Figure Drawing - Marathon to Final Part 3

This weeks piece was based off a photograph by Ari Marcopoulos that was on the new issue of ANP Quarterly. It is of Harmony Korine, the guy who wrote Kids and wrote and directed Gummo. I picked up this issue at Quimbey's and had the same thought as i did last week with the image of the kid in front of the bushes, "i have to draw this". Unfortunately, the image of my piece is not that good because i had to take it with PhotoBooth since i don't have a camera. But, the image is done in ink and an ink wash and Yoda is done with ink and watercolour pencil. Sorry that the image isn't better but once i get a camera i will post a better image.

Figure Drawing - Marathon to Final Part 2

So last week i found this awesome picture on the Vice Magazine archives site under their photo issue. It was a photograph done by Jonnie Craig. There were all these amazing pictures of these 20-something kids running through the english countryside. So i was flipping through the images and this one of a guy standing in front of a bush with a spotlight on him seemed so powerful to me and i just really wanted to draw him. So i took the image and put my own "comic book style" on it and here he is. This was done on watercolour paper with ink and an ink wash. (Reminder: to see the details, click on the image)

Birdhouse Initiative - Final Piece

Below is the final piece that i turned in for critique last week. It is a Quicktime Movie (i hope it works) that i put together and it was my first ever stab at editing any film. The shots of me working on the birdhouses were taken by my iSight on my laptop and all the stills were taken by my roommate, Lissie. The music is by Her Space Holiday. Pictures will be up soon, i just need to resize and lay them out, so for now enjoy the video.

Figure Drawing - Marathon to Final Project

This semester i am taking figure drawing from the wonderfully talented Karen Azarnia. For final project we are going to be exploring the idea of narrative in a piece of work. In preparation for the final she has had us pick an artist or artistic style we like and either copy directly from that artist's work or copy that style into a piece of our own. Her rational behind this exercise is for us to take an artists/artistic movement we like and break it down and kind of discover it hands on. We had to produce one piece a week and it could be any size, but she did specify that she wanted the final piece to be on a large scale. So what i chose was the artistic style of comic books, in particular the simplified shapes and forms of Seth, Craig Thompson, Daniel Clowse and others from the D&Q posse. I decided to start off doing direct copies so i chose to work with Seth's graphic novel Clyde Fans No. 1. Since i missed a week due to my grandmother's funeral i ended up turning in the following two pieces. One is a copy of the cover and the other is a copy of i believe page 5 in the book. I chose these two piece because 1) i really wanted to work on portraiture which is my biggest weakness and 2) i really liked the flow of movement in the second piece and the lack of dialogue.

Birdhouse Initiative - Proposal

This proposal was for my Intro to Sculpture: Unconventional Practices. The project was to create a site-specific piece that was to be constructed under $10. We were taken out to this abandoned field near Chinatown here in Chicago and were given the choice of using that space or any other that we deem appropriate for our project. I chose to use the space and create birdhouses for the birds that migrated through in the spring. The original idea was for each house to be constructed from a wood base and have a wire cage that would then be covered with brightly coloured rafia paper. Also, each house was to sit on a pole or stake that would be planted into a elevated area of the field that had downtown Chicago as its backdrop. (just a reminder, if you click on the image it will take you to the actual size of the picture)

Below is an "architectural" sketch of the individual birdhouses. Many things about the design and size changed in the end, but the one constant was the rolling cage and the rafia that covered it. The heart behind the whole piece was not only to give the birds a place to live in an area that the homeless had made their camp, but to have a very primitive looking yet brightly coloured structure that contrasts to the dull Chicago skyline.

line/dot/shape

The problem behind this series is to make 10 compositions each of lines, dot, and shapes. Each comp had to show either contrast, interesting use of space, repetition, orientation or all together. In total there were 30 compositions; some of them turned out great while others were failed experiments.

Each study was done using a 9 square grid system, which i ditched in the later studies. Also, each was done on Vellum with either permanent marker, PrismaColor marker or a .01 or .03 Micron pen.