New green sex and tata gala submission and no sleep

I put the last one on hold. I am sad that I ruined it and don't feel like trying to save it at the time. So I made a new one that I still don't love, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. It definitely turned out entirely different than I thought.

I submitted this new one and the purpleish cleavage one to the Tata Gala today (at least I think I did- there was no successful upload message or error message...). So, I guess we'll see if I'm good enough for the show. That would certainly be sweet.

In total college and high school fashion, I submitted these at like 8 at night on the due date, after staying up till 5 in the morning finishing the green one. I put it off all week, then went to 2 shows in a row, the second getting me home at 1 in the morning, and then I decided to stay up until I finished it, and of course I didn't touch it for another 2 hours. Had to work from 8-5 the next day, then get them scanned. Went to a kinkos where the guy hooked me waaaaaaay up (apparently it would have cost 65 bucks for each scan (!!!!!), but the person on the phone told me 75 cents so I got the "well, you talked to an idiot, so I guess we're not charging you 65 bucks" deal (p.s. I love you, guy at kinkos)). I then went to another show, and died later that night after sleeping 2 hours in the middle of being awake for 40. Good times. Haven't done that since college. Forgot how it feels. Lots of good insane moments.

So here's the one that I'm growing to like.

It kind of screams "lust" to me. Kind of a dark, sexy, Jake Bannon type thing. But with serious boobage.

No more nudity or boob centered pieces for awhile. It still feels weird posting it on the internets and I really prefer faces and some mystery. But here you go.

First terrible sketch where she is apparently mentally challenged:

More detail, and the eyes and nose start changing (for the worse at first):

Hair. I need to stop committing to so much hair. I do love drawing hair, but still. This got old fast.

Fixed the face up (its weird how off faces start off with me. I can't seem to get where eyes and noses should be right the first time. Ah well. ) and smeared lots of pencil. My hands were completely silver.

My thumb and index finger were the worst, but I like this shot cuz my hand is a CLAAWW

Done. Yes, I lost lots of detail by coloring it, and since I actually prefer the colored version, I don't care. I very much care on the last one. But I guess thats what figuring out how to do a style combining pencil work and watercolor means. As always, click the pictures for more detail. I need to get a scanner.

So now I wait to see if I am gonna be in that show.

currently listening to: Straylight run- The Needles, The Space

naked boobs, blood, not knowing when to stop, or "How To Ruin A Piece Of Art You're Proud Of"

OK.

so here's the journey of my latest piece, which was supposed to be another entry to the tata gala art show. I've worked on it for several nights, and after all of the work, I think I've ruined it. Or at least I don't really like it anymore. Maybe the internet can convince me otherwise. I just am still not entirely sure what happened.

So here's the inspiration: An adorable and well endowed model making a nice over the shoulder look. (censored nips so blogger doesn't mark this page as porn).

The idea I wanted to go for was to make her shine somewhat while covered in darkness. Maybe even have it so there was light behind her. I wanted to do it with purples and reds. Something like this:

Way too dark, but you get the idea. Easy to do in photoshop in 5 minutes, and most likely impossible to do with paper, pencils, and watercolors.

I did my thing where I draw the basic figure and basic "here's where eyes go, here's where a nose goes" and then ignore the picture and draw my own person so it's not a total copy. It went ok.

I love the innocent look of worry. I also like her more without finished hair- the fake hoodie look is hot. If I could go back in time, she'd be wearing a hoodie and it would just be a sketch. Oops.

Then I made hair and the body.

Oh look, naked boob. I spent forever on shading and trying to get the right amount of shadow and subtle highlights. Her back could be better, but I knew it would be covered up by paint at some point, so I didn't worry.

Then I did some splatterings, which I love.

And then I ruined it. I started covering the rest of it with random splotches and splatters of purple and red combinations, then threw dirty water at it like no tomorrow. I got a solid base of mess all over it, but was beginning to see the problem with trying to make it darker. I usually am pretty good at understanding how much water I am using vs. how much paint vs. how dirty the water is. I got scared about how dark everything looked, but knew everything got lighter when it dried. I kept going, and frankly, I blew it. I was dealing with way more red than I realized, and more importantly, way more paint.

See? I'm basically painting with blood. And yes, this was my set up- 2 feet of space and balancing the paper against my imac, using paper towels to collect the paint. Smart. So here's my pretty picture completely covered in blood.

I love the gore on the right- the way the reds dripped and dried rules. But this wasn't how this piece was supposed to go. And as you can see, I lost nearly all of my detail in this gigantic mistake. Broken hearted, I went to bed not knowing what to do. I don't have a good picture of it when it dried, but it dried less red and I painted some subtle yellow around her face with some very subtle reflection splatters on her arm to try to show some light behind her. Unfortunately, I was dealing with so much paint, I wasn't sure what to do.

I decided that even though the idea of this was to mix pencils and paint and leave things subtle (i.e. not use pens or paint to draw over the original drawing), I had to ink it just to bring her back out of the blood mess. And somehow, she lost her character.

