Ferdinand/ilu & ilu2.

This is a sketch of one of the rowdy boys for the Ferdinand painting. I added one of my trademark animal headdresses to him after I scanned the sketch at this stage, turning him into the feral bear of the group. I am debating what the age of the boys in the painting should be...I think 10-12 year olds would be a good source for the theme of the work, but I'm drawn to younger boys as well.



This is an assignment for Painting 2. The focus is limitation of the colors in our palette. We are limited to 9, but I decided to take it far by only using color in the water that surrounds the houses. I am figuring out things like placement and form as I go, which is not always the best approach, but as a painter it's the most common one to stick with. After taking a short hiatus from oil painting, I'm feeling refreshed and ready to come back to it. It feels good to directly integrate my pen drawings into this oil setting. I'm anxious to see how the final product turns out. I'm hoping for a good response during critique.

I will be going to SCRAP tomorrow to pick up materials to start making studies for my hansel/gretel book house. I am hoping that the gathering of materials will help to form a mental composition for the piece. I have a feeling that I'm going to want to do something similar to the ilu/ilu2 painting in the sense that I'll be combining media in a sharp, direct way. The eye will jump off the edge of the found materials to the painted oil landscape that surrounds the sculpture. I can already tell that this painting will take a lot of trial and error.

Getting back to the drawing board.

For my second and third paintings, I'll be using the Grimms' Hansel and Gretel and Munro Leaf's "Ferdinand."


My preliminary idea for the Hansel and Gretel painting is to completely rework a major element of the story. In the tale, the children seek solace in a cottage made completely of candy and chocolate. My idea is to transform the candy house into a house of discarded books. The symbolism behind this lies in the current budget crisis affecting the country--more locally, the CSU budget.


hansel and gretel, illustrated by jen corace

I am still figuring out what media would best suit this project. The idea of painting every individual book sounds pretty painstaking, and not in a way that I think would truly add to the overall work. As of right now, I'm thinking that I will paint everything in the landscape in oil and construct the house out of ink drawings, found pages, and cutouts that I will cut and form into the panels of a house. In creating the house out of various textures, I would hope to reflect a theme of the loss of materiality as well as access to educational resources.



this is similar to the composition i'm thinking of for this piece.

The idea of juxtaposing my graphic style directly into my oily representational one intrigues me. My aim is to start integrating my painting and sketching styles into one organized system that I can stick to. I am admittedly struggling with trying to remain cohesive and committed to my ideas, and I am pretty sure that these ideas will have to be drafted out several times before I figure out something successful. This painting isn't coming as easily to me as Little Red did, but I think that means I'm doing something right.

Another important aspect of this painting is that I don't plan to have any figures in the composition at all. This will be an interesting switch for me.

I plan to go to SCRAP, Goodwill, and other thrift stores on Monday to pick up material to start testing out my ideas.

***

Ferdinand is very much in the mental/preliminary stage. I absolutely love this tale. So much, in fact, that I don't think I'd need to modernize or torque any elements of the story at all. I want to bring back my exploration of human nature vs. animal nature (represented through animal headdresses, which is a surprisingly common symbol in local illustration these days. Here are some examples/inspirational works that have guided me towards my animal/portrait combos.)


charmaine olivia

jen corace




I imagine a panoramic panel of 3-4 boys, obviously friends, who are facing front and showing off their scuffed faces. Maybe a black eye or two. You know how boys are. I'd want to have little Ferdinand set off a bit from the other boys, possibly turning away slightly, but not enough to completely hide his face from view. The other boys' headdresses would represent more feral creatures with bright, saturated fur colors, while Ferdinand's bull will have a soft, sensitive expression and will be more muted in hue and value.


carson ellis

I will put up drafts and sketches of these ideas as soon as I create them!

Little Red-Process.

This summer I was invited to participate in a group show that was centered around the theme of folklore. I chose to take the route of childhood fables & folktales, and the first one that popped into my head was Little Red Riding Hood. I wanted to take this famous tale and apply it to modern times. The 2000s have seen their fair share of creature lore, what with 8 million different vampire series novels being published and werewolves setting trends for new television shows. Archaic tales like Little Red and the Three Little Pigs are often thought of as cautionary tales for young ones, and there's an interesting dichotomy between the heedful voices of Grimm and Aesop and the hyper-sexualized, titillating romance of Meyers' Twilight series.

The Big Bad Wolf really intrigues me. I wanted to flip his shady stereotype into something more romanticized without being awkwardly sexual. In my version of Little Red, the girl is aware of his suspicious nature, but chooses to walk with him and to know him despite his harsh exterior.

This is kind of a cheesy idea, but it made for a pretty substantial painting. I really took time to sketch this one out and take each choice into consideration.

missing updates

forgot to post these a while back.

new stuff!

This is my most recent piece, "Women of the Opry". It's a submission for this spring's De Young College Night, and the theme is Americana. I almost backed out of it, but I would have totally regretted missing out on such an awesome theme. Hopefully I didn't half-ass this so bad that I don't get in.

New Shit.

Well it's finally the end of the semester, which means I will be doing a lot more posting (I promise). I thought I'd start by showing you some stuff I've been doing for school these past few months....mainly paintings, and one animation.