Wall of Doodle

This is the full installation where my "e" sits. the artists from left to right:
G, Micheal
o,o, Dutton
g, Susie
l, Ryan
e, Jennifer

unfortunately we didn't win (BOOO), but at least dutton, susie, and i had a really fun late-night-painting-session in the office :)

In Twain

i'm back from maui and really fucking stressed out. (was that a cry for help?)

tried several avenues to abate my nervous energy today:

1. went grocery shopping
2. cooked cellophane noodles
3. cooked nian gao (didn't win any beauty contests, but it was freaking delicious)
4. attempted to draw

i ended up eating dinner at 4:30 pm (b/c i had nothing better do to) and consumed 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar and 200 ml of sticky rice flour (nian gao) over the next three hours. BAD IDEA. i now have the j-j-jitters from sugar withdrawal.

anyway, i really did attempt to draw something of relative substance to drag myself through a long day, but i just couldn't do it. i've been playing with a new concept for a painting but i froze. a brief phone conversation blocked everything i had planned. couldn't draw. couldn't focus. had to keep myself busy somehow so i decided (or maybe it was the sugar) to actively disregard my own nagging standards of "taste" and just draw something completely masturbatory for the sake of drawing. (fell back on a few old themes/design choices so i didn't have to think too much. god, i miss my sewing machine.)

ended up looking like an asian audrey hepburn + beheading piece, but i initially had Sargent's "Madam X" in mind (or i really just want a black dress with a plunging neckline). the blue variation is the original, the second is an adjusted version.



thumbnail sketch:



i also normally don't do personal work on the computer. that's my day job. at home, i try to maintain my grips on real media. today was an exception.

post four emergency doses of red bean candy and a second cellular installation, the jitters are gone...but i'm left with an insatiable need for salt. i'm recognizing my lack of savory snacks, staring at a packet of soy sauce, and wondering how one defines a "good idea."

i'm just realizing how frantic this post appears.

Seamstress Final

it's not a doll, it's a sculpture.

so this was a major time-suck (fig-1), but it was really fun to get out of 2D land for once :) this is part of a larger effort for my team (i obviously had the "e"). tomorrow is the final installation for all the letters so i'll have photos of the full piece in the next few days. anyway, here's the second half of the process:

DAYS 6/7: sanded and painted the figure and sewed the basic structure of her dress


DAYS 8/9ish: found that an old bottle of painkillers (left over from my date with the DR) was the PERFECT height for her seat. (see walgreens tag peeping through) penciled in the pixels for the "e" and began to sew the pieces. NOTE: sewing 1" x 1" squares of fabric with a standard size iron is decidedly unwise...though i only burned myself once (SKILL).


DAY 10/11ish: painted the shadow box to fit the palette of the fabric. something unfortunate that i learned when working with textiles is that YOU ARE AT THE MERCY OF THE TEXTILE DESIGNER. you can't change their palette, so you have to just suck it up and alter your plans...or layer sheer and opaque fabrics.


DAY 12/who-knows-what-anymore: final composition thoroughly secured with the help of mr. elmers, a handful of pennies, and Susie's trusty glue gun! i sewed the girl onto her seat and replaced the drugs with pennies (yea, i know, significantly less fun :P) so she wasn't top-heavy.


so there you have it! it was an awful lot of fun to work on, though my volcano-ash-and-sawdust-filled lungs may disagree. i have to say to my credit, though, i DID actually buy a dust mask...and i did use it-- only i didn't open any windows. apparently tiny, lung-slaying particles tend to linger in the air, so when i took my mask off, i gained a respiratory system full of foreign bodies. cheers to a shorter life span!

