Pop Goes the Artist!

Just for the heck of it, and because I miss it, the “studio” I left behind when I came to school. That’s my current work in progress, a pop art picture of my brother. Also in view, a weird thing I’m making Gina for her dorm room. Her color scheme is black, white, and pink, hence my color scheme. Only problem is, it sorta looks like Michael Jackson and that is NEVER a good thing. I never realized how lucky I was to have even that space until I came to school, where all I have is a very small desk that my computer takes up a lot of. Plus, I just can’t break out the paints here, because they’re too much of a mess. I took a lot of things for granted, art-wise. That being said, I need to look into a serious increase in storage space and organization of supplies, because that one little tower of drawers is not going to cut it for much longer. *sigh*

This is the companion piece to the other small landscape I painted. This one is also from a photo I took in Ireland, from an upper window of Cragganowen Castle, in Co. Clare. I’m not as fond of this one, which also took a lot longer than the first one. But whatever. I rarely (wait…never) paint landscapes and I almost never paint in this style, so we’ll chalk it up to a fun experiment and leave it at that. (acrylic, 5×7″)

This is the front cover. I started out with an abridged (but still more than 2″ thick) copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that I bought new, because I wanted something sturdy. I found that wonderful, heavy, wrinkly gold paper and glued it over the binding, then covered everything else with this paint-ish stuff that dries into a handmade-paper-like surface. The stuff is nasty to work with–slimy and tough to manuever–but the overall effect is great. Very glad I found it. While it was still damp, I stamped the clock into it with gold ink. I wanted to try to keep the cover fairly simple since the inside was a little more ornate. This isn’t the greatest picture, either, what with the flash glare and all.
The inside. I glued all the pages together into one huge block with gel medium and used a utility knife to cut out the boxes, then painted everything, wrote and rewrote the calligraphy (no kidding, probably five or six times–and I’m still not entirely satisfied with it), painted some more, added the gold corners and the fibers. The whole thing took a really long time, a lot of agonizing about supplies (especially those $%&# gold corners), and a lot more money than I either anticipated or wanted to spend. The problem is, I’ve never done a mixed media project like this before, so I didn’t have anything lying around leftover from other things. The outside edges of the page block are painted pale, somewhat shimmery gold, which helps disguise the layers and layers of gel medium. The fibers were a later addition, but I think they really help pull it together. I’m still not entirely satisfied with the way the quote (written seperately on watercolor paper and glued in) transitions into the rest of the book. Perhaps I didn’t tint the paper heavily enough. Not sure if I’ll try and fix that or not.

This is a close-up of the clock part. I should probably add that this isn’t completely finished yet–the clock still doesn’t work. I think I lost a nut or something that it needs, but since I was about to leave for college, I wanted to at least make it look done so I could take a picture of it. Next time I’m home I’ll stick a battery in it and see if it works despite the missing piece; it might. When I glued the block of pages together, I didn’t glue them to the back cover, so it opens to allow access to the motor to change the battery and adjust the time. Also, now that I look at it more closely, I feel as though that part of the page is missing something, too.

Perhaps this is just because I’ve spent so much time planning and making this book, but it feels somehow flat to me. I don’t think it matches the “inner vision” as closely as I’m accustomed to my artwork doing. No doubt I’m being too hard on myself, since this is an unfamiliar style and collection of media, but I feel like there’s something lacking. It feels unfinished and imperfect to me. It’s probably just me, but I don’t really have any way of telling that. Maybe sometime I’ll take it to my art teacher and ask her to help me figure it out. She’s good with stuff like that and I think this book would be very much her “style” so she could probably come up with some good insights. I just don’t know.

Several projects, in more or less the order I completed them:

This became my invitation to the senior art show. In the background, with the words colored to be a landscape, is a poem (Song of Myself) that I wrote last year in Creative Writing, repeated five or six times to fill the space. In the foreground, on foamcore to give some height, are pictures of me at various ages. I’m semi-happy with how it turned out. I was going for a gradual increase in the values of the black and white, leading up to the color photo, but that didn’t come across as strongly as I had hoped. Also, my edges are a little ragged, because foamcore is a bear to cut. I’d like to add that this looked horrible as a black and white, postcard-sized invitation, which may be part of that reason I didn’t send any out. (That, and laziness.) (Paper and foamcore, 8.5×11″)

For this assignment, we had to paint a facial feature using only two colors of paint. I took the easy way out and used white and another color, which made for much easier blending. Not that I can blend with a paintbrush anyway–and it shows. That inability may be partially due to the fact that A) I used acrylics, which dry very fast, making blending difficult, B) I’ve never really sat down to learn how, nor has anyone tried to teach me. Also, I don’t bother building up paint in thin, semi-transparent glazes. I’m not that patient, and if I wanted to do that, I’d be using watercolor, wouldn’t I? Anyway, it is what it is, and it was only a quickie exercise anyway. I do think the iris turned out nicely, though–nice variety of colors. And the eyebrow has some decent texture, although you can’t see much of it with the cropping and all. (acrylic, 6×6″)

I finally finished a pop art portrait of my brother, to go with the one I did of myself junior year. This is the third of these that I’ve done and I think it’s the best so far. And it looks like him. He chose the text, although we purposely worded it to be similar to mine, since they’re intended to hang next to each other. They also have nearly identical color schemes (primary, obviously), although I didn’t use the same colors in the same places, since that would look silly and dull. I’m also noticing now that the mouth is crooked (mouths are hard to get right in this sort of style, especially when people are smiling) and the eyes are slightly different sizes and shapes. Granted, so are my brother’s real eyes, but it still looks weird. Unfortunately I had to do this painting on paper, because my mom wanted his to be pretty much exactly like mine. Luckily, I was able to do it on much heavier paper than I did mine, so there was a lot less buckling. Perhaps this is just because I was using paper with a smooth finish, but I just don’t like the way the paints handle on it. (acrylic on paper)

Last, but not least (although smallest), a quickie painting I did from a photo I took in Ireland. I honestly painted this in about twenty minutes, with five colors and two brushes, right after I finished the pop art picture above. I just had to do something to loosen up my mind and hand after all those #&%$@ dots. Nevertheless, I’m reasonably happy with how it turned out. I did another, but haven’t scanned that one yet. (acrylic, 4×6″)

This is a painting of my dog Lucy that I did in acrylics, based on a photo my dad took not long after we got her. This is rapidly becoming my favorite style in which to paint.

I had a lot of fun with this one, although it took slightly longer than I expected and I had some frustration with the highlights on the ears. I’m also getting fed up with the transparency problems the acrylics pose, since I had to do three coats of those reds, and two of everything else (except the black, of course). It took almost an entire brand-new tube of red paint, grr. Luckily I buy student-grade paint (which may be part of my problem, but I can’t afford much better). While I’m still mastering the fine art of photographing artwork, this one is a significant improvement over my past attempts. No flash reflections, although it’s still blurry (should maybe invest in a tripod, or at least a monopod). However, the colors are fairly true, which is one of the hardest parts. (acrylics on canvas, 24×20)

I finally made a Webshots album of my only completed altered book, Recipe for a Relationship.  This is the one I gave to James for our one-year anniversary.  Enjoy!