Joelle Sept

river & memory

2011-12-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Botanical Illustration - Kale

2011-10-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

I took a Botanical Illustration class with Elizabeth Mancini, and made this decorative kale drawing. (It is partly dried out, but in a kind of neat way.)

2011-08-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

I finally updated my website (it is www.joellesept.com) and the newest things I have created are these:

They are both part of the story I'm inventing to give structure to my illustrative urges.

2011-03-29T18:25:00.001-07:00

There is this: being an attempt to make a colour-by-numbers mountain painting, without having outlines first, or with being a mountain, or with having specific colours. It was looking rather ugly for a while, but I think I managed to pull it together, and I'm rather happy with it now!

Campfires

2011-02-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

Work In Progress - shiny things

2011-01-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

This looks kinda neat...

Cumulus Discord - How Did We Get To This?

2010-11-29T08:28:00.000-08:00

I made these drawings as a CD booklet for my friend Alexander's forthcoming album.

It was a really fun project to work on. His album is basically about his own life, but a little dramatized and fictionalized and exaggerated. The songs start in the present and then reach back into the past, going further back each time, to try to answer the question of how he ended up where he is now. I felt like he gave me a whole lot of license to interpret the story, like I could make a mini-comic that goes with his album, but doesn't have to follow the facts exactly.

Deciding that I couldn't handle working in backwards-order like the songs go, I told a story of a young man who goes through different life phases, starting long ago, and living in a sped-up history. It's as though each year in this guy's life is 20 years apart in history. Or maybe each panel shows a different person living at a different time. Really, I just wanted to be able to draw different time periods. Because that's fun. And in a way, the time periods I chose kind of go with the spirit of each drawing.

So, the story as I saw it, with influences in parentheses:

A young peasant rejects his parents and leaves home (Hogarth); he and a friend become outlaw cowboys;

he is betrayed and thrown from a ship and gnawed by vicious sea monsters, or goes through drug withdrawal (scary-Romanticism like Goya); he washes ashore and faces life with new hope/recovers from addiction (Rationalism, World Fair architecture, Paris);

he falls in love (Romanticism, pastoral scenes with shepherds and shepherdesses, although I tried to make the lovers' posture less dominant/submissive than most of the historical examples); but the relationship starts to end/become distant (1920s phones and hairstyles and hookahs);

he has fun with friends but starts to see omens of change in his life (1950s, creepy amusement park mechanical fortuneteller); he realises the freedom to make mistakes and take risks and that things end but don't really (1970s spacewhales cosmic trippy journey);

he acts recklessly and doesn't realise the damage he's causing (1980s Ferris-Bueller style parade/marching band mayhem); he looks out his window and contemplates his life (modern-day Vancouver in winter).

campfires number one

2010-11-13T22:42:00.001-08:00

Plastics

2010-08-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

This is a followup to the last piece. It depicts jellyfish and plastic in the ocean. I am happy with it, except for the fact that I intended to have a more interesting shape in the end, rather than just filling up the whole page with one rectangle!

My works seem to be seen best from a short distance, and have little contrast to attract anyone from 30 feet away. I heard in a lecture once that a work of art should be interesting from all different distances. I must try to overcome this need to fill up the whole page!

loose leaf

2010-07-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

My latest watercolour drawing. I am glad it's different from the usual stuff I do, and I think the colours are very successful. In terms of being significant or having meaning, it doesn't really. It just looks pretty in an interesting way. I feel like it should be on a t-shirt, or a curtain, or the packaging for looseleaf tea. The composition is definitely a bit too rectangular overall.

Recently I laid out all my recent drawings, and realised that they don't look good from afar. The shapes aren't interesting and there isn't enough significant blocks of dark or white - contrast from afar. I guess my drawings are meant to be seen at the distance of reading a book, for example.

fitting together

2010-06-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

The first version of this drawing was freehand, without much forethought. Basically a doodle. I liked it, so I remade it about three more times, trying to make it better planned-out, and fitting together more. I'm pretty happy with it in the end.

I see it as an illustration for a non-specific fairytale in which adults and animals are the enemies of children, and adolescents are unsure what to do about it.

Seed Stealer

2010-05-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

A human being discovers the mystical plant which bears the fruits, seeds and leaves of many useful plants. And she cuts it down in order to take it away!

It might be obvious that I used a photo reference for this drawing. And it ended up looking too similar to me, in my opinion. Her face really bugs me because I tried to make it different from my face, but it only ended up being "bizarro-Joelle."

