Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Bullshit was the best word I've heard in a long time.

Whoa! It's November already! Only a little more than a month until I graduate from this monotonous place! Monotonous has become my "big word of the month" or something. I've been using it a lot.

There has been a good bit of progress for me on my Sr. Sem body of work. I have been working on 12 paintings at a time. Within the past 2 weeks I've spent over $300 on two 30 yard rolls of watercolor paper and a buttload of new watercolor paints. Thank you DICK BLICK. I've also spent a ton of my "free time" working on these paintings and other classwork. It has been a pretty hectic semester and I feel it's only going to become more chaotic as it winds down to an end. There is a light! I can see the light. There is an end!

Soon, I will upload a few photographs of my workings, but right now I am in class listening to my professor ramble on and on about something in Photoshop. Until I upload the photos here, you can check them out at my DA page in my Gallery under Watercolor. Or you can just click the correct link. Comments/critiques are appreciated and only two of the paintings are fully finished. Other than painting and classwork, I haven't been doing much of other artistic endeavors. My Total Drama Island like characters are probably my most popular features in my online gallery, however I haven't had any extra time to continue developing my ideas for my camp characters. Give me a few months and I'll have more characters. I'm also hoping to start developing scenes to give these characters more, um, character.

On October 20th and 22nd the Art Dept here at Ship held their first semesterly Sr. Sem critiques, in which all students in the 2nd Semester of Sr. Seminar are required to attend and present their works. I went on the second day and presented my watercolor paintings. It's been said from previous semesters' students that they professors tend to be very critical, most of them differing on opinions like Paula and Simon on American Idol, where huge arguments break out over students' works. Let me tell you, I was sooooo nervous about what they would think and say of my ideas and pieces. When the time came for me to present my works, the words I wanted to say came out right and the professors seemed somewhat intrigued and impressed. I received good advice and nice feedback. None of the horrible things that I thought I was going to hear. However, Prof. D in his big ego like manor had to say that I had to have 50... yes 5-0 paintings done by the next critique and thinking I had more time until the next critique came around, agreed to his demands. Since October 22nd I've been working my butt off trying to do as many paintings done because the next critique is next week. November 14th. From the 22nd to the 12th I had exactly 3 weeks to complete 50 paintings. Talk about stressed out. It would have been different if I didn't also have 4 classes and an internship to worry about and had all the time in the world to work on the paintings. But I don't have that kind of time. Today I received good news. I was talking with one of my professors, the one I am in class with, who absolutely loves my paintings. I mentioned the 50 paintings thing and she said "bullshit". She told me not to do all 50 because that would create for lesser quality of the works but she said what prof D meant was to do a lot of them. Like he's going to remember or count all of my paintings to see if there are 50 there. I'm just hoping this professor, and a few others, will back me up next Thursday if prof D starts to rip me apart for not having them. I did try though. I honestly tried to do as many as I possibly could. I set up a strict schedule that I followed, almost to a T. I say almost because I forgot to schedule when I would eat and I took a few liberties in making sure I ate something. I bought the extra supplies I would need in order to accomplish the feat and I only have 15 or 16 paintings, which only 2 of are finished. I can quit ripping my hair out after hearing what I heard this morning though. Wish me luck.

Welp, that's all that is new in the world of Bethany art. Check back sometime again in the future. I'm going to try to keep this updated as much as possible of bigger developments as they occur. =)

Thursday, September 10, 2009

No Turning Back...

Holy cow!
My last entry was way before the Spring 2009 semester was over!It is already 2 weeks into the new Fall semester. The Summer of Woo was amazing! It flew by and I had absolutely no time to work on any new art between a 3 week summer World History course and 10 Weeks of working at Camp (which was amazing btw)...
And of course watching the Pens on their run to win that Stanley Cup! Woo!
I'm Sad it's over but moving on to this next chapter is refreshing.
This semester I am taking a Typography course and a Photo-manipulation course so expect some cool new stuff. This is also my final semester as an undergrad which means I'll be working a lot on my portfolio, resume, and my senior body of work, along with the internship that I am doing at a shop downtown that creates decals for cars, signs for anything and also screen printing (I've always wanted to learn screen-printing).
I'm really excited but nervous about this semester.
So much to do, not enough time.

