Today was a weird day, painting wise. This was the first time in an extremely long time that I felt the fear that everyone talks about when they paint.
Last Thursday my Spanish teacher asked me to make a little poster to put up in the library with the poems that were submitted and preformed in the Annual Hofstra Spanish Poetry Contest. When I said I thought it was no big deal. When I started it today I started to get into some pretty big problems that I'd never encountered before. All the sign has to say is "2014 Annual Hofstra Spanish Poetry Contest". I thought that I'd paint it, because I like paint better and I have more colors to use. I realized soon after I started that this wasn't some other painting thing. I couldn't just dive in empty-minded like I'd been doing with the "Julian-Slug" piece for the past few days, because if it didn't come out right the first time there was no going back. The first problem I encountered was that I had no idea where to put the words. The title was pretty long and if it wasn't spaced right then it'd look weird. I thought a lot about how I'd wanna put it, and even now I seriously regret my choices. The biggest problem was that I there were some words that had to be on the same line or else it'd read weird. "Spanish Poetry Contest" had to go on the same line, because you read it as one thing. I ended up putting annual and Hofstra together and 2014 alone at the top. I painted it after. I divided the canvas paper up all nicely, spaced out the words and used colors that were very spanish. I soon realized, while painting in the letters, that I didn't have a brush that was small enough to do the letter the way I wanted to. I went in, very carefully, painting in the letters. After, I decided to make two little drawing on the empty corners of the page. I know with something like this, detail can be the enemy. If it's too complicated, it doesn't look nice. I made a book and a pen. I was terrified going into this. Terrified as in I had serious anxiety. My heart was pounding out of my chest as I started and it was something I'd never felt before. I drew out the book five times on a little sheet of paper before going on the piece, and I even tried to see if I could paint the book on another paper and press it onto the piece (but it looked terrible when I tried). The pen became a huge thing because when I stared it didn't look anything like a pen.
I think the poster turned out fine, I'm not really that proud, especially since I could have done the same thing in 10 minutes on my computer, but it's done and I can say that I stood up to artist fear. I never want to feel this again, but I know that it's probably something I'll encounter more as I keep painting. What really gave me the fear was that it's something so new to me, I've never painted for anything like this, and the consequences for it failing are more than just a day in my 365 that could get forgotten after a week or two, a failure in this is something that I have to look at every day I'm in the library, it's something that people are going to look at, it's disappointing people who had faith in me. I didn't think that I end up blogging today, but since this quarter we're blogging about process I thought it'd be a good opportunity to write what I was feeling and this change in my process.

Painting Trouble

This morning and yesterday afternoon I've been having some serious difficulties with what I've been working on. For STAC art I started this surrealist painting of me as a slug, running (slithering?) away in fear. For some reason, I also have an exposed brain. This is the first thing that I've worked on that hasn't been directly from observation. I was drawing my face and brain from a mirror and photo, but it really isn't working for me. The slug part doesn't look like a slug, I want the head to be bigger and the face to look more scared. So I've been playing around, but with acrylic paint it isn't exactly the same as with oil. Right now what I have looks like shit, I have decided to switch this thing to oil paint. I was reading some stuff online, and according to Google, it is perfectly okay to use oil paint over acrylic (but not the other way around, apparently).
This project, for me, is about creative exploration, and I think that I could do it much better if I were using oil, or at least the face for now.

My Recent Work

I went shopping about two days ago and along with a variety of new clothes, I also bought new art supplies. I honestly only planned on getting some more paper and white acrylic paint but I ended up buying a lot more. The big thing was these three little tubes of blue, red, and yellow oil paint.

I started to paint more again. About a week ago I did this still life with acrylic paint.

I didn't think anything of it when I started, but as I started to get into the candle holder thing I realized that I knew more about painting then I had before. I saw myself doing shading in places that I'd never do before when I painted more, and even color was pretty easy to use, which was the biggest surprise because even with my oil paint I didn't have any color. I think that this piece is far from perfect, but it had been twenty three days exactly since the last time I picked up a paint brush and for that time I consider this a huge success.

Two days after this piece was made, I painted a self portrait. 

I wanted to get more used to using a mirror rather than a picture because I want to be able to draw people in real life rather than from a picture. I don't like this one too much, and it was also made with acrylic paint, but I'm showing it because it is part of four self portraits from a mirror that I want to talk about. His skin is that color because when I opened my blinds for some more light, I looked like this weird purple. 

I already said that I didn't like the previous painting, but when I compare it to the last self portrait painting I had done, I much rather prefer the newer one.

After I went shopping I also bought new watercolors, so on that day I decided that I didn't want to have to deal with a big clean up, so I painted with the watercolors. This is a medium that I have almost no experience in, and I had serious difficultly making this piece, but for the amount of trouble that I had, I am ultimately proud of the result. 

