Pop Goes the Artist!

Some time ago, I did a “blast from the past” post, showcasing some of my older artwork. I’d like to make this a very occasional series if I can, so with that in mind, here is the second installment. This is from my freshman year of high school and marks the first time I used soft pastels. I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by them. In retrospect, it was mostly the fault of the paper we were using–fairly light, smooth sketch paper, whereas soft pastel is more ideally suited to something heavier and with a much more pronounced tooth, otherwise the surface of the paper fills up really fast. After only a few layers, the paper simply won’t accept any more pastel, so serious layering and blending is nearly impossible (not that I could have done that at the time anyway). This project was done from life; we had a set up of styrofoam shapes, but the colors we chose were our own.

I wish I had some photos of my other pastels (some completed within a few months of this one), because all I want to say when I see this is “You’ve come a long way, baby.” On a related note, I should really try to finish the pastel I started of a Quin Abbey.

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Sorry there haven’t been updates here in forever. I got back to school a week ago and have been absolutely swamped–I’ve barely had time to return phone calls and emails, let alone sit down for thirty minutes and try to coax coherent sentences out of my fingers. Things should be slowing down some after the weekend’s over, so I might even have time to start my next project.

I’m also pleased to report that my dorm has plenty of room for an easel. Hallelujah.

I was flipping through one of my portfolios a little while ago, looking for older pieces, mostly school assignments, that I could throw out. Then I thought maybe it would be fun to take some of the worst (or more interesting) pieces and post them here in an occasional series. Now, I’ll have to really dig to find anything older than my freshman year of high school, but I’ll do my best to find a few pieces that predate that.

This piece I’ve posted here is actually from the first semester of my sophomore year of high school (2002), from a one-semester intro to printmaking class that I took. (The second semester was devoted to 3D arts.) I actually did produce a few things worth keeping around in that class, but most of it was forgettable. This one here, which I apparently titled “Cheesefest”, is one of the pieces that inspired my art teacher to say “Printmaking just isn’t your strength, is it?” Heh. I think this was a “found-object print” in which we mostly just smeared some ink on random stuff and stamped it on construction paper. I appear to have used string, lace, and who knows what for the cheesy shapes (it wasn’t actual cheese, of that much I am sure).

I never did really get the hang of abstraction.