I attempted to oil paint last night after a long hiatus. I’ve lost it all and this time I have no teacher to guide me back into it. Very sad. You can click the images to enlarge and view the details. I used a palette knife because the surface I was painting on (a piece of thin wood) was feeling a little too rough on my brushes. I don’t know how I did it last time. Maybe I need new brushes. Anyway, I bought the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are particularly because I was too lazy to download the songs, but I’m glad I bought it. It makes me feel like a kid all over again. Do I have to grow up? Maybe I’m still a kid. Oh child. Well I’m off to work. Child labor! Laboring children. (P.S. Daniel, I think I’m obsessed with you. I’m creepy. Sorry.) Listen: Karen O and the Kids – Hideaway Farewell.

Another quick update of my little doodles. Most of them were done within a minute or so, therefore the sloppy penmanship. There are a handful of drawings that were drawn with specific people in mind. (Daniel Bang, I drew what is supposed to be Charlie Kaufman for you. The second drawing too.) Anyway, please enjoy  regardless if a drawing is dedicated to you or not. Also, here’s some random songs to listen to if you desire.

Karen O and the Kids – Igloo
Free the Robots – La Lune
Warpaint – Billie Holiday
Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind (Feat. Alicia Keys)
Love of Lesbian – Univsersos Infinitos
Eartha Kitt – C’est Si Bon (It’s So Good)
Jill Scott – Gettin’ In The Way

The pieces above were done on board material. (The heavy stock cardboard backing material on the bristol pads. Shhh.) Almost all of it was done with acrylic, minus the black ink on the second one. They all have their individual interpretations which I refrain from explaining for personal reasons. (One of them being laziness, kind of.) If it is too small, you can click the image to enlarge. Goodness, the photography has definitely tainted the quality of them, but ultimately it is better to see it hands-on and feel all the texture. I don’t know how to become commercial. It just doesn’t feel right. Maybe I just have to give it a try … or maybe I just need to find a better way in transferring the texture into a two-dimensional form. So lost.

Anyway, below are just some mini doodles that sprouted from the first piece I did above. The little fat birds. I also drew some non-bird related doodles, but I’ll hold that off for another update. (I want this to be a somewhat cohesive update!) A little less substance than the ones above, but I think they’re just as enjoyable. Who doesn’t like cute fat birds?

A little more personal update, I got into Art Center College of Design under the graphic program. Very exciting, yes. I think I’ll get the opportunity I am in dire need of to appreciate the essence of graphic design. Hopefully. I recently got back to listening to 89.9 KCRW. Very good station, although sometimes the reception loses sharpness. The station plays some authentically pleasing tunes. Speaking of music, two songs that were playing during the creation of these little pieces of Michelleness was Coldplay’s ‘Death and All His Friends’ and Radiohead’s ‘Nude’. I leave you with these little things.

Unnerve
Foam, fuzz, fame, frail, framed.
I limp, I wimped.
Unclear thoughts. Pure, I think not.
Straight lines unknown.
What is truest I do not know.
Pause. Sigh. Silence.

Some thoughts that are constantly running through my mind. The luxury of solitude loses its glamor once the body realizes the necessary need for affection. The right people are too often unappreciated. Unhappiness comes from desire. Desire creates anxiety. Expectations lead to disappointment. Strive for clarity. Interpretation. Deconstruction. Create.

For the summer semester at school I took a figure drawing class with Randall Bloomberg. It was difficult, trying different techniques that I wasn’t comfortable with, but it was still fun. Plus, there was a potluck on the last day of class.. and there were some delicious oatmeal cookies. Mmmm.

Blatantly reveal genuine emotion. My teacher told me my eyes need to be opened. That I have to be exposed to good design, good art, goodness..gracious. It is not necessarily about finding the perfect end, but realizing the beauty of the process of discovery . Anyway, I was trying to make a card, but I messed up, so I decided to make something out of the it, instead of throwing it away… because I don’t like wasting paper. You should see my paper drawer. It’s literally filled with scraps of different kinds of paper, thinking that one day I’ll put them to good use. Who knows, who really knows? The idea is slightly vulgar. I guess slight might be an understatement. It is vulgar. I can’t really explain myself because there is no explanation to give. I can only say that I got the idea from a combination of finger puppets and a thumb wars book at Barnes and Nobles. I can feel myself rusting. The video below is quite a contrast to today’s actual weather, but sometimes songs resounding with sorrowful sentiment strike closer and quicker to the heart.

