Fashion project: The Begining

Fashion. What can I say about the world of fashion. Being a tom boy, I have always seen it with an outsider's eyes. I approached my art for life drawing this semester with the idea that I was going to continue my critique of fashion from last semester, see the wood drawing/paintings from my painting class. After making this decision I began to dig through the fashion magazines I handle everyday at work, periodicals section in a library, and take a deeper examination of what I found there. I have always laughed at these magazines, as well as guiltily taking note of some of the more reasonable fashions. What is laughable? Have you ever seen the amounts of make up gooped on to the poor girls on a cover of WWD? Have you ever taken a look at some of the ridiculous fashions displayed in some of these? I have to admit, it is an interesting art form, and for all of my disgust was fascination. After a while I began to picture what these women would look like walking around in the real world in their full make up and odd fashion, not to mention abnoramlly tall thin bodies.
The above two drawings are the beginings of this exploration. The top is just an exploration into an exagerated female form, while the bottom drawing is the begining of a super model buying groceries.
After spending a couple weeks reading fashion magazines and the like, I found that although I could do this comentary, I really was not ready for it. Fashion magazines make my head hurt. My interest in fashion, has always been more toward the history of it. I will probably turn my energies toward that, although I may re examine this idea at a later date. If I can find some tall very skinny people and some outrageous outfits, I may try this in photography as it was suggested in critique and could be fun.

Michael Whelan

One of my favorite artists is Michael Whelan. Throughout my childhood I found his works on the covers of my chapter books and music. I have always been mesmerized by the way he portrays fantastical scenes and characters. He is not like any other science fiction or fantasy artist I have seen. Here is the link to his web site. Take a look. He is fantastic.

http://www.michaelwhelan.com/

Van Gogh's Ear

Van Gogh's ear is an interesting mystery. Why did he cut it off? What was he thinking? What happened to the ear? I was pondering these questions after my Modern Art class yesterday, where in we discussed the aforementioned artist. Today I found myself reading the September 2009 issue of Artnews only to open to an article, "What They See In Van Gogh's Ear." This article did not at all answer the questions I was pondering, but rather resolved the pondering in a different way. What is up with Van Gogh's ear? It appears since he chopped the thing off people around the world have been curious about it. The article talks about how Van Gogh's ear has inspired pop culture, and how more people know him for this incident than his art. Apparently three bands have taken names inspired by the ear, shops and resteraunts have called themselves "Van Gogh's Ear," and merchandise such as fake Van Gogh ears and Van Gogh heads with detachable heads are readily available online. With a love for history and psychology, yes I am interested in the mystery, but I have must agree with the article. Van Gogh gets lost in all of this hipe over his ear and possible mental or emotional disabilities. It makes me wonder what any of us current artists will leave behind. In a hundred years will people talk about our art or spend their time analyzing our possible mental states. I still remember a trip to the Salvidor Dali museum in Florida. The people I was with spent half the trip psycho analyzing his mental state. You have to be a bit odd to be an artist. Van Gogh is no acception, but maybe we can admire his art and forget about that darn ear.

Summer Art part 4

Above are my Twiggy pieces. Towards the end of the summer I became sad as I had not really spent a lot of time with water color or pastels, my favorite materials to work with. I was afraid I was rusty and wanted to just jump into a drawing with no prior planning or for thought. I have always loved fashion history. Twiggy, a young model from the 1960s, has always seemed beautiful and like an interesting subject to draw. I created the watercolor on the bottom first, on unsoaked water color paper. The top image is all pastels. I found myself virtually out of white pastel and charcoal, so I had fun with my eraser instead. That is on large drawing pad paper.

Summer Art part 3

This third installment of summer art is full of some of the images I created in my sketchbook. My favorite thing to do when drawing completely for myself is to create characters. Some of these are characters I have created before, others are random doodles, and one is a friends role playing character. When I draw for myself, I draw to escape, so why not escape into someone else. The greatest amount of the drawings in my sketch book are created by an odd process which I find myself going through. I will created categories; different types of clothing, colors, fantasy role playing classes, or different ages of fashion are some of the most common; and fill them all by the same amount by images I find on the internet or in books and magazines. I then pick something I want to take from each, another random process, and use these to put together a character. I tend to love this process as I never know what I am going to end up with and frankly I love the act of gathering images. The first image and the last couple images are examples from this process. If I could, I would love to take this process into some of my bigger art, as it always feels a bit hollow without it.

Summer Art part 2

My fiance got me interested in Warhammer and Warhammer 40k not because it was a table top army game, but because I love to paint. Despite this not being fine art I believe it needs a mention as something artistic I love to do and spent quit a lot of time on this summer. These minis come grey on sprues in a box, as they are only an inch tall or so I used really small brushes. This was done with acrylic modeling paint.

Summer Art part 1

This is the first part an overview of the art I have created this summer. I am beginning with my wood drawings/paintings. I started the summer off thinking about my memories. I began a series of palm sized pastel drawings with acrylic paint on wood. After the first few I realized that I had resolved some of these bad memories and moved on to other work. The first is actually a happy memory of my dad. In the summer I can always find him in his garden and the biggest part is always his many tomato plants which he turns into juice in the fall. This was the beginning of a series of happy memories I was going to begin as an offset to the others. It is not quite finished. The next to represent my own insecurities and stress from work. The third represents my uncle's death. I was not there, but the image of his death haunts me. The last image is what my brother looked like when we almost lost him a few years ago. He was attacked and appeared at our house the next day looking like death warmed over with dark pools for eyes.

Painting 2

This art is from my painting 2 class, which I took the spring of 2009. With my love of wood I found myself ignoring canvas for all of my paintings. In this class I began to explore my role in society as a women.

The first piece, "Women" is acrylic on medium density fiberboard. The women in the piece is an exaggerated housewife. I was thinking of all the physical features that women are often expected to have in America, so I gave her gigantic breasts, a tiny waist, and small weak feet and wrists. She is offering both herself as well as her well cooked turkey to the viewer. In the back window, feminists protest her way of life. On her fridge I have taped some passed ideals of women.

The rest of the pieces displayed are a mixture of acrylic and charcoal on wood. I wanted to bring drawing into my paintings as I had brought paint into my past drawings. These paintings are a commentary on make up, its application, and its over application. As a tomboy I avoid make up, but I see it as a necessary evil in my future as the time I will have to go for job interviews looms closer. I find make up an odd ritual where women poke and prod at their faces for hours with small torture devices and toxic chemicals, only to improve their beauty just slightly. I also find the looks people make when applying make up hilarious. I remember laughing at myself as I went through the motions to put on a simple contact. As for making the women in the paintings especially gaudy, well I work in a library and find the fashion magazines passing through my fingers onto the shelves. These poor models often have ridiculous amounts of makeup plastered on their faces.

Art from Printmaking

During the fall semester of 2008 I was taking a woodblock printmaking class as well as my life drawing class. As I am about to embark on my last life drawing class this fall of 2009 and my senior art show, I would like to begin by looking back on my previous work. One influence on my work by this class, and my drawing 3 class taught by the same professor, is that I came to love wood. This despite the many cuts I received through late nights carving into wood. I also spent much of the class in a state of self exploration. I found myself the subject in many ways of many of my prints.