Summer 2012 Progress Report #2

Last week, I was working on some digital photographs I took throughout the month. Aside from work on my mixed media projects and my buttons, this has been, this is what I've been up to lately. What I have here are seven images that are still being worked on. I already know that I'm not going to keep all of the, although I definitely want to keep some of them. These were all edited in Photoshop and while a few of the images emphasize on different color tones, one thing they all have in common is that the contrast is extremely high while the saturation is very low. One image is black and white, but that might change. None of them have names yet, just numbers. I hope to have some of these finished soon.

My next progress report will either be about the finished pictures or an update of the project I was focusing on when I made my first progress report.

Photo #1: This one as of right now emphasizes on brown and orange color tones.

Photo #2: This one emphasizes on blues and greens.

Photo #3: This one emphasizes on blues and other darker colors.

Photo #4: This one emphasizes on red.

Photo #5: Although this is black and white, it's using a  red color filter.

Photo #6: This one emphasizes on orange tones.

Photo #7: This one focuses on red.

Sorry about the lack of entries....

The last entry I had before this one was on June 18th. I meant to do a followup to the last entry I made a while back, but unfortunately due to certain unforeseen circumstances (some of it is my fault), I haven't done too much in the last month and a half, at least not enough to make a new entry about. I hope to have something new to post by next week if not earlier.

That doesn't mean nothing has been going on though. I worked on a  lot of button designs over the last month. Some of them are my own while some of them were done for Christine. I haven't gotten pictures of those yet because the place where I take all my pictures is off limits until next month. So I hope to take care of that then.

In other news, I've been taking pictures again. I have to use my digital camera since I don't have access to a dark room right now and probably won't for quite some time. I have gotten around to looking at all of them or editing them. Some of them might become something, while they may result in nothing. Hopefully, we'll see something regarding that by next week as well.

That's all I have to say for right now. New blog entries should be up by next week and hopefully some new stuff can be done by next month!

Summer Progress Report #1

Throughout the summer, I'm going to be posting progress reports with pictures that show what I've been doing and then at the end of the summer as the busy season begins and I get less time to work, I'll assess the work I've done. Out of the six art projects that I've chosen to work on over the summer, only one project has been making any real progress so far. It's even got a theme, but I'm not ready to share that yet. This post will focus on just that one project and hopefully, I'll talk about the other ones more in the future.

This project currently has the working title P-13. Originally, the project was conceived from two other unrealized concepts that I made into one project. That happened in 2010 and then remained untouched for the next two years. The way I build my mixed media pieces have changed over the years, so what you're about to see are really what I consider outdated methods and it's something I'd like to talk more about in the future.

May 4, 2010: The earliest photo of P13. The pieces of bristolboard from other projects were placed on two canvases that I put together. The chicken wire makes up the early 3-D work while the foamboard helps manipulate the shape of the project. Trust me, the way I do this now compared to when this photo was taken is so much simpler.

July 17, 2010: After the 3-D work has done, I placed pieces of canvas over the framework using hot glue. I then gessoed it thinking that all that would be left would be the artwork and other 3-D design work. It wouldn't turn out that way though. The process of using squared canvas pieces and doing gesso work afterwards is one thing that hasn't changed much over the years.

June 3, 2012: After almost 2 years, I decided what I finally wanted to do with this and it unfortunately required a major change in direction. I wanted the inside to be a bit more simple (it's for the theme I don't want to reveal yet) and so I used 1/2" foamboard to build up the insides.

June 7, 2012: Building up the insides was one thing. Because I raised the inside area, I had to raise the outside area as well. On some parts, hot glue is used to make everything stick while on other parts, I used rubber cement.

July 11, 2012: This right here should give you a clue about how my methods have changed over time. 

So that's what I have so far. I hope to show everyone even more pictures soon.

The Next Few Days.....

I know I've been falling behind on some of the stuff I'm supposed to be posting. It's mostly my fault too. I'm STILL working on my post for my art piece She Wants Blood. It's taking a long time because I'm not always motivated to work on it and because of the way I want to present everything, it's become difficult to decide how I want to finish it. Hopefully, I'll have that done soon enough. So anyway, I mentioned not too long ago that there are six new projects that I'm working on. So far, only one of those projects has been making any real progress. I do have pictures, but not as many as I want. I hope to have my next update with pictures before Tuesday. If I don't, then we won't be seeing anything on here (related to the current projects) until the early hours of Saturday since I just found out recently that I'm going to be dog-sitting from Tuesday night until Friday.

My Upcoming Projects

For those of you who don't know, most of the non-ceramic work and non-photography work that I have done over the last few years were not started from scratch. When I work on a project, I never have the entire project planned out. Instead, I'll start with one or a few concepts and let the process evolve until I eventually have a complete project. However, more often than not, my projects will come to a point where I either grow dissatisfied with the work I had done, or the general concept, but I don't throw my work away. I instead put the artwork away until a time comes when I come up with new ideas. Also, I find it appalling to throw our something I spent so much time and money on.

My recent project that I completed back in April, She Wants Blood is a perfect example of my process and yes, I'm still working on the She Wants Blood blog entry. This also brings me to talk about my work for this summer. In the back of my basement, I have a pile of unfinished artwork, all of which are numbered and have pages in my sketchbook reserved for writing and drawing ideas for these projects. For this summer, I have chosen six of these projects and hope to have them somewhat completed by the fall and perhaps, I'll have a few of them completed by the end of the year. Five of them have actual themes that I'm working with so far where as the sixth one I chose has many ideas going for it but nothing concrete.

