29 Faces - Feb 2017 03

Still chugging along! A little behind as I started missing some days, but I still am trying to (and not that far behind) finish all of the faces by the end of the month! I think that would be a first! This post gets me up to 19 (still have more I haven't scanned!!)

Weird day:
ended up spending time with people vs. sitting alone arting,
 random guy kept talking to me at airport, resulting in
fast, quick drawing on baggage claim ticket.

left: single line drawing
right: finger painting with gouache

remembering that I like painting with gouache, a lot

29 Faces Feb 2017 - 2 / Monthly Visitors

29 faces and my Monthly Visitors Series meet!! The result is..... pretty much exactly what I've been doing all along! But it's good....I'm actually excited that I'm getting better at painting with the menstrual blood. It's definitely it's own challenge.....

#7

#8 This is the first day I really had NO desire to work on a face, but hey, I still did it!....

#9 - the color on this one will still change a bit...

29 Faces - Feb 2017 01

Another year of 29 faces! This time I'm trying to actually do a face every day. I'm doing well so far with 6 faces completed in 5 days, but we'll see. I'm not going to be at my place for a little while this month and I'm planning for it with a variety of mobile supplies and a single notebook that I'm trying to make everything in, but we'll see. I'm trying very hard to do something every day for the sake of gaining something a little different from this project this time, even if it means sometimes doing something a little more rough or just forcing myself to do something even though I'm not feeling inspired.

01

2 & 3

4 & 5

6 - woke up early this morning and thought about making my face and decided against it. By the time the evening came, I realized I still hadn't done anything and wasn't that inspired. I just started grabbing things that were immediately available. Not my favorite, but I did something it, so yay!

November 16, Monthly Visitors

A continuation of last month's menstrual blood paintings,  this is the November 2016 edition of "Monthly Visitors"

I'm finding that the amount of "paint" each month is it's own limitation.... I'm balancing this with life, which is to say I have a full time job and other things going on, so I have to work within those limitations. Perhaps I'll try to work on one single piece vs. smaller pieces to see what I can do within those parameters one month...Since you're only working with a single color of non-ideal formulated paint substance, this definitely requires layers and patience to build up colors, but I'm enjoying the challenge.

 .

October 16, Monthly Visitors

I'm going to be blunt. Some people are going to be disgusted by this and frankly, if menstrual blood or generally people talking of such things disturbs you, please, stop reading now. For real. Stop. Stop. STOP.





Ok. So every month my body helps fill this little cup with some bloody bits for a couple days. And for a few days here I have this tissue, remnants of my uterus preparing my body for another month of something that's not happening. There's something very primitive about sitting with a cup of your blood (ok.. admittingly, I suppose knowing the names of all my body parts, not being culturally conditioned/scared of my body already is putting me in a different category than some people, but I really encourage people to get familiar with what is going on with their own bodies!!!!! I am not one to be disturbed by such things.) There's something a little weird about knowing what pain was involved in producing it. I think I first painted with my menstrual blood at least 15 years ago, but those are hidden away and have never seen any eyes but my own.

I've been wanting to paint again with it for a while and this month, I finally got to it. I didn't use all the blood, but these were done over the course of a couple days. For now at least as long as I'm doing paintings of faces, I'm calling this series "monthly visitors", which I like as it both refers to one of the culturally acceptable ways of acknowledging a menstrual period as well as a weird reflection on the people that my uterus and body have NOT produced over the years. Instead I'm using that non-people creating material to create artistic representations of people. So creating people in my own way.  I used a wet on dry technique for these 3 paintings.

No humans or animals were harmed in the production of this art.

re:love Park Painting

This past weekend I decided to venture out to the re:love park series for the afternoon. Armed with my kindle & watercolor supplies, I sprawled out in the grass (a rarity living in an apartment in a city!) listened to some good music, finished a book and started a new one and worked on 2 paintings! I really appreciate that I was able to just do my own thing in my own introverted way, even if I wish I had spoken to more people! Yay! Thanks!

Pretty sunset clouds at Woodley Park during re:love!

Searchin*

F, G & H (yes there is a-e. Showing off my creativity!)

This is a set of watercolors I did during Burning Man this year throughout the week and the last on the way out during Exodus... I finally let myself buy a little pocket sized field watercolor set, which made painting in random places much easier to deal with. Yay! Looking forward to taking it along for other adventures...

f&g

h

*brought to you by Roy Ayers


Other Burning Man 2016 Posts:

http://unboredhands.blogspot.com/2016/09/burning-man-2016-emily-perpetual-painter.html

http://unboredhands.blogspot.com/2016/09/burning-man-2016-actionsampled.html

http://unboredhands.blogspot.com/2016/09/post-burning-man-2016-general.html

http://unboredhands.blogspot.com/2016/09/burning-man-2016-building-hellfire-w.html

29 face 2/16 - 3

#5

I really enjoy looking through other people's 29 faces since there's so many variations that come out of the same prompt! This one was inspired by alarmcatstudio's line drawings, but instead I made 29 faces from a single line! This was a sharpie on bristol paper

 #6

I intended on doing something different for this one initially, but I like where it ended up! These were basic watercolor splotches (faces). Later I added hair, some slight facial features and eyes and then decided to sketch more definition on the hair and faces with a black copic brush tip. My paper's too big for my scanner!

