Current Project

This is a current painting I am working on. It is for a friend of mine and it has to be done before Christmas. I think I will finish on time. I love to paint people; I like painting their expressions.

Sundial Bridge

This is the sundial bridge in my hometown. This suspended bridge has become our town monument. If you want to know what to do in town...you go to the bridge. It's nice, but not that exciting. The man who designed this bridge also designed the monument at ground zero. As I crossed, the bridge was bouncing back and forth because of the wind. There was a lot of people there and you always run into someone you know. I had a nice day walking around enjoying the sun.

Here it is!

Papercraft Project

I had a lot of fun with this project. For this assignment I made a mime. I will have more to come. Also on the next post I will put up a picture of the completed papercraft.

Scratch Art

Picturing the Other

This was a difficult assignment for me. I am a shy person and so to ask someone if I could take their picture was out of my comfort zone. The bottom picture is of a lady I met on a hike, her name is Isabella. The picture in the middle is of my nephews at the pumpkin patch, they had so much fun. The top photo is of myself. I took it while I was studying and distracting myself from my work. I love that picture because my eyes are blue, but in real life my eyes are hazel...I had contacts in.

These pieces are done by an artist named Erica Grimm-Vance. She is an art teacher at Trinity Western University and she was the one who taught me the basics of art. It was in her class that I understood how to use a pencil in shading and to look at the negative space in an object. I learned a lot from an amazing artist. I love her technique and her use of loose form. It has a dreamy feel. I like how she uses steel in her art which creates conflict between the softness of the medium and the hardness of the form. The top piece is called Arc II, the second is This Wine We Offer, and the last is Memory Traces XIII.

Sunset Silhouettes

I took these pictures of my nephew and brother-in-law while our family was on vacation in southern California. I love the colors of the sunset with bright pinks and purples. I used those colors as background to the silhouettes of the two figures. The beach was beautiful and the line from the sand and sky play off from on another. These were some of my favorite images.

Old ads....what were they thinking?

I was looking online and I found a website called weirdomatic.com and they had a section of creepy old advertisements. I thought I would post some of them. It is amazing to me how our thoughts of life have changed and evolved.

The Mona Lisa

The first and only time I saw the Mona Lisa in person was this summer. That was all I could think about when I got to Paris, "I have to see the Mona Lisa." Being an art major, going to the Louvre was gonna be an amazing experience and it was. The Mona Lisa, of course, was the first stop on the tour for me. I have read books, seen shows, watched movies that all pertained to the Mona Lisa. I knew that seeing it in person was going to top all that. This painting is one of the most famous pieces in the world so everyone wants to see it. I knew from everything that I have read that it was one of the smaller paintings so I wasn't expecting anything big like David's Oath of the Horatii. What I wasn't expecting was the huge crowd that gathered around it. The painting was roped off so no one was able to come close, but the crowd inched forward pressing upon the velvet red ropes. In order to get close, I had to weasel my way through and push people aside all the while holding my breath from the horrid smell of b.o. Once I was in visual range, I stood there in awe, but that did not last very long. Just as I pushed my way up to the front, others were doing the same and I found myself getting further and further away. Soon enough I was squeezed out of the crowd and once again on the outskirts. My time with the painting was short lived. I was in and out within five minutes. I came all this way and I was only able to see the Mona Lisa for five minutes. Upon leaving I told myself that I would return again someday and maybe I will be there longer than five minutes.

Cindy Sherman is a photographer whose photos tell a narrative. This photo is from her "Untitled Film Stills." Sherman was the subject matter in all of her images, however they were not self portraits. The placement of the figure in the photograph gives the feeling of something just outside the frame. Sherman leaves it up to the viewer to decide for themselves what the image is really saying or not saying. You decide.

Alphabet soup

Found one more letter that I liked "x"

Too Tired To Get Up

This is one of my favorite charcoal drawings I did in my figure drawing class. There was not enough time in class to finish it, but I think that is what give the drawing some interest. I love the dark background in contrast to the light color of his skin.

