Day 3

ehhhhh. I'm awake. Feels like pulling a bandaid. Gotta hop out of bed quick.

But here, for your enjoyment:

MEDICAL MODEL PART II

Finally I finished these Cervix Medical Models. This was a really long process! It took a very long time to figure out exactly what materials I needed to use for the model itself so that it can be clamped and sewn into like real flesh.. and still be transparent enough to see into the pink "core" area..

The awesome part has been creating the stand for it, which you saw in my previous medical model post. In one of the pictures you see liquid silicone being poured into a mold that I made.. It takes about 1 day for it to "cure" and become its mature, bendy silicone self.

For you DIYers, I figured out how to make custom plastic packaging using sandwich bags and a woodburning kit. There's a picture of it below - but the trick is to pick out a woodburning tip that is somewhat rounded yet pointy (not too sharp) There needs to be enough surface area in contact with the sheets of plastic so that they melt together instead of just being cut. The next important part is that the two pieces of plastic are TOUCHING eachother.. If there is any air between the plastic sheets, it won't melt together, it will just cut. I used a metal chopstick to hold the sheets in place, and I ended up making pretty cool packages for my silicone models (which I wanted to keep very clean in transit). Hope you like! - I'm super proud

Day 2

Gah. I'm awake. It burns.

Here's the new addition from last night though. I added the beginnings of her skin tone. I see that my lighting needs to be fixed in places all around. I don't know if there's an actual term for this, but there's this point you can get to with oil paint where the painting can't take any more white paint. For instance, the paint was so thick and wet last night that I couldn't make a proper highlight on her shoulder any more, if I try to blend the white, it just gets absorbed into the base color. If I decided to blend green into the skin or something, it would have blended just fine. I just need to wait until it dries a little - its so hot in my room it should be ready only after a few hours.

DAILY INSPIRATION Day 1

Herbert Baglione - Street Artist. I love how he uses black, white and gold.

TODAY'S CREATION day 1

This is my current project. It’s about 2.5' x 4' in size.. This has gone through a full spectrum of steps, which is actually quite helpful. This was originally a sketch of mine which I created one morning at a self -improvement seminar. I scanned it and brought it into Photoshop where I used my wacom tablet to choose my colors and create a digital painting. This was a great way to figure out my values & hues – which makes creating my final painting so much easier – I don’t have any guesswork, I just have to copy what I’ve already done. I scored an old-school overhead projector (which needs transparacy sheets). I traced my original sketch and projected it onto my hardboard canvas (prepped with clear gesso). I really love hardboard because I can get some very fine gradients and detailed lines that I just can’t replicate with a textured surface like canvas. I’ll keep you posted.

WHY SAY NO?

I created this piece on the letterpress based on a quote that my friend Eli says “why say no when you can say yes” –Briefly after I learned of this quote, I watched the movie Yes Man with Jim Carrey and was inspired to create this poster.

It says “Why say no When you can say yes? Life is so much fun when you say yes.” The characters are created on one big lineoleum block that I carved into. I pressed it using a letterpress, then created the type afterwards using wooden block type. I was actually really limited to that particlar typeface.. All the other faces didn’t have enough letters in the size that I needed, but I think it turned out alright anyways.

Recently I got to show it at a small gallery space in San Francisco along with other students/artists in the “bookarts” category. There were some absolutely incredible pieces there, books are a beautiful way to use art to tell a story – artist books don’t necessarily need to be coherent, but they definitely should be captivating.

MURAL FOR MY BROTHER

My brother recently moved into a house with his roommate. I received the great invitation to be their commissioned muralist. “Paint on any wall you want! Paint whatever you want!” I find that when requested to do just “anything” I tend to resort to familiar concepts from my past. In this case, it was a tribute to Arizona where my brother and I did a lot of our growing up.

I’ve included the process from my thumbnail to completion. I actually finished it in one sitting lasting 6 hours -which is pretty quick for a large scale painting, strangely it looks so much like a part of the house that many people don’t notice it when they walk in. I’m excited to use the space and be a little more adventurous with my next mural there.

Misty mountains repeating into the distance has always been an image that moves me. The differences in color created by the thickness and amount of atmosphere in between the viewer and the mountain. I looked up pictures of cactus flowers on my phone while I was there, creating those on the fly.