art slumping

after i sent you that novel of an e-mail response, i've got some posting to do.

i like michael borremans--I hadn't seen his work. and i like the can you posted. that caption on it cracks me up. have you been mostly focussing on the still lifes lately?

i've been avoiding artmaking lately because i'm afraid of it...doing craft projects are a lot easier--there's a much clearer beginning and end point to them. whenever i get really involved in art, so many emotions come up.

however i've been trying to snap out of that, because crafting is not intellectually satisfying; it's more instant gratification.

anyways, here's a rapid fire of stuff i've made

Here's a drawing I made that looks like a sweater I'm knitting (for my little nephew for xmas)

Here's a crappy iphone picture of some mountains I drew--I already sent this in an e-mail. I'm trying to loosen up and be less uptight in my markmaking.

And here's a crappy iphone picture of my drawings that i've tacked onto my drawing board:

I really like this drawing from the 1800s, and early depiction of sun spots

And this drawing/collage, by Richard Artschwager

I've also been drawing icebergs, which I will probably make into a repeat pattern

I'm trying to think more about mass and volume-- rather than line. I'm realizing I tend to use line as a crutch in my work. I really like the way Georgia O'keefe works with mass and color in her landscapes:

I was just looking at some of her writings, and I found this excerpt from a letter she wrote to a friend very comforting

"I am really quite enjoying the muddle and am wondering if I'll get anything out of it and if I do what it will be. I decided I wasn't going to cater to what anyone else might like, why should I, and when you leave that element out of your work there is nothing much left. 
I'm floundering as usual" 

also, this kind of cryptic, lofty letter to writer Sherwood Anderson:

"whether you succeed or not is irrelevant. There is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing and keeping the unknown always beyond you, catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead - that you must always keep working to grasp. The form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear. I some way feel that everyone is born with it clear but that with most of humanity it become blasted one way or another. I can never show what I am working on without being stopped. Whether it is liked or disliked I am affected in the same way - sort of paralyzed."

I CAN post!

 

It's time to post! I'll start with this little can I painted tonight. It's how I felt today, like an empty sardine can. It's very poetic, don't you think?

I was obsessed with the painter Michaël Borremans for a while, and was making all my students look at his work. I saw in the captions that for his drawings he uses watercolor and white ink, so I got some to try it out, and it does give the drawing a strange kind-of volume effect.Like it's collapsing, and climbing out of the page all at the same time.
I also read that he wears a suit in the studio, I might try that too. Here's one wonderfully freaky Borremans drawing:

 I decided also to post these little experiments I did for our project.

 And this sweet drawing by (I believe) Alisa Yufa:

Now back to our Regularly Scheduled programming!

dusty blog. be-gone, dust!!!

it's been so long since a post! I'm changing that.

I've been looking at a lot of illustrators lately. In the last couple months for some reason it feels like the fog has cleared a bit--I think i've decided pretty definitively that illustration--I'd like to do editorial illustration and illustrations for books, that this is what I want to do with my life. For a long time I felt pulled in a lot of different directions in terms of a career. Anyways.

I'm obsessed with this illustrator Ping Zhu right now.  dry brush! so much energy!

I also am looking a lot right now at Jillian Tamaki. her style is so diverse; it's kind of incredible

delicious!

i also discovered this guy through behance the other night: Bastien Quignon. check out his portfolio. He has some gifs posted on there--i didn't know you could post gifs on Behance. I thought this was pretty lovely; it could make a really nice pattern in repeat.

meanwhile I've been messing around with color. here's a sketch--using colored pencils, a leaf I was working on yesterday. I really like your suggestions about abstraction. I need to find some exercises for composition as well.

What are you up to these days? It's been so long since we talked. Are you filling in at the art offices these days? What's new??