But I'm pretty happy with the drawing! We'll see... Sometimes the art projects I put the most effort into end up being the least admired by other people. Think I might do some goofy black-and-white cartoons next.

Toenail Tree

2010-04-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Magically fertile soil - anything planted here will grow.

This image may be too small to tell what's going on, in digital version. It's weird that I thought of that before I even uploaded it. It's almost as if I'm intending for my drawings to be seen only on a screen... : \

Back to black and white!

2010-03-13T10:26:00.001-08:00

After a long time with watercolour paper, I got myself some nice smooth Bristol paper, because I missed making black and white drawings! I love the feeling of a steel nib skating across the surface of this paper. And brush drawing is silkier when the paper is not so absorbant.

This drawing was inspired by some imagery in Les Chants de Maldoror, a proto-surrealist book by Compte de Lautreamont from the mid 19th century. It's about an evil anti-heroic, satanic figure who does these strange little battles with angels and God, sometimes defending prostitutes and sinners, sometimes victimizing the innocent. To me it's kind of metal, and kind of disgusting, and super HILARIOUS. There are surprisingly beautiful descriptions that show a fascination and respect for natural history. There's a passage where Maldoror has not moved for hundreds of years, and as a result, various fungi have grown on him, while little creatures and amphibians have started living in his body and taking it over.

But this drawing is not about Maldoror as a character. It's another ambiguous myth, an origin story about humanity. I like the idea of the human race, in all its banality, being the offspring of gods, of the personification of a swamp (with the mushrooms and reeds and toads) and of the night sky (perching on the earth and with constellation hair). I will probably always return to the theme of two abnormal parents creating a normal child, in some way.

For a long time I've intentionally avoided specific cultural references in my myth-illustrations (or tried as best I can), and I realised this is kind of pathetic and arrogant in a way. Who is the intended audience for my artwork? An audience that has never heard any story, does not have its own mythology. I'm pretending that the story I tell is the first story ever told, as if the audience is a newborn baby, a tribe of innocents. That's kind of funny to me.

And this is just supposed to be a sweet little cartoon drawing. I really like the way the faces are angled, and the way the man's legs bend around, although it bugs the hell out of me that I forgot to draw the woman's other leg and foot!

I really enjoy the challenge of using a sable brush with ink. As well as mentally preparing for every long stroke before I make it, I have to really be conscious of how the bristles are twisting around when I turn it around a corner. If I had the inclination, I would probably wax on about how spiritual and special this process is :p

two new things

2010-01-31T09:47:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a cerain type of around-1900s way to make cartoon faces, which inspired me to make this. I see it in Little Nemo comics (Winsor McCay) and on some retro lithographic posters in european-esque cafes. And I tried out some fancy shading on the woman's body, which is from a life-drawing sketch. Overall, I'm not sure thrilled with the colours.

The second picture is inspired by men who tell stories about their horribly bitchy ex-girlfriends. It's not really from my own personal experience. It's one of those drawings I made without pencilling or planning beforehand - I like to imagine that the awkwardness lends it the right type of charm. It's a tricky line to straddle, though, between "meaningfully naieve" and "shitty."

Another creepy drawing

2010-01-11T10:12:00.001-08:00

I think I could do a few of these. They creep me out a little, but they express something. I think.

Gruesome Drawings

2010-01-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

I was in a really emotional mood, and decided to just go with it, and comically exaggerate the way I felt.And then there are some minerals, and other things:

A rare, special, non-ass-containing drawing

2009-11-11T22:02:00.001-08:00

The upper half of the picture is memories of the past, and the bottom represents a potential journey into death and rebirth - the animals gathered around are made of a malleable, claylike substance, half-formed denizens of the world beyond.

Atlin Lake art vacation

2009-10-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

I went on a self-paid artist residency to Atlin Centre for the Arts. Basically, an art teacher bought and developed a lovely property halfway up a mountain near a tiny little gold-rush town in British Columbia, way up north, almost in the Yukon, and built cabins and tent platforms and ran a summer art school program.

I just wanted a bit of a getaway, in an artist-friendly place, where I could be alone and able to work on my drawings, pretending it's my full-time activity for a week. I wanted to be surrounded by nature, because nature is beautiful, and it's nice to see a tree right in front of you when you want to draw a tree.

Another artist couple from Australia was interested in the teaching aspect of the place, so Gernot ran a few workshop sessions that I attended. The general aim was for people to break down and re-invent their artistic processes, to let go of thinking and rationality (but still maintain your knowledge of what makes a good composition) and be more spontaneous, making art from within.

