Finals and good news.

I know it's been a while since I've been on here. Spring term one is over and done with so no more life drawing. It was an amazing class, I learned a lot we had a great model for the semester and I sketched a few good pieces.

We did a compilation of drawings for our final critique and well my critique was very much like the first one. Where it was basically you can tell I'm very graphic and I am very good with line work and I'm very good with giving a simplified image of the body. But except this time I was more aware that is how I'm more comfortable working and that since I found a style I liked it showed more in my pieces.

My final project was based on an idea I had last fall during a forensics class. I call it your body on drugs and it was based on my obsession with how eyes are dilated after drug use. So I figured why not continue this with not just eyes but using the figure to show more of the distant gestures of people on drugs.

Now instead of doing only sketches I decided to do something I'm a little more comfortable with, so I made a woodcut print for my project. Just a simple black figure with a few line work on the inside illustrating just a dazed person on drugs. Simple enough right? Using a piece of plywood (so chippy that it made me reconsider my original plan of a line drawing of the figure) I worked a total 15 hours to finish my final piece. And I'm very proud of it.

So now I'm on spring break and on Monday I got some good news. Two of my prints were accepted into Art Haus's emerging artists art show in Decorah Iowa! That news honestly made the start of my spring break amazing. I'm so excited for the opening of the show since it is the first show I've been in since 2011, since I've left home. It's super amazing to be 1 of 30 to be selected out of 87 applicants and to have not only 1 but 2 pieces in the show!

Next term I'll be in advanced painting so look forward to me posting about my paintings here soon.

So that's all for now just a little bit to keep you all updated. Here are a few pieces mentioned here including the pieces for the art show!

Xo
Lesley

Whimsical and Graphic

So 4 weeks later and I'm back. Today was mid-term critique day, we presented 12 of our pieces from our work for the first half of the term and we talked about it. What we liked, how our work showed gestures, how we showed line work and what our overall style was like. Now I hate talking about my art work, it's just something i find so difficult to do. But I got up in front of my class and I kinda just went at it, I made some jokes and hardly explained anything about the pieces i chose. I tend to do that a lot.

Now i'm still not comfortable with this class, because figure drawing for me is still hard. i can honestly say, though, it has gotten a bit easier since week one.

The feedback i got (from what i can remember) was something like this:

"Your personality is corky, comical, and very whimsical. And you have a way with making that show in your pieces, whether you consciously do it or not. What you need to do is be more aware of yourself and your personality. I mean look at this set you have two of the same pose in a way so you repeat your self and then just such a random thing right there on the same page. It's funny and not something you would normally expect but you did it anyway. When i say you're graphic it is not in a bad way your composition is great I mean you can really see how you think graphically. Especially when you were doing your prints you take your time and you think about where everything goes and that definitely translates over in your drawings with the dark backgrounds bordering the figure and the hard lines of the figure itself."

This was all from my instructor telling me that i am funny, and have a certain whimsy about myself that i put into my artwork.

Honestly, I did not know this at all. i just thought i went to the class and put some things on paper trying my best to make what i'm drawing look like what i'm seeing in front of me. Guess not. Knowing this now,  i thought about it and he's right, I do everything he said. even when trying to explain the pieces i chose for my critique i couldn't be serious i was more "corky". That's just me, in the end i seem to still produce pieces that him and other people in my class enjoy.

So my pieces for my mid- term critique. Tell me what you think maybe? Comments welcome!
I'm also thinking of doing some wood carvings of our model for the next couple of weeks and making multiple prints of it. Seems like fun.

XO
-Lesley

Week 1. Life drawing.

So back to school after my month winter break. And as much as I complained about the heat back home, I think I can take that more than the cold any day. But I missed this place and I'm very glad to e back.

This term I'm taking a life drawing class and even though I am not confident doing this at all I am trying my best. We worked with one model for 3 days this week. Doing gestural sketches for 30 seconds to a minute. Some longer poses for 3-5 minutes and then very long sketches that were about 25 minutes a piece.

Now like I said I am not confident in doing this class so far. I find my self incapable of drawing people on a way. I might me adding on extra weight onto the the model making her look more lumpy or something, giving her claws for hands and weird pastry looking feet. And a no faced head, but I'm doing this and I rly plan to get better by the end of week 8.

So here are a few sketches. I think you'll be able to tell which ones were worked on longer than others. But so far this is how it's been going for week one. I'm not amazing at this but I am really planning on getting better.

Enjoy xo
Lesley

Monoprint, my happy little accident

“We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” 

- Bob Ross

Monoprinting, the one try printing process. This project was absolutely fun to do. Having only one shot (maybe two f you can get a ghost print with your matrix) to ink your matrix make the design and run it through the press.

