A Few New Faces

Hey everyone,

I'm busy trying to finish my Sketchbook Project before the deadline, as well as finishing some scholarship essays, and preparing to go out of town, so this is going to be a short update. I just wanted to share a few of the art pieces that I've done over my break thus far.

These are the newest prospective art pieces for my AP Studio Art Portfolio.

 

This will be my last post of this year, which will mark the (almost) year anniversary of my blog. I can't wait to keep sharing my creative endeavors in the year to come.

Happy (almost) New Year, everyone!

A 2012 Video

Hello all,

I am finally on winter break!

And this means that I have finally had some time to actually do some creative things just for fun. But I finished the semester being pretty sick, so I haven't actually been feeling up to really creating.

But as I've been recovering, I started organizing all of the files on my external hard drive and found a fair amount of clips that I have never used for anything. So, I stitched together a video using all of the random clips of unused video from 2012, and I think it shows a little bit of what I've been up to this year. The songs used are by Don DiLego and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

I really liked being able to look at all of this film from the year, and I think that in the upcoming year I may try to bring my camera with me on more of my adventures. Hopefully next year I'll have another one of these videos to share!

You can watch it here:
https://vimeo.com/56230607


And if you're interested in checking out more of my videos, you can find them here:
http://vimeo.com/user10290335/videos

I hope that you all are having a lovely holiday season!

Ties, ties, ties!

This month has been a crazy flurry of stress for me. My current state of applying for college has been keeping me quite busy, as I juggle my time with both applications and school work. Art has moved from being a fun, creative outlet to yet another component of stress. I have deadlines to follow for my AP Studio Art Portfolio, the looming Janurary 15th deadline for The Sketchbook Project, as well as a separate Moon Journal/Sketchbook that I am trying to make an entry in every day. So, in my free time over the past two months, I have taken on a new project that involves no actual deadlines or any requirement to ever be finished. It exists as a means for me to have an art-related project that is simply for my own entertainment and stress relief. And now that I have completed a few of the paintings, I would like to share with you the first four pieces in my series of nebula ties.

Hair and Space

Hello all!

Since my last post, I have created a lot a of artwork. I'm excited to share a new development with some paintings of mine with all with you, but I need to make sure that the concept behind it all is something I want to stick with before I make it all public. However, I did make a small video showing the process to make one of these paintings. The artwork itself is a mixed media piece consisting of pen and ink, watercolor, and acrylic paint. You can find it here: https://vimeo.com/52904287. The song used in the video is Lemonade by CocoRosie. Enjoy!

In other news, my sketchbook is coming along quite well, but I can't help but make comparisons between this year's and last year's books, which is shaking my confidence a little bit. I feel like I have changed a lot as an artist, and I am looking forward to getting some other opinions on how they compare. But, that will have to wait until it's finished!

I've also started painting some nebula ties, which I will post about soon! I can't wait to update on my other projects as they continue to evolve!

An October Update

Hello again!

It's been a while, but I'm going to try to update more regularly. I've been quite busy, with many different endeavors--including a production of The Rocky Horror Show, making glass beads, making some short films, working on college applications, as well as trying to create artwork that I'm proud of for my AP portfolio.

I have been working on my AP Studio Art Portfolio quite a bit, playing around a lot with patterns and style, and trying to stay on schedule with completing my work.
This is a watercolor that I've been working on, and I'm not sure yet if I like it or not.

Also, guess what came in the mail?

I'm excited to get started.

Farewell to Summer

I took a break off from blogging for the majority of the summer for the sole reason that I was unable to finish any of my artistic endeavors.

I started many projects, but finished nothing. This is not to say that I was unproductive this summer--I kept myself incredibly busy and filled a journal with many sketches and ideas. I just had no motivation to do anything with my ideas. When it came down to assembling materials and mustering the technical skills to execute it, I was ready to move on to a new idea.

Now, as I look at starting into my third week of school, I have all of the motivation I could ever need to be creative, simply because I have no desire to do my calculus homework. I'm constantly struck by how creativity often comes to me in waves, and how inconvenient that can be at certain times.

But despite the fact that I have very few completed drawings or paintings from the summer to show, I have collected some other things to share.

