Remember when my homework used to be writing papers?

Oil painting, the historical standard for excellence and beauty. Refined, sophisticated, elegant.

Hair Metal Zombie 35"x 24", my homework for painting class a few weeks ago.

Sorry about the quality of the picture, it's from my phone.

Aaron Horkey

I first was became acquainted with Aaron Horkey at a show at what I believe is the now defunct OXOP gallery in Minneapolis. Let me try that again. I FIRST became acquainted with Horkey via his pseudonym. He had a way with letters (which has transferred to his type treatments) that was completely different than anyone I had ever seen. After that I got to know his fine art at one of the first Burlesque of North America group shows and it essentially blew my mind. Everyone over there is talented, but the Horkey paintings made my head explode. The rumor was that Horkey painted with a magnifying glass and a seven haired brush, and his paintings look three dimensional. It was the catalyst for me to start painting. I swear I went home that day and made my first painting.

(Click the image to enlarge)

Well, turns out now I'm studying illustration, and Horkey is the guy that I look at and say "Well, there's always a career in food service." He is an amazing draftsman and I basically curse my hands every time I see him churn out a new print.

Anyway, I thought I'd share.

Probably the BEST thing I've ever seen

Aaron Zenz has been posting his children's artwork on their own blog "Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty," and on the occasion of the third anniversary held open submissions for other artists to reinterpret their favorite drawings. What happens next is wonderful.

Original by Grace

By Adam Rex
Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty

Another productive day of work monitoring the nature lab

Team Society League

I fell in love with this Illustration

It has spurned my advances.

More here

Between the Folds

Netflix don't fail me now:

Abstract Expressionism

This Buff painting is genius. Maybe only to me.


KR makes ink. KR makes paintings. Taking the drip to a place you wouldn't have thought was possible.

For more on KRINK click here.

Sketches 2

This week's drawing homework is to draw an exploded view of an object in 1/2 scale, using either parallel projection of perspectival projection or a combination of both. Here are my notes, with the example of a blender.

We then did a few quick sketches of stools at the end of class so that our professor could make sure everyone understood how to explode an object. I am very excited about this project, as I really love the idea of drawing something in the exploded view. Should I be a product illustrator... probably not. You generally can't draw monsters.
As you can see sometimes I get carried away with the "quick sketches" and spend a little too much time on letters.
My illustration homework this week involves making two sketches of the New Yorker's iconic Eustece Tilly. At first I was getting really wild with it, but then after re-reading the assignment realized it had to be more controlled. One sketch (not shown) turned him into a flower pot with similar proportions. Apparently it actually has to be him... oops.
So I did these two: A frontal view of Tilly with the text disappearing into the background to give a sense of space...
And the modern day Dandy: A New York hipster looking at his iPhone instead of a butterfly, which is also a little self deprecating as I actually quite enjoy my iPod, flannels and facial hair. Haha.
I have a few more, but I think these might be the two I show in class. There's one made of abstract shapes, but I don't know how that will go over.

200 Posts!

I didn't have time to make another MS-Paint celebratory image, but here it is: 200th Post. I will celebrate by posting some more art.

This week's assignment for painting was to create a reproduction of Degas 'Portrait of Diego Martelli.' This was our first oil painting assignment, so it was time to see what people actually could do with this tricky medium. (The image above is the Degas painting). One thing that added to the challenge was that we were doing our reproductions at less than half the size, meaning that places where Degas was free to use expressive brushstrokes were now places where we had to pull out the magnifying glass and one-haired brush.

I am a sloppy under painter, but I prefer not laying everything out perfectly before the oil painting, because then it gets a little boring, kind of like a coloring book... Well, no, a little more challenging I suppose, but still not as fun.

 
Ta-da! Six hours later and I am done with my oil painting. I realized I need to go pick up some colors, because trying to make a cool red with cadmium is impossible, and trying to make bright blue act like cerulean blue is also impossible. Oops.

Here is the close up. My phone takes terrible pictures, I apologize.

Gordon Voidwell, PT. 3

As you may remember I posted about Gordon Voidwell a few times. For those of you not in the know, he's a funkafied killer.

He just released a free internet mixtape, for which I did the hilarious album artwork. If you're in New York you can catch him at the CMJ music festival on Thursday with Das Racist.

MIXTAPE LINK

New Socks

This is the finished product. Also, it was brought to my attention that I didn't fully explain my sketchbook drawings. I was NOT writing what brought me joy in order from first to last, I was responding to our assignment, which was a very limited scope. You will notice that making music or making art are not in the list, because we were only allowed to use people and their clothes, no background, no props.

That being said, don't think I'm a huge creep. Also, eating the ice cream cone was invalid as well.

Susan Anderson

Ever since I was a child the idea of children as adults has freaked me out. In fact, I wrote a fifteen page research paper about the use of children as the antagonists in horror films and why it is so frightening. I found that paper recently and put a check mark next to "reasons I spent so much money at NYU." Thanks to Mark and his "Imagining Childhood" class.

But I believe the scariest thing is the hyper sexualization of children, (mainly young girls) in tiny beauty pageants. I have ALL SORTS OF ISSUES with this, (controlling parents, feminist qualms, difficulty finding tiny veneers), but really these children look terrifying when they are made to look like little versions of Miss USA.

