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.