i also never addressed the subject matter of this piece. the restrictions of the project were only this: make an "e." well, ok. that's significantly less specific than my other assignments. considering the tumultuous nature of recent events, i decided to fall back on an old favorite subject: the seamstress. and only b/c this is the only subject i've consistently revisited, i feel like indulging myself and taking a walk through a bit of ego-centric history:

it started in the winter of 2008 (january 3rd or 4th if i remember correctly). i took a textiles class called "pojagi and beyond." in this sweat-shop-like environment, i stitched away for at least 300 solid hours....in about 6 weeks. ended up with several obscenely self-serving pieces. the three below are "armor," "swell," a 15 foot installation, and "the kiss," based on Klimt's palette (his painting of the same title). i found the act of sweat-shopping strangely comforting. it was agonizingly repetitive, vaguely empty of thought, and extremely meditative.

it was a mindless means to an end-- but mostly a means to a means.

it was a long winter:


running into the spring of the same year, i did a retrospectively weak digital painting called "seamstress" (yawn). unlike the previous series, this piece detailed my resolve:


in 2009 i was surprised to find myself in need of my dear, old friend. this time it was not so much the physical act of binding pieces together, rather, depicting it. these are two of an eight-part series that explores the button as a vehicle for attachment. it also put to good use my childhood obsession with collecting buttons off the floors of department stores (more specifically, Syms). "red blood" and "white blood" appear at the end of the series:


this brings me to the shadow box. unlike my previous works, the purposes behind this piece not only changed nearly every other day, but were in direct conflict with each other. the circumstances surrounding its creation kind of fucked up my reasons for using the subject matter in the first place. typically, i had a singular voice in anything i created with this theme. i had one thing to say to my motivator. after this particular project, though, i don't know what to say to my motivator anymore.

i've already said everything, and now i'm passionately neutral.

i'm not sure where this experience leaves my relationship with the 'seamstress.' this might just be the death of that theme since i'm finding myself scrambling for new symbols. regardless of whether or not i could ever find comfort in this subject again, the process of this piece served its purpose (see fig-1).

Seamstress Process

whoa, so it turned out that when my team asked me if i could actually fabricate that sketch into a sculpture and i said, "yea, sure," i wasn't bluffing. what a relief. honestly, i haven't sculpted for four years so i just assumed that i'd be able to deal haha.

received some valuable advice from the lovely sarah greenfield on how to work with paper clay-- so big thanks to her :)

I still have a bit of sanding and painting to do, but for the most part, i'm finished with the basic structure. here's the process thus far.

DAY 1: additional sketches for turning reference and a wire/foil skeleton for gesture and stability.


DAY 2: loose first coating of glue and paper clay. this stage reminded me of plaster casts from Pompeii (was that insensitive?)


DAY 3: started digging into her right hand, back, and legs


DAY 4: completed her left arm and chipped away at the feet (i'd accidentally made the wire/foil skeleton too large)


DAY 5: was only going to work on the feet and legs, but decided to start on the face as well. i actually had to use a size 00 brush and sewing needle to work on her lips. it was a late night...


DAY 6: finished off the face by filling out the cheeks a bit (it didn't turn well from the previous night) and added hair...exactly how i'm going to paint between her hair and face is a mystery to me...



phew! she stands about 11 inches tall and sits around... hell i don't know. the point is she's rather tiny considering she's going to sit in a 16"x16" shadow box. hopefully i'll be able to sand/paint her this weekend and start sewing her clothes/everything else/paint the actual shadow box before the due date.

one minor lesson learned from this project: breathing paper clay dust gives you volcano lungs. unfortunately, i was too lazy to buy a dust mask...though i had six days to do so. perhaps that means i haven't learned a lesson, rather, made an observation.

jennifer goes to 3D land!

concept sketch for a future project....IN THREE-DEE!! excitement and anxiety follow.

scratchings

i have had better days: not much in the sketchbook but writing lately--but these managed to creep into the pages.

pretty sure i also need a new scanner (see streaky fucked-up-attude)

Teeth, sketches, and android tomfoolery

Hell yes! I have completed a new painting (IN MY FREE TIME!) It's called "teeth," and you can track the process on my joint blog: Father Son Whaling Trip.


