Pop Goes the Artist!

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″)

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!

I’ve been experimenting more with calligraphy in the past few days, so I thought I’d share. An illuminated capital A, a bit larger than actual size, which is probably around 2.5×2.5 inches. This was very fun to do and I’m planning on making a small accordian-style book with all the letters of the alphabet. (watercolor and black and gold ink)

My name in Lombardic capitals. (watercolor)

I’m warming up for a full project, doing a calligrapy version of a meditation I found in Ireland called “What is dying?” It’s not as morbid as it sounds, I promise:

“A ship sails and I stand watching
Till she fades on the horizon
And someone beside me says, ‘She is gone.’
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all;
She is just as large as when I saw her.
The diminished size and total loss of sight
Is in me, not in her, and just at the moment
When someone at my side says, ‘She is gone,’
There are others who are watching her coming,
And other voices take up a glad shout:
‘There she comes!’
…And that is dying.” (Bishop Brent)

I’m planning on using an A similar to the one at the top to start it off with. More on that when I actually start.

This is a small, lazy pencil drawing of John Paul II I did right after he died as a school assignment. I say “lazy” because I didn’t feel like doing it at all, so I picked a pretty basic picture–no full body shots, flowing garments, etc.–and I made it the smallest we were allowed to do. Nonetheless, I’m happy with how it turned out. This project is only one of two times that Lanciotti ever told us we could use a photograph we didn’t take ourselves, for obvious reasons. Still, it means I can’t ever do anything with this one, even if I wanted to. (pencil, 4×5)

The second agonizing watercolor still life I’ve done, but at least this one didn’t get thrown away as did the one I did at the end of last year. This project wasn’t fun (I am not a fan of watercolor or still lifes), but I did it remarkably fast for being so miserable about it. I’m also proud of the way it turned out, although I think the drapery on the left side is a little weird looking. The window wasn’t even supposed to be part of it, but I centered the picture so badly that I had to include it for balance. The landscape/trees outside it are probably the weakest part. This is also a pretty horrendous photo of it–the colors are all right, but the angle is completely whacked. At some point, I’m going to set aside a weekend for re-taking pictures of all my artwork so that they’re not so embarassing. (watercolor, 14.5″ x 19″)

This is a large pastel I did of a plaster cast/relief type thing from the art room. It was another assigned project, like the above watercolor, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have done it. This isn’t a particularly good photo–since all the values are so similar, it was hard to get it clear and stuff. I used a grand total of I think three different pastels. (Fairly certain we had to limit the color scheme, but even if not, the thing was all one color anyway, since it was plaster.) But yeah. I like it and it’s big (always a struggle for me). (pastel, 18″x18″)

This is the cover of an altered book I’m working on right now. As the cover suggests, it has a planets theme–I want to do a page for each planet in the solar system, plus the sun and moon. The sun page is done, so I’ll probably scan that in later. I’m still working on getting Mercury to my satisfaction. Anyway…for the cover, I found the basic picture online and then continued it with paint on the cover. I also added five silver star beads for a little bit of three dimensional fun. I also painted the phases of the moon down the spine of the book in silver. The back cover is just black with gold dot stars. I might do something different with that later. More pages as I finish them. (mixed media, 5.5×8)