5"x7.5". candle smoke, candle wax, ink, acrylic on drawing paper. Richard was constantly trying to get me to do wacky stuff (using primitive materials, creating physical boundaries for control, etc) but most of it i had already done, but he suggested I draw with the carbon from a burning candle. At first I did it outside because I didn't want to burn down my house and I totally caught the paper on fire and had to stomp it out in the yard and it was stupid. Then I put water in the tub and did it on the ledge around it and it totally worked, no breeze and I found out if you wet the paper the carbon sticks way better. You can also get the carbon to fracture if the paper is really wet, it's cool! Anyway this one is my favorite (not Richard's). I like the lightness and the suggestion of the figure but not overly described. It's simple but has depth. I did this toward the beginning of this process, which was toward the end of last semester.
4"x6". acrylic, water-soluble crayon, fabric, papers on paper. This also has the suggestion of the figure. It was a similarly intuitive methodology no planning and knowing when to quit.
6"x6". acrylic, water-soluble crayon, fabric, and paper on paper. This one is a bit more contrived but it works for me because it's still so vague, it's kind of like a silhouette but the planes are more complex. I think this one is seductive and kind of sexy. I didn't do anything on purpose, just adding layer after layer but when it got here i didn't want to work on it any more.
6"x6". Pastel, water soluble crayons acrylic, watercolor pencil, ink on acrylic paper. This is the most contrived one that I like. It's drawn from and Annie Leibovitz photograph. I drew it in September and filled it in a few weeks later. It just occurred to me that last semester, in one class I started drawing from Vogue and worked away from it into abstraction. And in the other class I started by drawing the mundane objects around me and then tried to draw people around me but people in motion are hard to take accurate notes from, and I ended up drawing from Vogue at the end. Weird. Weird both the weird approximate summary and also that I didn't notice until now...
8"x10. This is an ink drawing that I photographed, digitally manipulated, printed, photocopied and then colored with prismacolor markers and a silver sharpie. It started out because I wanted to see what what colors I should use on the original. So i made thumbnails, then Mark got excited and said to think of them as a page rather than tests. So that's what i did. What I liked about it is I didn't it plan out but it had a lot of steps. However it's the different than the intuitive processes above where i have no clue whatsoever what it will be in the beginning. In those the thing wasn't anything until it got to that layer. With this, it started with a thing, and that thing still exists, but this exists from it, too, simultaneously. I really love fashion illustration, but want to push it a lot further. I'm not sure where it will go, but it's exciting.
5"x7" sketchbook. Here is one that has a strong Rene Gruau influence. I like the composition. I like how it isn't overworked, there is closely observed detail but not too much information, it leaves room for the viewer to imagine the rest. Had i finished the other side of the other leg this drawing would not have the same impact, or much at all. (photography note: The page has rounded corners) vignetting is not on the drawing.)
So, how they affect my future work. Clearly I want to be intuitive. I don't feel like planning it out and conceptualizing a layout (like I did in mixed media 1 and like I did at the beginning of last semesters mixed media DS endeavors) is often the right thing for me to do. When I do that, it's not as good (unless it's over several months, but even then it's more like incubation than planning). I want to incorporate figurative and fashion elements, I don't want it to be forced or contrived or obvious or boring. I want it to be sexy and delicious and provocative, but I want it to also be g-rated, too.
Sarah: These are all nice in very different ways - but mostly very resolved, which I think is more important for you in a way than planning or conceptualizing. You have good instincts - you just need to follow them all the way through.
Repetition, play and fashion all keep coming up.
Look forward to seeing what comes next. S
me: I've told you before that the planning gets in the way of my process. Now you see what I mean. There was no planning involved in any of those pieces. :)
Sarah: Something you need to find your way through. Don't change the way you work - but find a path through your psyche that gets YOU to resolution.
S
me: I don't think I have a problem resolving things. I feel like I'm in a good place with my work. I have a natural fast pace. I don't have any trouble coming up with ideas or executing them. I just have a hard time with fitting my work into a pre-structured schedule. Like right now I'm working on these small chine colles. They aren't going to all be done by tomorrow night. I can safely say that. The beauty is I've let go of grades. I'm just trying to be a healthy working artist, so I don't really care what grade I get as long as I get credit. I just want to make stuff. Resolution, staying on task, and being intuitive and trusting myself are not things I need to learn... The only time i feel that i don't resolve things are when some artificial thing like a semester or assignment ends. If i don't have time to get to it in the contrived time space, i may not go back to it for years, or ever. But that's not MY issue. It's just that the project didn't fit the time frame. I think that's ok. It doesn't always happen, its not a bad habit i need to kick or anything. It's just what happens when you make as much work as I do, some things just don't get done.
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