As an artist and a student of art who wants to one day be a professional, I need to start getting my work out of the classroom. This april I am going to be showing some paintings in a local coffeehouse during our areas Homegrown Music Festival!

Previously it's been primarily about the music, but this year they are adding a visual aspect to it as well. So I dusted off a few of my favorite paintings from 2010 (and one from 2011, accidentally labeled it the wrong year though) and submitted them! Two of the three I entered were accepted!

 These are the two paintings I entered that were accepted. The one above was painted in acrylic in 2010, and the one below is a watercolor I did in 2011 (though I completely spaced, and thought I did it in 2010 for some reason when I submitted it).

For awhile now, I've been completely dumbfounded by cute miniature food. It is a fact of life that when something is smaller, it becomes even more adorable. So I will spread the delightfulness!

Cuteness!

Also she has a channel on youtube where she has posted samples of her work as well as a tutorial on how to make tiny cupcakes!

She doesn't just make food though!

More awesomeness!

:)

Wax figures

 Wax figures!



Above are two photo's of the first figure I made.

         I really liked how these two figures turned out, even though originally I hadn't even planned on making two figures. The second one, the one kneeling as the seat, was inspired by a man playing "seat for hire" that I'd seen at the renaissance festival once before, and as I needed something for the sitting figure to use as a seat, I thought it would be amusing if he sat and had a conversation with his chair.  One thing I do love about this piece is how the form flows downward in a triangle if you look at it from the right angle. 

      Haven't updated in awhile, but today we got to pour the molten bronze into our silica cases we'd made of our wax figures. I didn't have a camera to take pictures of the process, but next time we beging this process (it takes several days), I'll do my best to get step by step photos. :)

Finished my steel project! It's about a foot and a half wide or more and two feet tall, can't be sure because I'm just guesstimating. I got some good feedback on it, and I think it turned out fairly well. What do y'all think, did I manage to convey the concept of "soft" using sheets of steel and rod?

Here's the original concept sketch. 

As you can see it's changed slightly, although it does keep the original idea of using multiple curved objects to create a texture. This idea I pushed even further by using curved triangles and rounding them out. I also kept the idea of having the curves move upward on one end, though I did change the direction the curves faced.

We're going to start dipping our wax models on monday and I've scheduled a shoot for my video project this weekend. More updates to follow! 

I promised photos of my current art project and since I was on a roll of being on top of things, I borrowed a camera to take a few pictures. 

These are of the miniature model I made of the concept "soft," and the original drawing looked completely different. I quite like the model, especially how the paper I used for the triangles stands out against the wire. Although the final result will be different as I will be using sheet metal and not paper. 

Here is the full scale base of the piece, with paper triangles as stand-ins so I can visualize where I will put the sheet metal ones. You can see the model in the background to get an idea of the size change. At this point in time I have all five of the large and small triangles cut out, their edges filed, and have bowed them out so that they kind of look like a scoop. I am toying with the idea of bashing the edges of the triangles to give it a more rippled and organic feel, but I'm not sure how I'll like it as a whole as of yet. 

The next step after getting the triangles mostly ready and the wire bent (by hand might I add, and god that was annoying. Cept the end bits, I cheated on those) is to add the slots for the triangles to fit in.

The handy dandy tool that will accomplish this.

Clamped tight, and all the way through. It's a long process but got there in the end. Final project is due next monday, let's see if I can finish it in time and still manage to update.

Also I began sculpting with wax today for the first time, and loved it. I'll save those photos for another time. 

Apparently I'm not so hot at keeping this blog up as a regular thing. I do apologize. The semester has begun again and I'm hard at work, this time with much more actual production. I'll be shooting and editing a  screenplay I wrote last semester and making many art projects for my sculpture class.

It occurs to me that I've not really put any of my work up on here, and it might make me think more about the actual production. So how about an art update.

My latest school related project has been inspired by a drawing of a concept. The professor told us to illustrate several descriptive words and we then based a model off of one chosen drawing. I picked the sketch I did for the word "soft." Not such a bad idea, except the materials assigned for the final result are sheets of steel and quarter inch rod. Originally I was stumped with how I was supposed to make something look soft, but I think I may have come across a way to do it.

I will return next time with pictures of my model and drawing, and possibly pictures of the in progress work. Currently I am camera-less and until I can remedy that I don't want to waste time talking about something that a picture could easily explain.

It's that time of the semester...

If you're a college student, or have been a college student in the past, you know how this next bit goes. You've known about all the projects months in advance, but ultimately it's the night before their due and you've yet to begin. Procrastination, it's something I know all to well.

By the end of the semester a fulltime college student has multiple projects due at various times of the week, every week, and each week progressively more difficult as the semester has gone on.  The build up to the end is aggravating as on finds oneself caught between the thought of getting enough sleep or turning in a paper on time. But because you're in college and you're paying several thousand dollars a semester, if not more, you decide to screw sleep and get that paper done.

There's a strange satisfaction when students complain to each other about how little sleep they've had or how much they've had to do. The wish for more sleep is genuine, but one can't help but feel a sense of smugness radiating off the individual who can say they were up til three or four, and woke up less than four hours later to do more homework. It wasn't the best work that could've been done, but hey it still got done. Right? Maybe I'm just deluding myself, but I've felt this pride.

Why is it that people can be proud of the stupidest things?