So I officially have photoshop fever~  It finally somewhat clicked last week . . . any thoughts?

I'm trying to figure out how to size them correctly for my website.  I was told 72 resolution but I'm not sure if that is correct. 

HWell hello blog . . . its been a year, an epic fail on my part!  So hopefully I got a little more tech savy during this year, but I really doubt it.

So lets have a little recap shall we!  I have officially graduated in December 2011.  I am part of an 11 member art group called Outliers, our website is outliersart.com.  We had our first official show in mid December at 2 and 101 Henry Adams Street in San Francisco -

 

I wanted to try something a little out of my comfort zone for this show.  For the past 4 years I had become so accustomed to painting pieces for assignments that it was strange to be left to my own devices.  When I'm left to explore like this my ideas become pretty fluid and I constantly make changes to my concept.  

Well this was quickly the issue with this series.  

I wanted to explore the idea that energy is never destroyed, but in fact transforms from object to object.  I have always loved painting portraits and wanted to present the portraits in a energetic manner.  I split the canvases into multiple pieces and connected them with copper piping. 

The concept wasn't as solid as I had hoped it would be by the end of the semester and wasn't received very well by the art critics that saw the show.  I wasn't surprised by their reviews of my pieces because I felt they weren't as thought out as they could have been.  They're criticism has given me the push I needed to round out my concept  . . . so vandalized train cars had to be found!

 

 Good bye for now portraits . .. hello industrial composition!

So moving on with the update!-  I finally made Christmas paintings, all thanks to not having to worry about other painting projects.  A nice perk to graduating!

So after the new year I began to focus on getting ready to get a job as a Conceptual Artist.  I was told by someone who works in the field that a degree in fine art would be the best move for getting into the industry.  Sadly for me, this meant that I got little to no training in Photoshop or any type of digital painting.  As well as the skills I would need to present my concept work to a potential client.  Fine art gave me the necessary training that I need, but failed to give me the modern/business punch necessary to succeed.  

So I basically had to scrap my portfolio and start from scratch teaching myself how to digitally paint and familiarize myself with the more business side of this field.  Its frustrating but a little liberating to be forcing myself to stick to Photoshop and make my own working agenda. 

And that is where I'm at now!  So lets move on to the things that I have found inspiring!

I have been hell bent on fine tuning my drawing/painting style.  I have always had a strange attraction to old school mug shots.  They are so raw and vulnerable, especially compared to the touched up glamorous versions of people we are used to being presented with today-

I've also been drawn to ink washed paintings/drawings lately.  I've always loved working with ink, and have recently discovered how to make the paintings I do in photoshop have and ink/watercolor look to them which I'm super excited about :D

And of course you can't go wrong with a little street art and classic Steve Mcqueen-

So this week has been a little less stressful . . . so TADA!  A POST!

I finally signed up for my LAST 4 classes!!!  I'm so excited (and scared) about graduating.  I felt like this last semester would never come :)
So one of the classes I signed up for involves building a portfolio consisting of 30 paintings.  Sounds intense, so I figured I would get started early and try to post my works in progress.

So here is the first drawing stage of a painting for this semester.  I'm going to try to do this in the technique of the old masters, minus grisaille because I despise it.

Grisaille is a black and white underpainting to help set up and structure the values and forms of a painting.  I just learned this a week ago and I personally prefer doing a burnt umber underpainting.  It seems to transition into color better for me so hopefully all goes well with this painting.

Once I've started the color layers I'm going to do a series of glazes to help build depth.  So here's the start to a long journey!

So I finally did a painting with turquoise like I have been itching to do for the past month.  Sadly it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to :/  It quickly turned into a project I had to rush to get done for class instead of the intricate time consuming painting I was

intending it to be . . .

So I'm just going to toss it aside until I have time to give it the TLC it

needs to hopefully get better!

I've always loved weather beaten bronze and I was trying to go for that effect with this painting

before I had to cut it short.  While I was looking up bronze references I came across an 

abstract artist that I have never seen before.

His name is Andy Hahn 

Seeing his work makes me want to use more red in my abstract work.  Maybe I'll play around with 

rusted metals and see what I can find :)

Wow, 2 posts in one day.  This is some kind of record for me!

So I just heard this quote and I thought that it was beautiful and wanted to share it with whomever actually reads my blog . . .

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds

long to play with your hair"

So I am obviously a negligent blog owner.  Thankfully I don't have to feed this blog or else it would die!  So far this semester has been more interesting than any semester I've had.  My teachers are very informative and I'm trying different techniques I've never done before.

