Two random works in various stages of completion

The vine charcoal/graphite drawing/details are from an assignment in Intro. Drawing II. I didn't quite finish the piece in time for the critique. The objective was to render a surreal landscape by referencing/observing a pile of trash and assorted junk. It's kind of a terrible drawing overall, but some of the textures are successful.

The last photo was taken earlier this week, and I've since made more progress. So far in Painting I, we've been solely concerned with mixing color. These are simple color studies -- merely sketches in oil paint -- of a single object. I've chosen a Duplo guy (obviously). I try to bring as much fun and personality to these elemental assignments -- necessary though they may be. The lower left Duplo guy is done in grayscale (save for the bright yellow pop of the background); the other still life employs a dull color palette; the final study will be highly saturated with color. I'll post a more current image this weekend.

Incomplete

I am probably the slowest artist in the Art & Design building. I'm obsessed with fine, minute detail and careful rendering of surface texture (sometimes at the expense of any given composition's overall impact). Such was the case on Monday during a still life exercise for AFND 102: Intro. to Drawing II. We were instructed to black out a large sheet of drawing paper with compressed charcoal, and then render a bundle of cloth suspended from the ceiling using erasers (though reapplication of charcoal was permitted to deepen dark values). As you will observe, I did not complete the exercise during the allotted time in class. Furthermore, I snapped this photograph with the crummy camera built into my cell phone. Still, I think this result demonstrates my progress as a technician since I started coursework in KU's Visual Art Dept. -- simultaneously suggesting the vastness of all I've yet to learn and achieve.

More Sumi

These are slightly larger Sumi ink sketches done in the same manner featured in my last post. I'm interested in seeing where this versatile technique takes me.

BONUS (please contain your excitement): A fragment from my "visual journal". . .

"The post-divorce years. . ." / Jan. 2011
This insane sketch was inspired by a number of sources, including but certainly not limited to the following: Barbie (and friends), the film adaptation of Mommie Dearest, and a late nineteenth-century painting by John Singer Sargent entitled, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (which you should Google). I'm really interested in the magic and strangeness of childhood and all the bizarre horrors inflicted upon us by our parents. This doodle could become the basis for a proper drawing or painting.

Gifts of the Magi

Untitled series
Acrylic and cardstock on Bristol board / December 2010

Untitled series
Sumi ink on watercolor paper / December 2010

Please send glue sticks

Sportive Tricks
Paper collage with monotype cutouts / 18 x 24 in. / December 2010

The original monotype I created in class as an experiment was admittedly (though not intentionally) too derivative of my instructor's own work (that of Jenn Erwin). Here I've used collage as a means to deconstruct and reassemble the piece, incorporating colored cardstock along the way. This intervention creates a new aesthetic approach and achieves a more personal narrative quality.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall polyptych
Collage (Sumi ink, watercolor paper, cardstock) / 8.5 x 11 in. (ea.) / Nov.-Dec. 2010

Sweet little lies

These are pieces from a series assigned in AFND 101: Introduction to Drawing I, in which we were to consider and incorporate three influences that inform and/or inspire our work and process. I finally narrowed my subject matter down to Froot Loops, men's fashion magazines, and Cold War-era anxieties. The works exude a sense of humor and charm true to the pop-art tradition (paper doll clothing tabs, sugary cereal "enlarged to show detail"), but my real interest is in our consumer culture: glamour, fantasy, deception, sex, fetish, apocalypse. (I mounted these pieces on the kitchen cabinets of our apartment to digitally photograph them -- sincere apologies to Vermeer for obscuring his masterpieces.) Charcoal (vine and compressed), Sumi ink, pastels, paper collage.

Wet paint



Scorned!
Oil on canvas / 30 x 40 in. / November 2010