Horned people posin'...

More PE sketch assignments from this summer. Here are a pair of Unavisi (invite-only character race designed by Brianne Goetz). Davina Falcão's fella Atthis in graphite and pen and Amy Clark's Yew with a juvenile gryphon sketched in Photoshop.

Ladybug jelly!

Alrighty...here's a quickie animation done for my Drawing 4 class this semester. I plan on making this one longer in my free time over the next couple weeks. Currently it's only about 77 frames long and has no sound.

And to the left are the ladybugs I originally drew in my sketchbook at the start of this little project. I think it should be fairly obvious which one was used in the actual animation...

Semi-chromatic ladies...

More of my sketchbook PE assignments from this summer...

Del Borovic's character Tain

Black ink pen, red nupastel

Mandy O'Brien's character Amile
2B and 4B graphite pencil, various colors of nupastel

The battle of the windows...

I'm working on a thematic series this semester for my Drawing 4 class and because I've long had a fascination with old-fashioned wood-framed windows, decided I would try to work with them for a sort of...installation-y piece.

Back in Drawing 2, I worked with a broken up collection of jellyfish in chalk pastel. Since then I've really had a thing for disconnected imagery, especially when it comes to natural forms. I've also really become absorbed with a love for the unexpectedly beautiful in nature, especially where there are double connotations...times when we look at things that we think of as both "bad" in some way and yet "pleasing" in another. Jellyfish are some of the most deadly creatures in the world and yet so elegant, graceful, delicate and ethereally lovely. Insects annoy the heck out of people, disgust and frighten them, and yet we still consider ladybugs "cute," butterflies and moths "pretty," and think fondly of summer when a dragonfly buzzes past. We think of dead grass as a problem and unwanted, and yet we relish the sight of fields of dried plains grass bending and rustling with the wind.

And more than that, I wanted to screw with reality. My style has so often been called "pseudo-realism" by others that I have started to embrace that idea. The idea that what I'm drawing is both "real" and "not." So my idea is to place images on the glass panes of vintage windows -- jellyfish on one window, flying insects on another, dried plains grass on another -- and then line them up so that if a viewer were to look through all those windows at once, there would be a bizarre suspension of reality, of what SHOULD be seen through a window. Jellyfish in the sky with insects over plains grass? More than a bit bewildering, don't you think? But I also want a viewer to be able to think about how what they're looking through affects what they're looking at.

Yesterday I drove out to Wheat Ridge after classes and acquired some windows from a couple people I found via Craigslist (thanks to Nathan and to Sarah) and even a big old door! I might use the door as an additional artwork if I have time, or it may end up being an independent project at a later date. The drive home with all this stuff piled up in my minivan was...interesting. I had to have one hand on the door, which reached all the way to the back of the van and right up between the front seats, at all times to prevent it falling this way and that coming around corners, especially since it was holding up the big white window as well.

Some of the windows (and the door) still have hinges and other things such as latches or handles intact, so of course I am excited and want to work with those as well. Some of the wood is very weathered and even splintering, paint chipped, left to the elements for so long, and the glass is often pretty dingy. My weekend is going to involve a lot of cleaning and sanding and other such things to get the windows to a more presentable state, one that doesn't involve me picking splinters out of my hands every time I touch them and that makes it easier to get images on the glass.

Getting the images on the glass has proven to be the most challenging aspect of this project. I do not want to have to use paint, since a) this is for a drawing course, and b) I'm not very good with paint or other such liquid-y mediums. I have a variety of ideas for ways to accomplish the conquest of the glass, whether by drawing directly on it or via acrylic transfers, heat transfers, xylene transfers, or lazertran paper transfers. I'm reluctant to use lazertran just because I've never actually seen the stuff in action... Anyway, guess we'll see what happens!

Meanwhile, a couple of big daddy-long-legs spiders played stowaway with the stuff and are now loose in my van somewhere -- I'll have to take the shopvac to the van later to deal with all the paint flakes and spiderwebs and pine needles and other debris left behind when I hauled them out of the car and down to the backyard last night. All in all, an adventure.

