carpe omnium's Journal

1:23pm: i'm doing a lot of painting practice recently. these studies both went in unintentional but pleasing directions.

rockwell



salen


i especially like this last one, almost paint by numbers-y

5:11pm:

pictures are like tiny slices of time

3:09pm:

learning more about skin tone

10:36pm:

these are some pencils for an assignment. there will also be 2 children in it and possibly a lil something-something in the background, but i'm drawing them separately. the idea is to ink the pieces and then assemble them in photoshop and then, ya know, colourize them and whatnot.

1:47pm: experimenting with a bit of digital over top of collage. it would be neat to find a way to add in actual drawings...................





also trying to find ways to obliterate source photos. i like to do relatively simple collages but commercially it would be difficult to use them because the images can be too recognizable.

5:56pm: also



this collage was made for fun purposes only. no suey.

5:14pm:

oo scanned

2:16pm:

you know how i listen to this american life and cbc almost religiously? well i might have found something i like even more (i know!). radio lab. some episodes i liked:

New Normal parts of this one actually made me choke up.

Parasites

public radio NYC also has a ton of other neat podcasts on art and culture.

11:46pm:

11:22pm: two more collages from tonight



this one is actually from the other month but it was attached to kaley's xmas present so i couldn't scan it until after she'd received it.



i try to use collage to practice design principles. its also a nice way to relax.

10:36pm: i just got back from a super awesome playdate with my 2 year old nephew.
some of the things we did:

- wore hardhats almost the entire evening
- made dinosaurs out of lego
- knocked down lego towers with the lego dinosaurs (lots of dino-army sound effects)
- played animal-pictionary on his chalkboard-easel (i drew)
- read almost all of his Mr. Men books and the new Bob Staake book i got him
- tried to find mr. mischief outside our window (but he was nowhere to be seen!)
- tried to convince him to play his guitar for me (its actually a ukulele and he wouldn't)
- amazed him with the finger-mouth-popping noise
- chased him around with a puppet

11:14pm: one sketchbook page from tonight. i've noticed that i dont draw different types of people very often, got to remedy that.

all ref'd from the newspaper



also trying different types of drawing. my art prof is always talking about "soft edges" and "blurred edges" and "disappearing edges" so there's some of that around too.

4:57pm: handwriting
interesting section of a site about "feminine" vs. "masculine" writing: hand writing and gender cues

one more link of interest: the quick typographer jumps samples of typographer's regular handwriting

the first one is definitely, the second one is very probably, via boingidyboingboing.net

i like to compare handwriting just because its neat. for fun, here are 3 lines of foxes. my handwriting is mostly unreadable unless i'm being very deliberate. my first one i was too self conscious so i did it 3 times for good measure. also when i really get going i write in some kind of printed-cursive hybrid.

what do your quick brown foxes look like?

5:32pm: portrait of lydia, only got 20 minutes in though



also, after thinking it over, i've decided i'm not going to cut entries that contain nude drawings because, and i dont say this often so you know i'm f'serious, im morally against artistic censorship. especially when it comes to life drawing.

i think i have a disclaimer on the top of my journal that says i don't cut entries anyway but its doubly true when it comes to my work.

please adjust your friends pages accordingly.

thank you,

alexis

5:52pm: check it ouuuttt!

9:20am: dreams from last night:

eating dinner in a room full of small tanks housing huge poisonous fish with big clear eyes and translucent skin. one of the most poisonous fish got out and was swimming around our ankles. we ran outside to a dirt road full of villagers and camels, blankets on the ground selling dried things. museum of small rooms with high, high ceilings; huge glass cases, tribal masks; blue stripes, fur, wood, small bodies.

lately all my dreams have been taking place in weird, seedy, broken-down areas. and all the rooms and floors are weirdly shaped, some floors are much shorter than others and rooms are piled up on each other like a jenga game. lots of big things in tiny rooms, lots of glass cases and white walls.

10:00am: holy crap.

im feeling.. uh.. panic attacky right now. hit of panic.

i just saw some thesis projects of california illustration students and they're just.. ugh. amazing. and i'm thinking about the piece i'm working on now (for commission, not thesis that's not until 4th year), and what i'll do for my thesis, and i'm unrealistically imagining how bad my stuff is going to be feeling guilt and panic over how much better it could be/have been if i had of done x or x or x and worked harder and not been so afraid to practice painting. and i feel like i wasted my painting-from-life this term because i was too afraid to fuck up (true story) and i should have practiced painting more last summer instead of wussing out and drawing all the time at life drawing (okay this is still very good and useful but i need to paint more if i want to get better at it).

whew.

also now i feel like i need to try oil paint on this commission but i might ruin it because i'm using something i wasn't initially prepared to use and i might panic. hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..

