Figure Drawing

I googled figured drawing and found this website. I've spent the last hour or so spending various amounts of time drawing bodies. There is an option where the site gives you a picture and only 30 seconds to draw it. I have a lot of those, but they kinda suck, but towards the end I got better at them. 

I realized that I don't want to intentionall disfigure the things I draw all the time, so I should learn to do it right. 

My Sister's New Show

My sister made a show. I wanted to talk about it, and our view on art.
Historically art has always been split up between two worlds, the high class art, and the art of the people. Our generation is split in a different way though; the art of the people, and the art of the artists. Somewhere along the line artists stopped hanging out with the people and became part of a closed society that the normal people find weird, or don't notice.
First, we have to ask, "what is our generation?" Now we can look at pop culture to try and figure that out. When you look at it you realize that our generation kinda sucks, and this is where we lose the good art of the people. An artist doesn't want to make music like Miley Cyrus, or make television shows like Jersey Shore. And so they end up turning their backs completely on that community of people, and find friends that watch cool stuff, and listen to good music. The problem is that the people need artists. Believe it or not, everyone likes good art over bad art. The thing is that people will watch and listen to things that are relevant to them, not go and find other sources of art, like we do. And that's why we have have bad music and television making billions of dollars.
Viviana was born into this world. When I say born I mean her friends and herself were surrounded by pop culture. It wasn't until her junior year of high school that she started to become exposed to good art. Viviana was still part of the other group, so her situation became very interesting. She learned about good art and became part of a growing movement of artists that bring good art to the kids of our generation. Her new show, The Coeds, is her attempt at doing that. Her show is already becoming very popular, and that's because it appeals to the Miley Cyrus listening, Jersey Shore watching community.
All throughout last year and this year I started to open myself up. I became friends with the people that used to make me wanna barf, and it's been wonderful. Once I realized that you can't judge people based on the music they like or the television they watched, people became much more appealing. It isn't a person's fault for liking something that's bad, because there isn't much that appeals to them and is good.
Rather than hating and trying to separate oneself from the community that you feel "doesn't understand art", make their art better. We are at a turning point. Pop culture's art is slowly becoming better, and that's because of people like my sister who are trying to make it better. We can still hate Justin Bieber and the Kardashians, but don't decide that everyone who listens to him and watches them, are idiots. Rather, look at is as a cry for help. The people feel abandoned and have let shitty art take our art's place. It's our job to bring the people thought provoking and meaningful art. The youth needs leaders to follow, and if we let Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus be those leaders, then there's no one to blame except ourselves.

My Arting

It's been a while since I wrote about my life. I've been painting and drawing a lot. The main reason I started the 365 page was so that I could put up all of my art and so that I wouldn't have to fill up this blog with every painting I make. I have been working everyday for the past ten days on art. I've actually been doing it since Christmas, but the time between then and the first day I made the 365 was kinda a trial to see if I could actually commit the time to doing this everyday. I could and that's why I stated it. I want to be able to see my growth as an artist. I also want it to be public because that gives me a lot of incentive to keep working. I've get more views on my 365 everyday, and that's mainly because I advertise on Facebook, but still. I know most people think that i probably wont be able to do it, and I honestly don't think I'll be able to go for an entire year without messing up, but having people come to check on my page just to see if I'm keeping up makes me want to paint and sketch even more. I made a poetry 365 in the seventh grade year. I got about two months in before I completely stopped. No one was reading it, even when I told everyone to. People actually look at my art blog, and that makes me want to keep going. I also used money I got for Christmas so that I could buy materials, and that makes this feel like this is for me.
My parents have always been part of the death of my passions. I wanted to be a chef when I was eleven, but my parents ruined that for me because they told me that I'd be poor if I went into cooking. Apparently their views have changed since then, because they're letting my sister study theater. And with saxophone too, every time I'd practice in front of my parents my father would say "that was good, but you messed up a little", or something like that. I stopped practicing completely when my parents where home just because I couldn't deal with the judgement. With my writing they'd read right through what I'd try to say and tell me "you shouldn't curse so much; you don't need to curse to be artistic". Painting is the first thing that I've done where my parents aren't involved at all. And I've come to the point where I don't care for their opinion anymore. When I was eleven and trying to be a chef, all I cared about was their approval, and when I got the opposite it killed me. If I was still into cooking now, I would probably feed off of my parents' disapproval. I love it when my mom doesn't get what I'm painting. I love it when she comes into my room and tells my my paintings are too sexual. That makes me want to draw even more sexual. The best thing that happened was when she negatively critiqued an Egon Schiele that I had open on my computer. The fact that mine and Schiele's work gives my mom the same face tells me that I'm doing something right.

I started a 365

Honestly I just wanted to get a month, it's day five and I'm pretty happy about how it's been going so I'll start to promote it more. Julianandthe356.blogspot.com 

Here's what I did today 

I Painted Something I Didn't Mean To

I only am noticing this now, but it kinda looks like he is masturbating... I didn't mean to paint this, but maybe I'm just feeling subconsciously horny. I just wanted the hand to cover the genitals, because I didn't want to draw a penis, but it ended up looking weird because i couldn't spend anymore time trying to figure out how to draw the hand over the penis, so i just covered it with black and called it a day. Every time I look at it I feel like I painted a depressed man masturbating. 

More Art

This is watercolor and charcoal.