Luckily, someone agrees with me. Susan Anderson is a photographer working out of L.A. who captures the horror of these pageants and really has captured my visceral, stomach churning reaction in her images. She has a new show featuring this work, and if you live in LA I would support her.

Also, can we come together as a nation and decide collectively to ban these competitions instead of making them into TLC shows? TLC: What happened to you? You are a joke of a network.

(Reminder: BLOG about shows I think should be pulled off the air as crimes against humanity).

Aaron & The Sea

Aaron & The Sea came out with a new LP titled "Seconds and Shapes." It bangs pretty hard. I was lucky enough to be able to do the artwork for it, and it turned out pretty sick if I do say so myself. The process was funny, from drawing hilarious napkin sketches, to doing a painting, scrapping the painting, and stripping it back down to the level of napkin sketches and a pared down palette. It affirmed that, yes, I do want to do illustration as a career. Because it's fun, but I also get a tangible outcome.

Here is the CD, all done:

Oh, if anybody else needs artwork, hollatchaboy.

Art Post

This post is delayed, but whatever. Here are the reasons I haven't seen, talked to, or hung out with anyone for the last couple of weeks. First is a 4'x3' painting. Here you can see the progression from the underpainting in black and white acrylic to nearly complete. It was my final project for Intermediate Painting, and, unfortunately, it is lost, since I had no way of getting it home. Now I'm sure it resides either in the trash somewhere, or in one of the tech's apartments on campus.

Aside from this monster painting I've been working on an even larger sculpture. It is a kinetic drum machine inspired by the work of David Ellis, although I have no knowledge of actuators and vacuum-pumps so my machine operates on a hand crank. It kind of looks like a complex loom, except it bangs on cymbals instead of weaves. It is all hand made minus the wheels because I can't make a perfect circle. It measures 8' x 5' x 4'. It is a beast, and it suffered the same fate as my painting, because I had no way to get it home. However, this on I'm sure was just taken apart for the wood, because no one really has the use for a giant kinetic sculpture.

Word. You can't really tell, but there are a bunch of levers, springs, cogs and what not that go into making all of those things work. I really enjoyed making that. Also, side-note to Meaghan, the spinning-wheel will be a piece of cake.

So tired and sick

I had an awesome/crazy/terrible weekend.

I spent it facilitating/making/cleaning up art installations for 33 straight hours. Once I got home I starting coughing so hard my throat started bleeding, and when I woke up I vomited. That's what you get when the only thing you've had as sustinance over two days are miniature Slim Jims and Full Throttle. Yesterday I slept for fourteen hours, woke up to be sick, drank thirty cups of tea, and went back to bed. Today I worked for 8 more hours, doing demolition of the Don't Sleep On It space, and stepping on a nail, which went through my foot. Luckily I had a tetanis shot five years ago so I'm in the clear.

But overall the event was amazing, it was an experience I will never forget and also something I suggest everyone does sometime. Not that you can just have a 24-hour art making marathon any day, but it is sick nonetheless.

Here's the time-lapse video of (half) the installations.



Check out my ill cholo-"Don't Sleep On It" sign in the beginning.

Finished

I finished my semester today. Great. I start school again in exactly one month.

As soon as I finished I went to work, and I stayed there from 5-11:30. Long day.

...But, it is worth it, because we were preparing for Don't Sleep On It. I expect all of my blog readers (all four of you) to go. It's going to be really fun, plus you can see me while I work a 30 hour shift.

Alright, short post, longer post tomorrow, but it's bed time.

I need to find a sculptor

I am currently enrolled in sculpture at my school, and we are on our final projects. For these we must find a sculptor that inspires us to do something interesting. Here are my candidates so far:

Theo Jansen



David Ellis



Joshua Allen Harris



If you can tell I'm into kinetic sculpture, but also very interested in the combination of sculpture and sound. I think that it is something I would like to explore. No matter what I choose to do I think it will probably be fairly dificult, so maybe I should take a step back and realize it's finals season and now might not be the best time to undertake a huge project. Hey, whatever happened to my radioactive plant sculpture? I have to find it...

Also, under-rated dinner option:
Pot-o-corn

That is all.

Jose Parla: Too ill.

Superstar writer Ease might by one of my favorite painters ever, and I was lucky enough to find in my quest for inspiration (not painting but creative writing) that Upper Playground posted his interview on WalrusTV.


If you don't dig his paintings, something might be wrong with you, but you'll probably still dig his pieces. Big inspiration for me.


Check him out at his website. JOSEPARLA.COM SO MUCH MIAMI FUNK YOU CAN LITERALLY HEAR THE BOOTY-BASS.

You mad doggie!

News from blog land:

MN weather sucks.
I made Jambalaya.
I got peppersauce in my eye.
I painted 3 paintings today, one of which is terrible.
I signed up for Twitter.
I came to realize that Twitter is of no use to me when my phone was made in 1999.
Three more zombie movies arrived:
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
Army of Darkness
Dead Alive
I miss class because of a power outage.
I watched this:


And I got into the Pratt Institute, which is an art school which I applied to. Best email I have received since that free viagra trial, but not as good as the million dollars I'm about to get once my check goes through to the Prime Minister of Ezahkstan.

Anyway, off to Twitter that I'm going to bed.