Some finished pieces for my thesis...

New self-portrait in oil...

This is my self-portrait for the Rethink project. It is done in oil. It was a lot of fun to do!! :D

From my portrait journal...

Assortment of stuff!

Portraits

These are some of the spreads I have for my self-portraits...

More narrative...

This is a project for my narrative class recounting a personal experience that had a big effect on me.. I chose my car accident from 7 years ago....

Narrative

So this is a really depressing little story, I forewarn you, but it is a truth about our world none-the-less...

Weekly portraits..

As part of a project for my class this year I am going to be doing at least one self-portrait a week. I am really looking forward to this. I am looking to explore in media, techniques, maybe some writing, and maybe so more surrealist approaches. So far I have two of a more traditional approach...

They are all going to be done in my little moleskin watercolour book, and at the end I hope to have a great compilation of portraits and writing, and maybe I will be able to produce a little booklet out of it. We'll see! : )

Final year begins!

These are some colour roughs for my interpretive project on Good/Bad. It is meant to be nature versus man-made. I plan to do the final in watercolour. I am hoping to get feedback from my teacher on which one I should do and how I can change it... I am happy with these marker renditions though. I love Copic markers!! They are such a joy to draw with. The brush tip really feels like a paint brush. Art supplies make me giddy! :D

Doodles...

Here are some random doodles from my journal.. I need to keep more of a sketchbook. I am very rusty at drawing from my imagination...

Summer is flying by!

Summer is flying by! I am having such a blast. I am so grateful for the co-op I have, just getting to paint all the time. I have also had the greatest couple of weekends with first spending one at the cottage with Giorgio, just hanging out and reading and being peaceful and then the following weekend we spent three days at the Mariposa Festival in Orillia and stayed at a B&B there! What an amazing weekend that was with tons of talented musicians. It was a really great experience. It was my first real festival.



This week I have taken a break from oil painting and I have been working with watercolour again. I love working with watercolour. The water makes it so fluid and fun to paint with. It is also really fun to work with transparencies. I think I have learned a lot from oil about colour, and it is great applying that new knowledge to watercolours. I have a few paintings to post, and I will probably have one or two more by the ending of the week!

Two new finished pieces!

Here are two of the latest paintings I have finished. I am really happy with them! I worked really hard.



This following one is self-portrait done from a full length mirror:

Self-Portrait

I have started working on a self portrait from a really long mirror. It is a fun challenge. I have actually never painting a full body self-portrait. This first day of work on it I mainly got the sketch down on the canvas and blocked in some of the main colour, to get rid of all the white of the canvas. I can't wait to work on this next week! Here are some pictures from day 1:

Painting of Ed

This is the the painting of Ed completed. I am really happy with it. It was so fun to paint and I feel like I really captured his face.

More paintings...

Here are some more of the paintings I have been working on at my co-op. I really am learning a lot and loving oil paints.

This was week three and final touch ups of the lemon still life:


This is week two of a portrait:


Here is a detail of the face:


This is week two of my new glass bottle still-life: (painting glass is so hard!!)



In other news I am on a 10 day cleanse and so far I have completed six days! I am feeling great and really healthy. It is so good to rid my body of old toxins and start fresh. I don't wake up tired in the mornings. There is a focus that I don't normally have. Giorgio has joined me on the cleanse and we are hoping to make it for the whole 10 days.

Co-op Time!!

This summer is my Co-op semester for school. I am doing a placement with an old teacher of mine, Katherine MacDonald, who is such an incredible painter. There are three other students along with me and we pretty much get to paint, 8 hours-a-day, 4 days-a-week. It is such an amazing opportunity to learn. I am so excited to be painting more than just the typical 3 hours a week.

I am also learning how to oil paint. We have been there for a week and a half so far and I am already learning a lot, especially about oil painting.

Here are some things I have been working on.

These are from the two days a week that we are at the Dundas Valley School of Art with Katherine:

Week 1:









Week 2:

Seed Packets

Our assignment was to create a branding for some images for a specific company and their cause, and mine was for Evergreen and their campaign for greener schoolyards. I decided to make seedpackets. Each seed packet had a different child sprouting the plant the seeds were for. The combined image is the little banner to go under the display case for the packets.

Couple of new paintings...

This was a great assignment. Total freedom. We could do whatever we wanted as long as it was self-directed. These faces are from a really old sketch of mine that I finally decided to remake. This is done in ink, watercolour (for the background) and gouache (for the faces). It was my first attempt at using gouache. I think I used it more like watercolour rather than the opaque way it can be used. It was really fun experimenting though.


This painting is a remake of a couple of old paintings, one called American Gothic and the other called In the Mowing. It was for an assignment about the nigerian scam emails that get sent out. This particular one involved a popular farmer in Zimbabwe who got killed so his family had to move to the Netherlands.
I had a really tough time with this assignment. Conceptually I really couldn't come up with anything interesting.
I had fun painting though.

