painting

Felt like painting suddenly and decided to do it! Drew a little sketch on a piece of cardboard and painted and it was REAL QUICK! The bottom one is the one I did today. Its based off a sketch of a Rodin and then I looked at a picture of the sculpture and so it's basically just based on the sculpture, cep for its from looking at a PICTURE...and so that's not from life...so yeah.

Anyway I think Ima make a series of paintings like this. Whatever this is. I guess its figures on cardboard that are in sort of radical colors. They look a little crazy afterward maybe, but when I paint them It doesnt seem strange. This last one I did, even though it at times is the hardest to tell what it is, seems like the most realistic of the figures in the series so far.

If you cant tell, it is the figure of a woman with one of her legs bent holding it to her body with her arms and the other leg is just kinda disappeared aaaaand so has her head.

painting

Heres a painting Ive started and the reference photo. I dont know how I feel about using a photograph as a reference, but since I dont have art classes anymore its a little harder to find a model, so Im using a photo. This isnt exactly what I wanted the painting to look like, but its getting there I suppose. I started out with a vine charcoal drawing on the canvas which was looking pretty good. Then I realised it was way off the reference so I started to try and fix it and felt like I messed it up and was getting frustrated and was feeling kinda crummy at the moment. It was looking really off and I had erased a bunch, which I normally actually dont erase anything, but the drawing was missing some eyes and a nose and stuff was all over the place. I just decided to start painting anyway and it started to come into the right proportion. Its still a little off, the face is too long and the eye on the right is a little to close to the other eye. But its getting there. The colors arent what I wanted at all, but I kind of like them. Anyway Ive only spent maybe about 2 hours on it, no maybe less, all together including the drawing part and Im gunna keep working on it.




Well I had another shot right here that was a little lighter than the first painting, but i accidentally deleted it just now. Dont feel like uploading it again, whatever, it looked crummy anyway. Looked like I was painting with ketchup and mustard.

mick

Heres the caricature of Mickey Rourke I did a while ago. cool!

I havent been able to load any pictures on here because i havent loaded any on my computer...because keiths camera hasent been charged for a while. so that is being charged now and...well thats the reason for nothing on here in a while. There might be MAYBE a FEW FEW FEW people who read this thing, but im still under the assumption that it is read by no one. And well now that I havent been posting, maybe Im just solidifying the zero reader fan base of my blog. Anywho, maybe it makes it easier to write stuff on here knowing that people dont read it. Not that it really matters.

Well anyway, I visited Caz about a week or so ago. I was looking forward to going because ben and brian and sam and kyle had all decided to visit that weekend and i was really looking forward to hanging out again. kyle gave me a ride and it was neat that he got to see my house in ithaca. well the weekend was kind of awesome, we stayed in the apartments that ben and brian and them used to live in, because our friends now live there. It really made me wish i had hung out with them more last year and made me miss some of the people from caz. Oh yeah, and some girl broke her finger playing powder puff! it didnt look too bad actually, I did the same thing to my finger a couple year ago and mine was actually worse. my middle finger on my left hand bent sideways over to my pinky and i immediately bent it back, hoping it wasnt broken but knowing that it probably was. I was hiking around with keith and it was just really annoying that it broke.

Anyhwhwhway...yeah caz made me miss people a ton and sort of made me wish that i could live with ben and brian, since brian lives in connecticut by himself and ben isnt having a very fun time living at home. It just so happens that curt is trying to geta job at espn, where brian works... and maybe living there with them could actually be a reality. so that would be neat.

