more painting things

Paintings from Art Center.  I forget for what class and for whose class and who was with me in the which class.  

They might actually have been from the workshops.

 

These funny little abstracts are from the end of a painting day.
I hate throwing away leftover oil paint, but I hate saving it too (it gets a weird consistency).
So I started doing smaller alternate portraits on a sketch pad or spare canvas to try to use up all the paint.
Confession: sometimes I like the caricatures better than I like the portraits.

I love painting.  

medium: oils, predominantly.

painting things

Figurative paintings from ye ol' Art Center days past. 

I forget which classes these were for.  My memory failing is not to be interpreted as subtext or subconscious inner-workings (though would I be conscious of it, if it were?) -- it's more likely the accumulation of too much time passing, too many faces blurring, and the privilege of too many great teachers in too many great classes imparting onto us the singular importance of the basics.  As it should be, I believe.   

mediums: oil (maybe acrylics) on probably canvas.

Whencesoe'er I came...

This baby we christened Octobook.

Jackie came over one day with this beautifully-engineered little thing and entrusted him into my care.

He was....challenging. Stubborn. Refused to submit to my authority. Sigh.
But I love this little guy.

You do your best to prepare the little ones for the real world and, with all your advanced worldly experience, you believe you've done what you can.

You reasonably expect your progeny to see clearly the path you've laid before them and to reverently partake of the wisdom you freely give--until, bit-by-bit, your carefully laid plans unravel and the wee little thing takes hold of his ever-strengthening faculties, dismisses your unsolicited assistance, and (by the power of his own fierce conviction) becomes a thing you could not have foreseen, could not have contrived, and would not have wanted to try to foresee or contrive if you could do it all over again because that would only ruin the delight of the surprise.

And so the artist finds herself a master, leading the vision, yet also, a servant, paradoxically, being led by it.

Whenceso'er I came / Whereso'er I go

The quote is from Moby Dick.

I pitched it to Jackie and she approved. I think it appropriately embodies the paradox of a character being led on by Fate while retaining his agency as a Hero--ever-willful and carving his own path; Fate be damned. It sounds contradictory and yet there it be. We demand that the Universe be linear, and the Universe, in turn, says "Screw you, puny human."

Who can fathom it.

We only cared to make 50, signed and sealed. You can purchase them here on Jackie's etsy shop. Object is smaller than it appears (a 3.5' square) but a warning: this is a very serious pop-up--not for the faint of heart.

Update (14.08.02): as of this week, Octobook is sold out (Comic-con 2014 was its fated last appearance). Alas! It's time has come to an end. They've all found good homes, I'd like to think, and I hope for their bright futures.

medium: watercolor scanned and re-printed to cut, folded, and packaged between two slices of book board.

holiday vii: christmas 2014 and some miscellany

Illustrious Colleague and I repeated last year's endeavors for this past Christmas' warm and fuzzy sharing and holiday cheer and all that crap.

This year it was a holiday version of an old favorite.

Again, Illustrious Colleague did the hard engineering part and I did the fun designing part. She says she prefers the engineering over the illustrating, but, in my myopic microcosm, I cannot comprehend people not liking the things I like and liking the things I don't like.

It's an "old favorite" because this was our first version. Think of the santa card as "Carriage Pop-up 2.0: the Holiday Edition."

The reindeer also propagated.

I may or may not have slipped them an aphrodisiac.

If you want any of the above, you may go bother Illustrious Colleague about it on her Etsy shop.
In retrospect, I probably should've blogged all this before the holiday season, but I can't seem to bring myself to care.

medium: sketches mostly done in pencil. some digital. everything else i forget....it's been a while.

2½-D!

Once a week for the past ten weeks, I had the inordinate pleasure of attending Motivarti's summer class Story in a Picture, which was taught by one of my favorite teachers from Art Center.  

This was the final I submitted to class: a triptych done with a neat technique I picked up from another artist that the teacher dubbed 2½-D.

Ha! I like it. 2½-D it is.

medium: pencil, digital, paper (in that order)

meet the gorgons

At Comic-con, our table was in between this guy and these guys--
which subsequently inspired this:

 

medium: pencil and marker and some ink here and there.....

WonderCon 2013: a debut

WonderCon 2013 was not only my debut into the convention scene: it was the debut of the first official collaboration between Helen Yoon and aforementioned illustrious colleague, Jackie Huang.

What does a collaboration between an illustrator and a pop-up engineer entail, you ask?

Well let me tell you!

Illustrious colleague goes to her studio and works industriously and illustriously to deliver me something that will function properly in her pop-up vision, like so:

And then professional illustrator will do some bibbity-bobbity-boo, like so:

And the hope is to create a product that both of us are proud of and will add a little charm to the quiet lives of  our viewership, like so:

Are you charmed, dear Viewership?  We hope so!

If you are interested in purchasing our first-ever collaboration, you can go to illustrious colleague's etsy shop and bother her about.  

You can also read her version of the events in question on her blog.