Canceled show

The show was supposed to be yesterday but it got canceled due to all the crazy weather. The storms iced up all the roads and so it is really hard for anyone to get anywhere this weekend. So pretty bummed about that but nothing I can do.

So anyways, I found a really cool digital artist a couple of weeks ago from Istanbul named Erdal Inci. I linked one of his projects that I really loved on his Behance profile. It's so cool you have to check him out yourself. He does a lot of complicated gifs and detailed light paintings. 

I took a photography class over the summer and we did some light writing stuff but it's nothing that compares to the work that this guy does. 

See for yourself:

and more!!

First show--hung

Yay!! Today was the day we had our last group critique, where I heard a lot of positive feedback about my work and we had the chance to hang our pieces. I haven't had any experience hanging or matting things before but thankful I didn't have to do that yet because I decided a long time ago that I wanted to leave my pieces unframed. I was originally going to use magnets to hold up my pieces but ended up resorting to binder clips and adjustable hooks. I also got to visit the exhibition space for the first time and it was really beautiful. It was quite a big space, from what I know, but we still had to do some shuffling to get everyone where they needed to be.
There is a prediction that this weekend will bring bad weather and I am not that excited about it because I want to go ahead and get this off my to do list but I am also really excited. I hope that the people that end up coming will really find my topic interesting. Some of the people that I interviewed I actually go to school with and so if everyone that is in the area can come I will have four of the six people there that I am making my work about. That is something really special for me.

Finished series

Well, I did it! I finally got my butt into the studio and I finished my series! I don't know how I did it but I ended up with a lot of pieces that I am really proud of. I really need to take pictures of them so that I compare the differences on here but I will have to track down a camera first. I made two completely new pieces that I didn't even make studies for but I love them.
One piece is the ghost print of a lotus flower. For that piece I crafted a new technique that I hadn't used or learned from anyone else before for blending colors for a monotype. I first did a base coat color on the plexiglass and then painted on with a paintbrush several darker shades of pink and then I rolled over the colors to even them all out and blend them together with the 2 inch roller.
I can't wait to post pictures! I am really happy I decided to pull a ghost print from it. :)

Pictures to come soon!

turkey break

So since I have been slacking on my work getting zero work done from my last post to now, I will have to stay on campus over my Thanksgiving break instead of going home. So yay for that! I don't really mind though. There is nothing more that I love than to be jamming out in the studio with my music and all of the inks, press, and paper to myself. I finished two more pieces, both of which are beautiful and clean, unlike the first one. Since I did that one in such a rush and used gloss medium instead of ink I ended up with a very different texture in my print that I was willing to roll with but didn't necessarily want. Anyways, can't decide if I want to redo that print yet. I think I will wait until I am done with all the others.
I was right about the paper making a huge difference though. In some of my pieces I use white ink for some parts of it and so it only shows up when you are facing it at a certain angle. The rives absorbed the white ink so well that I didn't have to think about staining the paper anything to make it pop.
 I have 3 more prints to go though! I should have them all done by Sunday if all my out-of-town plans go smoothly.

Visiting Artist Critique 2

So we had a surprise critique this week. It was a surprise because the visiting artist was suppose to be critiquing the painting class and not ours but it all turned out okay. By the time that he came to visit, I had finished one larger piece (22x30) and another study.
I definitely got some much better criticism from this artist (I felt like) because he actually took the time to listen to the detail of my work and read the titles. The suggestion that he made was to play with the scale of my images so that I could define the people in the pieces as more unique by how I scaled them.
I didn't take his advice and change anything big, but I have had a really strong feeling that this work is something I want to continue later on so I think that that is a suggestion I will use later in my work.
Because I didn't get my sixth study done I admit that I am dragging my feet a little on getting my series finished. I was hoping to get all six done before scaling up but now I'm not even sure I will have time for that. We have approximately two weeks to go and I have five more pieces to finish!! What am I doing to myself??

A few steps forward a one back is still progress....

Here are some pictures to share of some of the progress I have made on my drafts.
I will warn you that they do not look impressive and a lot of the detail doesn't show up well because of the quality of the paper but I anticipate them to all turn out beautifully in the end ;)

I plan on making six pieces so I have two to go but I am really struggling with those pieces because I am having a hard time deciding what imagery to use.

Visiting Artist Critique

So I got to experience my first artist critique with a complete stranger yesterday and it was not my favorite. If you are in any way familiar with the series that I have been blogging about so much then hopefully you would know some general idea of what I am doing and how important both aspects of the title and the piece are!
We were told to not be defensive and work on our listening skills and that is exactly what I did but I was a bit upset and annoyed that the person didn't really take the time to actually read any of the titles, he just skimmed over a few of them and made a bunch of suggestions that I didn't feel like fit what I was trying to do. It was a bit of a wasted critique I think because since he didn't bother to take the time to read the titles he didn't understand and so none of his comments were really on the mark or things that I wanted to change. His impression was that I am trying to create some experience for people through their senses but really, I am trying to educate viewers. I don't know, maybe it was the time constraint or the maybe I didn't articulate myself as well as I could have (but I am usually really good at doing so) that he didn't get it. But yeah. If I have another critique again I hope it goes a lot better than it did yesterday......