All of this lead up to what I made yesterday in about an hour and what I finished this morning in another half hour. 

I don't know what happened, but I felt really comfortable working on this piece. I have touched oil paints in almost a month, which is a long time considering that I've only been painting for about four months, and I cranked this out like it was nothing. The colors are something that came out of a different weird light that came from my window, and I had chosen to make it a little more radical.

All in all, I'm super proud of the final piece, and I feel that all that time I spent with charcoal got me better with shading.

Parsons The New School for Design

I went on my first college tour today. During my freshman year I had accompanied my sister on all of her college tours, so I had built a large context of what to expect when I started my tours. I had actually signed up to go on the Eugene Lange tour of The New School, but the people there weren't checking off on lists so I just ended up going to Parsons because that is the school that I would prefer applying to next year. The tour was very generic, but had the New School twist on it and I really fell in love with the school.
First off the tour itself was tiny. I remember that the tours at Northeastern and Boston University were huge. You'd start off in this huge auditorium and it'd take half an hour to split up into groups for the walking portion. Here the intro was in a tiny room and two minutes after it finished, our group was already on its way to the first stop.
Our tour guide was also something that sold me on the school. He was the kind of person that is a learned leader, not a born one. I consider myself someone like that, and the best example I can think of in STAC is Shiana, she can lead a group, but because she learned how to, not because it was just something that came. I could tell that Elias, our guide, had this quality because of the way that he talked, he was quiet, but in the loud kind of way. The reason I liked this so much was because it reinforced what he talked about in the school. Freshmen in Parsons spend that year working more on talking and think about their art. So what I got from him is that after a year at Parsons, he learned to talk, and that was expressed in his tour guiding manner.
Next, there are the buildings. This shouldn't be something so significant in a college decision, but it's extremely hard to ignore it. Everything is beautiful. Not only do the buildings themselves have the modern looking Bauhaus style, but the interior design is an even larger accomplishment in my mind. In their newest building, where we spent about half of the tour, and where we were told a good portion of our classes would take place, each floor had a beautiful design. Their new auditorium was this fantastic space with moving walls to convert it into a number of different areas, from a runway to a stage. Added, there were these wonderful section where the walls and ceiling were painted solid bright colors. The whole thing felt like a playhouse for the mind. I could get ultra creative in a space like that, and I think that's part of the reason why they spend so much money to make these buildings.
What won me over academically was their freshmen year studies. You don't choose a major until your sophomore year, and that relieves me from a lot of stress. I don't know exactly what I want to do, and it's nice to have options. I can apply with basically anything that I make in STAC, and choose something completely new to major in. The program that I'd want to do at their school would be Design and Technology, but I know very little about design or technology now. I am seriously worried about going into anything computer related that requires some sort of portfolio, but I can apply to the school with paintings and films and still go into what I want to do.
Lastly, the Dual Degree program. I like a lot of things, and I have put effort into a lot of things, so I'd feel really bad if I had to give them up, mainly Spanish and French. I love language, and it's something that I'd seriously consider studying if I could put it in a larger context, like study abroad programs. I kind of have a plan set out for Parsons. I'd major in whatever art major i decide upon, and then minor, or double major in French, and take advantage of the Paris campus that the New School has and study there for a while. Spanish is something that I enjoy, but I don't worry about forgetting the language like I would with French. I'll always be speaking in Spanish, I even talk to myself in Spanish, but without a French class I know that I'd forget almost everything I'd learned because I'd have no one to speak with.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Last night I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors, and this film is really a masterpiece. The first Wes Anderson film I saw was Moonrise Kingdom a couple years ago. I loved the film, but the biggest problem I had with it was that child actors are never very good. The movie had some amazing actors, and when put next to little kids it felt disappointing. I loved the movie, don't get me wrong, but throughout the entire thing you just want Tilda Swinton and Edward Norton and Bill Murray to get more screen time. The other three Wes Anderson films I had see before The Grand Budapest were Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Besides Fantastic Mr. Fox, I couldn't find that personal connection to the films that let you really fall in love with the film. Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums were amazing films, I always liked Moonrise Kingdom better just because the story really hit me in a great way, but Moonrise Kingdom had that big issue with the actors with me. The Grand Budapest Hotel gave me everything I wanted in a Wes Anderson film. It was whimsical, but serious. It was hilarious, but depressing. And like all of Wes's films, it looked beautiful. And unlike Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest doesn't have those moments where you look over he weaker acting skills. Even the young actors, Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan, are fantastic.
The film is also more beautiful than any other Wes Anderson film I had seen. It was the old European setting that mixed perfectly with Anderson's style. Anderson has this great command of color, which is a weird characteristic to give to a director.

With these three stills from film, you can see how Anderson uses wardrobe to match the backgrounds. And in the last two, it's more apparent that even skin color is something that he takes into account when setting up these shots. There are so many other shots that I couldn't find on the internet, but they're all as carefully crafted as these.