More videos....

Here are a couple of other videos from last semester. Both are just 5 second experiments in After Effects. They were really fun to make. I want to expand on the Eyeball Tree one. Turn your speakers up for it, since the sound effects of the eyes are really subtle!!

Bird Love

This was a video I made last semester in Electronic Media class. I am still just learning to use After Effects. It is such an enormous program and opens up sooooo many possibilities! I want to do so much with it! When I get more free time I want to work on more videos. Giorgio and I have an idea for one together. He is going to do crazy voices for it! It is going to be such a fun project!

This semester I am working on a music video for one of my brother's songs. I am hoping to be able to finish it for class, but even if I don't get it done I will finish it for Kit. Here is a link to his music for anyone interested!! http://www.kitsoden.com/
The song is called "Tip of the Iceberg" and here is a poster I just made for class for it:

procrastination...

Trying to finish an essay and I keep horribly distracting myself. I can't believe how long it can take to write a simple essay. It should take me a few hours and instead it takes me a whole day since I write a few sentences and before I know it I am daydreaming of something or looking up something on the computer.

Time management. Still issue number one for me.

I can't decide what I want for coop. A new posting went up for an animation place that is looking for character designing and layout and background design. This would be a huge challenge but an inspiring one. I feel I could learn a lot from something like that. I don't know if I can meet the requirements though.
I am also torn about whether to go with a teaching placement. I have done a lot of teaching in my past. Starting from teacher's assistant, then running classes myself, to starting my own art camp one summer. I feel confident that I could get a job doing this again and I know it is approved as a related coop experience. I am just wondering if I would actually be pushing myself and learning while doing this. It could be a really good experience and maybe get my foot in the door for teaching in Toronto when I am done school, especially when I will be needing a decent job to support my art.

Decisions, decisions....

Here I am procrastinating some more by writing this post...

Ah well, it helps to take a bit of a break from attempting an essay...

I spent a good portion of the evening listening to some classical piano music, mainly Debussy and Satie. Their music is so inspiring and calming. I close my eyes and get carried away into other worlds while listening. Their music brings shivers to my spine it is so good.

Old old sketchbook art.

I used Photoshop to make a collage of sorts of old sketchbook art from around 2001-2004

Self-Portrait

This was a quick digital painting I did on Facebook recently, using the Graffiti application. It is always a fun challenge, since there is no tablet sensitivity and you are restricted to sizes and minimal colour.

stolen from Facebook notes...

25 Random things about me....

1) Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong era since most of my musical tastes derive from the 60s and 70s...

2) I play four instruments but have never perfected one.

3) I love singing even though I don't really like my voice.

4) I can't see a hill without wanting to run down it.

5) I feel the most like myself when I am outside and walking, I just take a deep breath and feel like a totally different person.

6) I think I am happiest when I am outside too, especially surrounded by trees and moss and sounds of the forest.

7) It took me the longest time to ever want to bring anyone up to my cabin because it felt like my own personal haven or sanctuary and I never knew if someone would appreciate it as much as I do.

8) Sometimes when I am walking home I give myself a distance that I need to sprint to, and challenge myself to get past that point.

9) Other times when I am walking home I sing to myself, usually all my favourite folk songs.

10) I wish I weren't afraid to sing loudly.

11) I fall in love with every place I go and wish I could live everywhere.

12) I am equally torn between love of the city and love of the country, and don't know where I want to live.

13) Sometimes when I am reading a book I get so lost in it that someone could have been calling my name for a while and I just don't hear them. This has happened on many an occasion growing up.

14) If I weren't studying art I would be studying herbal medicine. I just lacked the confidence in my memory to go into that field. Instead I content myself with buying lots of books on herbs and slowly teaching myself.

15) My favourite type of book is fantasy and I wonder if it is because I am just a big kid who still loves fairy tales and magic.

16) I get overwhelming surges of love for life all the time. Sometimes it hits me so hard I want to cry.

17) I need to live near water. My heart needs it.

18) Despite needing to live near water I have an irrational fear of the bottom of lakes, or any water that is too dark and I can't see what is coming.

19) I wonder if I am cut out to do art for the rest of my life since I don't draw or paint as much as other people. There are so many other things I love doing too.

20) If I could draw faces for the rest of my life I would be happy though.

21) I dream of being a traveling portrait artist that sets up in a beautiful spot in every new town.

22) I am one of the messiest people I know, it comes from collecting too many things and being a pack-rat. My room is a cozy disaster though.

23) I love old houses and old buildings. Anything with old hardwood. They have so much more character than new homes.

24) I could wander the city or country all day taking pictures. There are always so many wondrous little things that catch my eye that I want to capture.

25) If there are stars overhead, I need to get a blanket and lie out watching them, in hopes of catching a shooting star.