I put lots of detail into her face, and then left the rest pretty untouched. That way, her body kind of blends into the paint and mess and hopefully your eye is drawn to her face rather than her boob or back. But somehow, everything still kind of blends in. For some reason, no matter what angle I look at this from, its just very vague and its hard to catch anything.

This is a fairly accurate representation using my camera and some color correction in photoshop.

So, I'm kind of lost. I don't know what to do. My mind is telling me that I lost, that I didn't do what I wanted to do, so either put it away forever, or maybe start splattering black all over the left side of the piece and maybe some lighter stuff towards the right. I ruined a piece years ago and just flipped out on it, splattering black everywhere and making it a complete mess, and although I still don't really love it, a lot of other people have.

This was done on watercolor paper though, which is much easier to make dark messes on, and much easier to "ruin" a piece on and have it still look neat. I really don't know what to do. I clearly need to make it darker somehow, but it just makes me real sad that I lost all of the detail I spent hours on. I guess they can't all be winners.

Thoughts?

currently listening to: Titanic, Signs, Independence Day soundtracks

crap+new

Thought I'd share this mess. I hung out with some friends last weekend and we had a little art party. I had paper, a huge bag of crayons and old markers, a pen, and some friends who like retarded art. I shut my brain off and just scribbled. The goal was to turn scribbling mess into something interesting by adding detail. I pretty much just zoned out for like 2 hours and actually had trouble stopping. It's a disgusting mess, but it was fun. And to add to that, this is just a picture from my phone, so it looks even better.

I also started another piece to submit to the tata gala show. I feel like what I want to do (which I've messed around with in photoshop) isn't possible without photoshop. I guess we'll see.

Here is a preview. I seem to draw a lot of girls with very worried looks on their faces.

currently listening to: Sufjan Stevens- Assorted B-sides

done!

Of course this is a little more red than the piece actually is (I need a scanner), but its done. It's a little messier than I planned, and I did mess up part of it when I taped over part of it with scotch tape (because I didn't have any painter's tape, which I normally use) and the stupid paint bled through the stupid tape, and then the stupid painter pulled a piece of stupid paper off with the stupid paint, but if I can ignore it, then everyone else should be able to. But yea, it's done. I'm happy with it and relieved that I finally put it to bed, as I've been staring at it forever.

Here's a more close up shot of her face/detail of the splatters.

On to a new piece, or working on another one I started that I am failing miserably at.

I need to figure out how to do art at times other than 3 in the morning.

currently listening to: Soundgarden, for like the last 2 hours. Seriously.

maybe 1 step from being done?

Its getting messy, and I am actually very much liking it this way. I think the next plan will be to make the bottom darker, then have some black splatters come up from her shoulders, then maybe splatter a little subtle white at the top to do a whole light to dark thing. The only battle I'm in now is if I want to leave it just pencils with blacks that aren't insanely black, or use some very small micron pens on her. I feel like that may make her jump out too much on an otherwise messy and vague piece, and I may not be able to do just SOME microns. I'm completely up in the air, but at least I feel like I didn't ruin it by splattering paint all over it, which I was quite scared of doing. This is a very weird piece of very detailed stuff mixed with haphazard mess. I'm kind of liking it.

progress and now... worry

I need a giant scanner, because every picture I take of this, she looks different because of the angles I'm taking the pictures at. BUT, this is what she looks like now. I'm pretty psyched about how she looks. I've certainly covered the tata part of the tata gala, in a both blatant and tasteful way, and I love her expression and hair. But now I'm terrified because the original idea was to attempt to do full on pencil detail, and then attempt to do subtle paint splatterings. This is kind of what the plan is:

I'm feeling dark purples, browns, and dark reds, obviously with a lot of water involved so the color is just kind of there. Originally I was thinking strong black around her, but since the pencil detail will be hard to see under subtle paint, I'm thinking the whole piece may end up being subtle, with less strong blacks... not sure. Kind of something you have to look at carefully rather than it jumping out at you... I haven't even tried this out before, so I will do a test first.

Just found this (as in, it fell out of my pad, and I went "oh yea, this"). I was gonna do a portrait of George Bush for my friend who was a big supporter. I gave up (even though it's not bad) and started messing with it to make him look more evil. Maybe I will do a test of paint + pencil on this and then move on to the real piece. We'll see.

currently listening to: Circa Survive- Blue Sky Noise

New in progress

Here is an in-progress piece thats pretty big. I want to try and combine the pencil shading work that I love to do with the splattered paint mess that I don't love to do but I think looks good. I'm not sure if its going to work, but it ought to be better than the art I've done in the last few months (read: none). Something that's got me pumped to try and do some more art is the Tata Gala art show coming up soon, put on by Erik Jones. I love his art and the idea behind the show rules. Money raised from the show goes towards breast cancer research, so the theme behind the entire thing is breasts. It is, in his words, "your opportunity to draw boobs and to not feel bad about it." I often focus more on faces, but this still seems to be right up my alley. This is the 4th year, and I completely wimped out last year. I plan on submitting a few pieces this year. Here's what I'm working on.

