me=kind of a big fat liar.

well, all that talk about "summer! " and "finished!" was apparently an outrageous lie. i mean, i'm still finished, but i forgot about my little friend here. he's a netsuke (a japanese charm/toggle-type sculpture), made of one cubic inch of porcelain, i.e., very small. he is probably the only thing i made in ceramics and didn't immediately want to hurl from the fourth floor balcony of the commons. and he has little underneath feet.


end!

final final project! starring: my hands.

the semester is done. summer is here. and making its big debut: the last of my final projects, officially titled "A KID'S GUIDE (or for anyone who's curious) TO THE REALLY cool, not-taught-in-schools but totally super-mega IMPORTANT skills, strategies, and other THINGS IN LIFE." complicated, to say the least.

first up is a (shoddily compiled) image of several views of the actual book itself. then the nice spreads from inside. then the book all open and crazy looking. it's bound in a modified squash style, for any of you book-making nerds out there, and closes with a jazzy purple slip band (seen below). the actual illustrations and text were all hand-done in ink and gouache, then scanned and cleaned up a little and printed (so i could arguably make millions! or not) to make the final specimen you see before you.




the end! i start my screenprinting class on thursday, so there should be something fruitful from that, AND i am using the summer as a testing ground for my "oh god i have so many things to do, can i slash will i choose to, and actually follow-through with, making some semblance of art too?!" fear that my unavoidably official senior-status has forced to the surface. so i'm working on some things to that end as well. i'm also holding down about twelve different jobs this summer, sticking around in baltimore, and hopefully taking some semblance of a vacation to nyc at some point. and trying to iron out my thesis. and i have about 5 months' worth of daily illustrations scanned into my computer, waiting to be... something more exciting. so, the moral of the story is hopefully my blog will remain active with proof of these lofty goals taking place throughout the summer. so stay tuned!

did it just get incredibly full of rage in here, or is it just me?

here they are, en masse. the bane of my existence for the past semester. the reason that i wore my embarrassing pink running shorts in public too many times to count, and that the automatic answer to "what are you doing today?" was inevitably followed by a dramatic sigh of defeat instead of an actual response essentially every weekend. in case i haven't made it abundantly clear (perhaps with the number of times that i uttered "fuck ceramics" at a remarkably high volume, often in the ceramics studio, always met with dirty glares from the students that actually like smushing clay into deeply conceptual vessels), me and ceramics did not so much see eye to eye. i'm glad i learned to throw, but beyond now being able to generate a sweet tableware set should i ever feel decidedly masochistic, i do not feel at all compelled to ever enter a ceramics studio again. that being said, here's what came of my toil.

first up is my final, a tea set with tea leaf fortunes actually sculpturally slipped into the cups. i read up on how to read tea leaves, bought loose black tea and a practice teacup with optimum leaf-reading capabilities, drank, swirled, read, and documented the fortunes, then recreated them. but part of the fun is that where one person sees a grasshopper, another sees a whale. so it's all a little ambiguous. which you would never expect from fortune-telling, obviously.

this is my "historical vessel combined with modern mass produced vessel addressing a pressing current issue" vessel. yeah. did i mention how much i love ceramics? it's about this article i read (on digg, because man, i'm just that classy with my research) about how if you took all the water on the planet (oceans, ice caps, moisture in the atmosphere, etc.) and compared it to the actual earth, it would be like comparing a marble (water) to a grapefruit (planet). global warming is hilarious, is the moral of that story. anyway, so this thing is giant-ish, like 16 inches tall, 13 wide and about 8 or 9 deep at its fattest point.

and the bowls. they... are bowls. deeply, deeply conceptual bowls. that's about the it. never again, is all i can say about that.

unnecessary drumroll.

after an emotionally traumatizing day of lessons in nothing-prints-out-as-nice-as-it-looks-on-screen-or-in-real-life-ology, i played angry frisbee for twenty minutes, then decided it was time-wasting time. so here we are. because i also happen to be fast approaching the end of finals time (supporting evidence of the severity of the above learning curve), this is also the time for the big reveals of all the things i've been promising and hinting at for weeks on end. and because the print-outs look like balls, here are the nicer, but not quite as nice as in person, spreads and such for my illustrated version of 'freak the mighty', a young-adult-ish book.