Naked in Red-Blue-Yellow

A lifedrawing sketch from back on May 7th for Drawing 3. The guy, a man in maybe his 60s or 70s, had a very interesting figure with an oddly proportioned back and abdomen. I very much enjoy drawing backs. I think they're one of the top three most beautiful human features aesthetically.

Anyway. I like doing lifedrawing this way. I used a scrap of bright yellow canson mi-teintes pastel paper and covered it with a layer of blue oil pastel, then smeared it with orange and red and brown oil pastels, dotted it, generally made a mess. Then used an exacto knife to scratch out the figure, occasionally smearing what I'd scratched off back into the piece. Went back over it with red oil pastel for the "border" and "ground" and then a dark blue oil pastel for dark shadowed areas. I left it very textural instead of smooshing the pastel down, so some parts are raised. A lot of that dimension got lost when I scanned it. And at some point apparently one of his feet got smooshed out... Oh well!

Still, I had fun.

Lemon drops revisited step 1...

I totally just realized -- out of the blue for no apparent reason -- what it was about this image that made me nuts. Look! See the shadows? There are shadows cast by the lemon drops, but not by licker dude! This is totally not cool. lol No wonder I couldn't stand looking at it and it made me uncomfortable. I can't believe nobody pointed it out during critique way back then! Actually, I have a lot of ideas for how to vastly improve it, but it would require starting over from scratch...

--Move his face closer to the lemon drops so that it interrupts the field of them, his tongue is almost touching one, perhaps hair is pushed up against some.
--Bend his tongue more. It looks like a cow's right now.
--Have him cast a shadow.
--The mango-colored shit-tastic hoodie has to go. Perhaps a plain t-shirt instead, dark colors.
--Do the "troubles" as if they were embossed in the lemon drops instead of as black transfers.

...probably need to just do this in digital. lol

Now that I know what's missing I can envision how it would look if I fixed it all. I will have to do it later though (see: eventually) because tomorrow I have a theory examohgodohgod.

Ahem.

My art is trying to kill me (FINAL version)...

I'm a lame-o! lol I got so stressed out during finals that I completely failed to update this blog. Then summer obligations and courses began and I got distracted. Of course, Aboidoodles has been getting some posting lately, but nevertheless, I owe my own blog a little attention, don't I?

Well, here's a photograph of the final version of the project I did for my Drawing 3 final.

Unfortunately, I have only a silly digital camera and am not a great photographer, so this photo really doesn't show much of the dimension or color quality that the actual piece does in life. Those are actual paintbrushes and pencils in there. The underdrawing is done in chalk pastel (aka "soft" pastel), sometimes with wet paintbrushes to texture it or move it around. The red and blue madness is acrylic with gel medium, applied via palette knife. I also utilized a couple of hairdryers, a fan, and the bright morning sun to get the paint to dry fast enough to take it to class. Yeehaw!

Regardless, I'm satisfied with it, even if it is not the way I originally envisioned. There was actually a version prior to this which was pretty much finished and fantastic and just the way I'd envisioned... But I dropped a bottle of turpentine on it, and it got totaled. I redid the whole thing, as you see here, the night and morning a few hours before final critique. I went to critique sleepless and very much of the opinion that I no longer gave a shit what others thought. I was exhausted. lol

I got an A for the course.

Riss was harassing me about our posting deal...

I have an ongoing deal to encourage Marissa Pittman to post more art in her blog. For every post she makes, I must make a post as well (either here or in Aboidoodles or my fotolog). Lately she has TOTALLY been taking advantage of this bargain to harass me to post more.

OH YEAH? WELL TAKE THIS RISS. Two posts! One for Aboidoodles, one for here! And this one is lame! What now, woman? BOOYAH.

Colored pencil doodlery in my sketchbook. Colored pencil scans like shit.