I hope to provide everyone with as many updates and pictures as possible in the near future. I'm hoping to have something new in a week or so. Also, I want to have an entire blog entry at some point in the future dedicated to explaining my process for creating my art projects. I know I kind of did that here, but I also know there are many people who aren't familiar with my work who are probably a little confused by what I've been saying and creating a post with more detail and pictures would help explain my process better.

Upcoming Entries

Starting hopefully by tomorrow night if not the night after, I hope to add some new entries that are about specific art projects that I have completed. The first one I'm going to do is about my latest completed piece She Wants Blood. What I plan to do is make entries about the process of how I made these projects and use the blog entry as a link for other places like Deviant Art so when people look at a picture of my one place, they can about it here and the advantage of that is this allows me to post multiple photos meaning that I can visually show everyone how I make my projects and that way I hope everyone can gain a better understanding about how I do as opposed to reading nothing but text. So that's all I wanted to say tonight. Hopefully, I have the motivation to make multiple posts within the next week, but we'll see.

Sweet Darkness

I've been neglecting this blog lately, but that's because I've been very busy over the last few weeks. But now I'm ready to start blogging again and I have a lot to report. Just over a week ago on April 30th, Christine and I had the opening reception for our show Sweet Darkness. This show took four months to conceive and towards the end, tensions were rising to get everything done on time and on occasions, both of us would end up getting very tired and pissed off at times. It was all worth it though. I think the show was successful and it got a lot of positive responses.

Like I said, the idea for Sweet Darkness came about late last year. At Harford Community College, we have an art gallery in the art building that is run by the Student Art Gallery Association (or SAGA as we like to be called) and I currently serve as the organization's president. I have also had shows there in the past. Christine was interested in having a show but felt she wasn't ready to have her own solo show yet, so she asked me to join her. I agreed to do so and from the beginning, it was apparent that since our art was very different, that would serve as the overall theme of the show.

Octo Bath: An example of the type of artwork Christine is known for.

She Wants Blood: An example of the type of artwork I'm known for.

As anyone could see, Christine's artwork is cute and adorable whereas my artwork is more dark and serious. In order to help the artwork fit together, we decided to do a collaborative piece.That collaborative piece would become Dark Lily. During Dark Lily's development, Christine had another idea for a piece that would be shaped like a heart. This would become Love You To Death. 

Dark Lily: I did the frame work while Christine painted the Lily.

Love You To Death to the left of Dark Lily. Again, I did the frame work while Christine painted the hand holding the heart and the roses.

Personally, I loved working on these collaborative projects because it allowed me to start something from scratch for the first time in a long time (most of my artwork is made from combining unfinished projects that have been building up over the years), which helped me refine my techniques. It also allowed Christine to have a feel for working on one of my mixed media pieces. She personally got to see the ins and outs of what it was like to construct on of these pieces and I received a lot of hugs from her as a result. Also, since we started on Love You To Death after we started on Dark Lily, I was able to drastically improve my techniques between the two projects.

After we had gotten the show date set up, we were sitting around one day and we were thinking of names for the show. It was very early when we came up with the name. If I recall correctly, I don't think Dark Lily was very far along in it's development and the concept of Love You To Death didn't even exist yet. She wanted a name right away since she wanted to make a Facebook event in plenty of time to promote the show. Sweet Darkness was one of those names that she came up with early on and we both quickly agreed on it. Ironically enough, as quickly as we thought of the name and as quickly as the Facebook event was made, the flyers weren't made and finalized until less than two weeks before the start of the show (that was my fault). The three flyers I would make were entirely my idea, with Christine's approval of course. I wanted to further cement the concept of the show into the minds of everyone who would see the flyer, so I came up with the idea of having a dark background with a beautiful picture of our hands joining together. I wore one of my more noticeable wristbands in order to help bring out the idea that two different artists were coming together for a single event. The font that was used is called Chaos Times, a font that would also be used for the name listing and number labels for our show. The SAGA logo was inserted in the bottom corner since I almost always include it in my flyers. I thought of the basic concept for the flyer in no time. The placement and the size of the font took me hours to arrange.

Flyer #1

Flyer #2

Flyer #3

Personally, I feel they are the best flyers I have ever made for any event. The only consequence is that not everyone got the idea and thought Christine was my girlfriend. I wasn't disappointed though. I could understand why people got that idea. Ironically, it was also not the first time people had mistaken Christine for my girlfriend.

We installed most of the show the day before the reception. Love You to Death wasn't ready yet and neither were the number labels. The lighting would also be readjusted the next day. When installing the show, there was a lot of improvisation. Christine was good at that. She had more artwork with her than I did and we had to eliminate some of the artwork from the show. Since the gallery was small, we had to find creative ways to put up some of the artwork. Christine was also nice enough to include curtains that helped block out unnecessary sunlight. In the end, everything was finished on the day of the opening reception roughly 30 minutes before the start of the reception. I never plan things that way when I have shows, but it always turns out that way. 

The front of the gallery where most of the artwork is located

From left to right are our collaborative pieces Love You To Death and Dark Lily. Then on the far right, we have my newest piece She Wants Blood.

Christine's beautiful photographs got a lot of positive responses.

All the black and white pictures are mine. the colored pictures and course the Octopuses belong to Christine.

An example where  Christine and I had to improvise. Originally, we weren't going to use this window area for anything other than keeping it blocked out by the curtain.

Christine's book of beautiful photographs

Christine & myself. I think we put together a good show. I think there are many others who would have a much harder time working together. Despite the differences with our art, we found quite easy to work with one another.

Overall, it was a very good night and I think everyone had a wonderful time. The last few days of getting everything ready was quite stressful, but it was all worth it. As I said before, I had no intentions of doing another show yet and that being said, I'd like to thank Christine for asking me to work with her. I'd also like to thank everyone who came to the reception and everyone who supported the show in some way or another.