the book is written from max's perspective (the big kid, purple sweatshirt), about his unlikely friendship with kevin, aka freak (the little kid). the two of them play to one another's strengths to conquer the world! or, you know, go on adventures and things. a surprisingly depressing book, i found out as i reread it, like bridge to terebithia's lesser counterpart. it was also made into a (pretty awful) movie with kieran culkin. i illustrated the book as max's journal (featured in the book, as the book itself) and fleshed it out to accompany the text. there are all sorts of "knights of the round table" references throughout the book as well, hence the horses and "fair guineveres" abound. the end! ooh, except the book would arguably have a full page illustration like this for each of the twenty-five chapters in the book, i just don't have them all because, um, yikes.

ZOMBIE HORSE OH SHIT

so here's a whole slew of sketchbook things again, of varying quality, as per usual. first, a forties-era cover. nothing's really forties-ish about it except her dress, but shhhhh. and, the book had a lot of blue in it? rough week, this one was.
the next two are in that same book, perpetuating the "a lot of blue" thing. i rather like the first one, a "parody" of a weird-shaped thing abstract thing that i decided was a big angry pile of laundry trying to scare the little boy in the dark.

next up, "glorification" of "ZOMBIE HORSE OH SHIT!" there's a crown? yeah. this does not do the original justice, but i never was one for drawing zombie horses very well at all. and then a sad man trying to sprout something out of what turned out to look like a mound of tar. not so promising.

finally, a nice cheat-y week: "in addition to" the cut paper puppy? A GIRL HUGGING HIM. god i'm predictable. then a little boy in footie pajamas escaping out his window into the night. i'm okay-ish with this one.and break!

it comes to my attention that professionals probably shy away from pig latin.

flashback with me to uh, a bunch of weeks ago, when i actually made this wrapping paper design. i was designated the "christmas" market, which is great, since, while i love both red and green a whole lot, i find them maybe disgusting in almost any combination with one another. also, i'm coming from a household in which our christmas tree had yearly rotating decoration themes (think remarkably invested, like 'romantic victorian', 'royal jewel-toned', and 'spring poinsettia') complete with matching stockings, tree skirts, ribbons, and paper that were so pervasive that we actually hid the non-coordinated presents from extended family in the back to avoid disrupting the aesthetic. so, there is a lot of baggage with alissandra and christmas decorations.

the moral of the story is that i didn't want to do something lame. or that would send my mother into christmas-time convulsions, since really, aren't the holidays just swell enough without epileptic-esque seizures for everyone? below is the first palette for my wrap, twelve days of christmas-themed! initially thought to be maybe not quite christmas-y enough (damn you unconventional childhood christmas palettes!) i doctored it minimally to produce a second palette, with the cranberry instead of the indigo. also created for both palettes were a series of three gift tags to accompany the paper, shown here with abysmal color balance, but that are cute and square and 3"x3".
hopefully this wrap wouldn't get stuffed behind the pretty presents with the hideous little drummer boy paper or the sweaters that were wrapped haphazardly without first being placed in boxes, or even absentmindedly shoved in an uncoordinated gift bag. did i mention i love the holidays?

in other news, this piece pretty much nailed down how much i don't like strictly digital coloring. ix-nay on the ool-cay, lick-say ook-lay.

what is your childhood trauma?

um, i so fail at the consistent blogging thing this time around. like a lot. i could go on with the "blah, blah, lots of work, blah, blah, not enough sleep", but really, it's the same story for everyone, so i won't make excuses. me=the suck, i'm aware. but here's words on wheels. !!

words on wheels is an "illustrate a selected middle-schooler's poem and have it juried to be maybe printed for public transit in maryland" project. my poem is (as you can deduce, i imagine) about a little girl being told she's bad at art. how could i not illustrate a poem for a little girl who's sad because she's told she's bad at art? there were a lot of troublesome restrictions to the assignment like particular font size, color, placement, orientation, etc., etc., but overall it was a surprisingly enjoyable experience. also, i found out mine will for real be printed to go on buses and light rails and other public-type vehicles, so that makes it all the more agreeable. other peculiar trivia associated with this project: the poem i was originally given was plagiarized from a pretty terrible internet chain letter. by a sixth grader. how many different sorts of depressing is that?