Fringe: Ability

Done as a homework exercise for a class. The assignment was to watch 30 minutes of television and to draw what we watched as we watched it. I watched an hour-long show instead (if you count commercials).

Pilot G-2 07 black ink pen, yellow and blue nupastels, 9x12 recycled sketchbook paper wheeeeee...

"Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions"

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions is a component of chaos theory which is more popularly referred to as "the butterfly effect." The butterfly effect has absolutely nothing to do with Ashton Kutcher unless Ashton Kutcher is getting eaten by a tornado.

Robert Redford's character in the movie Havana popularized the use of a hurricane with the butterfly theory when saying, "And a butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean."

However that was in 1990, and the butterfly became the popular representative of sensitive dependence on initial conditions way back in 1972 when the leading theoretician on the butterfly effect, Edward Lorenz, wasn't easily reached to provide a title for a talk he was about to give to the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Philip Merilees, a meteorologist acting as the session convenor for the meeting, came up with a title in his stead: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas

Thereafter, the poetic butterfly replaced its predecessor, a seagull, as the seemingly miniscule instigator of a pattern of events that might eventually be related to a massive, impressive catastrophe such as a tornado.

I, meanwhile, just illustrated it with colored pencil on 15x15 inches of bristol. Yeehaw! The scan looks like crap compared to the piece in person, plus I've made some minor adjustments along the bottom sections since the scan was made. I'll have to scan it again later.

Three for the show! (Death, Presidents, and Sap.)

A page from my sketchbook in chalk pastel and charcoal, done on a homework prompt of "draw something you think is dead."






A page from my sketchbook of brainstorming I was doing for a piece involving Abraham Lincoln (whose 200th birthday anniversary is this year, wacky). ...also, I drew Abe Lincoln on a Chipotle burrito's foil wrap with sharpies, and later tore it off and pasted it in the sketchbook. I'm a doofus, but I have fun.



And some sap drawn for a friend (and partially for myself) involving her character Seville and my character Sugar Maple. They are Unavisi, which is a race and a project designed by our mutual good friend Brianne for her friends to participate in by invitation only.

Illuminating skin...

To encourage a friend to draw daily and utilize her blog more, I made a deal that for every post she made, I would make one too. Well, the last few days have gone bonkers-like, so I am going to count this one post as being for the two she has made thus far!

The art group I am a member of, Private Exchange, has one exercise in which people can follow prompts for speed paintings/sketches. In need of a warm-up before commission work, I looked to see what the latest prompt was the other day: cloudscape.

Though there's not much in the way of clouds here, I like the result anyway.

Approximately 20 minutes in Photoshop.



Here is a WIP from a large charcoal piece I did on Monday. I'm afraid I don't have a photo of the finished product at the moment, but I thought I'd show this anyway. This piece has special personal significance to me.

Strathmore 300 series bristol board, soft vine charcoal, and General's charcoal 2B, 4B, 6B. Also, a tiny touch of acrylic and india ink for the ember and its reflection in her eye.

The entire thing is about 17.1"x28". I'll have to remember to post the finished product and its story later.

Make a mess, you'll feel better.

I am spending my holidays in San Francisco with my best friend. She's taking a nap right now, so I am boiling grenades (cans of eagle brand to turn them into caramel for pie) and making a quick post. Here's a couple messy pages from one of my sketchbooks this past semester.



Sharpie and watercolor drawing over a distressed gel medium transfer of a map torn out of a RTD light rail pamphlet. Ultra simple, but I like it!

















White acrylic paint and black sharpie over watercolor over distressed gel medium transfer of a photograph I took of a couple of hooligans (and other random passengers who happened to be present) on the light rail shortly before calling security on them for hawking stolen electronics. Loooong story. I had fun though!

Buggity bug bug...

Here's a couple little sketchbook chunks from back when I went to the Museum of Nature & Science and played with dead bugs!

Materials: Prismacolor colored pencils, HB graphite pencil.

