New year, same lack of content

Okay, so I lied. I’m sorry, everyone. I didn’t see you in fall. My ancient Greek HAVC class was very interesting and featured a lot of naked people, so I don’t suppose I’ll be able to tell you much about it here, given that the main link to this blog is on a page associated with a high school. I tell you now, children, that people care a lot less about stuff like that once you get into college. Especially if you’re an art student.

This quarter I’m in my third and what should be my final lower-division studio class, Intro to Oil Painting. I’ve never used oil paints before, so it should be pretty interesting. Our teacher didn’t tell us any specific tricks to use in the process of painting with oil-based paints, so I’ve resorted to handling them more like watercolors than anything else, only with solvent instead of water. (I seem to recall I was supposed to use linseed oil somewhere in there. What happened to that? I have no idea. Guess I’ll find out tomorrow in class. Unless I’m only supposed to use linseed oil to mix my own paint from pigment. Maybe that was it.) Kim, who, despite her best efforts and her position as a Game Design student, has ended up becoming more or less my artistic mentor, has never worked with oils either, so it’s a learning experience for both of us. So far I have managed to not spill solvent all over everything, and that can only be all to the good.

This quarter I am also taking two HAVC classes: one for a GE, and one for my non-Western major HAVC requirement (video games as visual culture and Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, respectively). Both are shaping up to be extremely interesting, although they have a lot of reading. We’ll see how long I can keep up this time — each quarter is a new quest to keep my head above a sea of pages.

In other art-related news, I’ve been playing a lot of Okami lately. If you haven’t played Okami, I highly recommend it. Its art style is distinctive from that of other video games — it’s a 3D game, but it uses a lot of Japanese sumi-e-style outlining. As far as mechanics go, I can only speak for the Wii version, but using the Wiimote as a paintbrush for the Celestial Brush techniques is great. There is definitely a learning curve, because the Wii’s limitations as a first-generation platform mean that your more finely-detailed gestures don’t always register. I do think that’s only because first-gen technology always needs refining — look at the first iPods, then look at whatever iPod is sitting on your desk next to you — and overall, Okami has been a visually gorgeous blast.

My quest to achieve Internet fame as a webcomic artist is progressing slowly, when it progresses at all. My opening pages feature a lot of big, sweeping, setting-up-the-scene shots, which involve much more detail than I’m accustomed to. Once I get over this first hump, it should be a lot easier. In the meantime, I’ll just keep muddling along doing whatever it is I do.

Also, I’m beginning to think that I should just give up on my quest to find a scanner so that I can put all my work up here for you all to see, and just photograph it. I did learn how to use the photography studio setup last quarter (we don’t actually have a studio, we just have backdrops and lights to set up in the classroom), so I should investigate hauling whatever I can down there and documenting it. Or maybe I’ll just put my stuff on the floor when there’s a sunbeam coming in and rope all my housemates into holding pieces of paper to serve as reflectors and just crop the photo into something that works.

Post-mortem

Well, way back at the beginning of the quarter, I made a resolution to write regularly, about once a week or so, and then I embarked upon an approximately five-week-long death march, so whenever I wasn’t in class I was working, and, quite literally, had no time to write. But now it’s summer vacation time, and I’m more or less recovered, and I can return and tell you what happened with everything.

I got B’s in both my art classes, which is pretty good overall, especially considering Paul is a very tough grader. I made $158.40 in the print sale, which, while not nearly as much as I would have liked to make, is still pretty darn good (my main concern was to just get rid of all my prints so I wouldn’t have to cart them back with me, but that didn’t happen either). I made some pretty interesting pieces in 2D Foundations, things that I never would have thought to try had I not been assigned to make something exemplifying some concept or other, which was quite a different approach for me. I’ve generally been provided with at least some guidelines as far as the content of my work, but 2D Foundations did nothing in that department, instead concentrating on testing our grasp of visual theory. It was infinitely more challenging in some ways, and rather liberating in others.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy overall with the work I produced, although I could have done without spending eleven hours a day in the print studio and not getting to eat because of it, all while juggling assignments for two other classes simultaneously. I guess the next step is to scan everything and put it on the Internet for your viewing pleasure. Plus that’ll save me the trouble of having to try to describe everything.

