Summer of music

Summer is now upon us and to me summer has always been the exact right time to play music at top volume to the chagrin of all my neighbors. I have found over the years that Black Flag seems to get the most knocks on my door to lower the volume pumping out of my computer. Which is why that is the first on my musical playlist. While making my way through the Black Flag catalog I remembered all the happy memories associated with this bad especially the Damaged. Which is were my new art project is going to come from. So far I only have two initial rough sketches of what I want and only of Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn. I want to do all of the members of the band that played on Damaged. I am only in the sketch stage right now but have no idea if I want these to be done in charcoal, oil pastels, chalk pastels or just plain pencil. Any ideas as to what medium I should do these in please post comments.

Haze

New photoshop action called purple haze. I would write more but I am dead tired. Good Night all.

Here be the link

Gagging On Pink Sparkles

I am just going to ignore that I haven't posted anything on here since January and move on to art stuff.

Another year has come and with that so has JAFAX. Last year was the first year I was asked to create their program. Well not so much as asked as Liz starting petting me and it creeps me out so much I just end up agreeing to anything. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I think I might have gotten a combined solid 5-6 hours of sleep over a weeks period. Even though it was taxing it was a lot of fun, stressful but fun.

This year I was able to do it again and there was still the stress and the going to bed at 3am thing but even though I grumbled and at one point cried because I thought I lost an entire page of layouts I must say I don't hate what I made. Understand though that there are things that could have been done better and laid out with more thought but when you are scrambling in the wee hours of the morning you tend to let a lot of stuff go so you might get some sleep before work the next morning.

This year JAFAX turned 16 so the theme was of course sweet 16. Now I am not one to do cute well. I understand how to do it but sometimes it just turns out as a study on how to gag on the pink sparkles. I was surprised though that I did make it work and it didn't turn anyone's stomach, especially mine. There are of course many things I would change and many things that should have been aligned better and were not but in the grand scheme of things it did turn out better then I expected. I won't go as far as to say I'm proud of it because I always find that hard to say about my own work but I will say I can live with it and not take a pen to the program as I did last year to correct my mistakes.

So here it is as it was laid out for the printers. I could spend the time reorganizing it so it can be seen as it will be in the program but I haven't had much sleep this week and if I look at the layout for to long I start to twitch a little. But you will get the idea as the pages are all numbered.

Impossible Hair and Dos Manos

Of late I have been spending too much time in my design programs that I am starting to go a bit crazy. I am now having dreams in which I create the world with Photoshop. While amazing and a bit god like I believe it to be a warning sign that I should devote some of my art time in another medium.

I didn't know at first what I wanted to do but on Wednesday after a particularly stressful day I sought refuge in a very unhealthy place for my wallet...T-Square. I don't go in there too much or many art stores as they're always extremely overpriced but much cheaper then therapy. I'm sure most artists will agree with me that the moment you step into an art store any horrible issues you are going through just melt away. You walk around touching different papers and running your fingers over brushes. It might sound odd and possibly something you would be asked to cease and desist doing in any other store but an art store has it's own quirky rules.

While in there I ambled down the isle with pastels which I adore the smell of. I realize how strange this must be but someone once told me that certain smells associate themselves with moments in your life. Such as anytime it's winter and I smell cigarettes I think it's Christmas because my Grandmother smoked and I used to see her most around Christmas. It's the same for pastels especially oil pastels. When I smell them I remember the first major project I did with in high school trying to recreate some of Botticelli's angels. Or the time in college when my hands were covered in pastels and I wiped my face not realizing it till someone in another class asked me if it was a new fashion statement. Sufice to say pastels always put a smile on my face and that is why I chose to do something with them.

It's been about 4-5 years since I have done anything in this medium let alone actually drawn. I sketch a lot but they are mostly scribbles of ideas nothing fine and fluid like a drawing. So it took me a few frustrating hours getting back into the swing of it with varied results. I do believe that I have the drawing done, of course this might change as I stare at it more. Usually though after I put it up here I stop obsessing over it too much.

It's based off a photograph I found on devitART of a girl with just impossible hair. My take on it seems to draw from The Day of the Dead because I have been listening to The Stevedores and 100 Monkeys too much lately and I associate their music with that type of art. Especially the song "The Day the Stranger Came to Dos Manos" which is why I'm fairly sure I want to title it "Rosa" Any nice critiques are welcome, which I'm sure just means Jess as I don't know if anyone else reads this.

Dreaming of cardboard & Frustration

I finished the second poster in the Orange Sheep poster series. I haven't slept too much because of this project. I keep having very odd dreams about cardboard sheep playing musical instruments. Either I have been spending too much time on this or I need to spend more time on it just to get it out of my head. At this point I'm a bit too sleep deprived to know which is the better idea. Plus I know I need to work more devoutly on the JAFAX program. I have all the sketches and all the elements to make it but when I start hashing it out in Illustrator and Photoshop I get very frustrated for some reason. Possibly because it's just not coming together like my sketches or because my heart just isn't in it for some reason.

I believe I'm having that artistic dilemma where part of you wants to make art to get paid and the other part of you just wants to make art because it makes you happy. With the Orange Sheep project I sit down put on some music and loose all track of time completely. Till it's around 3am and I freak out because I have to go to work in 5 hours. Thankfully there is plentiful amounts of coffee or I would probably crash and burn very fast. But in that time I spend working like mad it is the only time in my waking life that I feel the most sane. The rest of the time isn't bad by any means but I spend so much time second guessing myself and feeling frustrated over things that will probably never change. When I work on my art I relax and let go and every stressful thing in my life seems to not matter so much. Then there is that sad realization that you have to go back to it all and deal with life. I really wish I knew the answer to make this feel better in any way.

Wow that was kind of a depressing blog entry. Any hoo here is the second poster. I'm not sure I like it as much as the first but I am still fond of it.

Orange Sheep & no bail money

And here is the second installment of Orange Sheep. I attempted to make one, in hopefully a series, of posters for my wonderful little made up band. I have been staring at it for the past two days and figured I better put it up here before I critic it to death which I tend to do on pretty much every occasion. As for the fun idea I had for the little orange sheep I was informed that it might be considered illegal. My response was of course "is it really illegal or is it art there is just such a thin line there." This was of course met with a horrible stare and the promise of no bail money.

Willy Nilly Orange Sheep

When I was 12 I remember having a conversations as to if I had a band what would I name it. Now this has always been hypothetical as when I sing cats die and I only know how to play the flute very badly so the chances of me being in a band are slim to none but that never stopped me from coming up with names. Even though I am older now I still remember the name I chose and that was Orange Sheep. I don't believe there was a reason for this except that I thought orange sheep would be really awesome if they existed because orange makes everything cooler. I was 12 at the time and lets face it that reasoning still stands up today and you know it.

Since I can never have a band I figured I would make myself a fake band and start designing logos and posters for it. I might even do some interesting stuff with them. Yes you probably should be afraid of my willy nilly use of interesting or that I used willy nilly. Here are two ideas so far and there will be more to follow soon.