2015 Progress Report: January

I apologize for a being a little lazy with posting. It'll get better from here on out. This entry along with the next few entries will focus entirely of pictures of the progress I've made so far this year. The first picture at the top is my mixed media project Duality which was completed last year. The only reason I'm showing this is because not everyone will think to look at my portfolio on Facebook when I make references to past projects.

This piece is named Duality. It was completed in 2014 and served as a blueprint for the first few projects I would be working on in early 2015

1/15/15: I started off the new year with a new project. Normally, I don't like starting too many new projects without finishing up more old ones first but the first three projects I started were meant to be used as experiments for new mediums.

Before this was finally named Stone Cold, this was known as P1.

1/15/15: P1 has a similar design to my 2014 piece Duality. This was not an accident. I liked that design a lot of wanted to see what else I could do with it. It's not the same either. With the first three projects of 2015, I wanted to take that design and have it evolve while retaining some similarities. It should be noted that the P1 design is much smaller than Duality.

1/16/15: Chickenwire work was done with P1. Due to how fragile the piece is, I had to use extra hot glue around the thin edges. P1 was made to be very thin on purpose.

1/16/15: The bottom of P1.

1/20/15: The canvas work has been done. It really wasn't that easy with this piece. On parts of this, I had to cut out the canvas in long lines and run them along the sides of the holes in order to maintain the overall shape I wanted.

1/20/15: Even the bottom had canvas work done to it.

1/20/15: This is would would eventually become The New Dawn, although it started out as P2.

1/21/15: P2 made quite a bit of progress in just a few hours. Like P1, it also heavily borrows it's design from Duality.

1/21/15: This is what would eventually become Dissonance. At the time, it started out as P15. For the last few years, several projects have used the name P15. This is because I keep finishing them and there are always more than 15 projects that I'm working on. P1 was balanced on three sides at the bottom. P2 was balanced on four sides. P15 was balanced on two sides.

1/21/15: Here's the bottom of P3. There's not much to see. Like with most of my work, I made a area at the bottom were I eventually placed a name label.

1/21/15: The design of P3 is similar to the other ones but starts to stray away from that basic design.

1/21/15: The gesso work was done on the top half of P1.

1/21/15: The gesso work was done on the bottom half of P1.

1/23/15: Regular molding paste was placed on the bottom of P1 in order to create a stable surface and to add just enough weight at the bottom that keeps the otherwise extremely light sculpture from easily getting knocked over by accident.

1/23/15: The chickenwire work was completed on P2. It wasn't easy.

1/28/15: The chickenwire work is done. This one was difficult to work with. It took a lot of glue to hold everything in place.

1/28/15: I finished up the initial cavas work. It was a little difficult because of all the little pieces of canvas I had to work with.

1/28/15: The bottom of P2 after the cavas work was complete.

1/28/15: More difficult canvas work. I had to tightly wrap think pieces of canvas smeared with hit glue around the think parts and this took a long time. If the canvas looks dirty, that's because I'm using older cancas that was used for doing clay work on and other things. The nice thing about canvas is it has multiple uses and can still be used for projects like this.

1/28/15: I'm trying a medium I never used before. It's Pumice gel. I figured the easiest approach would be to let it dry in layers.

1/28/15: The gesso work on P2 has been completed.

1/28/15: The gesso work on the bottom of P2 has also been completed.

1/28/15: The gesso work on P15 has been complete.

1/28/15: The gesso work on the bottom of P15 has also been completed.

1/30/15: The molding paste work on the bottom of P2 has been completed. I know I mentioned this before but the reason I do this is to add further stability to the piece, to weigh it down a little so it won't be too easy to accidentally knock over, and to flatten out the bottom a bit.

1/30/15: The molding paste work on the bottom of P15 has been completed.

1/30/15: The Pumic gel work has been completed. This actually wasn't as difficult as I thoought it would be.

