Mwee

So I’ve decided I need a Summer Project. Apparently this involves painting a lot and hoping to gain talent for it somewhere along the way. Here’s a quickie sample;

Two months of absolute school assignment freedom! But I have nothing better to offer than a doodle from last time there was a party across the street. Playing the Macarena loudly at 4am is bad enough by itself, but when the culprits are too young for it to be some kind of nostalgia stunt? No forgiveness.

Besides, I like chainsaws.

Continuing work with linoprinting, the school assignment asked for a poster to promote a piano concert. They asked for abstraction and something aimed at a ‘grown-up’ audience (a not-so-subtle jab, I suspect, at my tendency to turn everything into rainbows and kittens).

Here’s the linoprint, a vague attempt at turning Norwegian nature into something sufficiently abstract:

And here’s how the poster turned out, complete with inadequate typography and colour (because colours, as it turns out, was another requirement):

This was the last assignment this semester, meaning I am near the end of my first year as a lazy illustration student - just some frantic final portfolio work left to do. Bring on the coffee!

Lino printing is so awesome. My fingertips are bleeding due to clumsiness with the cutting tools, but I had so much fun! I’ve never done any kind of printing like this before - now I’m excited that I get to spend all of next week working with it. I would devote the whole weekend to it, if I hadn’t made plans to go spend my birthday with the Clever Smut Poet and other friends.

Here’s the doodle I doodled! Or, actually, carved into a piece of linoleum, then threw paint on.

Just a quick one for the Illustration Friday topic, “electric”. Apparently, electric cats dream of electric mice.

School assignment; a cd cover for a local band. The whole thing was a sort of musical about suns and moons and hearts and trees and blah blah blah. They were looking for “naive and cartoony”.

This thing is meant to be folded and stuff, so just the bit with the girl sitting on the branch would be the actual front cover. No typography because I dread it!

From sort-of-absurd conversations with others, quick doodles.

Anti-marriage poster. “Flirting leads to marriage. Stop flirting.”

My friend Nik had a dream in which we were housemates, and there were futuristic skyscrapers and purple robots all over the place.

I love coffee. Some people, however, insist it tastes like python. You know, snakes, not code. Kind of a lost-in-translation thing, unfortunately. I said a python would be more difficult to fit in a mug; they said the trick was to catch them while they’re small.

Another episode of “I was supposed to do something else”

So, figure studies is the big theme lately. It scares the shit out of me: I’ve never done it before (I didn’t go to an artsy high school) and I am intimidated by everything I can’t simply attach bunny slippers to and call it done. I find the days spent drawing with a model very exhausting, but also, of course, rewarding.

I have to say though, I feel much more confident doing the 1-2 minute pose croquis sketches, than the extended figure drawings. I don’t really like standing around in a classroom, slabbing around paint and charcoal and having no clue what I’m doing. Then again, we’re all amateurs, and my stuff doesn’t actually look that much worse than everyone else’s: Today, to my utter surprise, I was told that my paint strokes are good and I should do it more.

(In case you didn’t catch the surprise: I do not paint. Paintbrushes are alien things to me, most of the time.)

Here’s a couple of my quick sketches - the only one that would nearly fit in the scanner:

Oops - it’s been a while since my last post. The end of the past year turned out a bit hectic (or at least too hectic for people with my lack of attention span). The new year has started, and this week my class has been vaguely eyeing dry media - we’ve spent about one day toying with different things (which in my opinion is too little - I want detail tutorials!) - and, while I haven’t created masterpieces, I’ve got a good idea of things I really want to investigate further in my own time.

Oil pastels are a ton of fun! Impossible to control and all kindergarden-like. And sgrafitto is the most fun ever. Now I must add a decent set of OPs to my shopping list (which is growing, growing) - and play more with sgrafitto, with more tools - I’m feeling the draw of the old toothbrush.

This is a page from my small cardboard-ish sketchbook, a tentative technique test the first time I’ve touched oil pastels since - exactly - kindergarden. That messy swab of green in the background is an attack on the pastel with a bit of cotton dipped in white spirit - impossible to control, and added a bit of dubious scent to my already pastel-stained clothes from the day before.