I think the idea will be something like this (this was an earlier version of the sketch, played with in photoshop)

The basic feel will be that she's wearing a very low cut dress, with the dress and background blending in to frame her in all black. Obviously, the tata gala focus on boobs will be covered by the cleavage. I can't bring myself to flat out draw naked breasts and I like the hint more anyway, so this will hopefully have more of a hint feel to it. I haven't quite decided how much I want to focus on that part yet (more low-cut? more boobs? less? less dress? more?)- for now I'm just loving smear-shading the hell out of her face. The other ideas I'm tossing up are how much splatter there will be, and if I will leave the black completely black- like, splatter-paint her and leave all black, or splatter the black and leave her as-is. None of that probably means anything to anyone but me, but whatevs, the idea is out. There should be a big update soon- the plan is to finish this some'bitch by next week and start up another one. I'm going to attempt to attack the hell out of this newfound desire to do art.

currently listening to: The Roots- How I Got Over

whaaat???

Yup. Back.

Sort of.

Here's something I did rather quickly as a "remember how to draw" thing.

I don't like it. I don't know what is wrong, but its just ok. I think the main problem is that her face is crooked. and her nose and mouth should be higher on her face. and her forehead/hair is too big. Small details I could fix, but I don't know if I care. The fact that there's no detail/eyelashes is also weird too, but thats because I'm going to paint it. And since I don't like it, that shouldn't be too scary to do. The plan is to have that done by the end of the week. This is my 3rd post and 4th piece put up, and it makes the score 2-2 for stuff I like and stuff I hate. Thanks Josh for pointing out the terrible shoulder on the colored one in the last post. Now I hate it. Maybe I can save this one?

aaaaaaaaand a million years later...

Wow, that happened faster than I thought it would. Failing miserably at a few pieces I worked on after starting this blog+ freaking out about trying to find a place to live+ actually looking for a place to live+ being very sick, apparently forever= me not posting about, creating, or even wanting to create any art. I've never been one to actually draw every day, or even every few days, but this is pretty bad. Ah well.

So, I now work 8 days straight while moving to my new place a little bit every day after work, followed by visiting the parents for thanksgiving and moving more, so I may not do an ounce of art for another 2 weeks. BUT, I will then be in my new place, where I will have an entire basement to hide in (I tend to need to be completely hidden away from everything to create), which hopefully lends itself to more AHHHT and maybe even some music. Who knows?

Probably all lies. In the meantime I wanted to at least post SOMETHING, so here's 2 pieces that I'm working on.

This is 19 by 24, which is huge for just a face (at least for me). She may be a little too cute, and that 1 strand of hair thats going a different direction bothers me, but I like this, and will be attempting to bring color into this.

This is also 19 by 24, and was started over a year ago. It's just been in a pile of paper under my bed. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of the page, or how I'm going to finish her, but whatever. See you in 2 weeks- 2 years.

Oh yea, I miss the livejournal/myspace thing where I can post what I'm listening to, so I'm just gonna do my own version.

Currently listening to: The Number Twelve Looks Like You- Mongrel

Oct. 21- Click pictures for bigger versions. I'm still figuring this out.

After starting work on another piece, I randomly decided to start another before I went to sleep. The following is a picture from a post on http://irison.blogspot.com:

I really liked her hair and the structure of her face, and decided to try and draw her. After a really fast initial sketch to get the basic shape down, I decided to not try and replicate her perfectly like a portrait, but rather to create my own person based on her facial features, which is something I usually only do after I realize that my attempted portrait doesn't look enough like the original. For the first time, this would be my actual goal, rather than just me giving up. The initial sketch was a bit iffy.

The next time I worked on it, I added shoulders and hair in an attempt to make it look better, when I knew the real problem was her eye.

The next time, I did much more detail on the hair, and widened her shoulders a bit. The "I know her eye is very off center, but it adds character!" defense was wearing thin. She was starting to not be attractive to me at all, and I knew I wasn't going to get away with leaving her eye that way.

So, the next time I worked on it, I went erase crazy and fixed it.

And here is the final. Click the picture for a much bigger version. I'm pretty happy with this. This is my first real portrait-type pencil drawing where I did the first sketch by looking at the subject picture, and then put the picture away, and just went to town 100% without guidance. I tried to make her eyes less dark than I usually do, but kind of failed. I absolutely love drawing hair, and this hair was particularly fun to draw. I'm not entirely psyched on the way her neck came out, but I had already smear-shaded so much towards the end that I couldn't do much, and had to let it rest. This also marks the first portrait type piece I've done where I have some fun with all of the extra pencil smearing around her. I usually just erase all of that. I like this much better.

Not having a scanner is interesting- it's amazing to me how different she looks in each picture based on tiny alterations of the angle I took the picture from. I think the first up close shot at the beginning of the post is my favorite.