i would close with the optimistic implication that i would post more later, but that would likely be a vicious lie. there are things to be shown, i promise, i just have to get around to actually, you know, showing them. don't judge. also, i have hit the "all my projects are independent" part of the semester, so things are less exciting to display anyway.

toooooooooolbox.

i'm unfortunately aware that it has been like a month since i last posted anything - tragic, unspeakable, unforgivable, etc., etc. floggings will be administered. let's get back into the groove with some response-respond pieces from the last few weeks, shall we?
first we have a "continuation" of two weird monster kid things that looked like they were yawning very symmetrically, thus sleeping very symmetrically, except one of them is maybe not really a monster. then more sleeping.this week's was "reversing" a food chain that said that snakes and frogs and deer-ish things and bunnies ate children. so instead, we have a silly blond boy with footie pajamas and a really big appetite. and an alice in wonderland-esque girl in a blue frock.

these were actually the first week's response-respond pieces, the ones i forgot to scan. it was an "exaggeration" of a boy quasi-hugging (think awkward family portrait) a skull-faced polo-wearing guy while holding baseball-type accoutrements. naturally, a crazy slide-tackle hug ensued. and a demented anatomy archer guy followed.and apparently by "last few weeks", i really meant "all the response-repsond pieces after the first one, since i haven't posted anything in like eight million years". sorry guys. this one is "questioning" a robot ripping off the head of some guy by, you know, making the robot a nerd in a robot suit? maybe? then a bird falls off a cliff, i'm not sure why. my random 'respond' pieces are bizarre, and usually completed very late at night.

so there you have it, all the response-respond pieces up to now. stay tuned for a cover design for one of these books, my "freak the mighty" book proposal comps, my words on wheels poster, and my christmas wrapping paper design. etc.! i promise i definitely probably won't be such a toolbox like this again.

response and respond.

i realize that they are a noun and verb of the same thing, but i couldn't really find a better way to differentiate between the two-part double-page spread sketchbook assignment i'm doing this semester. this time it's a response to the previous two-page spread based on a keyword (i.e., exaggerated, or oppositional), and another open-ended spread for someone else to respond to the following week. get it, get it?i forgot to scan last week, so i'll see if i can't get that book back later and scan them then.this week's response was an "oppositional" take on a farmhouse in a woodsy grove, so i decided on a tiny tree struggling to exist in a super-urban cityscape, that i decided to execute like wallpaper, you know, for fun. my 'respond' piece is a little girl afraid of the dark and psycho-killer-nightmare-monsters that dwell in the shadows. i'm gonna give these books the "hey i want to experiment with some mixed media" treatment, so i can play with new things and expand my repertoire without botching something i need to turn in. also, apologies abound for the minimal updates thus far. things are just getting underway-ish and ceramics is so not a scannable, web-friendly art (nor am i very good at it), so it's limiting how much i have to show for my efforts. also, because my illustrated book class is a long-term singular project, it has less 'in the meantime' sort of nice-to-look-at things. but i should have some character designs and turnarounds to show soon, so never fear.

"neo-crunches have a great respect for dolphins and think we should be more like them."

so it's been a little while, what with the whole 'no classes' thing, there hasn't been much in the way of updates. i did do all the work for my solo show coming up next month (more on that later) but i can't go and post it all over the web before it hangs in all its glory in the filling station, now can i? i gotta be at least a little sneaky.

so in the meantime, we have hipsters. specifically, "neo-crunch" hipsters as explained by robert lanham in the hipster handbook, which really is an actual book. Neo-crunches are essentially modern hippies who love recycling and marijuana, hate big corporations and showering, and wear tattered old clothing to hide the fact that they are financially secure, meaning basically, everyone that lives in boulder, co. the assignment was a full-page, half-page, and quarter-page, seen below in gouache and ink. it was pointed out to me that the middle lotus-pose zen-hipster looks like she really, really loves pot (and sort of loves wheatgrass juice), the baggie of granola kind of looks like pot, and the apple she's accessorizing with could easily be an apple bong. not so much the goal there, but it's still pretty accurate. the bottom neo-crunch is cutting holes in her jeans to discourage anyone from thinking she values worldy possessions, and the top hipster, my favorite, is since playing his banjo not for spare change, but to recycle your starbucks cups.