A video I made with a couple of buddies. 

The writers strike in 07-08 which resulted in the final 7 episodes of the second season of Friday Night Lights was an absolute tragedy and I am super pissed off about it.

Thanks for the shout out!

adjank:

Because color is ever so fascinating and flexible. And the artist is, where. Get involved?

Heey Adam, similar to what you’ve been working with. Except the digital approach.

hyperallergic:

Manuel Fernández, “Two Hundred and Sixteen Colors” — a participative Internet-based work. [Click through to see and participate.]

So I decided to start tackling the background of my large piece. I had this idea about clouds. It would have mixed my squares abstraction with some realistic clouds. So I started painting clouds. I hated them. I’m just not in a place to paint real. It drains too much out of me and I get sad and stressed. So I started mashing them up. Then I stared to have some fun. I was making a choppy color mix up of blacks, grays, browns and whites, which was nice, I liked it, so I threw in the squares colors to spice it up then when I was done I dragged a big dry brush down it all. It’s sloppy, choppy and drippy, and I like it. I don’t know if I like it, I think I do, I enjoyed making it. But only a small piece is done and I can’t see it all yet. I think I want to sort of go in the direction of childish puffy clouds done in this manner, and have small, faint color squares raining from them as well. I think that will be the way I show how this is just a cloud sliced in half and I am letting you see the inside. We’ll see. So it goes.

So I am feeling super overwhelmed. I’ve got some big stuff going on in my life now as well as having immense amounts of school work to do. And now this damn massive canvas is looking extremely daunting. There is really no practical way that I can assume that I am going to be able to finish it by the end of the semester. I think the best that I can hope for is like a once over type of finished, but it is going to need a lot of finishing and revision work to get it to a completely finished state. On a positive note, I am going to be able to finish ‘The Sun’ and I am loving it, and I really think that when it is completely finished I am going to be really happy with it.

I’m not saying all cops are bad, but those that are the pawns of the 1%, helping them force their agenda down our throats are not a part of the 99%.

adjank:

Do you follow? Do you get it yet?

andrewgraham:

Still wondering what Occupy Wall Street is protesting? The common thread is institutional inequality. Here are some infographics. (Images via.)

adjank:

pretty neat!

baghaly:

artgym:

ART WE LIKE THIS WEEK: Christain Faur’s ”Crayon Art”’

woah.

Ok so, I started putting color the rain (working title) piece, and I am left with two emotions. The first is that I am glad I waited until I was sure about the colors because after putting on all the darkest squares along the top I am really happy with how it looks. The second thing I am feeling is something akin to ‘what the hell did I get myself into?’ I put in about 5 hours last night and the dent I made was a bit more like a scratch. I’m not overwhelmed by the work that it will take to finish it because I want to be doing it, I enjoy it and I am excited for the day that it is completely done. I suppose the overwhelming feeling that I have is more about the time frame. There are only so many hours in the day and even though I would like to spend them all painting, unfortunately I can’t. I’m not letting myself get too worked up by it though, I’m just looking at it like I will put in all the time that I can and get as far as I can get and that’s the best thing I can do.

So onto the next point, goals and whatnot. So I don’t know that I have a ton to say about this but I suppose that remains to be seen. The truth is that I am just loving what I’m doing right now. I think that might have been my number one goal this semester. Last semester my goal was to learn whether or not I could paint and paint well. I discovered that I could. This semester my goal was to see if I could take that knowledge and paint happy. It is appearing so. Starting off the semester after a 3 month hiatus I was really worried, and I mostly just wanted to be putting paint to canvas, not worrying about the content. So I did (the first square painting). That created a whole world of new ideas and goals inside me. I wanted to start exploring color relationships. I also wanted to start playing with basic shapes and how you could manipulate them. The biggest thing I started thinking about was this idea of creating an image out of fragments that really have nothing to do with the end image (e.g. block color squares that make a sun or rain, unless you live in a pixelated world I guess). I have also been really interested in exploring my ability to create not just replicate. I can take a photo and recreate a pretty good representation of it with a paintbrush. What I didn’t know was whether I could take an idea and formulate it well enough in my head to bring it into fruition on a canvas. I suppose that still has yet to be seen, but I feel pretty good about it. The other thing relating to that is that I also want to find it in myself to take control of the replication process. Can I take a picture and not only recreate it, but do so with purpose. I want to be able to knowingly dictate what image I am creating. Ok for example, when I did myself portrait, I had no idea what I was doing, I just wanted to try and recreate the image that I was working from. I had no particular feeling that I was trying to represent, I just painted and let the process dictate the image. I think doing things that way totally has merit and I don’t want to completely eliminate that from my repertoire, but like with the orchid painting I want to do, I want to make it, what did I say ‘menacing’ I think, I want to make the viewer intrigued yet unsettled. I want to do that using things like object placement, color tones, angle of perception etc. Or with the sun, I want to produce an image that is enticing because you want to keep looking at it and let your eyes wander all over finding new things, but at the same time it is kind of hard to look at for a long time and when you look away you are left with its image imprinted for a time in your brain and on your eyelids, kind of like the sun.

Ok so there’s that. Another thing that was really big for me, was finishing ‘Bjorn.’ I really didn’t know if I would be able to pick the painting back up after all that time and do it again. I was also afraid that my ability before was just a fluke, beginners luck if you will. So when I sat down and painted that eagle and stepped back and looked at it, it was a tremendous weight off of my shoulders. It was like yea, you can do this. So I went after it, I was able to quickly fix things in the face that had been driving me crazy for like 6 months. And seeing his family’s reaction was so encouraging. The whole process has really shown me that in painting just like everything else, confidence makes such a world of difference.

I have also been exploring some new artists that I had never really seen before. Developed a man crush on Gregory Siff, so that’s good.

So I don’t know, I guess to answer the question, ‘how am I doing in relation to the goals that I had for myself in painting?’ I would have to answer, terifandistically. I’m happy, and just want to keep painting.

Sorry that was all just a string narrative instead of ordered bullet pointed goals and responses, but that’s just how my brain works. And I guess I did have a fair amount to say about that. I hope it was satisfactory.