1/31/15: I spray painted P1 with flat black spray paint. I always use the black spray paint for projects like this so I can hide the white areas and it wouldn't be noticable if I missed a spot with the acrylic paints.

1/31/15: The bottom of P1 was also spray painted. This was also done for concealment purposes. It also allowed me to get the ares I might have missed when the piece was turned upright.

1/31/15: I'm using another gel medium I never used before. This is a glass bead gel.

1/31/15: Yet another medium that I've never used before. This is fiber paste. It's similar to molding paste in a lot of ways but it looks more like plaster when it dries and has a slight texture to it that molding paste does not have. I'll probably end up using this a lot in the future.

2015

This post is a little late but it's finally here. As I mentioned back in December, this post will be about my plans for 2015. Here's everything I would like to get done this year.

1. Mixed Media: I did a lot with this last year. I will continue to focus on mixed media throughout 2015.

2. Photography: I got back into film last year, which wasn't expected, but I did a lot with it. I also did a lot with some older digital photographs. I'm not sure if I will work with film this year, but I'm definitely going to be working with older digital files and scans of unused film prints.

3. Ceramics/Sculpture: I did a lot with sculptural work last year but not as much ceramic work. I think this year will have more of an equal balance.

4. Shows: I actually had one show in February which I will cover in a later post. I would like to have at least one more show later this year.

5. Buttons and Ceramic Pieces for Sale: I would like to improve with the buttons and other things I sell this year. Last year was kind of disappointing, mostly because I didn't do as much as I wanted to. I did at least make some new buttons designs that I really liked.

6. Blogs and Other Media Outlets: I did give this blog a visual update last year but I didn't do anything else I wanted to do. I'm hoping to finally start the new Youtube channel this year.

7. Website: I didn't work on the website at all last year like I wanted to. I hope to start working on it this year.

8. Additional Projects: I'm  still not ready to talk about these yet.

I guess 2015 will be kind of a continuation of 2014, doing the kind of work I had success with last year while also trying to do the things I didn't get around to doing last year. That's all I have to say for now. The next post should have pictures since I have a lot of pictures to show off.

The End of 2014

The blog updates have been nonexistent for the last few months because I've been busy. I took a color photography course that took up a lot of my time. My work has resulted in the development of 14  photo prints and several other prints that didn't work out too well but may be used for future digital projects. I'm still working on getting everything scanned and edited. Some of these might be rescanned in the near future. As of right now, I'm going to present half of what I've done and I should have the other half ready to show soon.

The Morning Void

Neglected Perception

The Hidden Swarm

Falling Down

Deep In The Mind

It's Not Here

At Day's End

The next post will be about my plans for 2015.

New 2014 Buttons (so far)

Within recent months, I made new buttons for most of the artwork I've done in 2014 up to this point. The only 2014 pieces that have not gotten their own buttons are "In The Shadows", "Predator", "Paranoid", and  "Duality". I would like to make buttons for them someday, but I haven't done so yet because creating buttons for more sculptural/ceramic-based work has always been more difficult for me to do. Here are pictures of the newest buttons. 

Thoughts Of Yesterday 1.25" Button

Sleepless 1.25" Button

Cautious 1.25" Button

Is It A Dream? 1.25" Button

The Dark Corner 1.25" Button

Day Of The Dead 1.25" Button

 Lost 1.25" Button

Victim Hunt 1.25" Button

Afternoon Daze 1.25" Button

Looking Down 1.25" Button

Escape 1.25" Button

Here are my Ebay listings. Right now, the buttons are selling for $1.00 plus shipping. For most of them, I placed an available limit of five, but that's a number that can easily be adjusted based on future demand.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/jon-erich-1985/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

Summer 2014 Happenings

In early June I made the decision to postpone work on my projects until sometime in August. This decision was made because I needed a break and because the working conditions in my workspace aren't up to my satisfactory. My workspace is currently in the process of being reorganized and this process with hopefully be finished within a month. Most of what's happening this summer is non-eventuful to most of everyone except me. Nonetheless, here are some other things that are happening while I'm taking a break from artwork.

