Tying up loose ends...

Right then, so here we have the last assignment of my sophomore Illustration class. The assignment was to do an editorial piece about phosphate mining. We were assigned a lot of reading on the topic and then set loose. Honestly there were a lot of things that I could have made an image about, but in the end I settled on phosphogypsum ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum ) and all that.

I had such a good time doing the 3d stuff for my last assignment that I figured I'd give it another go, and there's the result. A step up but definitely still learning. This time I didn't use as much sculpey, it's mostly cell phone pieces, a broken RF switch, paper mache and wire.

Also, the lighting set up I made was pretty ridiculous, so I figured I would share that too. That's outside in my backyard by the way.

And on a final note, I put together a website (as an assignment for my graphic design class) and I think it turned out pretty neat. Some of the stuff on there is just placeholder (see bio + portrait of the artist), it's not really complete in the sense that it's something I would send to someone I wanted to show myself off to, but I'm happy with the tricks and whatnot I learned doing it (translation: Thanks for showing me around Carina).

That website is here

That's all for now. One more assignment by 4:00 tomorrow and a test. The marathon is almost over.

More heads...

You know what they say about practice...

nowhere near perfect yet, but I'm making ground.

Attempt No 3:

So this one is starting to get towards a likeness, but still quite a bit off. Some features remain generic while others take on the characteristics of the model. I did this in a combination (about 50/50 mixture) of super sculpey and super sculpey firm (the grey and the flesh colored). A step forwards but still not there yet...

If you know the Ringling models, this is Sarah, by the way.

Attempt No. 04:

The closest I've gotten so far, right here, though, after a certain point I just sort of veered off in another direction. It started out looking quite a bit like the model (Allison) but right around when I put the eyes in the sockets and started putting the meat and eyelids on around them I noticed the eyeballs I had made were very much too small... and she started to look like a deranged Asian woman. Since it still looked quite a bit more like a real human being than any of my previous attempts I just sort of ran with it (though I mostly ditched the deranged part).

Anyway, that's how that goes, more to come most likely.

Experiments

So, for the sake of exploration I've been bringing sculpey to figure class and trying my hand at sculpting from life... frankly it's giving me a lot of trouble (getting any sort of likeness... ugh) but it's a grand old time I've gotta say. Here are the first two stabs at it, probably somewhere around 1.5 to 2 hours of work a piece.

Attempt I:

Attempt II:

So they both sort of look like the same face, and I never got around to giving them hair or ears, but hey, I got a little faster the second time and figured quite a bit out (hah... figure...). Anyway, forward ho and all that business.

we'll see where all this sculpting takes me

Right down to the bone...

So, illustration assignment, right? Ok. Well this time around it was to do a poster for a play... we got a list, we picked our plays and went to work. So when I got to thinking about what I could do, I got to thinking that Chris Sickels is pretty cool... and... well... yeah, so I sculpted my figure, built my set, hung cotton ball clouds and toy airplanes from the ceiling in my room and this is what happened:

The play was, by the way, called Souvenir. It's about Florence Foster Jenkins (a real person...) who was a tremendously bad opera singer, and famous for it.

It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to, and there were a lot of things that suffered from the time available, but all in all it was a lot learned that I can apply to the next time I try something like this (which I'm thinking I might...).

Oh, and because it's awesome, here's some process:

my favorite part is when I eat the sandwich...

by the way, if you don't know Chris Sickels, go here and cry sweet tears of joy

if you thought that was cool, check out Paulo Ventura ... if you can get your hands on it, his book War Souvenir is pretty mindblowing.

We'll see what the future brings...

12, 12x12 paintings

For painting class we've been working on a series of 12, 12" x 12" paintings for homework. This has been assigned since ages ago, which invariably means that time will not be spent appropriately...

In any case, they were due yesterday, so I thought I would post the result.

The theme I chose for my series was a sort of surreal animal mish-mash thing. Kind of a way of highlighting some of the bizarre things that happen in nature by taking them a little out of context (applying them to another animal). Some turned out better than others.

Vulturephant


Walropillar


Moosetopus

Bioluminescent Peacock


Snigeon


Chrout


Uh... Spamtis? (Hamster Spider Mantis)


Catepede


Fostrich


Mosqiwi


Barn Owlmingo


Beagle

And there (in no particular order) you have it.

Pygmalion

Something I did for my illustration class. We were to take an old fairy tale or myth and illustrate it in two images. We also had the choice of re-envisioning it if we felt so inclined. I took Pygmalion and replaced the statue with a corpse collage... yeah, a bit morbid I know.

I didn't quite get to get them as finished as I would like, I might come back and refine them when I get time.

Assembly

Presentation