The Inuit & The Whale

Okay, I'm reposting this in high quality because I got to a scanner for a while today, and because I fixed the..."typo" that I made when writing out the whale half. And also because people seem to really like it! So, uh...yeah. (Vicki says this should be a shirt.)
Materials: sketchbook paper, micron sakura brush pen, watercolor, Kate-on-too-much-caffeine.

Kagen and the Eland (post one)...

Another sketch from one of my sketchbooks, this time done with carbothello pastel pencils and a blending stump.

My artist's journal class had gone to the Museum of Nature and Science downtown and gotten a private room to study a ton of pin-dried arthropod specimens. Ever see that scene in the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom movie, where that HUGE insect crawls through the chick's hair? We got to see some of those insects, and they were much bigger in real life, I swear. It was FANTASTIC!

...anyway. One of the specimens was a mantis, and I love mantises (I love a lot of insects and arachnids, for the record). I went home and looked up some of the old records of bushmen folktales from the late 1800s that were in the manuscripts of the Lloyd and Bleek Collection. I wish I had full access to the collection, but my college isn't among the participating institutions...grr. Anyway. I read up a lot, from there and other resources, on Kaggen/Kagen/Cagn the Mantis, a superbeing (not really a full deity by bushman concept) and especially enjoyed the stories of him and the Eland.

Supposedly, when Kagen discovered the newborn eland and learned its name (stories vary on how this came to pass, from Kagen's wife the Dassie birthing it after he punished her to his creation of it in secret on his own, to having turned another being's shoe into the eland), he hid it away in seclusion and nourished it on honey which he was supposed to be taking home to his wife. A relative, the Meerkat/suricat, discovers this and goes to find the eland. Not knowing of Kagen's purpose for the Eland and being a selfish and presumptuous individual, he slaughters the Eland and makes it into meat. Kagen is griefstricken on discovering the murder of his pet, and says that from that point forward, because the Suricat had spoiled the eland for its true purpose, the suricat must always hunt the eland. Supposedly this is the origin of both the eland, the largest antelope in Africa, and the ritual of hunting among the bushmen. Certain rules, according to Bushman rituals, must be followed to successfully hunt and kill an eland, or otherwise Kagen protects them and will not let them come to harm by the hunters.

...um. Anyway. So I just found the idea of Kagen the Mantis caring for the Eland so affectionately (he also had a pet springbok which was once stolen by an elephant who replaced the little antelope with her own calf, which Kagen did not appreciate at all -- he killed the calf) to be a very intriguing story.

I'm of a mind to, at some point, attempt to illustrate a short storybook in which I could revise the stories of Kagen to make for a good children's story.

Tell it to the bees...

One of the sketches from one of my sketchbooks this year, which I only got a chance to scan because I had two minutes with a school scanner. Heh.

For centuries, it has been a tradition in beekeeping families to "tell it to the bees" when a member of the family dies. Usually it's a child who goes down to the hives immediately after the person has passed and informs the bees that a beekeeper has died. Later, the bees are given a portion of the funeral cake or some other sweet to feast on, and they are formally invited to attend the person's funeral. There have actually been several recorded cases where the bees did, in fact, honor the invitation and come to the funeral. It has also been suggested in beekeeper folklore that the bees will not only empathize with the family in the event of a beekeeper death if told of it, but ensure that the soul has safe passage to the afterlife.

Much of the folklore surrounding beekeeping, and the rituals of beekeepers and their families, really intrigues me. I find it sweet and quite spiritually admirable at times.

Either way, this sketch was inspired by the idea of "tell it to the bees" and the insects' escort of the beekeeper's soul.
Prismacolor colored pencils, black fine point ink pens on recycled sketchbook paper.

Day in the life of an mp3 player...

So here's seven panels from a sorta-kinda narrative I did for my DrawingII final this semester. These are such crap photos, everything looks wonky. I'll maybe scan them after this coming Tuesday.