Alphabet Soup

"e"

"Q"

"F"

"W"

"M"

"T"

"i"

"V"

Hands...again

So as stated in a previous post...I am fascinated with hands. I found this American artist named Josh Keyes who uses urban and environmental elements in his art. In each of his pieces he is trying convey environmental awareness...

"and the common space we share with different cultures and organisms, is the backbone that supports the different themes and ideas I explore in my work. It is in places in the world where the human touch encroaches on the natural environment are of great interest to me. Areas where rain forests collide with the logging industry or the fracture in our own back yards where a sidewalk or street ends and an ecosystem or biome emerges. Areas where cement meets rugged soil and grass, or a displaced bear roams far from their natural habitat. It is in the ever-growing human fingerprint that calls into question the value and importance or lack thereof that we assign to the natural surroundings."

I believe this one is called Guardian 1

Childhood play

There are many times in my life that I want to go back to my childhood days. Days that were full of imagination and play. My second collage deals with the wonderment of childhood imagination. When I started it, there was a lot of color and I wanted to simplify it to black and white. To me, black and white represent the past and the blast of color in the magnifying glass is me remembering. As a child, I had an amazing imagination and as I grew up I lost some of that wonderment. It helps me to remember that child in me and use it as often as I can.

Hands...

I have a strange fascination with hands. I find that they can be very expressive. I found an image online a year ago and did this drawing with a ballpoint pen. Hands can be aggressive, loving or comforting without any words. I am a fan of this style of drawing (squiggly, I would say). There is a lot of emotion in every stroke which brings up the emotion of the picture as a whole. This is an up close view.

Strength in Image

I am currently writing a short paper on the issue of political artwork. This is a piece that my art history class has been studying by Jacques-Louis David called the Oath of the Horatii. This is considered political in content and style. The man in the middle is the father holding three swords up to his three sons as they take an oath to fight for family honor as well as for their country. This painting I consider to be strong not only in content but of placement of the images on the picture plane. If you notice, three is a reoccurring statement. There are three swords, three brothers, three arches, three distinct triangle and so on. Three is a strong element, for example if you have a bicycle (which is two wheels) it can easily be pushed over, but if you have a tricycle (as you know has three wheels) it cannot be done as easily. The triangle, in it's self, is a strong image because there is a good foundation to it. So in the painting it could be referring to the foundation of their family.
This summer, I saw this piece in Paris at the Louvre and I didn't know what it was about. I am anxious to get back and see it again.

Posters 2

The computer lab was closing down so that last post was a little short. Both of the posters as I stated earlier use vertical elements to keep your eye focused on the center of the poster. The themes of each are just silly. There is no hidden meaning behind them, they are just for fun. I have one more collage to go. It will be up shortly.

Posters

I made two posters and I am still struggling. I was looking at both of my images and I realized that I liked using vertical elements in each piece.

Collage

So this whole digital thing is a lot of fun, but I am struggling with concepts and ideas. I am having a difficult time putting images together from the web. I am used to using images from magazines, but the Internet has endless possibilities. For one of my collage projects I took a theme of lost and lonely children. If children are our future then how can we expect them to be strong and independent if they don't have a good foundation to start on. They need to be showed that they are loved and appreciated. We need to let them know that they have a future.

The letter "o"

Still trying to figure out photoshop. Still need more practice.

Sisters

My sister and I are your typical siblings. Growing up together we fought over stupid things like the remote control and who barrowed whose clothing. Today she is my best friend. She is someone I look up to and care for very much. I love to paint and when I needed a topic for an art show, I knew what it was going to be. Sisters. This is just one of the many watercolor paintings I did of us, but this is my favorite. This was the first time I used a toothbrush in order to create wood grains. My mom loves every piece and owns a majority of this show (of course she probably was the one who took the photographs).