Fall '08 Senior Year All done.

Well, the dreaded foam project has come to a close, and looking at the results, I'm much happier than I thought I'd be, and would consider doing it again in the future. It took a crazy amount of hours, patience, frustration, and funds, but it pays off to see it transform and learn how to do it again. However, I still remain pretty satisfied by the canvas prints, and might just continue with those next semester during my thesis and BFA fun. I want to try to push them a little further, with solid color and composition decisions, and mix up the static/organic qualities of the prints. 

Blogger was being stubborn about the last one

Individual Pieces...

Finished 3 Prints and Carvings!

Live and Learn

Ok yeah disregard the pink-ish recolor of it. Just thought I'd toss it out there for people to chew on, and like 8 people like the original. I'm gradually agreeing with them. :)

Oh crap, one more thing.

After looking at all three images in a row on the blog page, the other two are vastly more saturated than my final, which I like at that current level, so I'm gonna desaturate the other two a little bit more to flow together with the last one for a little more cohesion.

Final Image (No.6) and my indecision between colors...

(Changed Palette))

(Original)

I can't decide which color palette to use here. I was aiming for one that's different than the colors that I normally use, but both versions have a lot of depth. Any suggestions?

Quick Notes About This Series...

Yeah, I know that they're bright and colorful/saturated, and desaturated and all kinds of other things you can do to color and I like them that way. I've been experimenting with my color palette, and want to try some different approaches.

Image 5, a.k.a. Number 2 of the printed series.

Image 4, or the First of the Printed Series

Older Images I'm Drawing From.

Image 1 Drawing

Too much on my mind.

Ugh. It's 4:25 am and I'm tossing and turning. So i decided to update the blog and draw some sketches to go along with my last three digital pieces. I have a handful of sketches but I can't seem to be content with them yet. This might be why I'm still awake. I can't get them out of my head. Just the thought of them being unfinished makes me restless and antsy, and makes me want to stay up til the crack of dawn to work on them. That and the other two studios goin on right now. Oh well. Back to the sketchbook.

The End Is in Sight...

Sorry, there hasn't been a lot to post on since I've just been carving and working all week. I figured I'd condense the posts into this one since they'd all be a sentence, like "still carving today." Anyways, I was working on the third one today, thinking that they'd all be ok for tomorrow, and whoever makes the foam puts little perforated little cuts along the surface that make it easier for builders to break and harder for artists to carve. I was carving along the edge of one of these lines, and the whole thing split in half. So I had to start over with the third piece, setting me back to finishing the rest of the project this week. I expect it to be done on wednesday night-ish, so for the people that are in class, I'll show what I already have tomorrow, and the finished work on friday during class. I reworked the mache by adding more regular glue and some flour, since the original was too wet and crumbly. Due to material costs and mixing glue, I'm putting off the paper mache part until all of the images are finished carving up. I don't want to have to get the mix right more than once. The other three to be printed should be off the ground later this week, and finished over thanksgiving break.

Growing, Developing, and learning EASIER ways to do things...

Woohoo! Image one is done, and I have found MUCH easier ways to go about doing this. For the next two, the two pieces of foam will not be glued together, but smaller pieces will be glued on to the areas that need more raised sections in the relief. It just takes less time to avoid drilling through an entire layer of foam to reveal the lower layer. (Sorry if this makes no sense to people not on the same track as me)

Foam 2!!

Yeah, I know this can be one post but the format was messing up and this is my way to solve it :)

One piece wasn't enough, so two should do the job.

By the way, Image one is almost done. I just have a few touches to put on it tomorrow, and the other two are goin in the mix. All three transfers are going down at the same time just to make it easier on setup for gel and all that fun.

Foam!!

My version of mapping out the image on the foam before I carve it.

Minor Setback, but nothing crippling.

Earlier today as I was carving the foam, I stepped back and looked at it for a few minutes, and wasn't 100% happy with it. I was using 2" foam and the depth that I wanted to capture with it wasn't available in that shallow of a depth. I started over with 2 pieces of 2" foam for 4" and a greater depth and a more effective difference between each level of carving. Plus, this will go much more smoothly since there will be larger areas to work with. When I worked on the mockup and the 2" piece, it was slow and tasking since the areas were so small and fragile. The glue is drying on the large piece and it'll be dry for me to work on tomorrow morning. Since this process will already be complete on the first one, I'm printing the next two and finishing the first one tomorrow. The process will already be down and I'm going to make definite plans to have the three finished by the end of next week, giving me ample time to work on the other three images.

Monday's Critique...

Carving is going well and everything is smoothing out properly. Hopefully everything will continue to go smoothly and I'll have image one completed for monday's Critique.

Fin3...

Fin2...

Fin...

Also...

Also, in the last week, I started my next and last three images, and when I have them all drawn up, scanned in, and cleaned up, Expect a post. I might need some feedback on them and some color choice. 

Got a little behind on the posts...

Sorry, I was working on the foam carving and I really haven't had anything new and exciting come up. The carving is going well so far, and image one is printed out. Two and three are just about wrapped up and more will be coming about them.

