Exploring My Roots

Even though I had hoped to update my blog every couple of weeks, I guess my life is busier that I expected it to be. I've been knee-deep in projects lately, but I also feel like I haven't been wasting my time, so I'm happy with the way things are going.

Anyway, over the last couple of weeks in my monotype class, I've been exploring the different cultures my family comes from. One of my hobbies is researching my family history, and I've uncovered Dutch, Irish, English, Welsh, and Italian roots. I've been using my roots as a springboard for a series of projects I'm hoping to explore further over the rest of the semester.

To start with, I was really intrigued by the idea of using writing and well-known imagery from each country in my prints. After completing almost 25 prints over the course of two weeks, I've ended up with the best one from each:

Each of them incorporates some poetry (mostly pre-20th century if I remember correctly), as well as taking design inspiration from each culture.

Some close-ups of each:
Ireland -

The translation:

I am Irish
I am your language
I am your culture
The poets used me
The nobles used me
The people used me
and the children used me
Proud they were
And I flourished

The Netherlands:

The translation:

A new spring and a new sound

I want this song

Sounds like the whistling,

I often heard from a summer's night

In an old town along the water canal

England:

Wales:

 The translation:

I broider the world upon a loom,
I broider with dreams my tapestry;
Here in a little lonely room
I am master of earth and sea,

Italian:

The translation:

Most high, all-powerful, good Lord,

Yours are the praises, the glory, and the honor, and all blessing,

To you alone, Most High, do they belong,

and no human is worthy to mention your name.

This has been a really interesting exploration for me and I'm really anxious to continue and see where it takes me.

On a somewhat related note: Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh (Happy St. Patrick's Day)

 

Art for Art's Sake

"Ars Gratia Artis" - in Latin, it means "Art for Art's Sake". I've always taken this to mean that the artist creates something just for the sake of creating it. I guess that's what I've been trying to do lately: make art just because I want to, even need to. No assignments, no portfolio reviews; it's been just me and a sketchbook.

Which, I guess it just a long-winded way of me saying I've made some new work. Enjoy!

I just have to say that I'm really loving the watercolor sketchbook and pen that I've been using for location studies. Really invaluable!

A Post Before the Break Ends

It's almost time to head back for my final semester as a undergrad. Actually, this has been the first break where I've been able to consistently produce and post work, so I'm really proud to show off some remaining work!

This week I've gotten the opportunity to work with some students and introduce them to digital painting.  This is the final result of the demo we've been working through.

Since I got back into digital painting this week, I thought I'd go back and attempt to do a study of my favorite actor, Claude Rains. For whatever reason, I've always had a lot of difficulty with any attempts to draw/paint him. This is the first time I've done a Claude Rains study that looks remotely like him!

This is an interesting piece. I was really excited to get a watercolor sketchbook for Christmas, and we were going up to Yosemite to ice skate, so I thought I'd try some landscape painting. Once we were up in Yosemite, though, I realized I had remember to bring almost everything. I had the brushes, the book...but I had neglected to bring actual paint. I remembered that someone had told a story about painting with chocolate, so I rounded up everyone's leftover tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. It had a different set of challenges, but I'm still really pleased with the work.

I wanted to actually get back to painting in the sketchbook with paint. One of my favorite films, 101 Dalmatians, has the most amazing style for it's backgrounds, so I attempted to replicate that style.

Digital Painting Demo

Here's a quick demonstration of how I approach digitally painting a still life in Photoshop:

A New Year of Art

Happy New Year

As one of my first official acts of 2015, I'm posting three of the most recent pieces in my portfolio. I haven't had a ton of opportunity to work on art, but I got two new sketchbooks (one regular and one watercolor!) for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to filling those pages up really soon.

Here are my final projects from my watercolor class and my first sketch in my watercolor book:

 We had to do a piece based on a memory or an event, but try to render it as realistically as possible. Since Christmas was coming up, I chose to paint a scene from my church's Christmas Eve candlelight service. Most of this painting is done from memory, since I couldn't take any reference of the service at the time...

 My professor really liked the idea of doing work that was more abstract, which was a big challenge for me as I've mentioned here before. I've always wanted to do a piece based on the way Christmas lights reflect on surfaces.

The thing that I'm most proud of with this piece was that I was working with really cheap brushes that kept shedding. This was not planned, I just happened to forget my brushes up at school when I came back for break...

Printmaking

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks while I was creating some more work. Now, here's a collection of some prints that I created as part of an assignment in watercolor. I discovered I really like printing!

Inktober - 31 Days of Solitude (Part 6)

Here's the final round of sketches. Overall, I'm really proud of the work that I accomplished. Not everything is perfect, some are definitely better than others, but the point is that I got in and sketched, no matter what I thought was going to be good or not. This helped build up my confidence in my drawing.

Not every line I make in drawing is going to be perfect, but that shouldn't stop me from continuing to draw

Enjoy!