2007 August « Visual Wizardry & Exceptional Lollygagging

Archive for August, 2007

Out of office notification

August 20, 2007 at 6:27 am · Filed under Text

This week I am going to be scarce as it is project switch everything from old system to new system week at work. Overtime approved. I am facing up to seven 11 hour days at work, plus I still need to have meetings about classes for school. when I’m not doing these other things, I will probably be sitting very still at home.

In addition to this I start school the following week, which means I will go back to living three lives (artist, student, desk-job-holding-adult). I sat down and tried to configure a schedule, and figured I can promise myself about 20 hours from each responsibility each week:

- 20 hours at work because it is required of me,

- 20 hours of school work, which is including classes but is also including a huge block of time to sit and get all my work done, which I hope is effective, and,

- 20 hours of art time, which can be pushed to two 10 hour days on the weekend if I simply have no time during the week.

This may seem extreme, but really this is only 4 hours per weekday of each activity. 4+4+4= 12. There are 16 hours of awake time in a day, which still leaves 8 hours for sleeping. And I do want to set aside a LOT of time for school, and I have some ambitious projects looming in the distance and I need to be spending actual time with them. So there you are.

Here is a great project I will be doing whenever I have a chance.

Catch you later.

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Art for sale, getcher fresh art

August 17, 2007 at 6:35 am · Filed under Finished

Anthony and I went on a photo shoot for the five things I have on sale. His part was mostly to stand in a big vacant lot and mine was to push the button.

Tell your friends and enemies that there are some prime originals on sale. Originals, people. Not prints, not little paper cut-outs to tack on your cork board, I’m talking about high quality paint-on-canvas stuff here. I am particularly fond of Emergency. It is the newest thing I have painted besides the thing for my brother, and I’m sort of a crazy head for selling it. But, it was originally a venting piece, and now that it’s out of my system it should probably be REALLY out of my system.

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Little red bird

August 13, 2007 at 1:17 pm · Filed under Finished

So when a friend of mine went to Guatemala a few years back, she came back with a plethora of pictures, as one does. A few in particular stood out. This was one of them.

When I was still living in the dorms, I got out a giant canvas one day and decided to paint this, finally, or something based on it, anyway. I had been meaning to — it had been sitting in a special folder on my desktop for precisely this reason — but I hadn’t yet for whatever reason. I got out my biggest filberts and painted the brunt of this in about 1.5 hours, and did the details on the bird later when everything dried.

This is now hanging right above my dining room table, and can be seen from outside through the window.

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Sky Emergency

August 11, 2007 at 5:54 pm · Filed under Finished

Emergency, 2007

Despite all the madness in our lives, despite all the human drama and confusing situations, I maintain a sunrise or sunset is of the utmost, urgent importance.

This will be on sale at my little shop after the 15th. This piece also marks my first entry to Illustration Friday, which makes me happy. I’ve been meaning to submit something for a while now, and this seemed to fit the bill nicely.

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All you need is love?

August 8, 2007 at 1:48 pm · Filed under Pre-production

I have been toying with this for a long time. This is that style again, here examining the idea of how impossible it is to communicate things like “love”. And how one person’s idea of love may not be on par with someone else’s, and yet how important is it to be able to talk about the same exact things when talking about something so important as love?

This grew out of my irritation with people using the word love to each other in high school, but also with it’s liberal use in general. I think people tend to use the word love as a crutch where some kindness would have gone further, as a quick fix-it when long term surgery and therapy would have been more appropriate, as a flat and dusty verbal validation when actually showing it and living it would have been far more meaningful and beneficial.

It also grew from two exploding dog cartoons. This image has been rattling around in my head for a long time, and has shown up on many sketch books and day planners since I first saw it. This other one was also a huge catalyst for the idea. This positioning is actually used in one of the scenes I picked because it’s so heartbreakingly perfect.

I’ve narrowed it down to about four scenes at this point, and while I may tackle them individually for more depth later on, the initial approach is going to be a four-panel thing

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Cloth Grocery bag

August 8, 2007 at 1:29 pm · Filed under Fibers

THIS IS HOW I MADE A CLOTH GROCERY BAG

I get in modes where I want to do everything I can for Earth. And really, I’m doing okay compared most people my age I think. But I could always do MORE.

Cloth grocery bags, if you don’t get them from Whole Foods when they’re giving them out for free on Earth Day, are kind of expensive. That’s lame. So I decided to try and make one.

The size I wanted was about the size of this paper bag. I looked at how the thing was made.

Then, I looked at what I had in my fabric stash. I was going to go buy more fabric, but where’s the sport in that? I had some leftover flannel from all my quilting projects. They were in weird strips and irregular bits.

I lined them up next to my model. Oddly, each piece was almost exactly what I needed in terms of length.

I used the following pieces:

- A piece for the skinny sides, that included both sides and the bottom.

- A piece for both fat sides, also including the bottom
- Two straps
- Two strap enforcers
- Some cotton to reinforce everything, since flannel is not all that strong and could stretch out.

Then I sewed it together. Then I blanket stitched the outside a little, and the side seems to make it more boxy.

And now I have a cloth grocery bag to forget at home. So far the only place I reliably use it is the farmer’s market, but I guess that’s appropriate.

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Steg v. Peace-head: pre-production

August 2, 2007 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Pre-production

Crazy Day, acrylic on canvas, 2005

I am in two places in this painting: I am celebrating a campfire (green person) and I am being fed a coffee of epic proportions as a stegosaurus (same green). I don’t know why I became a stegosaurus, but then who doesn’t have different “modes” around different people?

Ever since I painted this picture I’ve been toying with that stegosaurus, most recently:

from sketchbook

This is a big variation of the idea — whereas before I’ve been doing LOTS of stuff in this really expressive and bright look when I’m expressing/digesting/communicating stuff that’s actually happening, this particular thing got transferred to a mural on a wall (just left of the blue dancing box thing). It’s going to be twilight, and A Person will be walking hunch-shouldered briskly by.

It’s a little dissociative, a little less direct, but at the same time maybe that works better. Because sometimes the things that you see so clearly are being ignored by the people it involves. Or the people who are closest to it.

Helpful walls and buildings:

(though I want to be angled from above, not below/ground level).

(I forget where I actually picked up these pictures. If they’re yours tell me and I will remove them or credit you, whichever you prefer.)

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Man sketch

August 1, 2007 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Pictures, Text

This is kind of incredible. \

from my sketchbook, sometime in high school

Just last night I was talking to Sam about how boys tend to draw boys and girls tend to draw girls. It’s not a matter of preference at all — people just draw what they’re used to, and what’s easier to “get” than the sort of body you deal with on a daily basis?

Of course, one does need to draw the opposite sex every once in a while, and sometimes one needs to draw obscenely muscled people. I told Sam about this series of studies I did that was basically the torso of men and then everywhere else of…well, all sorts of things. And here it is! Well, here the file is anyway. I think this may have been one of the many things stolen from me in ‘02. Luckily for you I had an e-copy.

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