flippity flop 3, in grisaille, Q. Cassetti, 2011
So working on the technique of these things. The bolder the lines, I find it getting harder to make them interesting in color, but the grisaille works (at least for me). I could color this. These images are different than the memento mori images, using techniques from the Home Sweet Home body of work last year around this time. As always, color stumps me, so doing it is pushing the old girl along to see if the images evolve and snap more with the color than just plain black and white which is my “go to” and safe place. The original line drawing (bottom) is where I started, took it to color (I’ll post, but am not thrilled with it), back to reworking in greys (top). The image is drawn in my moleskine (A4), with sharpie pens, and new copic brush pen (nice). Original sketch done in verithin photoblue pencil. Verysharp please. Then, I scan it in, retouch the half and then flop. Then I make another one, (negative) on another field…and cut and paste between the two. Pretty crafty…all we need is the virtual gluestick.
I am pondering….”Is it better to get an undergraduate degree in art/visual art from a liberal arts school if you know you want art? or is it better to go to a for real Art School?”. I have landed on the side of get the liberal arts education and draw like no one’s business. Learn to write. Learn some skills directly related to art, but also develop interests that are the sources for content, for inspiration, for further learning. Learn to learn. Get the spark. Focus happens for us all…why cramp your style by focusing down so quickly? Why get stuck in a groove too quickly. You might create a hybrid that can change you and or the world. You could find content in DNA and it can inform your art, your films, your stories. You never know. Mark Zuckerberg did not go to school to create Facebook. He learned to learn….and with the climate today with what a job, what work is— who knows if you can learn how to be something when the terraine is shifting in such wonderful and interesting ways. What with Etsy and the money one can make at short pops during the year…making a living is not limited to a nine to five at a Fortune 100 with your “work/life/balance” defined, and your personality questioned insofar as wheither you are good or bad. There is so much out there in this wide world, focusing down is safe insofar as the “job”, but isnt your time on this plain so, so much more?
I need to get on the ball and look at summer programs for the babies. It would be great to find something for Mr. Boy that might be related to photography or something else. Kitty, art. Maybe Illustration Academy (did you know its not in Florida anymore?). Here is what they say:
“The Illustration Academy’s 2011 summer program will be held in one location, Kansas City, MO. The Illustration Academy is now operating as a Special Program within The Art Department’s (TAD) Illustration Major. The 2011 Illustration Academy will be held in the TAD studios (Pods) that have been developed to accommodate the immersion component of TAD.
The Illustration Academy will begin June 12th and run through July 8th. The same stellar professionals will make up The Illustration Academy Faculty. It is a major advantage to have the Academy in our own space once again. We are presently speaking with a major convention hotel about housing for the Academy students and instructors. “
I have sauce bubbling away while two testosterone filled juniors bellow and moan over this shoot em up game they are playing on the t.v. There was drum music for about an hour and now we have breaktime with chocolate milk and gunplay. Alex had the school play practice today. Skiing (in the rain?) tomorrow.
Rob and I came back from trolling the big box stores for bathroom light fixtures and sinks. We were amazed by the sheet flooring that is out today that mimic the real thing wonderfully amazingly. I have a hankering for a deep brown parquet…which is really, really convincing though the cork was pretty spectacular too. We are finishing up Kitty’s bathroom and the yellow bathroom (one of the original 3) is having all the acid yellow tile ripped off the walls (this is an amazing acid yellow as nothing “went with it”—-we tested colors galore to a big bad yuck) and the dropped ceiling trashed. It is quite spectacular. All the fixures stay (except the cheap vanity) and we are looking at linoleum as we really do not want to have to shim all the plumbing to raise it for tile (as well as the thresholds and the contact with the tub). So, its a refit…and this luscious, believable, chocolate parquet would make it a stage set for glamour. We are thinking of moving one of the chandeliers (the house came with three yucky ones) into the space as we have the headroom…and it would be great. Only problem as I can see it, is that one chandelier is just not enough. Three? Five? At different heights? Now we are talking.
Mardi Gras illustrations fill my thin skull. I think I need to move towards doing a few.
Later.