First off, I took a lot of photographs this summer in both individual and stop-motion form. I've realized that I haven't really shared any photographs of things that aren't my artwork, and I would like to change that.

So, here are some of my favorite photographs that I took this summer.

Jewelry from a day trip to Santa Fe

Red jellyfish at the Birch Aquarium

A routine visitor to our backyard. 

Delicious dessert from our trip to California.

In addition to these pictures, I was able to complete a few videos as well, this time with some friends as my subject. This was so much fun to film, and my friends enjoyed having a movie made of them. You can watch it on my vimeo account here:
https://vimeo.com/46941463

I had a lovely summer, filled with a lot of great memories. I'm sad that it's over, but I am excited to finally be in my senior year of high school. There is a lot of promise for creative endeavors to occur in the upcoming year, and I am very excited to share them all!

Keep a lookout for new posts!

Updates and Experiments

I am going to try and post more regularly, I promise!

Lately, I have been working on many projects--all of which include new experiments in painting and animation.

First off is a short stop motion test that I did, trying out a style of paper animation. Although this video is only three seconds long, it took me about three days to film. I learned a lot in the process, and I discovered ways to make the filming piece easier, as well as make the final product a bit more fluid. I really like being able to design and create my own puppets for the animation, though I learned that they need to be bigger in size to make moving them easier.
I'm very excited to play around more with paper animations!
You can watch the very short video here:
https://vimeo.com/44347001

Another thing that I have been working on is playing around with mixed media in my artwork. I am finding more and more that I really enjoy incorporating other mediums in my paintings, this time combining white sharpies, colored pencils, and watercolors.

Here is a picture of it:

Additionally, I have been very interested in the prospect of painting hats and incorporating different mediums in embellishments in the hats. Along with the hats, I've been playing around with trying to draw children's faces, which has been very challenging for me. I've only done a few sketches thus far, but I'll keep you all posted if I actually go through with executing this idea.
Regardless, here is one of my favorite hat-related sketches (and attempt at a child's face) that I've done so far:

Now, to conclude this massive post about all things art-related in my life, I will show you an in-process picture of a painting that I'm working on. This is a painting that I've been spending a lot of time planning, and I hope that my pre-painting efforts will end up to be rewarding. I think that I'm going to post some in-process pictures of this piece, and attempt a sort of photo-journal about my process with it. 
Here is the first glimpse at this painting:

You could even leave me a comment about what you think it's going to be a painting of--I'd love to hear your predictions!

Oh Blogspot, How I've Missed You

I kind of fell off the face of the planet for a while.

Things got really crazy with school--ACT, AP tests, final projects, final exams, plus all of the end of year awards and festivities--and being creative stopped being a priority for me.

But here I am now, on summer vacation, enjoying a bit of free time to relax and catch my breath after a crazy school year. And what am I doing? Extensively cleaning my room and editing all of the old pieces of videos that I found on my camera, while also beginning to make a plan to execute all of my creative projects.

So, this video that I'm including on this post is one that I finished editing today, but was actually filmed two or three weeks ago as I prepared a fruit plate to contribute to a drama banquet for my school. Although they were not my best carved watermelons, they were still a lot of fun to make and deserved to be documented!

Vimeo link:
https://vimeo.com/43138514

An Aquarium Adventure

A few days ago, I dragged my lovely sister with me to the aquarium so I could make a stop motion video. Although neither of us really had time to go spend a Thursday afternoon at the aquarium, I think it served as a nice break and a chance to get in a little bit of relaxation before going home to study for some big tests. It's been a busy few weeks for me, but I'm hopeful that the fast approaching Spring Break will give me a chance to get control of everything and really sit down and focus on finishing some projects of mine.

I simply adore going to the aquarium. I think fish are beautiful creatures and I like to just sit and watch them. I find that there is something a little eerie about the aquarium, because it is so quiet and there's so much movement. The colors are so bright, and they all move in different speeds and patterns--it's silent chaos. To me, the experience of sitting and watching them swim in different directions is hypnotizing and incredibly peaceful.

Now, I will admit that this post is much more about the video I created than writing about the actual experience of going to the Aquarium. This video is compiled of 1,152 individual images, with each image being about 1/12 of a second.

