Covered in Paint

I’m going to have to quit posting finished pieces soon, otherwise all the work that goes up at Flightpath will have been seen already. But if I keep finishing at this rate I should have twice what I need. (Yeah, cause I always have four days off in a row to do art. Pfft.)

There’s a bit of bleed room around it for the frame, so it looks a little odd as a JPG but this is what happens after…Well, I guess I started working on this image from the last post about three hours ago. It goes through a LOT of steps to get here. The Photoshop file has about ten layers that didn’t make it into the final image. Makes for a lot of options to run through and a very large file, that sometimes makes my computer really cranky. (And this is why I have a 1TB external hard drive.) I’m still not totally sold on the brightness/opacity levels. My eyes are starting to vibrate though. Dang limits of the human body.

Now that everyone has to return to reality with hangovers and resolutions, I’ve made myself a big ol’ pot of coffee and am finally deciding on which pieces to include in my TBD show at the Flightpath Coffee House. I’ve got 11 pieces in varying degrees of completion, and I’m hoping to have 20-25. Show is sometime this summer ideally, so I think I can do it.

The awesomest part is, I happened to meet someone recently who is familiar with making frames, which is exactly what I wanted to do! None of those Ikea frames for me thanks. I found some amazing old molding at a junkyard, and I think it would suit my work way better.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit rusty after my holiday coma. This is a piece I started the other day. I thought everything would be easier once I scanned my entire catalog and could easily pick from the images, but I had to scan them at such a high resolution that going through all my scans… you know what? Blah blah blah cat. Go finish some art.

some adjustments on impatience and a new piece! and it only took four days this time! (i’m assuming the stress and turmoil have achieved perfect levels in my life.) this new one is actually the one i started ages ago and tried to force it, and it wound up being the 1GB file? yeah, that one. it’s still a pretty huge file, and i need to do some adjusting to it, but i’m starting to be able to revisit pieces and make them better or finish them. in the past, i would go into the zone and i would force myself to finish art. sometimes, it would work, and other times it was disastrous, but i digress. here’s “cleaning day”:

there’s definitely room for adjustments, but i think it needs hand done elements, so at a later date. and speaking of hand-done elements:

found this beauty in an old sketchbook. i’m not sure if i want to finish it digitally or physically, but with the puppy’s penchant for chewing notebooks, i figured a scan was a good idea.

“notebooksh are delish, what?!?”

and now, to watch american horror story until i have nightmares, because i’m an ADULT. (who totally doesn’t own a night light.)

This is by no means art, but I’ve spent all morning scanning to add to my collection of images that I can draw from, and I’m on the search for more right now on e-bay.

That’s probably the one thing I miss about Philadelphia: the thrift stores. Everything was so awesome, and because no one in Philly was cool and realized that this stuff was awesome, it was super cheap. Here in Austin, everyone is all hip or whatever and I can’t find vintage photos for less than 3$ a pop. (3 for 1$ in Philly! WTF.)

So here’s some of what I’ve added to my arsenal and I look forward to using it.

One of my favorite blogs, Hyperbole and a Half, went defunct about a year ago. This was right after the author announced that she had received a book deal (which I and all of her other fans were super excited about.) But the posts had diminished in frequency until the very last post. This particular post was about depression and how she feels terrible to feel terrible, because she didn’t have it all that bad. And I haven’t seen anything since. Allie Brosh come back! We miss you! We’ll forgive your absence! And here’s why:

I GET IT, GURRRLLL.

This is the first time in a month I’m updating here, and I call it Reminders because for the last month I haven’t been able to accomplish any good art work and it’s been killing me. Oh, it’s not for lack of trying. There is a 1GB (you read correctly, not 200MB, not 500MB… 1GB) PSD file on my computer right now with about 40 layers that I spent four days fucking with, trying to get it right. There were just too many layers and each one worked with various others in different ways but in order to make them do so I’d have to move them and play with the saturation and color levels and then I thought what about type and then it was oh, what if I add…ACK!

As an artist, especially one who creates best out of turmoil and uncertainty, it’s pretty hard to create when you’re not depressed enough, or when you’re too depressed. It’s a very fine line. And then, to top it all off, you walk past your art set-up every day and get even MORE depressed to be neglecting it!

Oh! You’ve reached that perfect level of depression! Or so you think. So you sit down and you put 40 layers together and argue with it for days until you’re arguing with yourself like “WHY CAN’T I MAKE IT WORK?!? It must be cause I SUCK.”
And BLAMMO. You’ve crossed that fine line and all you want to do is sit on the couch in yer underoos eating greasy popcorn watching M*A*S*H re-runs. (That may or may not be what I do. I plead the fifth.)

It’s a vicious cycle, so I’m glad I pretty much forced myself to work through this one, even if it is simple. It’s made me pretty grateful to have the tools necessary to do so.

So, you get the point. Art is hard. (Thanks, Cursive…. (One of the reasons I’ll probably not update again for about three weeks. I’ll be at Fun Fun Fun next weekend, and in order to work enough around it I’m pulling some crazy hours.) Sometimes, it’s important to appreciate other people’s art work as much as it is to make yours.)

Evidently, midnight is when I turn into a pumpkin and have to abandon projects even if they’re not done. Some good progress on this little guy here, which came literally out of nowhere, but the brain has turned to mush and I’m overthinking and I won’t waste my next two hours searching fruitlessly for the next step. It’ll come to me, always does. I haven’t really got a good title for him right now, but I’m affectionately referring to him as Baby Godzilla on account of the size/framing.

Apparently, my artwork is DELICIOUS, because my dogs have eaten this piece. It’s mildly devastating (I was never fully enamored with this piece, but it came from somewhere very special and was my first piece in a long time a while ago.) I have no hi-res scans of it, and this cleaned up version is from a phone photo, which I feel does not do it justice.

From here on out, hi-res scans of EVERYTHING, IMMEDIATELY.

Fare thee well, art. I won’t say you’re going to a better place, because I’ve smelled my dog’s breath.

Finally cleaning up some of my scans to put them into use on the new site. Much better than phone photos, I’ll say.

More to come.