Its definitely something new for me!  I'm actually painting abstract pictures and I like it!  Who knows if they're any good but its very liberating to paint so loose and carefree.  I am so used to painting "realism", so this is a big change.  I was listening to Stan Getz when I painted this one.  If anyone wants to try to paint abstract some jazz is a great mood setter, lol.
I'm still not sure which way to present this, I keep turning it to make up my mind.

The color isn't showing up right, its a lot more vibrant in person

The next week I attempted a similar style with this one.  The color shows up better on this one

Never mind about the color, once it uploaded it looks much more faded than it does in person . . .

Oy, why does this have to be so difficult!

So one of my favorite teachers just had a gallery opening.  He is a brilliant artist and this show just blew me away-

His name is Kevin Moore and I highly recommend you go and check his show out if you're in San Francisco and you have the chance.  

This entire show is about space and time.  Kevin would walk around with a camcorder and record his daily life, then piece together the images he collected all into one scene.  The picture about is time lapse of him painting his wife at his home.

It was a fantastic opening and a truly beautiful night

So back to school-

I am currently taking a class called Quick Studies.  Sounds harmless enough, but this class is intense!  My entire "art career" I have been instructed to take my time with my work.  Make sure the under drawing is precise, the shadows are laid in correctly, the values are mapped out, etc.  And along with all these instructions we were constantly reminded to take our time, there was no need to rush. 

Now that we've all had this hammered into our brains suddenly we're being instructed to paint as quick as possible.  Have the drawing done within 3 minutes, get the shadow shapes in under 2 minutes, hurry hurry hurry!  Its so mentally exhausting . . . and fun!  Its as if I like to torture myself because everyone else in my class seems to hate it :)

These were my very first paintings done in 20 minutes.  They are horrible but I figured I might as well share them.  Thankfully the ones I finished yesterday were better, but I don't want to jinx it!

Moving right along, I was also commissioned for a mural!  Its nothing huge 5X8 feet.  Whenever I say mural people seem to assume that it is a huge painting on the side of a building.  There's no way I could handle that! 

This mural is for a young boy in his bedroom.  The parents want his name to be done in graffiti

Here is a rough color study of how it should turn out.  I can't wait to get started!

Wow, sorry for completely forgetting about this blog!  I'm still not even sure if anyone has seen my blog yet, but hopefully at least one person has . . .
So my computer's X-mas present to me was to up and die, which was a wonderful surprise.  But thankfully the people at the Mac store fixed it SUPER quick, they were amazing.  So now that it's all fixed HOPEFULLY I can remember to post on here!

I've been working on some illustrations for a child's book and designing tattoos - So props to me for actually doing something artistic during my break.  As a friend of mine said, "My breaks usually consist of different versions of sitting on my ass."  Which is so true, but at least I'm sitting on my ass and drawing, woot woot!

Here's a tattoo design I did for a friend of mine.  The color is dulled but the tattoo turned out great!  I've designed around 10 tattoos so far, maybe one day I'll muster up enough courage to actually learn how to tattoo . . . but until they invent an instant tattoo eraser I'm going to stay far away from that idea

Since my winter break is in full swing I've been neglecting my paints . . . as usual.  But lately I've been getting the itch to randomly paint something.

For the past 6 months I've been slightly obsessed with turquoise.  Especially if its more on the green side.  For some reason I gravitate toward anything this color and it just puts me in this euphoric state.  Probably has something to do with this color reminding me of tropical get-aways and the fact that it has been ridiculously cold here lately.  I have a few ideas of some abstract pieces using galkyd that would finally let me use this color.  Now I just have to get around to actually starting it . . . lets be honest, that might take awhile . . .

This semester I've been trying different techniques of painting portraits and I started doing some in watercolor, with ink and acrylic.  And for some reason every face I paint has it's eyes closed . . . maybe its a sign I need to get more sleep -_-

That's all I have at the moment, I'm going to try to post more tomorrow . . . so we'll see!

Ok so lets get this blog thing rolling!  Here are some random doodles I did this month.  This is apparently what happens when you're waiting for Matte Medium to dry, you doodle random decorated elephants and ancient giants . . .

So this entire semester has been packed full of new techniques I've never tried before.  I have to say that I fell in love with a different way to approach watercolor painting which includes gouache.  This helps to give a more "painterly" look to my brush strokes, and makes is very easy to rub out details.  I can't imagine painting in watercolor any other way now!

 I also was introduced to Matte Medium, which has become my quick go to method to create texture and the appearance of thicker paint.  It has been a pocket book life-saver and makes it possible for me to paint on any surface . . . oh the possibilities!