This past week I created some very quick, large sketches/drawings with white bond paper and some sharpies. I like the last one I did the most, but I guess that’s how many things are. The more you do, the better it gets? Or so they say. The lighting is really horrible, as always, because the lights in my room are yellow and I don’t have a huge scanner or an external flash. Basically I’m too lazy to find a better way and even if I did, they would be uneven, and I prefer unity. Anyway, I finally fixed the pictures on my wall (last picture). The tape was becoming less adhesive with every breeze that flew in from my window, so I re-taped them all back up. The task haunted me everyday, with every fallen picture pleading to be put back up on the wall, but I finally finished it. Well its not quite finished. I still have a bit more space left for whoever comes into my life in the next few months and happens to get their face shot by me, in the least violent way possible. I follow Rainn Wilson on Twitter and I believe on one of his tweets he mentioned how this song was going to be the opening of The Office if it weren’t used in some other show. (I am realizing that sounds really creepy. But hay! I know I’m not the only one. :T) Anyway, I listened and liked. A nice feel good song.

Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky

I’ve been sleeping to Sigur Ros, Stars of the Lid, Damien Rice and Priscilla Ahn’s Silent Night in hopes to dream specific dreams. I think its definitely possible to have external noise influence your dreams. Kind of like hypnosis I suppose. Anyway, my library account owes the library $9.95. I am led to believe that this fee will increase due to my lack of responsibility to return the movies I rented this past week. Dangit. Isn’t it interesting that the word live is evil backwards? To listen to live music is to live. The content of this paragraph makes me content. Not really. In its context, a word changes its meaning, just as humans do. We’re continuously changing. Anyway, last Saturday was my last day at ANDLAB so I brought home all my drawings, paintings and other miscellaneous work that I’ve done in the past year. I thought I’d post up some of the stuff that I’ve done because thass what I do.

I’m in the process of finishing this character design drawing. I wanted to create odd characters that are fairly depressed because their planet, Pluto, is no longer considered a regular planet to Earth. So sad, Pluto was my favorite planet too. Anyvayz, the doodle on the right was just a quick doodle during break. I guess you can call it a semi-self portrait. Ha. I like it, Michael liked it. Moving on.

This was way back then when I first started drawing fundamentals/rendering with Rebecca. I dreaded this class in the beginning, but once I got into the zone, I was in it. Worked off of references that Rebecca gave the class. The left is charcoal and the right is pencil. It’s off, but took forever so I’d thought I’d give it a little room to twinkle. Plus rendering is not my forte so heyohh..

More figure drawing stuff. This was the week that I experimented with size and materials. Pen suggested using rose stems and dried rose petals. I first started off with the regular 18×24 sheets …and I ended up taping six of those sheets together drawing on this massive piece of paper. Since the paper size increased I taped more rose stems together losing nearly all control of the medium. The experience was so liberating, which, I think, was the point. You realize the loss of control and with this sense of powerlessness you almost become more in tune with the nature of the drawing. Whoa whoa whoa, settle down.

Painting is not my forte as well. Basically I’m not too good at one thing, which hopefully will change sooner .. or later. (S’all good as long as I’m enjoying what I do right? Oh brother.) This was the week that Jeff subbed for Michael’s oil painting class. Michael wanted us to do head and hand studies, so Jeff had us do two paintings instead of one that day. We had this super angry-looking* model with very pouty lips and I think I slightly captured the essence of the model…minus a few years. The first painting I did that day is on the left. Since we did two, I didn’t have enough time to finish it, but what the hey. The top left (and right) is the second painting I did on a piece of wood that was previously prepared.. I think the technical term is primed? Iono man. I like how the wood texture showed through the paint (which is a little more visible on the second picture). The sun has risen.

I think I should slip into at least an hour of sleep before I get ready for class. I have a big day ahead of me. Important questions to ask. Basically its life or death today, but I’m being a little over dramatic, just a little. ANDDDD my I have lost internet connection right as I am about to click Publish. Lovely. I watched The Limits of Control at the Landmark Theatre today. The theatre was luxuriously pleasurable, a severe contrast to the movie itself. Very silent, very dry and the much needed climax seemed like a short hiccup. Each shot, though, was beautiful. I like the way Avi Offer puts it when he says “Feels tedious, bland and pretentious. It’s the kind of film that’s more appropriate to be studied shot-by-shot in film school for its expert camera techniques and other production values instead of experiencing it with a movie theater audience.” But, I must say, I did enjoy Gael Garcia Bernals little snippet. Yes I am biased. The connection is up and running now, so I will end here. P.S. I killed a spider last night.