Out of curiosity, at the moment, which is your favorite? Second favorite? My top fave is "Hand in My Pocket", followed by "First Day of My Life" and then "Old Fashioned Love Song"... Least favorite is "We Went For a Ride". Haaate it. I can't make it look good no matter what I try. I should've gone with my first instinct and made it a plains-country highway.



These were done with Nupastels (aka, chalk pastels, soft pastels) and CarbOthello pastel pencils (another form of chalk/soft pastels) on various colors of Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper.

Lemon drops project (fin?)

Lemon drops when I was finished with it. There was a lot about it that disappointed me, but oh well. It wasn't my intended thing anyway.

...I'm bleh y. I'll talk about this one later maybe. Heh.

I have an objective eye and subjective hands.

We had a couple days of lifedrawing on top of regular assignments in one of my classes this week. I love lifedrawing. I love drawing people. I love figures. I love the beauty and metaphor that I can find in a curve of a spine, the fall of light on a cheekbone, how the thigh meets the hip when folded just so...

Anna (instructor) told me a couple years ago that I should take the lifedrawing courses offered at our school, that I belong in them and would enjoy them and so forth. She repeated that, two or three times, this week. It amused me. I also got a couple "Kate, you suck!" comments, which always make me feel quite the ego boost (it's a compliment and they say it with a grin). Somebody get the needle for poppin'. Our class had a few really good people on it (Lori Clark and Bill, for instance, were doing gorgeous ones. Lori's especially were like little finished quality pieces all on their own).

Anyway. Monday, we did a lot of gesturals and then a longer sitting which was broken up by the model taking "breaks" which I hate, because they never return to that pose they were in at the start no matter how they were marked out with tape. The woman had a very unhappy face, but lots of interesting pudge and proportion to work with. Anna had wanted us to start with contour drawings of the entire basic shapes in colored pencil. I, rebel that I am, blocked out the shape of the head and shoulders and fist and then started establishing rough facial features -- in CarbOthello pencil! Hahaha. I'm wicked. By the time Anna came around the first time, I'd established her down to the belly folds. Anna asked me to correct the face, shave some off the far side of it and pull the nose over. I nodded and went along with it, and then ignored the advice when she moved on. lol I know what I know, and I knew that when I'd started, the model had been facing that way, not the way Anna thought. And I knew I didn't want to move or change her, so I didn't. Later, Anna wanted us to fill in values with colored pencil in actual fleshtone. Rebelling again, I went for a greenish-yellow, an whiteish-yellow, a blue, and a pale rose in NuPastel. Hahaha, I cannot be stopped! By the time Anna came around again, I had most of what I wanted. She admitted that it looked great and she didn't advise any changes -- even though I hadn't changed the things she'd asked me to! I love Anna, she's a great instructor and very knowledgeable. But I'm of the opinion that agreeing with teachers all the time just because they're teachers/authorities in the classroom? Is dumb. Sometimes you go with your gut, and you should be able to be happy doing so.

Wednesday's model was a native american (I think) man. I really really really wanted to focus on his face or his feet because they were very neat (he had a funny tic in one foot too). But when we got through with gesturals and moved into the longer sitting, he had his back to me and I couldn't move to a spot where he didn't. Anna wanted us to do subtraction method with oil pastels for that drawing, so I threw down a layer of bright orange on dark blue paper (osnap, complimentary contrast, woo!) and went at it with the x-acto. I haven't tried that method before so it took a while to figure out. When I realized I could use what I scraped off to add back into the image, that helped a lot! I got a few more "Kate, you suck" compliments (hehehe), and I didn't get to see anyone else's (except Lori's, which was of course freaking awesome because she's wonderful like that).

I hate oil pastel. My hands are still a little bit orange. Ugh ugh ugh, itchy.

I think it's worth noting that these were done in the dark, because we have to keep all the blinds and doors closed when nude models are present to prevent issues with people from outside the class, and the lighting in our classroom SUCKS.