Next quarter, I’m not taking any studio classes, but I am venturing into the world of the UCSC HAVC department (History of Art and Visual Culture). Max took one of their classes on Southeast Asia this spring and highly recommended it; the class I’m taking in fall will be on ancient Greek art, and the Internet has nothing but good things to say about the professor, so I’m looking forward to it. We’ll see how I do with that and a concurrent history class on ancient Japan, plus an introductory class on programming in Java. Fortunately, I’m surrounded by people who are much better with computers than myself, so that last shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. I hope.

Until fall, then. Keep creating!

Sketchbook

I know Skocko says that one of the most important things you can do as an artist is to carry around a sketchbook, so you can record your ideas before you forget them. This is indeed a great idea, but one thing I’ve noticed, in my attempts to practice this habit, is that it really doesn’t matter what you draw on, as long as it’s not something you have to turn in later. I do keep a dedicated sketchbook in my backpack for that purpose, but more often than not I find myself doodling in my notebook, in the margins or in the section for my studio class. During D&D sessions, I just snag a piece of printer paper from the stack and doodle on that, and I store it with my character sheet (I’ve been drawing a lot during D&D sessions recently, and I must say it’s a great exercise). So really, I think the important thing is to get your ideas out there, so you can see them and remember them and improve on them. It doesn’t matter where or how you do it, as long as you can keep track of them later. And one of the most important things is to draw all the time — even little things, even if you don’t think it looks good. The practice is essential to helping connect your brain and your hands. And even if drawing isn’t your method of choice — if you’re primarily a photographer, or a 3D artist, say — the cross-training you get from sketching will only make you stronger as an artist.

Today I used the wood shop and I didn’t die

It’s true.

Our next printmaking project is to make a print that has multiple colors in it. This can be done one of two ways: reduction, which involves printing all you want of one color, then carving away that area and doing the next color (this means that you will be unable to use your block after you finish, so make sure you figure out how many you want in the edition; also, the people in charge of the studio have explained this process to us several times and I still don’t fully understand it), or going into the wood shop and cutting up your block using a lovely tool called a scroll saw, which essentially makes your block into a jigsaw puzzle, each piece of which you ink individually. Not only is this easier for me to understand, but my inner child loved the idea, so that’s what I did. I haven’t inked or printed yet, but I probably will either this weekend or Monday.

In other news, I made a friend in my 2D Foundations section! Her name is Kendall and she’s kind of a Japanophile and she’s crazy like me! I guess this is what happens when you actually talk to people and don’t skulk around in a corner with your headphones on, looking suspiciously at everyone else out of the corners of your eyes like a paranoid misanthrope. I should try it more often.

Also I am considering participating in the annual UCSC Print Sale! It will be a lot of paperwork but I might get money from it and, as any D&D player could tell you, the best way to motivate anyone is to appeal to their sense of greed, so we’ll see. Even if I don’t end up doing it, if anyone reading this happens to be in the Santa Cruz area in early June, you should come check it out! As much as I enjoy making fun of art majors, we do have a lot of good work in the art department, and it’s always worth a look.

We don’t discriminate on basis of medium

One amazing thing about quarters (instead of semesters) is that they go by astonishingly fast. Each quarter is ten weeks, plus finals week, and there’s no better way to measure this than by having a class that is only once a week and keeping track of which class session it is. I had no idea we were already on week four.

Anyway, the printmaking is going well. It’s interesting to note that carving and printing wood blocks requires a different method of visualization than plain drawing — since your print will come out in reverse (and inverse) from your block, you have to do more planning to ensure that you get the image you want. Two out of my three original blocks (my first block and the one assigned to be a pattern) were indeed Japanese-themed, mostly traditionally styled but with a bit of a modern stylistic twist. By my third block, I was very tired and couldn’t think of a good texture to do for my third one, so I carved out sections going with the wood grain, which actually looked not too terrible. Our next assignment was a self-portrait, which seems to be a requirement with Paul, and which actually wasn’t too bad with the woodcuts because I didn’t have to pay as much attention to detail as I did with pencils. I did a sort of stamp-art style, which turned out pretty cool. One interesting thing was that I left a lot of wood space uncarved, so when I inked it and printed it, you could see the grain of the wood printed on the paper.