However, since I didn't come to this place with the aim of re-making my process, but rather just having time and space and the intention to make all the art that I haven't been making for the past six months, I wasn't ready to benefit from ideas like that. I don't respond well to religious or artistic evangelism. I'm not easily infected with a spirit of amazement and reinvention, and I feel like I don't get it. I'm too cynical, I don't believe that I contain within myself everything I need to just make spontaneous, emotional gestures on the page that would be interesting to anyone. I may be a bit deficient in this respect, but I think that since I know this about myself, and I know what kind of art I'm interested in making, I am better off continuing and striving in this vein, and leaving abstract spiritual art to others.

All of these drawings looked better before colour was added. When I compose an image, I'm constantly making decisions as to what density or interval of line is appropriate to convey the right information. I decide all of this with the lines, leaving no information for the colours to convey. I don't think ahead to the colour when I make the lines; if I did, I would need to hold back on some of the lines, and let the colours speak. The way I make pictures now, the colours are just confusing, and actually take clarity away from the image.

I am still continuing in the vein of self-invented mythology, using tropes and themes and symbols that are commonly found in many, many stories. I am making fairytale illustrations of psychological conditions, or fanciful ideas of people's place in the world. It's a formula, in a way. It's a bit dispassionate, because I am not a believer of myths (though I don't know if myths are traditionally "believed" literally anyway).

Every image i make is a little bit mocking, a bit self-aware. But at some point it crosses into naieve, goofy, sincerity. I also seem to include a lot of vulgarity in my drawings. I'm not sure if this is beneficial to any idea I might have, or if it's just a way to get attention.

watercolours in sketchbook

2009-09-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

2 trees

2009-08-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

2 or 3 years ago I made a sketch with this composition, intending it to be a painting. It didn't turn out, but I still like the general idea of it. These colours were tricky!

Bland little girl

2009-08-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

Hands Man

2009-08-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

Trying to get back into the artistic frame of mind.

trashy beach

2009-07-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

meghan and arlene

2009-07-10T20:26:00.001-07:00

The background is weird, because it's basically a featureless expanse of grass-colour, presided over by a murky pseudo-sky. Like a T and T picture.

three owls

2009-07-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Here are the finished owl-heads. I made three files with three different levels of detail, to be used for various sizes. I haven't yet heard what he thinks of the most detailed one (it's new) but I think it could come in useful for a big logo on something!

I'm happy because this is the first time I've been hired by someone who isn't a friend or family - and I've already been paid! how professional! :)

previews of beach drawing

2009-06-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've managed to get a lot of work done on my big, fat, ever-more-complicated Illustrator drawing this weekend. I'm posting some cropped areas of it, so that I can feel as though this blog is still alive:

owl

2009-06-05T23:13:00.001-07:00

An owl drawing, as a logo for someone who is making panoramic photography camera heads or something -

It needs to be really really small, so I made a simple version and a more detailed version. I'm pretty happy with this, plus owls are so awesome in their expressions!

I have been working on a big drawing in illustrator. It started off with beach-sketches, and I'm limiting myself to invariable-width line, and trying to keep the colours within a scheme. The composition wasn't much planned beforehand, but I find it's pretty easy to move things around and re-size them. And just now, I even thought of a concept - some objects I can add to suggest a kind of story.

But um... it probably won't be posted for a while. I'm doing a bit of work every day.

THING

2009-05-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Here it is, my latest work of art for this Victoria Day weekend. I hope you all are ready for this shit. I didn't bother to find out what this thing is. I really love Bibliodyssey, and maybe I don't show that love in the best way.

Also, I think I have discovered the most hipster music possible. I'm not going to say what it is, in case I am wrong about it.

crest guy

2009-05-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

I copied this decorative guy from a huge, awesome crest I found on Biblyodyssey.

From what I understand, art school used to consist of a whole lot of copying things... We don't really do that as much any more, because of the emphasis on individual creativity and such. I wonder if there is something useful in the copying idea... maybe because I did this, next time I go to create a decorative, muscley dude with a leaf skirt out of vectors, I'll be better at making my own original one?

trainwreck-watching care bear fetus

2009-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

This drawing is also a few weeks old. I was thinking about how people love to hear about disasters and see them on tv, and the image started to form in my mind.