 #7

Lesson: 1)Profiles are much harder than you think (I had google images for profiles up, but didn't really copy  anything/look while painting. I had to modify my brain definition/hand definition as I went along to make them more realistic/less cartoony 2) The right paintbrush helps. I went with something too large at first which made it difficult to get the details I wanted & then I wasn't liking the lack of smoothness on the tips of the paintbrushes and started trimming. Watercolor can be hard to tame, but a bad brush doesn't help.

That's 203 faces already! (not counting some in progress things!)


2/2016 faces! 2
2/2016 faces! 1

all previous 29 faces

Magazine Graffiti Women

Last year when I first participated in the 29 Faces challenge, I experimented with a different technique for each face and stumbled on the idea of painting on magazine pages. I hadn't played with this idea at all until this past week when I hit a roadblock, unable to get into any art in particular when I decided it was time to do something more "mindless" and decided to paint on some magazine pages.

I lovvvvvvve the eye and nose on this one

 and a couple of short time-lapse process videos of the purple and pink faces. Each one compresses about 45 min to ~1 min:

Although, as before, I kinda view this as cheating, I still think it's a good and interesting technique to use, especially to just experiment with getting the "feel" of painting a properly proportioned face in different positions. Plus, once you slap down the first layer of paint, you're kinda on your own in terms of going forward with shading and fixing your slopped paint slapping. I like the result and I'll probably go to this and maybe even try it out with my own photos at some point....

Art Recently, Oct 15

I still have SO many photos to go through and scan, but that doesn't stop me from also working on many other things at the same time! Never! My brain pretty much never stops when it comes to coming up with new things to try out. Part of it is just due to me being me, but I also have some things I've been working on that I hope to make happen this month (well sooner, hopefully), so we shall see. Here's some of the arty things I've been working on in the last couple of weeks...

I found these napkins at the store (I'm always scouting for awesome bat related things in the Halloween aisles!) At first I glanced at them and passed them over as they were just a Dia de Los Muertos skull with the decorations printed with black on a white napkin. Then I realized I could paint them and scooped a stack up and have been painting away for the last week. I really love how they turned out and how painting them differently brings out different shapes & patterns. Pretty awesome. I still have some more napkins and different color combinations I'd like to try out. Each painted skull  area is about 14 x 10 inches.




Most of this eye was painted as part of the batch I took to Burning Man. I didn't really like it though, which is why it was left behind. Then I decided to paint it with a slit pupil, which I think fits it much better and is nice and creepyish as well! I would like to make more of these.











Why do I need another book to work in? Who knows! But I'm doing it! This is actually the large Dylusions Creative Journal. I have a weird thing about some of my art books and have aversions to trying random things in a given book (i.e. a collage book is for collages ONLY. I've deviated from it and I don't really like it.), so I picked this journal (w/ 50% off coupon at Michael's) with the express purpose of really just EXPERIMENTING in it. I literally just scribbled on the first page and then turned it into something. On this right page, I ripped up a few different types of paper, dropped them on the page and then spattered alcohol inks on them. The papers are actually glued on another page I didn't photograph, the random dots that ended up on the book page itself were doodle fodder (right) and then I discovered my previous issues with alcohol inks were due to the papers I was using, and so I played around with them on a full sheet of vellum (left). Whew. So I think the book is serving it's purpose.

So once I discovered how much of a difference using non-porous paper made for alcohol ink fun (I've had some of the bottles sitting around for I don't know how many years), I pulled out a little notebook of "water resistant paper" that I got at Daiso (Japanese $1.50 store.) I have no idea what it's made of, but it's a little plasticy and it allows the alcohol inks to flow nicely without soaking it. My next experiment is to finally jump onto Yupo with these.

 And finally, some paperclay bits including some eyes, bird heads and mammal heads. This is actually my first time using the DAS air dry paperclay as I usually use the Creative Paperclay (Blick was out of the Creative one day and an employee suggested this one.) It was weird because it it definitely had an intense, almost almond like smell, but I'm hoping that dissipates as it dries. I just made these last night and it's been rather humid/raining here the last day, so they aren't quite ready for sanding/painting yet. I think I like the experience of working with the Creative Paperclay more so far, but I'll wait to make a decision once I've actually finished some projects. (Photographed on top of my "Wreck This Journal", which I've also been working on a little, but going into that is it's own set of posts/video or something... it's maybe half completed.)