Speaking of inking, it’s a very exacting (and kind of messy) process. You have to take just a little bit of whatever ink you’re using, scraping along the top of the ink in its container with an ink knife (no gouging — that makes the ink dry unevenly). Then mix the ink on a corner of a glass slab, working it around with the ink knife to get it warmed up. If you’re mixing colors, use a different ink knife for each tin of ink, and remember which knife you used to mix it on the slab. Then, when the ink is warmed up, gather it on your knife and draw a line across the top of the slab. This is called a fount. Then take a roller and roll the ink down the slab to make a big square, making sure to cover the roller evenly. After it’s all a uniform consistency, then you can roll it on your block. To print (always test first!), take your paper, with a piece of newsprint behind it, and place your block in the center of the paper (our very sophisticated method of measuring this is called eyeballing). Then flip it over and take it to the printing press, where you place it on the center of the board, place a plastic sheet called a tympan over it, and roll it through, naturally making sure to check that the press is at the right height for your board first. You get used to the routine pretty quick.

Cleaning up always takes a long time, though, and is at least as messy as the printing (it is almost guaranteed that ink will get all over everything, no matter how careful you are). We use corn oil to wipe off all the slabs and rollers, followed by a mixture called “Simple Green.” The ink is designed to stick to everything it touches (you don’t want your print to be too light), so removing it is an adventure. You go through a lot of rags.

2D Foundations turned out to be much more of a studio class than I thought, especially when they surprised me with the announcement that sections were in fact twice a week instead of once a week and in one fell swoop ruined my glorious dreams of having completely free Fridays for the first time ever (turns out most studio classes here only meet twice a week! So instead of a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class, I now have only a Monday/Wednesday class! This sort of happened fall quarter with drawing, which was Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, but when I emailed Paul about it, explaining that I was in cross-country and that most of our meets were on Saturdays and would this be a problem, he told me that he didn’t meet his classes on Saturdays, which implied that was a personal decision and not a department thing). It is a good class, though, and we’re going over a lot of basic elements of 2D design, such as lines and composition. I may have mentioned before that my fine art skills are not the best, especially if I am unable to work from a photograph, so my work has been a bit behind the curve, but I suppose all I need is some practice. Overall, it’s a good review, and the work the professor shows us in lecture is proper art (i.e., not contemporary), but he makes sure to include a wide variety of artists and works to ensure the legitimacy of what he says, which is good.

The other main excitement around here has been that Portal 2 came out this week, and while I myself don’t have it, and haven’t played it, I have watched Tyler and Adrien play it, and I tell you that game pretty much single-handedly negates all arguments that video games can’t be works of art (I haven’t heard any of these myself, but Adrien assures me they’re out there). It’s beautiful not only in its visuals and concept, but in the elegant way it tells its story. Portal 1 (which I have played) was amazing, but Portal 2 just blows everything else out of the water. Any of you 3D people out there could probably learn from it, or at the very least be inspired.

Not Dead Yet

Well, it has been an astonishingly long time since I’ve posted on here, and for several reasons. Firstly, winter quarter is always the worst one — the weather combines with a badly-timed schedule of very difficult classes to make doing anything at all seem like a challenge akin to climbing Mount Everest. Secondly, I didn’t take any studio classes last quarter — only a “theory” class that was more focused on psychological aspects of contemporary art, among them “the violence of the male gaze” and “the Mirror Stage,” which are completely and utterly ridiculous. On the other hand, if you aspire to be an artist and this day and age, you may take some comfort from the fact that you can do absolutely anything, such as putting a dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde, inventing a machine whose sole purpose in life is to produce feces, or taking pictures of strangers standing together, and it will be considered great and wonderful in the so-called “art world,” all three hundred of them that live in New York. (Although if you have any degree of sense whatsoever, you will renounce that path and continue to create tasteful and eloquent work, at least as long as you are under Skocko’s roof. After that, you may consider a murderous rampage; I know I did after ten weeks of blatant psychological nonsense.) So even if I had had the time, there was nothing worth writing home about.