I have finally come to a decision of what I will do for my senior body of work. I'm doing a series of watercolor paintings based from a piece that I did during the spring semester. It was really the first painting I had done that I felt really good and passionate about and still do.
That piece would be this one--



Sorry about the picture quality. =[

I went out last weekend while I was home from college and bought a bunch of new paints, watercolor paper, and other supplies. I even bought a sheet of plywood at Lowe's
and had them cut it into 3x2' rectangles to stretch the paper. I spent over $200 on stuff... and I have a feeling I'll be buying more.
At least it's for something that I love.

Well, that's all I have for now.
I think I'm gonna go start painting. =)
<3bethy

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Featured Artwork

EVGENI MALKIN
a little something for the Playoffs


This is probably the first of a series and one of my favorite but hardest pieces to date. I'm planning on doing paintings of most of the Pittsburgh Penguins players from the 2008/2009 season. This is Evgeni Malkin. This painting took me over 10 hours over a two day span. I gessoed the paper first, as I believe gesso is very forgiving when you make mistakes, which I made many and fixed within the long process of painting. The only black that I used is ink and it's in the thin lines of lettering on the jersey and in the Penguins logo. Other than those areas the "black" that you see is actually multiple layers of purple, blue, green, and orange. I tried to "punch this up" by using colors that you normally wouldn't associate with skin tones or locality within this area. Such as the blue-green color that Iused for the shadows on his face which were quite gray and boring in the original picture that I used as a reference. His jersey and helmet are obviously (supposed to be) black but here I used an assortment of dark colors to get to the gist of black. I think this makes the painting more interesting to look at rather than looking at a plain black surface. Most of the white/lighter areas were masked off first. To do the background, I laid a paper cutout of the figure over the working surface ontop of mask so that the gestural brush strokes wouldn't cover that area and so the wet paint wouldn't spread under the cutout. Once the entire background was complete I pulled the cutout up and began drawing the significant contours throughout the figure, then began painting within the contour lines. The helmet was definitely the hardest part of the entire painting which is why it was the last thing I painted. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. Feedback is appreciated!
PS. I purposefully left out the logo on the helmet... two logos in the same vacinity of the picture plane, I think, would have looked a little cooky. What I have works.

GO PENS!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

I'm also gonna start doing this: FEATURED ART OF THE DAY-AY-AY-AY-AY

BATMAN BLOWS

The title echoes...
Here is my featured art of the day from my collection. Instead of posting everything here when it's already at DA, I decided I'll just feature some of my own art here every once in a while.

"Batman Blows" is a piece from my sketchbook. Made with watercolor and black ink and mask. First I drew an outline of the Batman symbol. Then I painted the color gradient within the outline. Next I dabbed globs of the same color paint as inside the outline, out around the outline and blew into a straw away from the logo. Next I applied mask to the edges of the outline so that the black ink wouldn't flow into the colors. I dabbed some globs of the ink around the back to the outside of the logo and once again blew through the straw in the same direction. Once the paint and ink were dry I used a toothbrush to spritz around the logo with more colors. I removed the mask and voila! There it is.

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you, without a dope rhyme to step to.

I've basically been focusing all my time and energy into watercolor for the past week or so. This weekend instead of enjoying a decent break from classwork and celebrating our Savior's death and resurrection, I will be working on more watercolor, writing and making a paper about some guy that I was supposed to converse with but never got any dialogue back from, and doing lots and lots of macrame! The only good thing that comes out of this is spending time with a family member in order to teach them the macrame skills that I've learned, so that they then can pay it forward. Sunday will be my day to relax with my wonderful family and enjoy an awesome meal and then tons of candy and laughs with afterward.
I've also been doing a lot over at deviantArt and kinda forgot about this place. Oops, my bad. I'm sowwy. =[
Just about everything that I have in this apartment that I consider art that I've made has been uploaded to my DA page. Today one of my works
(this one)
was featured on another member's journal/page. You can check it out here. I was super stoked! Woo!
Ok well, I have a class pretty soon and I should probably clean myself up before I go. <-- good song!
Mmmkay... laters!

Friday, March 20, 2009

I uploaded a whole bunch of new stuff (well it's all old stuff but new to the site) to DeviantArt. Go to one of the previous entries for the link!

Woot, first day of Spring!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Can Anybody Hear Me?


So, I'm just wondering if anyone reads this.

Give a quick SHOUT OUT! if you stop by.


I'd love to know that someone's reading.

------------------------------------------------
Oh, and here are some of the pics I took at the landfill last weekend! They turned out pretty nicely and my professor seemed to like them. I'll have to take a picture of the full presentation.