- I finished some new button designs recently and hope to have them up for sale soon.

- I'm still looking into making a website for myself to serve as a true home for myself on the internet. Right now, I'm in the process of still figuring out what I want. Anything that gets done this month will most likely consist of sketches and overall outlines.

- I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how my new video format is going to work. I know what I want it to focus on as I explained before, but now I'm just figuring out the more technical aspects of the new format. I still hope to start the new video format by the fall.

- This month, I'm hoping to revamp the Etsy store and give long overdue update to my Deviant Art account. Ebay will also be updated with new stuff on sale.

So that's the main focus of this month, to try and take care of the many other aspects of my art other than the artwork. The next post will hopefully be more picture-focused.

Follow-up To The February News Update

Back in February I gave an outline for what I had planned over the next few months. That post was supposed to have been the first of many posts that gave various updates to everything that was going on. That didn't happen. Instead, I'm going to directly update the information I posted in February in the order everything was listed in.

-  I stated earlier this year that three new projects were started. At the time, they were listed as Projects A, B, and C. These were later updated to P1, P2, and P3. The reason for the working title change (yeah, that does sound rather pointless) is because I had updated my to-do list and added these new projects to the list. My projects are always called P-something until they're finished. P1 and P2 were completed and are now known as Paranoid and Duality. You can see them in the pictures below and I would like to do a more extensive post about each one of them sometime in the future. P3 didn't get anywhere because I felt like I needed extra resources and more time to do what I wanted. While the piece is still in development, I put it off to the side to focus on other projects.

Paranoid

Duality

- I was also working on three projects that had already been in development. I managed to finish one which became known as In The Shadows and immediately started on another one which became known as Predator. There are two more that had made some progress but are only around 50% finished.  They are currently known as P8 and P9 and development on these pieces will resume sometime in August (more on my summer plans in the next post). 

In The Shadows

Paranoid

- I did end up having a show in April. It was titled After Midnight. It was a great show. I'll show off two pictures of it right now but I would rather hold off on the other pictures because I want to go into more extensive details about it sometime soon.

After Midnight Front View

After Midnight Side View

Official Show Flyer

- The blog facelift I said I was going to do has been done......to an extent. So far I'm liking this new look and I think I'm going to keep it. As for the new format I announced where I would start a vlog and use that to explain things in detail while this blog would be used mostly for visual purposes has not come through yet. I kind of jumped the gun when I announced it. I originally thought it would be as simple as recording myself with my built in computer web cam and the early results I got through testing this were rather disappointing. I would still like to do this, but I feel it has to be done right. Hopefully I figure things out over the summer and start the vlog sometime in the fall.

I think that covers everything that I talked about in February. If everything goes right, I'll discuss my summer plans in the next post.

New Blog Title and Design!

I'll admit I've been falling behind with my posts. This was due to my workload over the last few months as well as the preparation I had to do for the show I had in April. Since I'm getting ready for more updates on here and other sites, I thought this would be a good time to give this blog a visual makeover.

This makeover was done mostly because I felt dissatisfied with the old design. I wanted to do something that was more simple yet elegant. The background was based on source material taken from Flyer #2 that I made last year for my show Wildwood. That flyer used a picture that was taken of my 2012 mixed media piece "She Wants Blood". I wanted the background to have more presence so I chose to do away with the solid squares and rectangles and went with a transparent design. I wanted to use darker text so it wouldn't take away from the artwork, but at the same time I didn't want it to be too dark. The Crimson Text is used for everything. I thought it worked well for the visual style I was going for. Finally, the blog name was changed because I wanted the blog to serve as an extension of the photo album I have on my Facebook of the same name.

I may tweak the blog a bit more or I might leave it as it is. Let me know what you think. Also, here's a screenshot I took of the old design before I changed it. Compare it if you want.

The old design prior to May 25, 2014.