The creature is a fat/fetus/penis/carebear hybrid. The mushrooms basically only exist because of smudged ink that had to be turned into something. I think they're only misleading in terms of what the image signifies. The tree and heart exist for composition's sake, but I don't mind the associations that may come up with the fruit tree - garden of eden, maybe? innocence? danger? fruitfulness? Plus I think it looks real pretty.

I had a lot of fun drawing the explosion (maybe it's the creation of a universe and the creature is a retarded God?) and I want to draw more, different explosions in the future.

new collages!

2009-04-17T14:15:00.001-07:00

after thinking about collages, I made a few new ones.

old collage(s)

2009-04-16T18:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't done much new art lately. Here are some collages from collage class, about a year ago:

I mostly had fun in that class, letting the material I found guide me, just juxtaposing things with some connection or opposition. That's not really an original strategy. I found that the simpler I made things, the better. I believe the main impression from my collage work comes from the 'cool' factor of old magazines I used. There wasn't much intervention coming from me.

The course outline mentioned "collage thinking", and I interpreted this as suggesting possibilities for non-glue-and-scissors collage. I think the drawings I've made recently are what I mean. They are pen and ink drawings, but I used source material from photos (I usually don't) and embellished them with elements from my imagination, or other photos. I used a variety of resources, but because the whole thing is drawn with the same ink, there is a cohesiveness.

Another lesson I might have learned from this collage idea is that taking away something can be as neat as adding it. But I never have that kind of restraint - to leave a figure unfinished, without a face, for example. Or to draw a background with an empty spot where the figure should be.

2009-04-10T16:27:00.001-07:00

I did a lot of measuring with pencil before making this. I don't really know what the point is, it has a lot of detail but not much to grab you I think.

Elodia

2009-04-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

This is a drawing I made, of a character created by my friend Alexander. With this drawing I wanted to figure out how to 'paint' in Photoshop, and I think I learned a lot. I tried out a lot of the different ways to use a brush, such as lighten, screen, soft light, etc. using transparency as well. In the past I used to just paint opaquely, and when I tried to hack away with transparent brushstrokes it just looked messy. I was more thoughtful this time, rather than just putting colours on to see how they look.

I think next I want to try a hard, bright sunlight, rather than an overall soft, diffused light. I think this image looks good but I don't know if the light effects are actually realistic.

I probably should have added more pouches, weapons, shiny things and doodads on her outfit.

The other thing I'm happy about is the clothing folds - after some book-studying, I feel more confident inventing those than I used to!

2009-03-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

aaaand this is a drawing i started in australia and finished in canada. It was inspired by a library book about magic and alchemy in art. I was amazed at how certain mythologies and attributes of our natural world persist and change through time. But for me, it's not so much about consistant symbolism as the underlying human/nature relations.

Somehow I came up with the idea of people going a little bit against the natural order. This is a woman peeing upwards at the moon. She's gigantic like some kind of superhuman, and her urine actually reaches the personified moon. It's playful, and I thought it made sense that the moon is often a symbol of feminity. And I think it's like a myth... "and she grew so large, and peed so strongly, that her piss totally soaked the moon in the face, and dripped down to earth, creating the lake of Moon Piss."

For me, the concepts that inspire a drawing should stay at the beginning stage of the art-creation. My ideas about this work's "meaning" only serve as the motivation to create an image that is, in itself, interesting to look at. So I know that people are going to interpret the spraying fluid as a gigantic orgasm, or lemon juice, or whatever. I don't like to make art that is like a cryptic code, which you can decipher using your artworld knowledge to come up with the meaning and say "oh, I see what you did there."

And that's okay, because when I look at old medieval, renaissance, or surrealist imagery, I don't always need to know what the symbols mean in order to be interested. I just want it to look cool and provoke a bit of thought.

Failure of Text in images

2009-03-22T18:43:00.001-07:00

I haven't been posting while I was in Australia. While I was there, I made these two drawings:

There was text in the speech balloons, but when I scanned these images, I photoshopped them out, because they just didn't work in context.

The words were based on a conversation I overheard, from the party in the yard next door while I was drawing. A European visitor had had too much beer, and was talking loudly about all sorts of things, mostly comparing Australia to his home. He sounded homesick. Eventually he started saying, "I don't feel like I should BE in Australia, as a white person. White people don't belong here, they aren't welcome because they are foreign invaders. Everywhere else i've travelled, I've met someone from that local culture who made me feel like I was accepted as a visitor, but not here in Australia." He sounded pretty distressed.

I paraphrased his words and made the topless woman say them. She was a picture from an "Australia is Beautiful" naked postcard, and I just added the rest of the decor randomly.

