Venice love

Here's me in San Marco Piazza trying to photograph a white pigeon.
The pigeons in Venice are all especially fat and content looking; possibly due to all the outdoor cafes.

I'm still thinking about Italy and was so inspired that I feel compelled to post some photos and soon I will start putting up the little collages I've been working on. I decided to make this post about Venice because even though I've heard others say they found it too touristy or crowded it wasn't that way in January. I guess it was a really good time to go but I wish it hadn't been so cold.

Favorite things in Venice: windowsill gardens, faces on buildings, lions statues (in honor of St. Mark), the golden interior of San Marco Basilica, turquoise water, little alleyways, particular shades of yellow and pink and very fat pigeons.

Also the rose colored glass in the lamps next to the pink and white Doge's Palace.

Gouache tribute to Venice featuring bronze horses, the skyline, men selling roses, loads of wine and even a mouth of truth. Mouths of truth were scattered around the city (imagine little mail boxes with faces.) Each box was for a different crime that you could accuse someone of. You had to fill out a form with your name and the person name you were accusing and what they had done. If they were found guilty then they were punished but if they were not guilty you were sentenced to the same punishment for the crime you accused them of.

Evolution of Egnasio

This is Egnasio. If you ever come to my apartment you will see him hanging by a window. During my childhood Egnasio hung in my parent's kitchen. I was very confused by what he was supposed to be and why he vaguely resembled Bill Cosby. Years later my parents took him down, probably when they realized how tacky he is and I came to the conclusion that he doesn't really look like Bill Cosby at all.

My interest in Egnasio was repeaked after I saw this horrific story about a carp that had a person's face. I've always enjoyed hybrids, mutants and mythical beasts. With that I traded my parents a drawing they liked for Egnasio. And now he lives with me. He acted as a muse of sorts during college and inspired some similar looking characters. This is from a series of prints I did that I'm still pretty happy with. The theme was monsters so I just went with mutant women.





And this is all that is left of a 3-d piece I made for my senior show. At some point I couldn't bear to look at the rest of it anymore and I pitched it... but I still like my skeleton fish so I kept it.

Above looking at the ribs

The face is sculpted from clay but the little girl is a doll I found.

Here's a full body shot.

This is a sketch for a character I'm working on for my graphic novel. She'll have a body similar to a koi and a human face. I only have thumbnails of the first 8 pages or so of my graphic novel but once I get 12 done I'll put those up too.

Well thats it for this year! I leave tomorrow for Italy and when I get back I'm going to put all my effort into getting the first 12 pages of my graphic novel done before the comic con.( If its possible)

witches be crazy!

During my latest job I somehow ended up volunteering to create some of the wardrobe for a coven of witches. The director wanted these witches to be wearing all white or off white lace dresses and still look sexy. I was worried that covering the witches in lace would make them look like brides or old. I decided to approach them from a sculptural point of view because I wasn't able to get the girls measurements, I don't actually know how to create clothing and I didn't have a dress form. I definitely had a few days where I was kicking myself and thinking; "What did I get myself into?"

Here's one of the first drawings I did. I decided that the cheapest and easiest way to pull these off would be to buy old slips from thrift stores and to deconstruct them with lace, gauze, tulle. I thought it would make them look kind of otherworldly. In theory this seemed like something I could easily do.



Next I decided to channel Helena Bonham Carter. She always wears her hair in kind of a haphazard mess. I wanted these witches to be disheveled, eccentric, mysterious. (ie: intriguingly skanky) Beautiful but broken, so like these women had been through a lot. Very Marla from Fight Club!


This is a cleaner concept drawing of the dresses together. Some of them I'm happier with then others. I think my favorite one was the last one I did that looks like a demented ballerina. But overall I had a pretty good time making them. I also enjoyed cutting holes and burning them so they would look distressed. After a few weeks though I just wanted to be done.


These are some close-ups of the dresses. I didn't have time to distress them all myself so some of them are a little too white. I don't have any photos of the girls in the dresses either. oh well : (

Movie magic

Here's some more stuff I finished up for the movie!
I had organs, wigs, dresses, and tulle everywhere. This is fantastic, until you reach the point where it takes over the rest of the house. Getting out of the shower to find a piece of lace circling the drain, hot glue in your hair or a mysterious purple feather in your purse. Don't get me wrong... I'm willing to get a little messy but all of these projects were taking over my corner in the studio and making it quite difficult to get any of my own work done. So here's some of my fake organs for a surgeon's party in the movie! Below we have a selection of hearts, kidney's and liver's. I also made some intestines out of stockings but I wasn't as happy with the results.

Here's a close up of one of my favorite organs:

Once again I am amazed at how useful masking tape and tissue paper can be to create interesting textures. This is basically a wad of newspaper crumpled up, taped into form covered with tissue paper and painted with some thin glazes. The texture of the paper/tape are good at trapping the paint in a way that makes it look like veins. This photo doesn't really do the heart justice...

I also did some sweet calligraphy... It was supposed to look messy and distressed which worked to my advantage since I'm not trained in Calligraphy. As I was working on this I remembered that the last time I remembered practicing Calligraphy was in Elementary school with our Art teacher Ms. Fry. I guess it paid off. I was able to do a few samples, scan em' and cut/paste them together in photoshop.

This is a faux antique book I made for the movie from a real live antique book. I covered it in pleather and hand painted on the lettering with gold ink. I ended up changing the color because the paint was peeling and being difficult, but you get the idea.



For some reason I had a really hard time getting a good photo of the book maybe it was the metallic paint or maybe the shiny pleather, who knows?

Halloween!

Oh Hell! It's Halloween! One of my favorite holidays... I've been painting,gluing, sequining and feathering these masks for the movie I'm working on. In the movie there is a mardi grasesque party and we needed lots of cool masks for people at the party to wear. I could have bought those cheap premade in China ones but... it was more fun to make these and cost effective. So I made 30 of em'.

These are my greenish-yellowish ones

Blue/yellow designs

More blueish masks


Here's Robin and I modeling some of my favorite masks... in what I shall call a mask montage!



Here's some of my masks all together like one happy family!

Here's some of the orignal sketches. I decided to just go with the half masks cause they were way cheaper to buy.

Foxy

These are all based off of I character I created in my printmaking class senior year. I find myself going back to a lot of the same subject matter... animals, naked women, forests. I want to keep working with a lot of the same imagery but find clearer and more complete ways of expressing my ideas. I'm also trying to incorporate lots of pattern and texture since those are some of my favorite things. These are all just experiments in my sketchbook but I'm happy with where they are going.


Here I was using some reference shots to figure out some cool poses/angles. Also trying to figure out the logistics of how this costume would fit and move. The vellum is great for building up layers or trying something without changing the drawing.

These are also a few months old... but I'm still pretty happy with them! I love foxes not only because they are redheads but because they can be creepy and graceful at the same time!

More little collages and sketches from my sketchbook in preparation for my Graphic Novel. I've been experimenting with vellum, cut paper and lots of pen work. My work is typically without a lot of spacial depth in it so I'm trying to improve that.

I like the moon because It's full of cheese!

I was inspired by a book I found about the future in space. It was published in the late 1950's so we had not yet landed on the moon, but it was very optimistic. Too bad that didn't work out. But look at the googles this guy is wearing, man is he ready to grow large vegetables on the moon!

Hmmm I still think space suits look cool.

These are a few of the collages I worked on over the summer and have yet to put up. I guess you could say I was inspired by a simpler era or perhaps the promise of a glorious future. But since I am not growing delicious vegetables on the surface of the moon I am making art about astronauts and space exploration instead. Hopefully I can channel this interest into some current artwork.