Anyway, after last quarter I came very very close to wanting to leave the art major in a fit of extreme disgust, but I had already signed up for a class in Relief Printmaking with the same professor from whom I took drawing in the fall, who is awesome, so I decided to wait out the year and see what happened. And what has happened, so far, is that I got into the studio and realized I was happier creating stuff than I would be doing pretty much anything else I could think of. This epiphany was quickly followed by another epiphany in which I realized that I had just sealed my own fate and condemned myself to a path that, while fun (at least for now), has very little practical use in the real world. So I may wind up as the stereotypical starving artist, unless I can make a living drawing webcomics (this year has been extraordinarily full of both epiphanies and existential crises — whatever else goes on, there’s never a dull moment).

I was rather confused as to the differences between relief printmaking and normal printmaking, as I had never taken any sort of printmaking class before. I still don’t know what normal printmaking is, but relief printing involves carving things like blocks of wood or linoleum, running an ink roller over them, and then squishing a paper onto them with a printing press. I had though that was normal printmaking, but I guess I was wrong. Interestingly enough, over spring break, my mom and I went to see an exhibit at the Museum of Art down in Balboa Park featuring Japanese woodcuts, so all the ideas I’ve had for my projects this quarter (both past and upcoming) are Japanese-themed in nature. It’s just like Skocko says — synchronicity. And I tell you, it’s a good feeling to be inspired and to be producing work again.

I’m also taking a class called 2D Foundations, which is apparently the only actual theory (visual theory) class the art department here offers. The professor mentioned that numerous students have informed him that that class was the only one in which they got any education about color theory, which he found hard to believe. I didn’t — the art department seems rather weak on theory — but given the number of studio classes they offer, I really can’t complain. Unless I want to take digital art. According to my art TA from last quarter (who actually did seem pretty down-to-Earth, and was also from San Diego) that’s all conceptual nonsense too, so enjoy the Mac Lab while you can, unless you plan on going to a trade school. Although speaking of trade schools, Paul (my drawing/printmaking professor) mentioned to us that he much preferred teaching at a general university to teaching at a trade school (he gave a talk at one once). Here, we have a plethora of inspirations; we may be taking chemistry or physics or programming or history or literature classes alongside our studio art, so we’re exposed to a much broader range of influences. At a trade school, you’re shoehorned into a very narrow field of specialization, so you don’t get that base. Interestingly enough, that is the precise reason I chose a public university as opposed to an art institute of some sort.

So this quarter is looking to be a most excellent experience, full of work and creating awesome things. And with any luck, I’ll be able to post more than approximately once a quarter.

(On a side note, my midterm project from fall turned out to be a fantastic project. I chose to draw close friends I made in college, and it was one of the funnest things I’ve done in my whole short artistic career. I highly recommend it, for anyone who wants to practice their drawing skills.)

Model Student

It is an interesting habit of the human brain to claim to dislike every aspect of an activity that an individual actually enjoys. For example, I am an art major, yet as I hack my way further and further into the deep, dark, graphite-smeared jungle that is my drawing class, I find myself being grumpily opposed to many facets of the art world.

Fact: I don’t like soft pencils.

Fact: I don’t like charcoal.

Fact: I don’t like still lifes. (Or is it still lives? I’m still having this debate. If anyone has any input on this topic, feel free to tell me.)

Fact: I really don’t like self-portraits.

Fact: I don’t like when the model only poses for one minute. (Interestingly, two-minute poses are fine. I guess I was warmed up by then. I got some decent little sketchy things.)

And yet, somehow, despite all this, I still like the whole messy business.