I know I've been working on tons of other things as well.. jewelry I didn't photograph, decorating my apartment for Halloween, finally framing and hanging some photos, cooking. Sounds about right!

End of August update

So it's the end of August and that means being super busy! A few weeks ago we had an awesome CicLAvia that I keep meaning to post photos for... Then I lost a sweet little rattie friend and found out I got space in Center Camp at Burning Man for some of my art... all in the same day! The last 2 weeks have been busy as resultingly expected.

Ever since I first visited Center Camp at Burning Man in 2013, I knew I wanted to show some of my art there. I love the huge art in the open playa, but as of now, I know my own skillset is generally more 2-d and small scale, which is exactly what there's space for in Center Camp! So this year I put in 2 applications, 1 for the black and white Holga photos I've shot for the past 2 years and 1 for the eye paintings, Soul Mirrors, that I was inspired to do from the Burning Man theme this year, the Carnival of Mirrors. This has been super exciting partially because I did something I told myself I would do. Partially because it's a chance to show my art publicly, which I haven't really done before. Partially because it's a chance to push myself (it was pretty scary to drop $22 on a single 20x20 print and just hope it turned out ok considering I've never had such a large print made of any of my photos and I was just hoping the scan quality was sufficient....) Partially because it involves unusual planning since you need to be prepared and have all the parts needed to hang and secure the art in the middle of the desert.

I've been playing around with the pieces I have to figure out the layouts. The spaces are 48x48inches, which is rather large and I found the only place I had free in my small apartment to play with that amount space was on my bed.....

 I think this is approximately what I'm going to do with the eyes, with the rainbow-ish one on the right on top. The mirrors aren't attached yet...

At times I think I like this layout the best, but then I look at the others and sometimes I start doubting it.  I ordered a bunch of prints with some in multiple sizes just to have a chance to play around with the images....

So much left to do and less than a week left before leaving!

Constant Watching

I kinda love that sitting in my living room currently includes views like this:

I've been working on this painting for the last few weeks.... with so many colors and 12" x 12", this one was quite time consuming, but I like how it turned out (I wasn't sure for a while there.)  I decided to just do the black center for this one vs. the mirror, although I do like the reflections in the mirrors in the foreground.

Soul Mirrors!!

About a month ago I had a brain explosion (a good thing!) that lead to altering what I previously did with this drawing... the result has been a series of painted eyes on boards with various types of mirrors in place of the pupils...With the idea of the eyes being the windows to one's soul (or whatever way you would like to represent the concept of the eyes giving one more insight into a person & their emotions and creating connection) combined with a mirror (sometimes flat and sometimes giving a more distorted reflection), the result is turning this idea into a more self reflective activity. The colorful eyes draw one in and then act as a prompt combined with the mirror that urges one to carry out this connection and activity with themselves as well.

SO MUCH LOVE and ENJOYMENT in creating these!! Plus, they just look cool.

Smallest is 8x8 and largest is 12 x 12 inches. All acrylic on wood. The bottom 2 also include glow in the dark accents.

wanderer

We got home from Burning Man last night... this year was definitely it's own experience that beat me up in new and exciting ways (tm). Some have asked how I was just getting back since it was shut down ( it was, but just temporarily & for us meant sitting in line within view of Will Call for 12 hours.) I battled with my body and injuries and pain and introverted nature and  ended up spending way more time in camp than I had wanted as a result, but it is what it is. I managed to make it out to shoot some pictures though, so I'm happy with that. I had made up some specific photo shooting goals and at least partially achieved them as well. I don't go back to work until next week, so I'm still trying to ride the wave of random productivity in the meantime - I stayed up late last night and developed some of my film from the Holga and this morning I was working on scanning negatives and hopefully will develop more this afternoon. Go, go, go!

One morning at Burning Man I just couldn't really force myself to even be around other people, so hid for a while and painted. It wasn't until I just scanned the resulting painting that I realized what way I wanted to orient it. Distraction by abstraction!

29 faces...7th!

1 more left after this group! I can definitely tell I've been wanting to go more off into abstract territory, which is coming through in the faces, but they are still faces none the less!

25 - pencil on printer paper, using the frottage technique

26 - pen on drawing paper... made from circle-type shapes

27 - colorless oil pastel on watercolor paper with watercolor then applied on top. This is a tricky technique since you can't really see what you're drawing without tilting the paper at an angle, but that's part of the fun. It was kinda exciting to see what I drew appear as I applied the watercolor. This technique has a great deal of potential though and I'll probably play with it more.

28 - watercolor on watercolor paper