the spikes and to enlarge the image to the most bulky point of the shell.
It was hard to position the shell, because the spikes form straight along three "sides" of the shell, many positions (with a diagonal axis) still seemed flat. So I minimized the spines and tightened in the composition.
From the time between the final and midterm, I felt like I learned a lot just because we were revisiting some of the structures that most commonly define us as human--hands, feet, and faces. It's really relieving to be able to understand how to really "see" these structures because you can start to get past these really popular misconceptions of what a nose or mouth or anything looks like.
I feel like in the last studio, the full body image I drew was my most successful. I was also excited to start using conte again, it has a really great quality to it. I can't wait to do more like this.
Some things I still need to work on are checking and rechecking plane changes to make sure that when something is pointed at the station point, it makes sense in how it falls away from that point. I would also like to keep working on contours and exaggerating lines where they need to be and recognizing lines that need to be simplified or left as they appear. I also want to work on starting lighter and moving towards the dark.


Final Images on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10thstreeteast/sets/72157622914297057/