More.

Well, thanks to my relative laziness, I seemed to have missed a couple of slightly important things in my Art History class. Hoorah. I also get to work in a group with other people, which I detest being forced to do. I don't mind working with people, except the part where I have to work with people. Especially college students who may or may not be invested in the class. Or college students who are just as busy as I am. However, my boss is being nice and I've got a stretch of three days off, without loosing any hours. So at the very least, I should be able to not only keep up with my homework, but enjoy some relax time.

But I didn't just want to gripe about how hard and difficult my life is (or isn't), I'd like to share some more of my previous works.



This is a sketch from a few years ago, I think. Or maybe from last year. I should try to keep these things straight.

Anyway, it's another of my friends, and if I remember correctly, I did this sketch on the sly. Take that modesty! Portraits and the human figure are my favorite kind of art, at least my favorite kind of art that I like to do. Other people's portraiture and figure drawings are nice, but I just absolutely love the experience of drawing the human figure. It's personal without having to actually interact with a person.

I especially like that you're able to capture both the person that you're drawing, and part of your own self when you do draw someone. I don't mean that in a spiritual, namby-pamby, "essence of art" kind of way, I mean that any time that an artist, or anyone, really, sits down to draw something, they are attempting to communicate their own experience with others.

When you're doing portraiture, it gets a bit more complicated than if you're drawing a cup, for instance, because when you're doing a portrait, you're trying to communicate the character or personality of the person whom you are drawing. (Did I use whom correctly? Anyway.) But even when you try to strictly stick to the person in front of you, it's that person as you see them. It's what you see in that person that you're drawing, and what you see in the person that you're drawing is unique to you. Five thousand other people can draw the person that you just drew, and everyone of them will be unique.

The whole snowflake thing that gets thrown around applies here. It's not because the person who is being subjected to the pressures of 5001 people drawing her/him, although I'm sure that would be a bit unnerving, it's that each of those people will have a different subjective experience of the subject that they're drawing. While subjectivity can be abused (a lot), it does have it's place when you're viewing any art, or when you're creating any art. Who you are as a person is reflected in what you see in art or what you put into your art.

I could go on for much longer than this, I'm sure, but I'll just leave it at that. Look at my art and be astounded! You're interpreting my art through your collective experiences from your life and my art is a reflection of my collective experiences in my life! Isn't it just grand?

Also, I'm not entirely sure that the above completely makes sense, but I don't care! Ok, I kind of care. Not enough to edit anything, though.

Midterm project, oh joy

So, midterms are here, and it would seem that I only have one midterm this quarter. This makes me terribly pleased with the universe.

This is a sketch, fairly complete, of a friend of mine - who heroically allowed me to take pictures of her. There were a couple which would have worked well for this project, but I had to chose only one.

The project is just your basic "draw a face using pen strokes" assignment. I'm using loose cross-hatching. I'll be damned if I do another stippling project. I'd rather set myself on fire, really.

But since I haven't set myself on fire (yet), I should probably add that I used Photoshop and my beautiful, lovely, wonderful Wacom tablet. As I said in my write-up for the assignment, I feel more confident using Photoshop. Besides, part of the assignment was to trace the image, and I don't actually have access to a good preinter. Or a light table.

Hello world.

Well, I've finally decided to give in to the overwhelming pressures of the Web 2.0 and start my own personal blog.

I suppose this is where I wax poetic about how interesting my life is, or how much knowledge and intelligence I have to share with the world. But, alas, I'm about as interesting as the other 6 billion + people who currently inhabit this little world.

The purposes of this blog are simple, really. I want a place in which to share my doodles and creativity with as many people as I possibly can. And I want to be able to talk about whatever I want to, as well. I've heard that you can do that on the internet.

I'm currently a student in the Bay Area. Not at one of the fancy art schools (yet), but the community college I'm attending has a fairly diverse and interesting array of art classes. I'm learning a lot. I plan on majoring in Illustration, if possible, and I have an interest in Graphic Design. What I really want to do with my art is show how awesome and amazing the world is, dealing specifically with scientific themes and concepts (especially astronomy). It's a niche that is pretty empty right now, what with all the post-modernists and pop surrealists running around. And what happens to niches that aren't filled? Why, creatures adapt to them!

So, yeah, science + art = great.