The second image had text based on the reply to this issue made by a housemate's friend when I told him the overheard conversation. He basically said, "Well the British weren't the worst colonizers in the world. Sure, they did terrible things, but not as bad as some other nations. And at least they did things to improve the countries they took over, like building railroads, instead of just pillaging."

I'm fairly interested in discussions of colonialism, so I used these two points of view, in a collage spirit. I figured that just as I was taking figures from postcards and re-drawing them, I might as well do the same with text.

But in the end I didn't find that I could show these pictures to anybody, without adding a big disclaimer of, "This is not really my opinion, this is a conversation I overheard." I guess words are just that strong, more loaded than images in this case. I mean a topless chick with pointy boobs is a topless chick with pointy boobs - whatever - but the words seem more likely to be interpreted as the artist's personal viewpoint.

I think in the end, the problem is that I feel so ambivalent about judging these viewpoints. I'm using the words without putting forward my own viewpoint. It ends up being really wishy-washy and confusing.

So, I used the clone stamp tool to just make it blank.

blue and brownish crystalzes

2008-10-28T22:43:00.001-07:00

this is the latest - I think I'm improving at this technique every time I do it -

1970s illustration

2008-10-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

I went to the library and read a book about illustration in the 1970a. I stole these images. A lot of them are by Philippe Corentin or Alain le Saux - I can't really find much information about them on the internet, but I really like these pictures.

I'd like to develop that skill of thinking up smart, metaphorical imagery that brutally communicates an idea, in such a poetic way.

2008-10-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

I was asked to design a layout and cool banner for Mountain Madness Mondays, a blog about an apres-ski (snowboarding?) night. This is what i came up with - it might be tweaked a bit yet. I managed to fight down my tendency to have every single colour in the artwork, and keep it down to a few ones that look good together.

http://www.mountainmadnessmondays.blogspot.com/

fireball

2008-10-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

Another one in my "series" of little watercolours of rocks. This one is different in that it has black lines, and I tried to keep the colours more subdued and earthy (to a point, obviously).

Watercolours look so fantastic when the paint's wet, but are often pretty dull in comparison once they dry. It really depends on the particular brand and colour you're using, I think. Maybe one day in the future I'll try to use oil or acrylics again, for that shiny, wet look.

Pigments are an interesting thing... they can have such amazing qualities. I guess a computer screen isn't really the same way - we can get pretty much any hue on command with a computer, but there's always going to be something compelling about a limited choice, about the idea that some colours are more expensive than others. The history of pigments is fascinating (especially when some strange material had to be got from mummies or some weird, particular source. So romantic!).

words and pictures

2008-09-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to develop my narrative tendencies, by coming up with A Story. It's going pretty well, I guess - except for the fact that the story sucks, and is lame, boring and not pertinent to anything significant. I wouldn't want to put it on a wall and have anyone I know see it. Is this something I should keep working on, and improve it in terms of those negative aspects, or just abandon it completely?

It's very, VERY rare to find any one person who is equally good at drawing a story, and writing it - in terms of the plot, the characters, the choice of language, and all that. Most good comics have either a compelling, well-told story combined with simple drawings, or beautiful drawings and pointless words. Actually, maybe it's not an exact balance - a comic with a shitty, lame, saccharine plot and nice drawings isn't usually worth reading. I would actually say that the story is more important - but I think the key is that the images should be appropriate to the story. As in, the artist should know his or her limitations and stick within them, rather than trying to draw in a more complicated style than he or she can.

But what I really want to talk about is: why do we expect one person to be able to do both? What happens if we combine a great storyteller with a great artist? Maybe this is what happens the vast majority of the time - the comics I read are mostly webcomics, where it's all about the self-publishing and such, whereas in a traditional published comic, it's made by several people.

I think I'm all for abandoing the stereotype of the artist as an individualistic genius who does it all himself or herself. On the other hand, maybe there is something lost if you have two people working on both sides of the story: not because it taints the purity of the individualistic genius artist, but maybe because a story with great words and great pictures isn't as interesting as one that is a little imperfect on one side of the equation.

I think there's still something charming about reaching for a certain mark, and falling a little short of it.

Or it could be that the real important thing is the way the words and pictures work together, to tell a story. An image isn't just there to embellish the words (most of the time). And words aren't just there to explain the picture. Striking a balance is probably key.

Maybe instead of coming up with words to tell a story, I should realise that pictures can tell a story on their own, since that's what I'm better at.

