Holy Cow!!!!!

Oh my goodness!  Today, something, or someone, very exciting happened.  I went to my sculpture class early, by about two hours, so that I could get some more work done on my project.  As I walked down the hall of the building to my class room, I noticed a large loud crowd of people waiting outside the projector/lecture room.  I thought nothing of it and went in to work on my sculpture.  Well, those people outside of the room were waiting for a lecture given by none other than... drum roll... Korto from season 5 of Project Runway!!!!  

It wasn't until the end of the lecture that I found out what was going on!  I could have listened to her talk about her fashion work!!!!  I'm so mad at myself.  I did, however, see her walk past the room.  I saw her amazing hair first and noticed she was wearing a purple coat... and carrying a black bag... but not to get to psycho lets stop there.  Me and another girl from my class went out to get "a drink of water" and watched Korto take a few pictures with people and leave the hall.  What an exciting day!!!!

On another note, cheap markers are amazing.  You don't care about ruining them by blending like crazy because they only cost five dollars.  Heck, you could just get more.  I bought these markers right after receiving the book Hellboy II: the art of the movie for Christmas, which had all sorts of concept drawings and even sketches by Guillermo del Toro from his sketchbook.  He used markers on all of his drawings.  They looked so cool that I went out and got my own markers.  Here is my own monstrous creature sketch using markers like del Toro.

This next drawing is much better and I drew it with my markers just to show how amazingly they are!  The drawing took me forever because I didn't really have time to work on it.  Well now it's done!!! Ha haha ha.  

Mannequins and Skulls

Oh, sculpture and drawing.  I never managed how tired I would be after each of my studio classes.  I find that I'm more tired after drawing studio.  How's that possible?  All you do is stand and draw, right?  That's exactly why, all we do is stand... and draw.  It's fun and relaxing but I'm not use to standing up that much.  I guess you can call me weak.  One of our recent homework assignments was to take a drawing we did in class and finish it up at home.  Here is the in-class drawing I chose to finish:

I had seen this exact same mannequin in student drawings from last semester.  I have to say she looks better in the drawings than in real life because a few of her features are only painted on.  Like her eyes, for example.  This makes it really hard to draw because we are only using line, no values allow.  Paint and the likes are not in the linear plane (only if there is a thick amount of paint that creates a three dimensional form that you can touch).  But that is not the case so we can't draw her eyeball only the bulge of her eye.  Skulls are always fun to draw.  I still need to spray fixative on the drawing so it won't smear (because I used charcoal).  But I can't do it outside because it's raining right now.  And I can't do it inside because the spray gives off toxic fumes.  Can't spray outside, can't spray inside.  That's a good one m'lord.  

Heartaches of a French Cat

Sundays are the best library days!  They just has that bookish feel that summons me to the library.  Yesterday I felt the weekly summons and went to the library.  The book I picked out to read was The Heartaches of a French Cat by Barbara McClintock.  The book had absolutely no text; it was completely illustrated.  Only two spreads were in color.  I love McClintock's style.  I would describe it as old Victorian pen drawings.  Stories by P. J. Stahl and Honore de Balzac, illustrated by Grandville (a french illustrator), greatly influenced her.

 

Here is the book cover.  I would love to show some of the pictures inside of the book but I can't find any online.  I had the same trouble with the other book, Snow.  

This is a drawing by Grandville.  He has an anthropomorphic style, that means he attributes human qualities to animals.  Yes, I had to look it up but how else do you learn?  Her style is very much like Grandville's except her animal heads are less naturalistic; they are lighter and more cartoony.  Cartoony isn't bad; actually, I prefer it.

At the very beginning of The Heartaches of a French Cat is a character list with pictures.  I thought it looked nifty and decided to do my own character list in the same sort of pen and ink style with the characters of the Croaker Norge story my sis wrote.  Here they are!

The hero of the story; Croaker Norge

The traveling bard; Timothy Gildersleeves

The witch; Pip

Lady Gwendolafina of Eppsbeck, aka Gwennie

The bandit King; Rufus

I know none of this makes sense but enjoy it anyways!!

From 'A Haunting' to Snow!

Today has been quite a day even though I had only one class and it ended at 10 am. I'm starting to feel the weight of homework assignments once again. For my Drawing Studio class we had to do a 18"x24" line drawing that should take us approximately three to four hours. I managed the four hours, with a few food breaks and phone calls home here and there. I am extremely happy with my finished piece; it looks all cool and linear. I got quite a lot of eraser bits on my pants and on the floor; however, it's not as bad as the 14 charcoal drawings which had me breathing charcoal profusely (my snot came out black!).


Here's it is!! Just as I started sketching out all of the shapes of my random objects, I realized I had to blow my nose really badly! Too late!

While drawing, my room mate and I watched two episodes of 'A Haunting'. That show tells the story of real ghost experiences and hauntings people had. Along with interviews, the shows has actors play out the story (there are a lot of fast camera bits with faces and bodies imposed over the video making it really spook, at least for someone like me who can't even stand watching trailers for scary movies!). Well, after watching two hours of this show, I didn't want to be left in the room alone. So when my room mate went to the gym, I went to the library. One of my favorite things to do at the library is pick out a couple of books from the Juvenile section and sit near a window to read. Today, I picked out the book Snow by Uri Shulevitz. I really like Shulevitz's style and will add him to my contemporary artist list.


There was one figure in the book, Mother Goose, who intrigued me the most. Shulevitz made her nose and chin curve like a cresent moon (so she looked like the man on the moon with a body attached!). I really like that and did my own drawing inspired by that.

This guy, I've decided, is a guard to the king of the moon people's castle (who live on the moon). He doesn't look like a happy fellow; he probably is bored of just standing next to a moon rock wall. I had left all of my drawing pens in my backpack, which was back in my room, so I had to draw this picture with just my markers. I love those markers; sometimes cheap art materials are the best!

Winter Break

I can't believe that winter break has come and gone already! I had a very relaxing time at home with my family and didn't do very much, especially art. After a long action-packed semester of art classes, I took a break from doing any "art" art. Sure I sketched in my sketchbook, but I didn't paint or anything. What I did do was make clothes. Inspired by many of the clothes (actually, all of them) in the movie Penelope, starring Christina Rici, I made myself a dress to wear on Christmas day.

For Christmas I received my own sewing machine (up until this moment I've been using my sister's). I'm extremely excited about it and foresee many more garments in the future!

Here is the link to a video my friend Rachel and I made for our Time Studio class. The assignment was to make a performance that has three elements. For any of you who are confused like I was two months ago, performance art it live art made by artists. Performance art usually isn't very theatrical, but mostly makes political, economical, etc. commentaries on society. For this 3 Element project, we were required to have three elements in our performance that lasted 3 minutes, for example of a performance would be me watching a movie infront of the class and making comments about the movie aloud or something. The elements would be myself, the movie, and the class. Yes, this is a very different and interesting art but it is also extremely fun. So, here is the youtube link for one element of the performance piece Rachel and I collaborated on. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G75ACqs2Rzo