Doe and Fawn

This is a personal piece--it wasn't for homework, just something for me, myself, and I. I just wanted to experiment with shape and simplification and...stuff. There is definitely a whole lot of Secret of Kells influence going on here as well, though the designs are completely mine. I'm not sure if I'm totally done with it, I'm thinking about incorporating some textures. I may leave it alone for awhile so I can come back with fresh eyes.

more from figure painting

I only had 2 class periods (less than 6 hours) on this one, so I only focused on the head.

Senior Studio 2--another figure painting

I've really been enjoying my Senior Studio 2 class. I fell in love with oil paint and painterliness and colors all over again in this class. We recently spent a series of 5 class periods of 3 hours each on this painting. And no, after 15 hours of work, it still isn't done. We'll have another 2 class periods with these models in a couple weeks so that we can complete these paintings, but I decided to show what I have so far anyway. 

ENGL 220

open in new window to see big.

Tessellation for Crosscountry endpages

So, my BFA project is officially underway as of this semester. I don't plan to post all the illustrations as I make them because, well, then who would come to my show in April? But this can be a sort of teaser, I guess. This may have tweaks and edits in the future, but I like what I've been able to accomplish with this.


(sorry for any typos--typing on a kindle is...exciting.)

What I've been doing lately...

I yet live! As proof, I will show you what I've been doing lately...

Ok, so this is actually from last semester. This was my final for my Senior Studio class. The prompt was Ghosts of Christmas Past, of any interpretation. I decided to literally illustrate THE Ghost of Christmas Past from The Christmas Carol. Thanks to Brooke and Randall for being my wonderful models.

This semester I'm taking the Senior Studio 2 class, which is essentially a Figure Painting class. I'm loving it! Our teacher is Joseph Brickey, he's a great artist and just a really nice guy. Lately I've been loving vectors and trying to figure out what I want to do with my work digitally, and I'd forgotten how much I love oil paint, and brushwork, and fun color variation.... and painterliness in general. This was my first painting in the class, just a study that took 1 class period (about 3 hours including breaks). Can you see where I was going, "Yay! BRUSH STROKES! I MISSED YOU"?

 This is a longer study we did for the class over several class periods. You'd think that after hours I would have gotten something in the background, or done something with that box he was leaning on.... but no.... that would make far too much sense :D

Monster--Kelpie

History of the American West

Bucking Bronco

the dichotomy of ability and understanding

Over the years as I've been trying to improve in art and in other areas, I've noticed a pattern that I thought I'd share. This pattern has to do with the relationship between the ability to do something well and the understanding of how to do something well.

First off, I think our understanding of how to do something is always beyond our ability. As we study, observe, read, etc, our understanding (hopefully) increases.

Our ability doesn't always improve at the same rate as our understanding.

Lets pretend that we can graph ability and understanding, which we can't, but we're pretty good at pretending so we'll do it anyway.

Understainding: -----
Ability: ----

So we're feeling pretty good about ourselves, because we can do art (or whatever it is) about as well as we understand what it means to do well.

Then we study. We look at awesome pictures, take some classes, brainstorm some awesome ideas.

Then our graph looks something like this:

Understanding: -----------
Aility: ----

And we don't feel so good about ourselves. So we work and sweat and stay up all night and fill fifty sketchbooks and try new things.

And then we have a graph looking like this:

Understanding : -----------
Ability: ----------

And we're feeling pretty good about ourselves at that point.

I think this keeps on going indefinitely. Our understanding will pull ahead, and we work hard for awhile to bring our abilities up to that level again. When understanding and ability are close to the same level we might get kind of comfortable. But as we continue to, like, live and expose ourselves to good art and hopefully learn stuff, it happens again, and our understanding pulls ahead. When there is a large gap between understanding and ability, well, thats a pretty uncomfortable place. But it's important part of this pattern.

I feel like I'm currently at the high-understanding/insufficient-ability end of the cycle right now. Not a comfortable place to be. Understand, I'm not asking for sympathy or "your art is so awesome don't say bad things about it" type comments right now. I'm just saying, I feel like I have so many ideas and sources of inspiration and my current abilities just aren't measuring up to the visions in my head.

Not such a bad place to be. But you know what that means?

Time to get to work.

I really liked how this banner for HIST57 turned out, I couldn't wait to share it :D.

Idea for splash of History of the American West