He sets up his shots like a painter, and that started to get me thinking. I want my next big art project to be in the style of Wes Anderson, particularly in the style of The Grand Budapest Hotel. I want to capture the beauty and humor and composition that exists in every shot of The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Pull the Lever, Kronk!

I've been told that I have a very diverse taste in music. I believe that to a certain extent, but it's really more that I go through phases with what kinds of music I listen to. I am always in a phase with Julian Casablancas and The Strokes, but you can't listen to only that all the time, and so recently I've been listening to a lot of Eartha Kitt. She has become one of the biggest influences for my artistic thought process recently, and I really admire her as a person, and think she is probably one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. Even as she got older, I still see the beauty in her. I've drawn her three times now, all from different points in her life.
The first was a young Eartha, during the time where she travel Europe singing cabaret. One of the biggest reasons why I admire Eartha is because she is so worldly. I read in an interview with her that she has sung in I think 13 languages. She didn't speak that many, but she could get around in quiet a few languages. I study French and Spanish, and I don't find many artists that connect language to art in the way that Eartha did. When Eartha was a child, she went through a lot of physical and mental hardships, which really impact the way that one can approach her music. She never sings sad, and the feeling I get when I hear her voice is more of a commanding and powerful woman. There's this song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" that she sings. Even though she didn't write it, if you put it in the context of her life, her biological father was a white man who raped Eartha's mother, and who Eartha never met. The song is about how boys try to flirt and get with this girl, but she doesn't ever do anything with them because her "heart belongs to daddy." That's pretty powerful stuff when you know her background.
The second drawing of Eartha that I made was really a quick sketch of Eartha during her middle aged years. Eartha played with sex in a way that feels classy and even more sexy than what pop stars do today. She sounded seductive when she talked, and that flowed into her physical appearance. She was this awesome bridge between worlds that don't really meet. She sings with class, but the undertones are of something much more human and risqué. Eartha was a huge supporter of gay rights and even though she wasn't a lesbian, having support from someone like Eartha gave the movement more legitimacy. This is the music that your conservative grandparents listen to, but the singer is a women who openly opposed the Vietnam War when she was invited to the White House and supported the radical idea at the time of being okay with gay people. Her song "Santa Baby" is played millions of times ever Christmas season, and it's seen as this classic Christmas tune and is definitely not considered political, but the singer was very much involved and that's the bridge I was talking about. Eartha was able to bridge between worlds in a way I've never seen an artist do before.
The third drawing of Eartha I drew today, and it was her during her older years. Really, Eartha is beautiful in every way. I have changed my definition of beauty ever since I started drawing faces regularly. There are faces that I like to draw, and ones that I don't. Eartha Kitt has a face I love, especially older Eartha. Towards the end of her life, Eartha played Yzma in the movie "The Emperor's New Groove". That movie has a huge connect with me personally for a myriad of reasons, one of which is that it was the only Disney movie and the only kids movie that I've ever seen that explore Latino culture. Ancient Inca had some of the most beautiful stories and even though The Emperor's New Groove didn't explore the mythology, but just seeing the architecture in the building and the names of ancient emperors makes the whole experience feel more special since I had always been surrounded with that art in my house and during my trips to Ecuador and Peru. And then there's Yzma. The villain of the movie, but also a lovable character. As a child I always connected her directly to my late grandmother who raised me for the first seven years of my life. Their voices where extremely similar, and the most vivid images of my grandmother are during her later life when she had begun to get extremely skinny because of her cancer, and Yzma was also very thin. It wasn't until recently that I started to make the connection between Yzma and Eartha. The reason Yzma was so important to my childhood was because of the voice. If it weren't for Eartha, Yzma wouldn't have meant as much. My sister used to reenact the scene from the movie where Yzma and Kronk go into their secret lab. We'd jump into our hammock in our patio and Viviana would scream Yzma's line "Pull the lever, Kronk!" and I'd pull on a stick next to the tree that held the cloth sack up. Then Viviana'd scream "WRONG LEVER" and I'd shake the hammock and we'd laugh. We'd do that dozens of times in a row on summer afternoons and those times where the best memories of my childhood. Eartha was directly responsible for the happiest moments of my childhood, and if she didn't mean something special then I'd not understand what an influence really is.

I'm Back

This week I've been basically off the map. I've been sick and I haven't really done anything this week. I took really three days off from drawing or painting anything. Monday I did a doodle in a minute so I don't count that as a work day, and it wasn't until Thursday that I started to paint and Friday I played around with these new graphite pencils my dad got me. Today I whipped out two other thing and put them up in place for the when I didn't do anything. I don't think that it's cheating to make it up, and I changed the date on blogger for when I posted it, so when I go back to look nothing will seem out of place.
I still have to do a piece for today, but I'm happy that I caught up.