Anyway, yeah, as you may have guessed, we’ve moved on from doing still-life studies (two mortal weeks of staring at rusty pots and my own amateurishly smudged paper. Dios mio) and have, as of today, progressed to drawing live models. Yes, the model was female; yes, she was naked; no, it wasn’t awkward at all. Honestly, I think nudity is fine as long as it’s tasteful. (For an example, check out one of my favorite works of all time here. Make sure you read the description. Also, you might want to check it out at home, what with the whole maturity filter thing. Just because I think it’s fine doesn’t necessarily mean the school will.)

In other news, we have received details on our midterm project assignment. We need to go buy a high-quality piece of paper from the paper store we conveniently have on campus and use it to make a collection of between twelve and twenty portrait sketches, in ink, of people belonging to a category of our choice (for example, famous actresses, Civil War generals, or the 2010 starting lineup of the San Francisco Giants. I’m sure the fact that our professor is a huge Giants fan had absolutely nothing to do with that last one). This is the one project in which we’re encouraged to work from photographs instead of real life, so the possibilities for creativity are much greater than what we’ve been doing. As for what I’m doing? I know, but I think I’ll keep you in suspense just a little bit longer…

What I Learned Today

Charcoal gets everywhere.

We’re starting off with studies of solitary objects, focusing on linework more than shading and values of tone. I drew a small model motorcycle, choosing to use charcoal since I had a sheet of rougher brown paper. It turned out pretty well (no pictures yet!), but somehow I managed to get smudges of charcoal on me all the way down to my shins. I have no idea how this happened. My best guess is that charcoal can somehow defy the laws of physics. Either that, or there is a rule somewhere that states that an artist’s attire must include some of whatever medium they were working with that day. Not sure.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

Classes started today here at UCSC, and my first class of the year happened to be my art class. Preliminary inspections indicate a favorable outcome — that is to say, it looks like it’ll be fun. The professor has been teaching art here for twenty-eight years and seems pretty down-to-earth, not at all a crazy hippie as I had feared. We’re going to be working from still life for the first few weeks, then some photographs and live models, and finish up with some landscapes, weather permitting. The studio is very spacious, which seems a bit at odds with the extremely limited class size, although we’ll see how crowded it gets with twenty-four Giant Drawing Pads of Doom set up around the room.

We do have homework, Part One of which is to get our supplies (I have two supplies out of the ten listed, and one of those I left at home, exasperatingly enough), and Part Two of which is to check out an art book from our vast and perpetually under-construction main library. I had been to the main library once before, to activate my ID as a library card, which was unhelpful in helping me locate the stacks, as I realized today when I went in and discovered that I had no idea where any of the books in the entire library actually were. I found them (eventually) without too much difficulty (only two elevator trips, although I suppose I should mention that the library only has four floors), and was immediately and perhaps a touch unreasonably astonished at the sheer volume of books we have in the stacks. Where to start?! But I found one I liked after a while, and now my assignment is to look at it in the hopes that I may derive some inspiration from its contents.

We got out early, as it was the first day and we basically just went over the syllabus, which is how I had time to go to the library, check out a book, then come back and write for you. (And I have the chance to eat something before my next class, immediately after which I have practice… my Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be interesting, to say the least, once the gears really start turning).

Anyway. I’m excited. What will I make? I can’t wait to see!

I Cast a Spell

Behold! Lineart of our wonderful, insane D&D party! Max named us the Unspeakable —-Kickers; you can probably guess, without too much difficulty, which word should replace the dash, but I am probably not allowed to type it here because it’s mildly inappropriate and there’s no swearing in the Mac Lab.

I’m definitely looking forward to coloring this. It’s the most fun thing I’ve drawn in a long time.

And look! I finally figured out how to upload images through wordpress!! I feel intelligent!! (Plus this means the picture is actually of a size that allows you to see details, which it isn’t on Facebook!)

The quote in the image was from Ben, our DM (dungeon master, for those of you who don’t speak D&D), speaking as a guide from a village in an alternate dimension we’d accidentally fallen into, warning us about beings in the Far Realms, which is the dimension we needed to get to in order to get back to our own. Oddly enough, it is also extremely applicable to our party…