holy cow i think i just realized that i dont feel like writing anything. I went apple picking with kristine the weekend of caz, we went to beak and skiff and the whole time we went i was thinking of how, i dont know, just the way everything looked. i enjoy the drive on route 20 from caz to marcellus, which is the way id usually go home from caz or go back to caz. Beak and skiff ison route 20 pretty close to my house and maybe it just made me think about going on that road and remembering going to school and coming home fromschool, and how it seems like every thing i see is prettier than the last thing i saw. beak and skiff made me think about being a kid i spose and im constantly stuck on stuff that i missed out on. It felt like looking around from the entrance to the orchards at beak and skiff that i was sort of thinking about, i guess, the past a lot? i spose. welli dont really know, i know that on the ride home from apple picking that i couldnt take how amazing everything looked, it was such a nice day, the sun was coming through the clouds on the hills surrounding route 20, sheding sort of foggy rays of light on the hill sides, making some of the colors on the trees really glow and stand out and it was just amazing looking. i felt like i couldnt take how nice it was because i wanted to express and exclaim about everything that i was feeling strongly about, but every image that proceeded the last brought stronger and stronger feelings. I felt as though i couldnt do justice to just how beautiful it was, or maybe how i felt. Reminds me of something from aesthetics and the deffinition of beauty. There is one deffinition that says the viewer who sees something as beautiful has a sense that what they see is universally beautiful, that they cant see how anyone would think otherwise. Maybe thats what i was feeling on the ride home. I remember thinking that i wanted to write about it because maybe that would fullfill the feeling i was getting, but now i cant seem to produce anything that i feel explains myself fully.

the night i got back from caz i went to a phoenix concert and it was pretty neat. Keith had an extra ticket and i was trying to find people to go from caz. actually i really only asked 2 people i think but i really did want someone else to come, someone from caz cause i just thought it would be nice i guess. Ive been seeing a couple bands every other week or so, i saw bear in heaven and twin sister awhile ago. then i saw the thermals and keith and i just didint like it. I feel like we are the only people who dont like the music, but we just didnt like it. I heard one of their songs when i was in caz and it actually didnt annoy me the way it did when i saw them live. Well then tonight i saw...hmm some local band from ithaca, they were not bad, then a band called wintersleep and they were pretty cool. holy cow! the drummer from the band, o man! so good. he looked like he was constantly on the verge of sneezing and crying and had the appearance of continually surprising himself with the stuff he was doing on the drums. Almost as if he had just sat down to the drums for the first time and was hitting anythign in front of him, not totally absent mindedly though, but in a way that he was kind of trying to find the right thing to hit, and then got surprised when everythign he hit was spot on. and he looked like he was sort of being rushed into playing an instrument he had no idea about, but in actuality, he was really good. at the end during their last song, i got this neat idea and image in my head watching them all playing. there was a guy on key board, 2 guitarists and one on bass, and they were playing this awesome song and just going nuts with their instruments and they were all sort of facing in towards the drummer. It seemed in that moment that the drummer was this savant drummer god, who was an incredible musician with just pure unpracticed but perfect talent, and that the other members were all playing to him. they were all very good at their instruments, but at that moment, it seemed like they had all seen or heard him playing or maybe that they had heard himplaying in their heads from different parts of the world, and the sound of his drums brought them to him, and they we just playing and all really sincerely playing with passion. he had this appearance that reminded my of the pieta, where he was the virgin mary, a massive over sized figure sitting atop from the rest of the band, and the drums and the band members were all the figure of christ. I think the reason i got such and image from him was because i felt as though, without the other members there, he would still be playing. I felt like he was constantly playing or just playing these beats from his head that would be heard regarless of the rest of the band. anwyay, thats the stuff i think about, but they were neat.

The next band or headliner was besnard lakes and they were awesome. the first song was powerful and a great strong and whimsical sound all at the same time. the singer had an amazing voice. i got a feeling from him that i sometimes get when listening to other bands. I can remember thinking the same thing after listening to manfred manns version of blinded by the light for the millionth time and house of the animals version of house of the rising sun. Its the sudden realization that the singer has an amazing powerful voice. I had never heard this band before and im listening to them on youtube now, and its really too bad that it doesnt come through as much in the studio version as it did live, just how great his voice is. Their sound was very strong too, had such an atmosphere about it. I felt like it was a mix of pink floyd and radiohead. He kinda sounded like thom yorke actually.

holy mac i just got distracted drawing a caricatur of mickey rourke. ill take a pisture and post it on here when i get a chance. ive probably been drawing for an hour. ha! what is WITH me today?! anyway, im listening to the besnard lakes stuff, and it also reminds me of active child and something else that i cant quit think of. maybe its still pink floyd, but there was aslo something when i was watching them that the guys voice reminded me of. o well. anywho i think ima get back to this caricatur. pointless post

rien poortvliet noahs ark

sculpture

SOOOOOOO, I did this one awhile ago. maybe a month or so. mm, probably a little more actually. I havent posted anything in a while because my keyboard refused to work properly. WELLLLL I remembered I had another one in my closet so I hooked it up a few days ago. But then I remembered why I switched the keyboards in the first place and why this one was in the closet, cause its stinky too! well not that bad actually, the space bar just doesnt work sometimes. WHATEV, anyway, heres this one.