Teeth, gouache on paper, 28"x14"

In other news, i've finished a couple of watercolor sketches recently-- her are two of them:




and for those who attended I/O this year, you might recognize this illustration...working on it made me giggle:



something less interesting to everyone but myself: i finally, FINALLY painted on site. my coworker, mike dutton, convinced me to journey out for a quick landscape painting session recently. i quickly found out that i am a total hack. needless to say, i'm not going to post the unfortunate smattering of watercolor, but hopefully i will show future paintings (assuming i get better with practice...)

rodney and the holidays

hope everyone enjoyed their holidays! here's rodney to reaffirm this wish of good will:



i tried my best to draw a narwhal for work...but when that failed i had to branch out on my own. oh well.

Mary's Legs

been working on this on and off for a while now. i'm posting just to make sure no one thinks i'm dead or anything. i still don't know what to do with it.

Sketches are all i live for now

I was talking to Mike Dutton the other day and rediscovered gouache. this is what happened to my sketchbook as a result:

testing out gouache and acrylic medium. it's fun so far.


true story: i was looking at the "J" in this for a while and felt that it was kind of strange but didn't know why. it only took me two days to realize that I HAD DRAWN IT BACKWARDS. yes, i've written my own name at least several times during my life and i'm not illiterate...but this typo only dawned on me AFTER i had penciled and painted it. i'm wondering if all of my schooling diplomas were a scam. gouache and ink:


lia marcoux likes cameos and i've been thinking about them recently. they're out of my system now. gouache:


in other news, i was fortunate enough to nab free tickets to Cirque du Soleil's "Ovo" in San Francisco earlier this week. IT WAS FANTASTICALLY MIND BLOWING.

New Sketchbook

i've been noticeably absent from the internet lately-- and also overwhelmingly present. i'm ALWAYS online but never really heard haha.

anyway, i bought a new watercolor moleskine and here's what i've done TO it since i lovingly stripped it of its purity. (yes, i realize how disturbing that sounds haha)

1. i was tired of working with tight vectors and pixel-level detail...and i threw a brush and paint at the first page. i wanted to make the subjects look like they were awkwardly standing next to each other...but maybe it's just an awkward sketch in general.



2: Ok, i can explain the following. i saw "This is It," the Michael Jackson documentary, on monday and though i'll spare everyone a long-winded retelling of how it was the closest thing i've ever had to a spiritual experience i WILL acknowledge that it has triggered an unforeseen (and certainly unanticipated) fixation with the King of Pop. it's also allowed me to work in brush and ink (which i haven't done for...ever??)

(note: pretty obvious what hanging around Aaron has done to the way i work.)

my art needs me time

i guess i'm facing a common problem for artists who draw for a living-- i don't have time to do my own work anymore. anyway, i'm fighting my way through this one right now, but i don't know what will become of it:



also sketched this out earlier tonight after realizing that i haven't worked from life or in pencil for a LONG time:



the text reads "me as seen by me, for now. october 28 2009." i drew it in a moleskine that i accidentally purchased for nearly $20. i say accidentally b/c i didn't know that i was buying one with "plain" paper-- aka CHEAP ASS PAPER. $20 for cheap paper....i wanted to kick myself. alas, the damn thing is in my possession so i might as well make the most of it :P this was my first moleskine ever too...i don't think i've learned my lesson though. i'm buying another one with watercolor paper.

what does 'vacation' mean?

over-exposed photo of an acrylic character painting. thanks to fabby for the advice :D

i guess i'm most interested in the silhouette... and how it so strikingly resembles a uterus (btw, why is it that everything looks like a reference to human genitalia??)

i'm starting to find that i much prefer agonizing over a piece with a brush than on the computer...this is not to my mother's advantage. i've turned a third of the house into my personal studio. i'm actually surprised that she hasn't yelled at me yet haha.

need to start another painting now....boo to early senior shows!!