Designing the plate is easy, and there are many ways you can design your plate. You can use your ink roller to roll on the ink. use pointy objects to draw onto the ink, use turpentine to manipulate the ink on the plate or or can use a paint brush to paint on the ink. 

this method of printing from what i can say is a very fun way to experiment with color, and it was more fun while doing it this semester since my teacher got us raw color pigments. We were able to mix our own colors, not being confined to just the same set of colors all the time. Which for me, was very difficult, just because everything i print i want to be printed in black. 

So for this project i wanted to use color i wanted something that would pop on the paper and grab my classes attention. Even though i didn't get the bright color i wanted, and it still ended up being a bit grey with just hints of color. It was still a very good piece in my mind.

For this project  we had to use the words change and transformation. We needed to make four different prints two with words and two without, and none of the words could be change or transformation. So naturally i took to the thesaurus, and for one of the four prints i chose the word MUTATION! Originally i wanted this to be one of the prints with the word on it, but when m actual idea came to me i realized it didn't need the word. 

So i went and did some image research and got to sketching. My concept was to show a mutating DNA structure. Using a dark background to bring out bright colors. 

So i did my sketch. picked out what colors would work, and i thought pinks, oranges, purples and blues were going to be perfect. It was mostly because most pictures i found of DNA structures were that color. On top of all that color i was going to ass a very moldy looking green to make the structure look like it's being mutated.

I used black as the background color and used turpentine and ink to start painting on the DNA structure. Mostly pink with hints of purple in it. 

Now painting on the ink went pretty easy, and the structure looked pretty cool the colors worked and i was ready to print. So i ran my plate through the press, took everything off to see my final piece, and that's where i realize i made a really huge accident. Now this accident was huge, but it worked perfect for my piece. I Managed to mutate my mutation even more.

This is my ghost print, it's not as colorful as i was going for, but there are hints of pink, purple and green behind the black. It stands out so much on the light grey back ground it just looked great. The way the ink ran just made it more convincing that it was mutated, and even though it was an accident it still works to show the concept.

From doing monoprints i realized you need to have more than one try to get what you want and you can't just assume the first try will be the best. You will definitely go through many accidents, some will be good and some won't but it's worth the try. Because in the end you'll still end up with something interesting.

~Lesley

Cycles

When something ends, another starts.

It's a new year, but i'm the same me. I'm still passionate about art, i'm still shy as hell, and I still obsess over things that fascinate me. Even if it's a day of obsession or years. If I like it, I like it and I will with every fiber of my being. One thing I've obsessed over since I was a kid was art. I will make my life with this, i'm good at it, some say excellent. I can only get better. 

Being able to fulfill my obsession everyday, and having such supporting people behind me pushing me to up my standards every time i start a new project, is the best. So now, I've decided instead of keeping my work to myself I'm going to start sharing it. From the Process to the final piece. To get other critiques besides that of my family, classmates and instructors.

 Cordyceps Fungus

Wood block print 

Cycles- the first theme my printmaking class had for the past semester. Our first Project was to work with a 4"x5" block of cherry wood (amazing to work with), and we were to show a cycle of some sort. while everyone was working with how people grow or the life cycle of butterflies or the phases of the moon. I chose the cycle of life and death. 

Not being morbid or anything, it's just a cycle that i figured no one would want to touch and it would be a challenge for me to not show it in an obvious way. I thought about it for the longest time, and i finally came up with a pretty brilliant idea. Not something you would understand right away, but once it's explained you'd be like "wow, that's clever!" or "damn, that's disturbing."

A lot of reactions I got was that it's pretty disturbing, but I loved this piece non the less. If you've ever seen Discovery's Planet Earth, this should be a bit familiar. Season 1 episode 8- Jungles, a place i know and love. Coming from a tropical country i know about jungles, my mother used to take me hiking a lot as a child. While i was watching this episode they showed something I'd never pay attention to. Dead bugs. 

Not just dead bugs, though. Dead bugs with a certain fungus growing on them! The Cordyceps Fungi, such an amazing parasite if you ask me, clever on how it chooses to reproduce itself. It attaches itself to the insect, manages to make it's way to the brain of the insect and controls it(Brain controlling fungi. Is this a horror movie?). When the time is right the fungus devours the insect's brain, and grows out of the insect's body. The fungus then spores to spread itself to some other unfortunate insect. 

So this is what I did, a very simplified image of a dead bug with a thriving cordyceps on top. It was the best way i though could have shown life and death., and not just the death part of it, but also showing that after death you can have live. Now i know I'm a little bit odd for thinking after the bug dies the fungus that grows on it is absolutely gorgeous. It's like allowing such an interesting thing to become more interesting. 

So from sketch, to carving, to final image. a total of 4 days of working. My first Piece for the semester, and my favorite piece i did all semester long. 

Cordyceps Fungus

xo

Lesley