A time for relaxing.

So..Its X-mas break and I have a month of relaxing and visiting with family.  I have to say its been nice not having to deal with the school life for a change.  Its weird...now that I'm off for a month I still feel like I should be worried about something. 
But since I am off, it will afford me some time to kick around and experiment with some art outside the class room without an instructor peaking over my shoulder. 
This entry is about an inspiration and tribute to an artist. Zdzislaw Beksinski.  A polish painter, who was never traditionally trained had some success and was tragically murdered in 2005.

His art was dark but all pure inspiration from his dreams.  He said that many people found his art dark and negative, but he saw it as positive and sometimes even humorous.  He had a style like no other and had mastered or rather understood the effects of light.  He worked with photograpy, photoshop, and oil paint on hard panel.  Truly inspiring to me that he had no training and he quit his successful job as a contractor and made his own path into the art world.  The thing that catches me off guard is that he never named any of his works.  He was uninterested in the meaning.  He said he just wanted to photograph his dreams...that was all, it didn't need a meaning.  Here is another.

After examining much of his work and reading more into his style that though images can be dark, some can be scary...they are not always negative.  Some are just things we hide deep within our subconscious mind, and can effect how are in waking life.
I experimented with these techniques today and made a sketch...just playing around with some ideas more as a tribute to this amazing artist

My mom peeked while I was sketching, and she goes "Oh, that's evil."  I thought for a second, its funny that skulls and bones and brains and everything else has been deemed evil over the years.  When in fact,  All of this gooey, dark, evil stuff is what makes us up as human beings.  Maybe that's what Beksinski was getting at.

The Semester Finals

Well....its dead week...or so they call it.  The last week of semester where things are supposed to be easy hence the term "dead week".  I think whoever thought that up should be shot in the face.  I've never been more busy with due dates, papers, and everything else in my life.  So, I've renamed it Hell week. That's more fitting.
My art finals had certain guidelines.  For Drawing class I had to do 2 drawings....a self portrait in a setting, and a still life of an object out of context.  I'm still a beginner in the portrait area, but I'm trying to improve.  I ended up doing my self portrait from a mirror while I was home on thanksgiving break.  Then I added a setting.

 I struggle with portraits.  Personally I find that its not typically hard to draw a human being as it is to achieve  a likeness of unique features that everyone has, including myself.  BUT, being this my first one...i just need more practice.

For the object out of context, I wanted to do something a little unconventional to what most everyone else in the class was doing.  I kinda wanted to do a piece that suggested a narrative.  So, after some brain storming and coming up with some concept sketches, again this was achieved at home during thanksgiving break.

 My object out of context ended up being the umbrella.  The best part of this project was...I didn't have a woman model soo.....I made my younger brother wear high heals hahaha!  All I needed was a suggestion or starting point with the legs, then I could make them feminine.  We teased him something awful the whole time but he was a good sport.
For my 2d Art Design class the final project was to make a book using any media we wanted.  It had to be a"how to" book, but delve into the aspects of time and space.  I seriously could not think of anything until last night.  I was banging my head against the wall wondering what I could do that I would enjoy doing.  Sure I could half ass it and get a good grade but when you don't enjoy what you are composing, you see it in your work.  At least i do.
Finally, a stream of ideas hit me.  "How to compose a Human", wait a minute no that's dumb.  "How to draw?", no that's fricken lame.  "How to go on a picnic?",...no I don't even like picnics.  I got it..."How to plant a dandelion."
I decided to record the process so....we'll start with materials.
I had left over hardboards that I had cut for some oil paintings a while ago, so I decided to get my dad to help me cut them into smaller squares.  After that, I applied acrylic gesso to the boards.  I did this quite thickly because I thought they would sand smooth for a nice surface to work with...WRONG.  They probably would have, but I didn't have the time.  SO..I had some left over heavy duty RIVES BFK art paper from past drawing projects.  I decided to sand the boards the best I could and cut the paper to size, and use Mod Podge to glue the paper to the boards.

After preparing the materials, I thought for a while on how to portray what I was trying to say.  So I came up with a few quick concept sketches.  This is always good to do when planning...any project.

 After getting a relatively good idea on how i wanted to do it, I grabbed some caffeine, turned on the tunes and went to work.  I started with the first step in the dandelion process and went from there.  Charcoal was to be the medium, because I hate acrylic paint, and oils rot through paper.  Could've probably added ink wash, but that was a headache for another night.  I was on a mission.
As with most drawings I do, I start by drawing a picture plane applying a middle grey to the whole thing.  You don't have to do this but I find that finding middle greys from white later is a pain.

 First piece down, 5 to go.  After finishing each piece, I like to take an eraser and clean up the picture plane, this really makes it pop.  The second stage of the dandelion is the flower bud.  So, as before...prepare the drawing (picture plane, middle greys).  Then I sketch it out with vine charcoal, then go back over it with charcoal pencil.

 After getting the foundation of the drawing done, then comes the time to really pay attention to values.  I applied my darks...then my lights...then retouch both.  To finish it off, I put in a little suggestion of color with some pastels.

The third stage was the flower...so...started it like all the rest...finished it like all the rest.

Finally, here's all of them in succession.  After they're all finished, I spray them with workable fixitive.

After spending hours, I'm happy to be done and I'm off to the shower with my dirty, charcoal fingered face, mad scientist haired ass.
Till next time....hope you liked.