I feel overwhelmed with miscellaneous work … even though I don’t have much work to do, if I were to manage my time efficiently, which I don’t. Anyway, I received sad news that my art tutoring school might be shutting down due to the economic strain. So if you guys are interested in taking some art classes to build your portfolio or just to learn how to draw, check out ANDLAB. (They also do branding, logos, packing, etc.) This month we have communication design and experimental illustration on Wednesdays, character design on Fridays and figure drawing and oil painting on Saturdays. I feel like an advertisement, but I really don’t want to lose a place like this. Anyway, for the past couple of months ANDLAB offered a rendering class on Thursdays with Jeff McMillan. (<-Amazing artist/illustrator) He had us do some master copy’s of contemporary artists, self portraits, rendered perspective of our room and a customized final project. I just wanted to show the two master copies that I did because it took a while and why not? It’s aiiiite. I am also subliminally advertising ANDLAB, well … if you like what you see. O_O

(I am realizing I need a better transferring method because taking pictures of my stuff in my yellow lit room is no good!)

The first master copy in Jeff’s ‘Fun While Rendering’ class was recreating one of Alex Pardee’s pieces. Well there were three other options, but this one tickled my fancy. It’s so ..cruel.. so good. Obviously I did the one of the left and in my defense, the printed copy that I was looking from did not have the white specs on it like it does in the picture up thurr, so don’t hate too hard. All right, moving along!

Okay, I suck at rendering, whatever, but Travis Louie is too crazy. So smoos!! (smooth.) This was the second session of ‘Fun While Rendering’. Jeff picked a new set of contemporary artists for us to copy and again I chose the weird one. What can I say? I have an eye for odd thangs. I tried, again on the left. I’ll get better, hopefully. ㅠ_ㅠ

This isn’t the rendering class, but the figure drawing class on Saturdays with Pen. (<- who also teaches the experimental classes on Wednesday nights, who is also very talented/artistic, who is also very sexy. I will stop here.) Anyway, the styles in the class vary from every student, I just happened to enjoy contour figure drawing, it feels more natural and freeing. (<- opinion) I need to stop with these parenthesis, arrow, comment, end parenthesis and find a sophisticated way of inserting my unnecessary remarks. Anyway, Pen had me experiment with pen and ink this past Saturday, since he saw how much I liked the medium. I definitely need more work on the washing, though. The blobs just represent lines, not shapes. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of it soon.

I know the images are tiny, I’ll try to fix that next blog around. The anticipation of Art Center’s application due date in October is killing me… already. So I decided to try some experimental collaging in photoshop. I’d like to say it was CocoRosie inspired, with the odd mixture of images and wild colors. The image itself displays a sense of an unsettled identity. Whatevs. I really don’t like the layout of this entry. So I’m going to stop here. No I’m not. Watch ‘Please Say Something’! (P.S. You can click on all the images to enlarge them.)

Honestly I forgot it was St. Patricks day more than five times today. I saw green everywhere and literally thought that everyone was crazy. Just kidding. Not really. Today was my experimental illustration class again. Today’s medium was pen and ink. The instructions were to gather three images of three people and fuse their facial characteristics together. Unfortunately, Mimi, Violet and I didn’t bring those three pictures, so Pen told us to use each others’ face… and we ended up just creating our own creatures. The color of the images are definitely incorrect because the light in my bedroom is yellow, but I think the yellow glow gives the pieces a bit of a worn-down look, its trendy so what the hey.

Anyway, so I’m still debating whether I want to go into Graphic Design or Illustration. Everyday I choose the other. One day I am entirely convicted that I’m meant to do graphic design and then the next day I strongly believe I was meant to be an illustrator. Why can’t they fuse?! I’m sure they can. Right? Anywho, one artist I really think is amazing is Egon Schiele. The way he expresses the contour lines is so raw and the disproportional figures give emphasis on all the right places. He was so talented! Gah. Seriously I could post up his stuff forever.

Egon Schiele’s work:

I found this short last night called La Revolution Des Crabes. It was definitely worth the five extra minutes I stayed up to watch it before bed. I like the animation too. Do you ever feel as if you want to do everything in life? Sayonara