2008-09-21T21:59:00.001-07:00

I'm getting into the habit of blocking things in when I use Adobe Illustrator - just kind of building up a general composition with colourful shapes, and then using another layer for lines. I thought this pre-line composition looked kind of neat.

2008-09-20T21:09:00.001-07:00

more imaginary rocks!

this is better than the other ones, and I'm getting better at keepin' it clean with the watercolours.

2008-09-17T22:16:00.001-07:00

I drew this shitty thing just so I could update.

2008-09-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

And this here happened in Adobe Illustrator - it's just a really quick sketch based on a conversation in which a guy said he doesn't go for "conventionally" attractive women.

2008-09-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

OK here are some new images finally!! These are all pen and ink, with a few watercolours thrown in.

This one above is part of my slow attempt to become more narrative - I'm trying to come up with an actual story, without worrying too much about how cheesy it might be. I think that like any ability, narrative ability has to start out really crappy, and get better with practice.

You might notice a lot of butt-drawings in this group.

My sister said about this drawing that if an angry horse became human, it would look like this.

2008-08-12T14:28:00.001-07:00

2008-08-10T00:18:00.001-07:00

I am prolific today! (this one was quick)

2008-08-09T20:57:00.000-07:00

this was inspired by a photo one of my friends commented on on facebook- I don't know this lady, she just showed up on my news feed. So it's not really a caricature of "her" -more like all proudly pregnant women in general.

I'm pretty happy with the way there's a gradient only on her belly, so the focus is there, and the pants kind of fade into the background along with the feet. I want to make drawings with "areas of detail" and stuff like that.

2008-08-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

there is also this I made today!

2008-08-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

I went for a 30-day trial period of adobe illustrator. I'm really considering actually buying it.

2008-07-31T12:01:00.001-07:00

I want a comprehensive book of anatomy for artists that shows how to draw everything, including women and men (and not just women as modified versions of men), overweight, underweight, ummuscular, young, old, people of many different races (and not just as special bonus chapters), every expression including chewing food, pulling your eyelid apart, sticking your tongue out, puffing up your cheeks, with folkloric and pseudoscientific facts about what it means to have a widows peak, various relative lengths of index and ring fingers, dimples, or those weird assymetrical teeth, and while we're at it this book should include orthodontic diagrams about problems with crooked teeth, as well as how to draw sexual organs of different shapes and sizes in various states of arousal (instead of leaving the crotchal area as a mysterious blank), wounds, scars, bruises, how to render skin that's freckled, sunburnt, peeling, acne-ridden, skin that has the imprints of elastic bands or wrinkled pillows, how to draw the results of bad and good plastic surgery, like nose implants and fake tits as opposed to real ones, also that weird drawing that shows how big your body parts are in relation to how much brainspace is dedicated to them, and a history of standards of perfect proportion for every culture, and a historical overview of the most popular cartoon-proportions over the past century or longer.

Not just healthy, brooding, white heroic muscle-men.

(I know that such a book would be huge and impossible, and at a certain point you just have to draw more from life. I'm just saying - such a book would be awesome.)

2008-07-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, a picture!

I work as a barista. This is a self-portrait. I'm pretty happy with the progress I'm making in terms of conceptualising an image, planning the composition, and making the correct lines. And using Photoshop to do it.

My favourite part of the image is the left-hand. it's BEAUTIFUL!

2008-07-24T23:20:00.001-07:00

I am working on this. I find it extremely frustrating to try to do photoshop drawing, and make it look the way I want. I need some kind of instruction or tutorial (and the patience to sit through it).

I think the colour scheme is not too bad - maybe the most important thing is to start with the right colour scheme. I want to have really flat colours around certain areas, and eerily detailed skin, inspired by old old posters and such.

butterface

2008-07-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

I just started a blog!

I can post images I make!

These are some imaginary rocks and crystals I painted with watercolour. I try to make the colours ugly, yet appealing. I keep on making the mistake of filling up the whole frame in a very boring way.

And images I didn't make, but I like!

I like the amateur quality of this drawing. It looks so sincere. I think that in art these days, people are attracted to a combination of sincere intent and amateur aesthetic. It almost doesn't matter what the content is, as long as it looks like the artist was really into it. Why is this? Do educated, jaded people find it cute that someone was so enthusiastic about a subject that they perservered in their depiction of it despite their lack of skill? Are they mocking, or are they jealous? It's more interesting than wankery.

I also love the combination of one image with one word, especially when the word is a frank statement explaining the picture. A label.