Egon Schiele

I did this after looking at a bunch of Egon Schiele paintings. I used water color for the skin, charcoal for the outline, and acrylic and pastel for the hair and shirt (the pastel was because I didn't like the color that came out, so I tried to draw over it).

A New Hobby

My uncle was a huge artist during his high school years. He really wanted to become an artist as a profession, but my grandfather wouldn't let him, and so he studied architecture in college. Recently my cousins have been visiting more frequently, for no particular reason, and my uncle has been seeing more of my art stuff, just because I almost always have my sketch pad with me in the house, and he comes over and looks at my stuff. I feel bad for him, and even worse that he's doesn't even doodle (maybe he does, but I've never seen him draw anything). I sometimes wish I were my cousin so that I could have a dad that knew about artsy stuff, but then I remember that that side of the family is very Christian. But still, it'd be fun to have someone teach me arts stuff. My cousin can't draw for his life, which doesn't mean much, I have gotten so much better just in the past couple months, but if I were my uncle I'd at least want to try and mold my child into whatever I couldn't be.
My cousin is really into music, and he is always talking about his orchestra class. I used to be like him. I remember I was the saxophone kid prodigy. I picked up the clarinet in a matter of weeks after quitting the trombone in the third grade (it wasn't really because I didn't like it, I was just way to tiny for the instrument), and that talent continued when I started the saxophone. I was really into it, I loved music so much and for a good point during my fifth and sixth grade year my dream was to become a musician. That dream quickly died after my saxophone teacher, Igor, made me hate every thing about the instrument. I liked playing, but everything became about NYSSMA, and my parents didn't really care what grade I got, and neither did I, but Igor did, and so I was forced to spend hours practicing music I hated. He tried to even it out by playing a couple of Beatles songs at the end of each lesson, but by then I was too tired to even enjoy that. I got back into music when I started piano lessons, and even more when I took the three months of guitar lessons, but those ended along with my saxophone lessons because I am too afraid of running into Igor at LISMA, and I'm too lazy to find another piano or guitar teacher. I always think that my cousin will start to hate what he plays, like I did, but he's surrounded in an environment where he can't possibly hate it. He's loved by his teachers and nothing is really expected of him, he goes about his music the way that he wants. The sad thing is that he plays the cello, and he is so far behind from every the thousands of cellists who've been playing since they were four, while he only started a few years ago. This kinda got off topic, but I give me another paragraph to connect it all together.
I really really like all the drawing and painting I've been doing. I like it enough that everyday for the past three weeks I've drawn something. I haven't been this committed to something ever. Even with the things I like, I can't manage to do them every day. I want to get better, I want to invest those ten thousand hours and I'm starting off pretty well. The thing is that I don't want it to turn out like it did with my saxophone. The second that this stops being fun I will probably stop. I know that if my cousin didn't absolutely love what he was doing he wouldn't be doing it. And my uncle is more proof, he loved art, but once it was ruined for him by my grandfather he never went back.


I started drawing another charcoal, and I bought paint and tried it out. I also put up what I've been working on for Ganes.

For the charcoal, the arms are too short and I need to learn how to draw hands.

The face was something I did because I had a lot of extra orange and a little extra blue from the soda bottle painting. I came out better than I had hoped, so that's why I put it up. I notice now that the neck is a little off, but I didn't expect it to be perfect.

I drew an empty soda bottle that I had on my desk. I've only been drawing for a couple months, and that time has been almost exclusively with either pencil or charcoal, and this was the first thing I've painted own my own. 

This is my STAC Art project. The art movement I'm using is German Expressionism. I'm going to use paris craft for brain, it'll come out of the head and land in the top left corner of the page and I'll have a little on the iPhone. I used charcoal for the head, hands and phone. I use acrylic paint for the pool of blood and the floor. The more I look at the left hand, the less I like it. I wanted the fingers to be long and thin, so that it'd look creepier, but something about it bothers me now. 

King Lear

I just finished watching King Lear at BAM and it was a pretty awesome experience. When I saw awesome I mean that it inspired awe within me. King Lear is a great play, and is probably one of my new favourite Shakespeare's. What I'd like to comment about this particular show is that it was so visually stunning at some points. There wasn't any manipulation of the text, which is something that I've seen a lot and never enjoy as much as the normal kind of stuff. Over the summer I saw Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare in the Park and it was good, but setting it in the 20s felt weird for me, and I was always asking, "why do this," and "what is the significance?" I found myself not being able to find a good reason for why the director decided to do that for that particular show. But this also brings up the question, "how do we try and reinvent Shakespeare so that it doesn't come out worse?" Going to King Lear, I felt that what they did was brilliant because they took all the technology that is available today and used that to make the show visually stunning, without taking away the essence of the play. There was this wonderful scene, where Lear was outside in a storm, and they drowned the stage with actual rain while Lear started to go crazy. That was something beautiful to watch because you have Frank Langella screaming at the top of his lungs while he is being drowned by rain, and the lighting complemented the entire thing. What also made it wonderful was the fact that the stage stayed wet for the rest of the act, and made Edgar's first scene after he had becoming a little crazy himself and was living as a bigger, even more awesome. and the BAM Harvey theatre is one of the most beautiful theaters I have been in, even though the chairs are kinda crap, so that adds even more to the visual aspect of the show.

I've done this for about two weeks now.