Don't Know Exactly Why... Experiment Maybe?

I know it's not some crazy breakthrough or anything, I was just messing around with flipping the image since these can really go any way or rotation and I was playing around with the forms.

Just posting some stuff I was tooling around with.

Red Image

Ugh...

Been working for about 4 hours at this point. I'm trying to simplify the images using color instead of completely changing the forms in the image (Although, i changed a few things, like those fingers being all morbid-ish and stuff). Also, upon reviewing the images, they're a little bit too busy to run together in a series. I'm not going to simplify them any more in form though because I like how they are and I'm not changing that any more than I already did. To deal with this, they will be a series instead of a continuous piece, each one following a different general color scheme. This first one that I finished tonight is the red image; toss up some responses if possible to let me know if you think it's an improvement or not. All three of these, however, will be coming to a close by he beginning of next week so I can move on and work on some other pieces as well. Expect a mock up after this weekend - I should have it finished by then!  

One more thing...

I did my best to get all three images to line up as far as color goes, as well as brightness and saturation. While I carve out the foam using black and white prints for the relief aspect of these pieces, if anyone has any comments or suggestions on the finished color images, I'd be happy to hear them since I won't be using them quite yet. 

Finally, 1.

And 2..

Image 3 Finished!

Forgot to add something.

Also, I thought my original size of 24x16 would be a pretty good size, but after putting some thought into it and measuring it out, that seemed too small for an abstract image. I bumped the proportion up to 36x24, which felt like a much better size for the images. 

Ugh...

So... I worked on the three images all weekend so that they would be finished for monday, and as I neared the end, they seemed incomplete and sloppy. I thought I'd try a different approach towards working with scanned-in drawings at the beginning of the project, by scanning in linework, digitally painting it, and then doing the shading. Afterwards, it seems that my original method of drawing the whole thing and painting it afterwards is still the better of the two for me at least.  So  I killed all three of the images, re-drew my original linework to get rid of the colored pencil outlines on the original drawings, shaded all three and re-scanned them. It ended up being a ton of work but it paid off. I personally think the finished three look better than the originals. 

Some Quick Opinions..

I posted earlier several pictures of my first series of images, and I can't quite decide which version I like better - the saturated or unsaturated version. I'm trying to push the saturation levels in different areas throughout the image to push and pull the movement more, but I was trying to start off with a better base. 

Fun With Insulation

I also began making mock-ups out of the pink insulation foam and I purchased the fiberglass and resin, and i should hopefully have a finished mock-up and some pictures up of it by Wed.

Working

For this semester, I've decided to do the first series of three images, and a complete 3-d walkaround. As I did last semester, the prints directly onto canvas came out very well, and the colors were on the spot. Three more will be done, maybe a bit smaller than the first several series, but not much smaller.

Image 3

Image 1

Coloring and shading and so on...

Well, I ended up Doing the middle image first of the series, which is the 2nd one. The first finally has color on it, and the third is being worked into that right now. Shading to come soon, since I realize all seem kinda flat at the moment.

And a quick view into the future before it catches up to me

This series of three will be my first full project. I want to attempt a full 360Deg. walk-around with a reversed image transfered onto foam again. The other three will be all separate images with pieces of instruments molded into them. I haven't quite finished the design into how that is going to work since I need to pick up the instruments this weekend and have a little fun with metal snips and a hammer. All of the pieces in this work are physically going to have instruments in them, but it's tough to determine where actual pieces will fit until the project is finished and the pieces are acquired since I can alter the image infinitely, but the pieces, not so much. More to come on this later...

A little bit of color never hurt...

                                                                                   I added extra color to one of them and toned the other one down to look at the difference between the two and decide which one was more effective. The brighter one seemed a bit overwhelming, and the black lines divided the image too much. I made them brown and toned down the saturation a bit. This seems a bit better since there will be another layer applied on top of the Image, making it a bit darker anyways. I'm not too worried about the other two images in this series since I will be drawing from this image and using the same colors as to keep a unity in the single body of work across three images. 

Working Continued

Black and Whites are up and separated from the color images in the first series of works. They'll be shaded by hand and re-scanned in to create a greater depth in the image. Opacity should be turned down and Images lined up to create the effect. 

Working...

As I attempt to juggle the 3 different studios, I'm happy to say that my content and style has spanned across mediums and different things aren't turning up in printmaking and painting. I've expanded my view on the subject to the total abstract, more analytic in form. This week, drawings for my first computer art piece are finally coming together and getting scanned in. Digital painting is up next and all kinds of battles shall commence with the scanner as linework and crosshatching are giving me hell to add to the pieces. More to come later...

So Here's the Pitch...

Over the summer I was testing several types of formable mediums, and ended up with the Pink High-Density insulation foam. It doesn't melt or get eaten away by paints and such, and will be perfect for sculpting and transferring on to. Well, back to the sketchbook...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines....

Thus begins Senior year and Computer Art V. Just finished working some sketches out and running tests on some different moldable mediums.