This summer I took Computer Illustration I. So I hereby present some of my work from this semester. I have a big backlog from this past year that still needs to be properly photographed, I’ll post that as soon as I can.
This is a drawing of my hand from observation.
Personal Logo Design
ADIM Sticker Design Contest Entry
Landscape Design using scatter brushes, based on Longwood Gardens
One Point Perspective Cityscape
Final Project, Event Poster
I can paint. My first still life.
This is the Google Sketch-up rendering of my “Passage” assignment for last semester’s Portfolio class.
Finished lamp. I’ll have better pictures soon. The lamp shade is a cotton twill that is held onto the frame by velcro so that it is easily removed and washed. The whole lamp collapses into a two inch high box (a long one) in the spirit of Ikea. Measurements, 6′x2′x1′.
This is my double sided RISD drawing. Graphite on semi-translucent rice paper. When viewed in person one side presents a keyhole showing a sleeping girl. The reality of the scene is revealed on the other side. Was rather annoying to draw because of the inability to erase on the rice paper.
My text drawing for RISD. A museum show concept poster. Designed to look like actual pages from the artist/architect/designer’s journal. India ink, watercolor and tea reduction sauce (no, I’m not kidding) on heavy watercolor paper. My first time using watercolors. The font (in the spirit of the artist himself) is a custom font, an amalgam of several designed by Mackintosh.
My RISD bike drawing. Tried to use a cartoonish/70′s/Crumb style here. Lots of political references. Simple looking, but spent longer on this than any other drawing to date. Lots of little details.
“Prison of the Mind”
My first metal and wood sculpture. Now taking up lots of space in my living room. About the height of a bar.
Photo assignment. Never really used a camera as an artist’s tool before.
More coming. Still some pieces to photograph from last semester, already started on pieces for this semester.
There is an old Zen saying which I cannot quote word for word, but basically, it says practice is like walking through a fog. You get wet, little by little; it happens so slowly you don’t even notice until suddenly you notice you are soaked. I had one of these moments this past week.
Thursday at school I was talking to a classmate and we were talking politics (ruh rowh). A statement was made by said classmate about how they believed more government surveillance was needed, not more curbs on their power. It was a “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” type of statement. Now, four years ago I would have probably flew off the handle at this, and I must admit that at first I felt anger arise. However, I realized it was manifesting, and did not let it rule me. We had both had birthdays in the past two weeks and I had been thinking a lot about my age. I tried to empathize, to see where they were coming from. And once I started doing this I realized they were a decade younger than I, THAT was the answer; the anger dissipated.
When we are younger, we have the politics of our parents. When we get older, hopefully we question these politics and evaluate them, we develop our own. Perhaps they change, perhaps not, but we SHOULD question them and develop our own opinions. I know when I was a child I had my parents politics. I am a child of a military family. I was a Reagan baby. I thought Reagan was great, I mean, he was my President. Our government could do no wrong. I was a conservative. But my mother and father also taught me to expand my horizons, to go out and find my own answers.
When my classmate was BORN, Reagan was no longer President. They never saw the Berlin Wall fall like me. They never saw their parent go off to war. They don’t remember being taught in school about the evils of the Soviet Union, and how they were our enemy, and then waking up one day and they were gone and being told Russia was our biggest ally. They were in elementary school (if I do my math correctly) when the Battle of Seattle occurred, when the government illegally spied on their own civilians, illegally arrested thousands of union members and political activists, illegally shot military grade tear gas at their civilians in violation of national and international law (thankfully many of those responsible eventually lost their jobs) (by the way, the rioting occurred AFTER the police started firing tear gas). They weren’t even in high school when the biggest peace protests in history occurred in the run-up to the second Iraq War. They were still in elementary or middle school when saying you disagreed with President Bush in public could gain you a visit from the FBI; when we kidnapped people off the streets and sent them to foreign countries to be tortured for months, for their families to think they were dead, only to find out they were innocent.
More personally, they haven’t been branded a traitor to their country by friends for disagreeing with the Iraq war. They haven’t been spied on by the state police for being an advocate for peace, they haven’t been illegally detained by police for their manner of dress (at least, I doubt they have, don’t quote me on this, this is more what was going through my head at the time). Have they been illegally searched for drugs (which I never used nor had)? (I doubt it). When my parents were in school segregation was still in effect and advocating for full rights for African Americans got you an FBI file for being a dangerous communist and could end your career. Could the same be the said for theirs? They have not had the same experiences in life as I have, how could they POSSIBLY hold the same beliefs as I?
They are at the age where my own opinions were truly beginning to form. I must show patience. Showing anger would only cause them to be angry as well and would accomplish nothing. Perhaps they will one day share the same beliefs as I do, perhaps they will not. But they must have the freedom to decide. My anger came from a desire to impose my beliefs on others when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.
So to that classmate, thank you for being my teacher.
On a side note, I know I haven’t posted any artwork on here for MONTHS. I am preparing a digital portfolio as we speak for a review next week and will post as soon as it is ready.
By the way, I think nothing speaks to how corporately controlled our media is as the coverage of the protests in Seattle by ABC. They covered them until a Disney store window was broken (their parent company). After that you wouldn’t have known anything was happening in Seattle.
Just really busy with schoolwork. Here is some of my latest:
This was my first digital imaging homework. I had to “watercolor” the image.
This is actually my second sculpture from 3D design. This is clay, pre-firing. I wanted to document it in case it exploded. Self portrait of course.
This was a digital imaging project. We had to make a repeating wallpaper tile. It looks a lot cooler printed than on a monitor.
This was my latest assignment, creating a mailer for a selected non-profit based on their current branding/web design.
Anyway, I have a lot more sculptures from this semester and pictures/paintings from last semester to still post here. So, keep checking every once and a while.
Here is another 2D Design project. I had to draw a poster using a number of different techniques and make a final version in india ink only (brushed). This has more potential as a color drawing than in black and white I think. I may do a full color version slightly altered (for example, no polk dots) if I have some extra time over break. This poster is the kind of thing that people “in the know” will immediately understand, and those who are not involved in this particular music scene will not understand. It is not meant to be universal. But so you know, the building made of letters behind the guy’s face is the new MICA building, and the guy is Dan Deacon, an electronic artist and one of the main faces of Wham City Baltimore (whamcity.com)
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| From 2D Design |
By the way, I will be shortly posting a whole slew of Zen related stuff, so get ready for some boredom!
Apologies to Bill Waterson, the quote is from “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by the way, I hope he would approve
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| From 2D Design |
This one is a page from the book Cat’s Cradle
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| From 2D Design |
The whole idea here was to combine found pictures with found text. The first one is a picture from a 1983 National Geographic of children climbing a sculpture, a pinwheel and text from a pre-soviet communist propaganda poster. The second is the Walmart logo and slogan from 2006, and a random child labor pic.
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| From 2D Design |
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| From 2D Design |
These are some drawings from my Drawing I class. Sorry about the quality, they are pictures, the drawings were too big for my scanner.
Class studies
graphite pencil
Form Study:
A Good Example of Bad Perspective:
Form Studies:
Vine Charcoal:
Perspective Drawing