So, here is the link to the video!
http://vimeo.com/37903027

Never Underestimate the Power of The Dork Side

For every six-week grading period at my school, my math teacher assigns us a project. These have included poems about the quadratic formula and secret messages decoded through simplifying equations. And for this grading period, we were assigned to make a game about logarithms with a partner.

Now, I am very fortunate that a good friend of mine from my Nerd Herd is in that class with me, and we got together to make this game. After much observation of our teacher for the past semester, we learned that she is quite the Star Wars fan. And in no way trying to appeal to her interests with the hopes that she'd appreciate our creativity, we decided we would make a Star Wars themed board game about logarithms.

This proved to be more ridiculous than we imagined.

We started with our cards. There are three types--the Yoda Asks cards, the Fortuitous Cards, and the Final Battle Cards. The Yoda Asks cards were where we addressed all of the math concepts, and the other two types of cards were to add an element of chance to the game to make it more engaging.

We then set off to create the directions for the game, which simply brought us to the conclusion that if our game wasn't about logarithms and exponents, it could actually be incredibly appealing. That is not to say that logarithms are not entertaining, but I think an entire game based around them is rather daunting.

We then were able to start on the fun stuff, like making our board and the character pieces. This is what everything ended up looking like:

These are the contents of the game, color coded and all!

Logarithms and Exponents in Space. This is the outside of our box.

The math pieces and directions, both infused with Star Wars trivia and quotes.

Our groovy Millennium Falcon game board.

And finally, our awesome character pieces. 

I had a lot of fun with this project, and I'm beginning to appreciate why my math teacher has us do these projects. They all require us to blend math concepts with art and writing. This process helps to strengthen our grasp on the math portion because one cannot successfully create a game about logarithms if one does not understand how logarithms work. 

And I'll try to remind myself of this when I come home complaining the next time she assigns one of these six-weeks projects.

The Sketchbook Project

Well, after almost four months of working on it, my sketchbook was mailed off to New York.

For anyone who doesn't know what The Sketchbook Project is, here is the website:
http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject2012
Basically, it's a project in which you are sent a Sketchbook with a theme and then you have to send it back to them completed by a certain date after which, all of the sketchbooks go into a collection that goes on tour, and eventually are added into permanent residence at the Brooklyn Art Library.

I signed up for this project and received my Sketchbook in the middle of October and began working on it immediately. After some problems with the paper that the sketchbook came with (it was very flimsy and deteriorated when I put watercolors on it), I decided to rebind my sketchbook with different types of paper that would allow for more variety in my book. Along with this came the idea to film the creation of the sketchbook and put together some artistic documentation of the process.

After months of working on this book, I finally completed it two days before it needed to be postmarked and sent off. I then began the endeavor of scanning the entire book so I could have a copy of it, which took an extraordinarily long time. Then, I allowed my family to look at the book and give me their opinions and feedback. I then packaged and addressed it, and my mother sent it off for me the next day.

My sketchbook was sent away this past Monday, and since I finished it so close to the deadline, not many people got to see it. So, I began editing the footage I had taken while drawing and painting and I have completed my video.

Also, on a side note, I am very dissatisfied with the quality of video that blogspot supplies, so I have decided to make a Vimeo account, which will include the other videos that I've posted on blogspot.

Anyways, here is the link to the video. The songs used are Walking the Dog by Fun., Daylight by Matt and Kim, and Your Hand In Mine by Explosions In The Sky.

http://vimeo.com/36175008

Parting with the sketchbook wasn't as difficult as I expected it to be. I had envisioned that I would fall in love with the art and writing in my book and not want to send it away. But in reality, although I am content with the way it turned out, I am happy to let it go. I realized that in working on it for such a long time, I had funneled a lot of my feelings of the time into it, and in a way it was sort of like an artistic diary. I was glad to let that little chunk of my life become (hopefully) something beautiful that many people will look at and enjoy.

The Nebula Dress

These last few weeks have been crazy for me. I've been busy completing art projects, starting art projects, working on writing projects, planning my school schedule for next year, and simply trying to keep my head above the regular flow of homework. I have not been getting as much sleep as I would like, and my brain seems to be hyper-active and I'm stressing out to no end. But, two weekends ago I set aside my Saturday night to devote simply to being social and going to a school dance.

