Just A Little Something

So, in order to feel productive without having to do too much I began painting these little porcelain bowls. They only cost about $1.50 at Pier 1 and the Pebeo Porcelaine paint is only $4 or $5 a container. So it's fun, cheap and creates a nice tangible piece in the end. Hypothetically it would be awesome to make tons more with other, more evolved designs and sell them. But for now, they'll just be my own personal project.

Snail Mail

Watercolor on Arches paper.

Some Sketchbook Pages

Both are crayon resists done with watercolor and some pencil.

Ever since I came home for the summer I haven't had a scanner and it makes recording my work a lot harder. These were done with a camera so they're a bit fuzzy but get the idea across.

More Projects With the Tatertots

Again I found myself with another time slot at camp where I could lead my own activity. The theme of the week was 'Super Heroes', so I tried to create a project that could encompass that idea while encouraging artistic principals. Plus, I once again only had an hour.

So we did comic books covers for the kids self-created super heroes.

First I had them start with an idea for a superhero. Most of them already had an idea in mind and if they didn't I found a nifty little (fairly PG) super hero name generator. Then they drew the superhero in pencil, allowing room somewhere on the page for the name to appear boldly. After their pencil sketch, I had them ink around the lines with a heavy Sharpie to get that classic strong black outline. The final step was adding blocks of flat color. In a perfect world we would have had far more time to sketch and could have maybe colored in gouache. But in the time frame we had we did it the color with marker and colored pencil.

Super Pug in progress.
Booger Man and The Nose in progress.

Working With the Tatertots

So the blog has been falling a little short lately as far as updates are concerned. But this is because I have been doing something just as valuable with my time. I have been focusing a little less on my art and a little more on teaching art to kids. I have been working at a camp called 'Dutchess Arts Camp' for the past few years, being a counselor for the 7 to 11 year old age range. Due to some scheduling shortages I ended up with a few extra blocks in the weeks to come up with my own project.

My challenge: Come up with a project that taught kids about some particular type or facet of art that related to the theme of the week and could be completed in about an hour.

The first week I had this opportunity the theme of the week was 'Art Around the World,' so I decided to teach the kids how to make very basic books that could be their "passports" for the week.
To make the books the kids designed back and front covers to their passports and then glued a very simple accordian structure of pages to the inside of each cover. I encouraged them to create emblems for the outside that reflected what art camp to them, though we definitely ended up with just a lot of American flags.
After the books were finished I took head shots of each camper in my group and printed them out nice and small like passport photos and them glue the pictures inside the cover.

As I final touch I handed out small pieces of paper cut like stamps and asked the kids to decorate the stamps with the activities we had done. There were Tye-Dye Day stamps, Theater stamps, Magic and Mime stamps, all of which we would glue into the passport as they completed them. This part they did during the extra time in their other classes, the "free draw" time. All the kids went to the extra effort of trying to fill up their books even though it was their time to do whatever they liked.

All in all: It was well suited for the age group (7 and 8 year olds) but it was impossible to pull of in an hour. I had to do most of the prep work for the kids and we had to make the all the extra pieces on our own free time. With an hour every day for a week this could have been one amazing project.

Porcelain Painting Final

There was a sketch tile posted for this a long time ago, and technically I finished this piece a while ago too, but I'm proud of it and would like to put it up. I painted the fish with porcelain paint on a pre-made plate.

Collections

Handmade Box, cover acorn is painted in watercolor.

Actually all the pieces in this book are painted in watercolor. But here's the book in it's box.


The book is bound in a concertina form and each page is decorated with small watercolor paintings. Some of the pages, like this one have windows in the pages made with acetate that let you see through to the next page with the image resting in between.

Submerged

Recently I had to make a little book about the trees at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain. When I visited the Arboretum to get inspiration it was right after Boston had experienced a huge rainstorm so a lot of the fields were flooded and it looked something like this:

So I decided to make my book about how trees look in floods. Each piece was painted in watercolor and then taken into Photoshop to add original text:

Cover

First Spread (Definitely click on these to get the big image, you can't even read the text in these tiny ones)

Second Spread

Then the images were then printed and bound into a little four panel book. It's not my favorite structure (and not my best book work) but it's nice to have a fully illustrated book:

A Brief Journey Into Animation

I had forgotten, up till now, about my brief exploration in animation. I took an animation class for a semester in the fall, and this was my favorite piece:

8 Actions

The MassArt 21st Annual Benefit Art Auction

On Saturday night, I had the privilege of working at MassArts Annual Benefit Auction. With the exception of not being able to sit for 8 hours, I found the experience all around fascinating. I had never actually been to a real live auction, and while the drama was obviously no where near as intense as cheesy bidding scenes in movies it was still very interesting to watch bidding wars over particular pieces or how certain pieces could barely even sell.


The first part of the evening (after general gallery browsing) was the live auction. My job was to carry each piece out as it was being bid for. I got to handle some exquisite pieces, including:

Fred H.C. Liang
Western Lake
Paper Cut on Chinese Calligraphy
Tuanzhi Paper, 58" x 29.5"

I'm such a sucker for cut paper and this one is unbelievable.







This other piece up for auction I found was more interesting to actually experience than to view as a piece. Created by a collaborative effort called Triiibe, this photograph (taken by Cary Wolinksy) features the identical triplets Alicia, Kelly, Sara Casilio (might I add, ALL MassArt alums). Most of their work plays on their identical looks, as does their performance. The three showed up in the same clothes they are wearing in the photograph and unless you knew them personally there was no good way of telling them apart. When their lot was called up for live auction their assistants mimed carrying up a heavy invisible frame, where the triplets posed to match the photograph as the bidding took place.

"Alicia, Kelly, Sara, Cary" TRIIIBE ‘01
Paint by Number
Archival Inkjet Print, 35" x 26"





The silent auction also featured some great work:

Nick Brandt

Elephants and Egrets After Storm, Amboseli 2007
Archival Pigment Print, 14" x 30"

Resa Blatman ‘95
Mild Rapture 1
Acrylic on Panel, 11" x 14"

Love the detail, especially the circles.

Sandra Mueller-Dick
Still Life with Pear
Watercolor and Varnish, 8" x 8"

I know that pear isn't real, but I still wanna eat it.

Give a look here for the other amazing pieces.

While all of the art was wonderful to look at the most inspirational part of the evening came when midway through the auction the school asked the attendees to raise their paddles for scholarships. They first asked for pledges of $5,000 which showed only one or two paddles, even the pledges for $1,000 didn't do too well. But when they got to the $500's and the $100's the paddles were flying up across the room. I got to watch a room full of total strangers give money to people they didn't even know to give them a chance to go to college. The applause would swell, the announcer got louder and louder as he shouted out the paddle numbers of donators, and there wasn't a single person without a smile on their face.

Tile Painting

I recently started a project in porcelain painting for a class I'm taking and I am getting really into it. This tile is only a smaller study/sketch for a much larger platter, but that will get posted later.

It's just such an unusual medium (especially to be studying in an illustration major) but there is something so great about having a three dimensional object in the end.