I didnt have any references for this sculptur other than maybe some little line sketches I had done, actually no I dont think I had any sketches. Yeah now that I think about it this was just from stuff in my head. But I was working on some ideas I had about making a fountain for my sisters new pool area. I had a feeling she would ask me to do something like that, since she had seen my blog and some of the little sculptures. I figured she saw it and got sort of pumped cause I was doing something with art. My family, save my dad, usually tries to encourage me with my art by asking if I could maybe make something for them or something to hang in their office. Usually I dont oblige. Actually, I never do. I feel bad about it. I did draw a picture of a 1948 jaguar family sedan for camille to give to doug for christmas. I almost didnt do that to be honest. I think we were going to go over to their house on christmas and I was supposed to give it to her then so she could put a bow on it or something. Well Im pretty sure I didnt start till...the day before. I ended up finishing most of it at around the time santa should have shown up at my chimney, or woodstove rather. Well I guess I have camille to thank for showing me that theres NO such thing as santa. But in his defense, we dont have a hearth and a fireplace, not that squeezing in a fireplace is very comfy, but chimney sweeps do it all the time. Fitting into a small woodstove would probably be a little difficult for a heafty old bearded man. Well it would be hard for anyone actually. I hope kyle doesnt read this. Anyway the whole thing reminded me of a documentary I watched on Frank Frazetta. Apparently he wouldnt start any of his paintings till the day before or night before he was supposedto have them done for a magazine or comic book of publisher, but they always came out really well. Not that I had a Frank Frazetta when I was done with the drawing of the jaguar, but it was alright.
I dont have many pictures on here of this one. I took a bunch, but most of them dont look like this.
I finished sculpting and started taking pictures and thought that id really like for itto be a little more complete. the legs were almost not there and it was just sort of a torse sitting atop a heap of clay. So I decided to sculpt out more leg and butt for him. It started looking better and then I took more pictures.
The back looks goofy. Its missing some muscles actually, well not really missing them, they just arent as even as a typical persons muscles are. This guy would probably have bad scoliosis. His traps are uneven and his lats are a little uneven too. His erector spinea is also a little goofy looking, just not developed well I spose. I wasnt really working too hard on it, but looking at it now, I think I should have made it a little more even. The pose of the figure suggests one side flexed and the other side to be elongated and I didnt make it look that way.

I reallylike the look of the legs though. I think this is a good example of what I wanted to do with the back. The legs arent very defined, but there are subtle forms that show the legs as a whole to be pretty acurate at first glance. Its kind of like in a painting of a person from a distance. The form can be recognized as a person with no qualms about it, looking rather acurate. But comeing closer you might notice that the eyes are just maybe a dash of dark color and that the nose might consist of just on brush strock where the nostrils are. That is somewhat how I see the legs and actually how I want to do my sketches. Id like to try and make the body more of a single form rather than trying to develope the muscles individually. The posture of the body doesnt look like what I want it to look like most likely because I tried to add on the the torsoe as apposed to molding it entirely. The one leg that is extended was formed from one collum of clay which is what I should have done with the torso.
ANYwhoo, this is something of an idea I had of a figure to go in the fountain that Im trying to make for camille. I have another sculpture Ive done but those pictures are still on keiths camera.

Regarding music

Listening to the french kiss song, by still corners, Im curious why I said I could go without this song on the play list. Theres a certain riff or sound thats very 50's, 60's ish and its great.

Music

Artist--------------- Track
Active Child---------- Body Heat
---------------------Im in your church at night
---------------------She was a vision
---------------------Voice of an old friend
---------------------When your love is safe

Beach House-------- Zebra
Dont know if this one really counts. I have beach house on my computer already, I just never had this track. mmmmmI guess it does cause I like it in the playlist.