So let me just star by saying that I love nebulae.

This craze all started last winter when I stumbled across a Christopher Kane nebula dress in a magazine. But, I was absolutely distraught when I saw the incredibly high price of all of these nebula dresses. So, for the next few months I experimented with painting nebulae. This ranged from nebula backgrounds on paintings to creating a pair of shoes with nebula on them.

So after about a year of this obsession, I decided I would take on trying to paint a dress. I finished it on New Years Eve, and it made its first debut that night. 

 And here's the final product! I used a sponge to layer on the colors, and splattered white paint over the skirt for the stars. Then, I glued small rhinestones onto the skirt as well.

So a couple of weeks later, I went to a school dance with the boy next door and ended up having a really good time. I got many compliments on my dress and its originality. And after more than a year of being obsessed with nebula clothing, I have finally created a dress that I absolutely adore and want to wear everywhere.

"Gold Teeth And A Curse For This Town"

While looking through my camera's memory card for clips and images to use for my video documenting my work  on The Sketchbook Project, I came across some old pictures from when I went to the Balloon Fiesta back in October. I had forgotten all about the photographs I took and I had a lovely time looking back through them all this afternoon. A fair amount of my favorites were pictures that compiled into bits of stop-motion animations, so I decided I would put together a short little video of my favorite images and animation sequences.

Now, the moving images of this video are actually individual photographs, shot continuously at a rapid pace, then put onto my computer and into a sequence, played back at 8 frames per second. The other photographs, the still ones, are each set at around 2.3 seconds.

The title for this post, "gold teeth and a curse for this town" is the first line from the song New Slang by The Shins, which is also the song that I chose for the video. This band is a favorite of mine, and I am greatly looking forward to their new album coming out in March. This song is one that I heard back in 2007, and it has been in many playlists of mine since. Now, before this blog post becomes one of me describing my love for The Shins (which definitely could happen), I wanted to explain that this song reminds me of home, therefore I thought it would be very fitting for a video about the Balloon Fiesta, which I have witnessed almost every year.

Creative Frenzy

I have this need to create.

I want to form extraordinary pieces from ordinary things, to feel the ultimate joy in expressing myself in something beautiful. This need cuts through my ability to focus and disrupts my ability to be productive. My fingers are itching to start doodling in the margins of my textbook. I have a Moleskin notebook where I write and sketch things that inspire me, and it is practically oozing, whispering about ideas to me as I try to complete French homework.

Quelle plante menace l'existence de la planete du petit prince?


I can hear it. It's begging me to crack open it's worn spine and spill over the ideas that I haven't wanted to lose.

Pourquoi le petit prince voulait-il un mouton? 


Once I finish these questions on Le Petit Prince, I will start on an art project. I'm promising myself that as a form of motivation to finish this homework. I'm just not sure where to start. I have so many ideas circling through my brain and I can't decide which one to take out and put under a microscope before I transfer it into physical creation.

My ideas seem to be multiplying with my cells as they grow and divide. My need to cast away the French homework and open my box of art supplies taunts me as I try to repress the fact that every pore in my body is whispering to me about the promise of creating art that I will be proud of.

Bisecting the once tenacious nucleus of my being, I'm left with two debating halves of a whole.

The Bubble Time Lapse Video

I adore time lapse videos.

I have three that I'm working on right now, and I'm very hopeful that I'll have time to get around to finishing them. I think that time lapse videos are particularly intriguing with art because it shows the progress in a fast manner, with arms and paintbrushes rapidly flying, while the piece of art remains the constant focus.

This is a time lapse video I made of my process for making my bubble paintings. The song is Chicago by Sufjan Stevens, a personal favorite of mine.

Enjoy!

The Deadline Deviation

On December 22nd, after having been told about the competition from my art teacher, I decided I would participate in the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers' Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. My deadline for the project was January 6th.

I wrote a short story about a man who had to make a choice between responsibility and things that he loves, set into motion by his GPS failing him. After much editing, reconstruction, and proof-reading over my winter break, on the evening of January 5th, I was finished and content with the piece of writing I had created.

I also need to point out that I went back to school on the 4th, so at this time, I was also juggling the piles of homework that was, in my opinion, quite unnecessary.