9:06pm: some silly stuff from tonight

9:50pm: here's some stuff from tonight, referenced just for some ol' practice. my sketchbooks are really messy, so just ignore any weird pokey lines that come from other places.

ref'd from liu zheng's photography







ref's from sports int'l but i dont know if you'd recognize 'em if you saw 'em

7:53pm: these are some detail shots of a 10 x 20 painting (okay its more of a painted drawing) i did.



i took this at an angle, the kid has a body and feet too!



jellyfishy-y-y



i tightened up a LOT, i'd like to loosen up considerably. BUT learning, learning.

10:51am: oh mah gaw i drew stuff!





i totally cheat on back muscles, really i have non idea wtf is going on back there. i've done so many muscle drawings of the back but its always totally different when you're looking at a real, moving back.

these aren't from life, though, they're referenced from a delightful figure reference book.

winter break = gesture life drawing!

9:44pm: i will entertain you with a concept sketch for a skool assignment - awesome! its a poster about the environment. key concept words: zero waste, future, ecosystem.



the first thing i thought of was a "closed ecosystem" like those people with their fancy fish-plant aquariums. rest easy, this boy will have legs.

at first i was containing the circle inside the 10x20" rectangle we have to work in but it felt kind of constrained.

i want to try to emphasize drawing with this one in the final, maybe something like this or this. i've never done those on a large, complicated scale before. no time like the present?

a few things i have to keep in mind:
- light source (i've already kind of lost my light source here, oops.. must do a quick light-study just to cement things)
- don't panic and start doing things without thinking

9:59pm: I really like doing collages, i tend to do them in a frenzy - paper, glue, scissors flying everywhere! i think its important for me to work with a lot of different types of materials, even if its just in my workbook, it keeps everything feeling fresh.



she loves you furreal!



do we have another cat?





don't sue me oookay, these are just for fun.

i really love type, i love looking at type upside down so i can see all the shapes. i like how type looks when its jammed all together.

3:57pm: New York: an exorcise in communal screaming by the gentleman with the itchy legs
I am back from New York!


ha! you know i didn't notice it at the time but i seem to have given her some kidn of horrible spine problem, her neck is waay over on the left.

My trip took an unexpected turn before it even started when I missed my group's bus, i was all packed up and i checked my facebook and found a message that said "where are you the bus is leaving!". 'SHIT NO WTF!' panic ensues but i decided to hop on my own bus and come anyway. I'd never been to a city by myself before, so everything was kind of crazy. In the morning and evening I'd hang out in front of the hostel I thought they were at and try to run into them but no luck - where were these people?! I figured out where they were holding an art show at a place called Red Hook in Brooklyn and made up my mind to somehow get there.

some maps and direction, this is what the inside of my head looks like:



I dont know if you've been to New York, but getting from Manhattan to Red Hook is an adventure all on its own. The first directions I got from a subway worker sent me to the wrong station but this big amazing black woman train worker helped me out and sent me to a bus stop in front of a church. but were no buses running to Redhook (or anywhere, there was an accident on the bridge) so I was wandering around at night, no idea where i was going, using a shitty bus route map i had doodled in my journal for guidance. a lot of really nice spanish people gave me directions along the way. an hour and a half later i wandered into this warehouse area and THEY WERE THERE! big hugs all around, "i can't believe you made it!", etc. - neither could i!



I went to see Tim Fite, which was pretty much my first ever concert. i don't know how to describe my experience there but it felt almost religious to me, in a violent, frenzied, insane mosh pit kind of way. Tim's music was described to me as "kind of like folk hip hop" which did nothing to prepare me for the insanity of his Halloween concert. When they got on stage they were wearing all white, no pants, they had licorice and candies stuffed into the front of their tightie whities and the show began with "an exorcise in communal screaming by the gentleman with the itchy legs". Needless to say, I was in love. Totally infatuated. Tim was like a character out of a David Lynch movie. They were all very bizarre, moving strangely through the crowd, destroying things - total chaos!

Tim Fite stuff:



Living with Tim Fite part two

notes about tim fite the day after:



I found a couple of souveniers in Brooklyn at a rummage sale and found a lot of nice clothes on the streets, people just leave a lot of stuff out.

i didn't have my glasses on when i drew this:



I can't tell you how much beautiful art I saw at the MET: Sargent, Watteau drawings, Reynolds,MUCHA; at times my heart was beating so fast it actually hurt my chest. Seeing these pieces in real life was like meeting a long lost friend.

I have so many stories, I think missing the bus was actually one of the best things that could have happened.

11:40am:

mah hurrrrr. it's pretty long and i was all grooming with a buzzer and decided 'hey i'll just take the sides down! and oh i like it.