Geographer-------- Cant you wait
---------------------Kites

Glasser------------- Home

Golden ages-------- Everything will be alright

How to dress well-- Cant see my own face
---------------------Ready for the world
---------------------You wont need me where Im going
---------------------Decisions (featuringYuksel Arslan)

Still Corner--------- Dont fall in love
---------------------Endless summer
---------------------French kiss
Could actually maybe go without this french kiss one, but whatev
---------------------Hostory of love
---------------------Wish

Sufjan Stevens----- Heirloom

Strange talk-------- Climbing walls

Summer camp----- Round the moon
Maybe I only got this ^ one cause I really liked the music video......but no I liked the song too.

Sun Airway-------- Oh Naoko
--------------------Waiting on you (holy cow this is good)
--------------------Put the days away (wow! this ones good stuff)
--------------------Your moon (who am I kidding? Its all good stuff!)

Now this is stuff I feel like my mom and my sisters would like, the twin shadows stuff. Maybe not Rita as much, but maybe yeah. It just sounds like 80's new wave smiths depeche mode and it reminds me of duran duran and I feel like Camille and my mom might have more of an appreciation for it than Rita mmmmmmmm BUUUUUUUT, maybe not. ANYWAY....I really wanna show it to all 3 of em!

Twin Shadow------ Castles in the snow
--------------------I cant wait
--------------------Slow
--------------------When we're dancing
--------------------Yellow balloon

The wild mercury sound (shucks, this names too dang long)---------Chemistry

More

The latest sculpture was a little rushed, and I didnt like it as much as the other two. I had to work at 2:30 today and didnt start working on the sculpture till after 12. Dont remember quite what time I started but I finished uploading the pictures of the figure at around 2. Ive been thinking about seeing how long these little figures take me so this was good to get some sort of idea.

The other 2 figures were both based on some Rodin sculptures. I looked at some images in a book I have here for reference. This one was inspired from a Schiele drawing. I originally wondered what it would be like if I were to sculpt a Schiele figure, with a particular painting of himself in mind. I looked through my Schiele book and saw a painting that I like of a woman. Then I kept skimming through the book trying to find the self portrait picture, thinking that it probably wasnt in there. Well it was, but when I got to it I wanted to do the woman painting instead. I thought that maybe it was time I tried to sculpt the female figure now before I got stuck in a rut of sculpting male figures. I didnt feel like this one came out as well as the others, maybe its cause I dont have as well rounded a knowledge of the female figure as I do of the male. I guess I dont have that much experience with woman? :p But really I have taken some figure drawing classes with primarily female models, so I spose I do have some knowledge.

This little sculpture was much more of a sketch than the other ones. It didnt take me long to really make the torso. I worked on the face a bit because I knew that I wasnt going to be able to make a good female face as easily as I can make a male face. For some reason I can draw and sculpt a male face very easily. A female face is much harder for me, so I worked on it with the whole idea in my head that it wasnt going to turn out looking like a woman, and it didnt. I sort of knew that it was a lost cause because it was almost like I had given up before I started. I also knew that this was just a sketch and that I didnt have that much time to focus on the face. I thought that I might not be good enough to make the torso and body look enough like a body, and would therefor have to rely on a head and face to kind of ground the sculpture, to make it look more realistic. Well I think it ended up being the other way around. The torsoe seemed to come out pretty well and after looking at the photos of the sculpture, much like with the other 2 figures, I like it more so than when it was around.

I also had something on my mind today more so than with the other figures. I was aware with the first figure that it was somthing more of a reliefe sculpture, which is why I took some photos of it from an angle that showed the face and arm were sort of cut in half and not finished. Yesterdays figure was a bit more robust and complete, but still reliefe like. This figure today was much more like a reliefe. I had a feeling that it would be a lot harder to do this one since it was from a painting as aposed to the photos of sculptures. I had a feeling that it would turn out looking flat and it was beginning to look flat. At one point, the figure only looked realistic from on point of view, and when I turned it the figure just looked lopsided. So I fixed it and really enjoyed making the figure pop out and look like it had weight and mass.

Unfortunately, just like the other sculptures, this one no longer exists.





This isnt a particularly good shot of the figure. I just liked the picture for some reason.