So, there I was, the night before the official deadline, my writing was completed, and I was ready to submit it. Then, by some whimsical force that remains unknown to me, I decided I wanted to submit a piece of art as well. But, I didn't want to submit one of my paintings that was already finished. I wanted to create something new. I had an idea and I wanted to try it out. So I did.

Once that was finished, I sat down with my dad to submit my work. When I initially researched the project, I thought that everything was to be submitted electronically. But, as we tried to upload my story and painting, we learned that I needed to have a teacher sign off on my work, and send the physical copies of the form to them, postmarked by January 6th.

I will admit I was relatively hysterical at this point.

My stressing wasn't a result of being worried about not receiving an award if my work wasn't accepted, rather it was frustration that I had put so much work into these two things over my winter break and that they wouldn't be accepted.

As to not bore you with the strenuous details of this endeavor, the short of it is that I ran around like crazy the next day and got the signatures I needed and then was able to give the forms to my dad and sister who made a trip to the post office and sent them off for me.

When I finally got home after school and an entire afternoon of drama-related activities, I was exhausted. My brain was simply frazzled from the stress of the past 24 hours. It was the sort of tired where I could feel it in my limbs, my head was heavy, and my eyes were constantly losing focus.

I need to point out that I don't usually leave things until the night before because I don't work well under pressure. So, with my Sketchbook Project deadline being on the 31st of this month, I intend to submit it much earlier.

Which means I need to go work on it.

Time to be inspired.

Oh, also, here is the painting I submitted.

The Woes of Writer's and Artist's Block

I have never really believed that writer's block was a real thing, just a label for procrastination. On many accounts throughout my education, I've used the phrase "writer's block" to justify procrastination to myself and others. But I've always thought that the feeling of being unable to produce writing or art is simply a result of not being inspired.

And maybe that's what writer's block actually is. I'm not exactly sure what the phrase means.

But regardless, I am experiencing a sever lack of inspiration and creativity.

I am entirely and completely unmotivated to edit my short story that is due in four days, after having it read and edited by everyone in my house. I'm also at a loss of what to do next for my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project, which has ten pages remaining and is due January 31st.

So, I decided I would work on my assignment for my English class. For this project, I had to select a book from a list and read it, then construct a presentation in which I must provide a sort of "teaser" for the story, as well as some sort of a visual representation of a theme within the story. And, being the procrastinator that I am, I finally finished my book yesterday. I did enjoy the book immensely, though.

Now, I am trying to find a way to visually represent the aimlessness of the Lost Generation in connection with Ernest Hemingway's book, The Sun Also Rises. So far, after talking the assignment through with my mom and watching Midnight In Paris in hopes of sparks for ideas, I've decided it will have something to do with a compass.

And that's all I've got.

Did I mention this project is due the day after tomorrow?

I just realized that my short story's main character has a poor sense of direction and relies on his GPS too much. Compasses also tie  into my sketchbook's theme of "uncharted waters." I think my mind is caught up on something. I hope I'm able to figure out what all this direction and compass business is all about.

So, I turn now to my blog in hopes that it will spark some sort of creative inspiration that will help me get through this project. I'm not sure if this creative block is a result of how much I have to do and how ridiculously productive I need to be in order to complete it all, but it needs to go away, because I need to finish these things.

Maybe on each of the four points of the compass there will be an image of a symbol or event that occurs within the story. Hmmm. Paris. Bulls. Alcohol. Fishing. Spain.

The ideas are starting to flow now. Well they're more kind of slugging along, but they're starting to emerge. I'm hopeful this will continue.

I'm off now to try and utilize these ideas and create something.

Well hello there, Blogspot.

After many months of talking about starting a blog, I have finally decided to take the leap and start. Initially, I thought that my blog would be a place in which I would simply post writing exercises and other pieces that I was particularly fond of, but as I thought more and more about what I actually could gain from blogging, I decided to lessen my parameters and let this space act as an outlet for whenever and wherever inspiration strikes, as well as be a place to simply update on my creative endeavors and whatever thoughts I feel like sharing.

So, with that, I am going to introduce myself. I am a young individual striving to feed my soul through art and writing, while attempting to keep from worrying too much about the future. 


These posts may just be the story of it all.