Monday, January 31, 2011

Elyse, start to finish

 THE WIND WAS LIKE MUSIC IN HER HAIR (acrylic on wood panel 2011)

Hey, I thought it might be interesting to document the progression of this piece from start to finish, it is one of 3 paintings to be done from a photo that had been taken by myself for my issues of representation class.  The piece i believe is 18x24 acrylic on wood panel.  have been working on it for more than a week now, I'd say about a total of 20 hours including breaks.















omigod i left my house and did stuff

So... actually went out to some stuff this weekend.  Second weekend in a row... woot.  Went with Joey and his friend daniela, first we went to bookhou it was not actually their work but some featured designers.  I dunno, it was crowded as hell, a cool map of canada... a neat blow up chair.   Not really my style though. Then we headed to Made they had the apartment above the shop all set up with merchandise/ art. MADE at home Some of the rooms were more exciting than others, but it was pretty neat. There was some work from a woman that is part of Joey's study named kerry croghan she is super super sweet, and does fun feltwork, and sweet nature prints.  The shop was really awesome too. I pretty much wanted everything.  But way to pricey for my blood. Awesome branch kitchen chairs that went for $1500 each and cool wood grain hanging lamps, everything was awesome.  Then we went to Come up to my room at the gladstone.
It was pretty sweet. Packed, pretty loud, but fun for sure. Mostly really awesome stuff. A room with little.. sensor lights of some sort that twinkled like starts and was somehow hooked up to an i pod touch screen.  An abandoned dinner party, a room full of crocheted web-work, a room that looked like a cross between being under and ship's deck and a tree house, lots of sweet stuff.  A really awesome room in which a girl named Amanda had sewn 2D near life size versions of all the furniture in her living room into solvy and hung the transparent work from the ceiling how it was arranged in real life.
Pretty cool.
Today we checked out the work of one of my profs at OCAD jj lee at loop gallery
She has a series of narrative paintings that are being used in a children's book about a Turtle ... my bad TORTOISE for Ch'u.  They were pretty cute, and lots of cool collage and textures incorporated in the paintings.  After that checked out show and tell gallery 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

friday night blogging

Had a fairly busy, productive week at school, i meant to write a blog a week ago but it seems not to have happened. Last saturday went to the Kim Dorland opening at angel gallery, it was pretty sweet. Pictures of his work online arent as impressive as the actual pieces in person which are alot larger than you think, he does lots of trees and uses glow in the dark paint, so ... often painting trees and even more often using black light paints I was impressed.  He is a pretty young artist, who is now doing really well for himself.  I was both encouraged, inspired, and totally envious.

Spent most of my time this week working on a portrait of my friend Elyse, I will post the pics when it is finally completed... almost there.

 Close up of a fun textural encaustic piece

 posted an earlier version of this piece a couple blogs back, this is the completed version, and i like it quite a bit better like this.  Its done with encaustic wax on an old dresser drawer
 full version of the close up piece above...
 better picture of an encaustic jelly fish painting I posted a couple of blogs back.

You may ask MIKE: why all the gay art lately?  WELL ... why not?  Also, I plan to get a booth at this years pride if all goes well, and want a large body of reasonably priced pieces for it.
 Sewing into paper
 This is not specifically gay, I have a figurative painting class... which means its all in class work from live models, every class we paint a 40x30 oil painting... this was last weeks
 bear dude taking a piss, sewn onto paper and burnt.
 gel transfer of the same bear dude, sewed fabric onto transfer
gel transfer, all the line work is sewn into it.

Hung out with my friend jade tonight, ate yummy nachos, and gave her a sexy little tattoo on the side of her ribs... it was interesting, the ink did not disperse the same there as it does on fleshier places like legs.  Good to know, will post a pic once she heals a little.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

freezing cold tattoo, porn, gel transfers and goodtimes

Starting to get back into the swing of school, pretty excited about certain upcoming projects. 
Talked to my prof about my modern art mark.  turns out i did fairly decently but because of attendance I got a shitty mark.  serves me right.
So i was gonna make sure i went to all my classes this semester and I already missed one tonight.  I thought it started at 6:30 but it actually started at 5:30 so there was little point in going.

Instead I dragged a wet oil painting home on public transit, got paint all over my coat, and discovered that there is no heat at all in the house I live, and the landlord is missing in action.  BOOOO. 

On the bright side here are some pics of new stuff.

 Tattoo I did for a friend, obviously Shaggy and Scooby doo
 Joey found a mouse skeleton so I stuck it to a stained wood panel and painted a black light mouse angel...  I like this quite alot, simple cute and creepy.   Now i must find more skeletons
 Dude sucking his own dick... I figured why not, its a sewn image onto a bark type paper then mounted on a panel... kinda wish I hadnt have added a glaze finish to it.  Bit too shiny
 Ring Ring Ring Banana phone   gel transfer on wood panel
 transfer of a photo I took of a cracked and weathered old lawn ornament at my parents house, added button for an eye some tree bits, self leveling gel and some paint/marker detail.

My current mess.


Saturday, January 15, 2011

fall semester

I already have a couple smaller pieces near completion for the new semester so i thought i should maybe post some stuff from the semester that just ended.

It was not my favourite semester ever. I had 5 classes. History of Modern art monday mornings at 8:30am.  horrific.  most days i stayed in bed.  There were pod casts.  Thank god apple seems to own OCAD, I dunno, I am still trying to fight the mark in that class.  I've never been one to contest a mark... but I felt confidant about the mid term, i got 68% on the essay ... so i figured with the what i thought good mid term, and an ok final exam i could get it to 70.  I have never gotten anything less than a B which from what I can tell is pretty sweet.  And i really wanted to keep it that way.  I ended up with a 63% i have no idea how i studied for the exam didnt think I did that bad.  I have not seen my midterm or final exam and have in no way found the prof helpful in communicating, soon my mark will be frozen and I am bitter. 

Also had an image metaphor class... all the projects were right up my ally, too early in the morning but I was happy with it.  Was expecting a bit higher of a mark but shouldn't complain too much.
Had Contemporary Issues. Far too many art critic articles to mean, and a million journal responses, but the studio projects were totally open and i took the chance to do textile work, which was really exciting for me, and over all I actually really liked the class. 
Had an into to sociology class.  It was fine, completely irrelevant and sort of a joke but the prof was nice and for what it was, it really wasnt that bad.
I also had a processes class where we did metal point drawing, egg tempera paintings -GROSS- i will never paint with egg again its official. also oil glazing and encaustic.  The encaustic was frustrating at first super messy but ultimately really awesome, again could have gotten better marks, but I can't complain too much, and there was some pretty deserving work from others in the class, sorta seemed geared towards those who work in abstraction I thought.  but... whatevs

SOME HIGHLIGHTS
 This tree print was just for fun, used the tree for the pillow project... you can see the piece if you scroll a couple entries back
 Good angel (the assignment was to due 2 versions of a tarot card) admittedly this is lame
 Angel of death... sadly i took this pose DIRECTLY from an episode of Next top model.
 doorknob, oil... not the best picture





 Encaustic jellyfish... final piece is a bit different than this, but I haven't taken a more recent photo
 encaustic, found object collage, leaves, teeth, pussy willows, grass, feathers, postage stamps, graphite, acorn

 encaustic

 This piece above also ended up differently... in my opinion better, now that i am looking at this version
 watercolour of Joey
 Shadow box comprised of all hand dyed fabric, cut out and sewn into a multi layered almost diorama like piece.... scuba diver is acrylic on foam board
egg tempera.. which was vile, useless, and unenjoyable... OH and highly sought after by cats.
Templin gardens, good ole Fergus Ontario