Some of these shots show a bit of the weight and mass of the torsoe that I really like. When I was sculpting I really wanted to do more of the figure. I like the pose of the painting I was sculpting from and a big reason I liked the pose was because of the position of the legs and how it forced the woman to sit, with her stomach sort of elongated and with her diaphram sticking up and out. I didnt have that much time to do legs, but I think I probably should have. Another problem was the clay getting a little dryer. Im putting some water on it before I put it back in the bag but I might have to take some more precautions. Im sure that Im probably not going to be able to use this clay after awhile because the constant use might just ruin it. I dont really know though, dont know that much about clay.





After looking at some of these Im really pleased with this one that I thought was the weakest of the figures Ive done. It might actually be the best one so far. Not that its really saying much, my other 2 werent exactly masterpieces, but I feel like this one might actually be the most realistic looking. Which is funny in a way, because my reference for the other 2 was from Rodin, which is far more realistic than a Schiele painting. Maybe this piece was me filling in the missing pieces with my mind because I didnt have as much information. I dont know. Anyway, Im not sure if I think "realistic looking" is quite something that will define if I like the sculpture or not. If the figure looks and feels like it makes sense, that it is a figure with a working underlying structure of skeletons and musculature, then that will make me happy. I think Im much happier with this figure than I was with the other 2.



I really like the subtle creases and bends and dips in the stomach area. My favorite part on a woman? Get real. Thats probably too hard a thing to pinpoint.




Holy cow, I got abunch of music today and I totally love it. I think I need to post a list of just about all the music I got. Im not totally enamored with every single one of the tracks I got, but I do enjoy most of them, and together, I guess as a play list, I think its just great! Insidently, this is what I was listening to WHILST I was sculpting and typing this post...BETWIXT the walls of my brick house......... FROM WHENCE MY SCULPTING CAREER WAS BORN!!!

Ima post it in a new post, cause this one is just too long!

Mas

Been wanting to sculpt more stuff since i dismantled my little sculpture yesterday. This one is also, of course, based on a Rodin. Similar pose. Dont think I like this one as much as yesterdays but there are things I noticed which I like when I looked at the photos, things that I hadent noticed when just looking at the actual object. One thing I noticed was in a picture I sent to a friend. The side of the neck looked very realistic and there were features there that I thougth looked very good, but I dont remember doing it. Its sorta like the thing I was talking about yesterday, with just doing something absentmindedly in a way.

So I again took 100 pictures. Actually I took 103 pictures then uploaded them. I was looking at the little sculpture for a bit more and took 34 more photos from some more angles that I hadent. I liked these a lot and figured that its alright if I take way too many photos, because these little sculptures dont exist anywhere other than the photos. This one was also destroyed.







From some of these angles I also noticed something that I hadent noticed when I was looking at the object itself. The leg looks very realistic and I didnt even really think that much about the muscular structure of the figure, at least not for the leg. Maybe this is because Ive been drawing the human figure for, mmmm, long time now, and these things are just subconsiously there. I really like the hip flexor, lower obliques, sartorius gluteus medius, rectus femorus and vastus lateralus area. it seems rather accurate and relaxed. Like the way the stomach is meant to look, sort of a relaxed musculature. Like the way Michelangelo used to draw most of his massive figures.
I used my spoon to support the head by shoving the handle down the torso and using the head for the head, like I did yesterday. I also used a paperclip for his right arm. You can see part of the head of the spoon and the paperclip in a few of the photos.


The figure I did yesterday was done only with my fingers and hands, but this one was a little smaller so I used the nail clippers, the file part, or rather that tip thats used to clean dirty fingernails or something. I used that to smooth some stuff out and get at some of the harder to reach places. I dont like this face as much as yesterdays, but thats alright. This is just a little sketch in clay basically and I dont totally dislike the face either. Im pretty happy with the overall outcome considering I dont really sculpt at all, this is basically the second thing I ever done on my own, yesterday being my first, and that it didnt take too long to make AND that it seems to be coming easy to me.



I liked this pose and this angle shot because the figure is really kind of distorting his torsoe, twisting and bending at the same time. Usually my figures arent as manipulated as this one and its something thats been on my mind for a long time. I like this pose.