painting dump from spring`10 semester

Ah, I've been so bad about maintaining this blog~! :P

I finally bought myself a camera, so I got around to taking pictures of all the stuff I did last semester in my intermediate painting class. So here is a dump with descriptions copypasta'd from deviantart.


First assignment: the goal was to paint a still life made up of "white" objects (though of course there was a lot of variation between ivory and slate and so on!)

Though I don't think the painting itself turned out all that well, I think I got more out of the process and exercise itself.



This was a quick one-class assignment from the intermediate painting class I took spring semester of my freshman year. First we made a "landscape" diorama out of a shoebox and some random colorful stuff (marshmallows, plastic wrap, wrapping paper, etc). Then we... painted it.

Yeah, kind of cheesy I know! But it was fun :D



The assignment was to make a painting about "light." So of course I had to throw creepy naked sexless people in there... =_= and a dog for good measure.



Goal was abstraction.

Ah... not sure what else to say about this besides a vague "it was fun to make!"


man... I miss taking art classes. This semester I had no room for any in between all my engineering blah :( but I'm thinking about taking a sculpture class next semester! That should be fun, I think.

Final projects from painting class

In no particular order, the final three projects for my Introductory Painting class in school.
All were taken with my poor little cell-phone cam at funny angles, since they were high up on the wall and alas, I am short.


This 'un was a self-portrait. Requirements: either yourself in the mirror as a still life among other still lifes or at least one hand engaged. I opted for the former.
Mr. Skeleton there was my good friend for several painting sessions... not to be outdone by Mr. PseudoNeoClassical Sculpture. It's symbolic or something.



This one was my narrative painting. Requirement: Two or more figures in a plausible space, meant to be in some sort of narrative. The camera angle is especially bad here... haha. But it's supposed to be two nekkid angels duking it out.



And this one was a transcription of Ruben's Prometheus Bound. I've posted some WIPs here before. I'm actually the happiest with this one out of all my final projects.

Well, that's that. I'll miss this class, but happily I am taking Intermediate Painting next semester. So expect lots of art-dump then, I suppose.

A Breath, At Last!

As evidenced by my lack of blog updates, I've been pretty damn busy lately. Between problem sets and plays to read and being in the pit orchestra for Ragtime the musical, I have had nary a moment for this poor blog.
Which means a huge picture dump!
As usual, sorry for shit cell cam quality. I really should invest in an actual camera.
Since I have no life outside of class, all the following are from or related to my painting class.



A typical palette... I find it ridiculous that this picture came out the clearest.

A "narrative sketch." I don't particularly like this one, but I took a picture of it for posterity as I have since painted another one over it.

Still life; I regret the awkward placement of the head.

This one was intended as a Fauvist exercise.

Yet another hat; this one I knit while on the train to and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC with the painting class.

Our next project is a transcription of a master work. I chose Ruben's Prometheus Bound. What can I say, I like naked guys and liver.

This is the preliminary charcoal sketch. I realized I actually like charcoal despite the horrible noise of vine charcoal on paper... ugh!

The sketch on the canvas... It's actually quite large; about 35"x38".
This is the progress after one day of painting. I'll probably post more WIPs as I work on this thing.

And here is something ridiculous I found on the interwebs.

Art Dump No. 34252

So instead of studying for midterms and finishing problem sets, I decided it would be a good idea to upload some pictures of my sketches/class assignments from the past week or so.

The following are sketches of random unsuspecting civilians eating or chatting in Frist. I drew these with the Art Club here yesterday.

This is a still life I did with the art club on 10/16, whatever day that was. It was big, so I could only take a lame cell phone picture, as usual.
These are color collages I made in painting class.

And a naked person!! Nude models are awesome. Surprisingly, it's not as weird as I thought it would be.

And this is a hat I stayed up till 3:30 AM knitting... Perhaps my priorities lie in the wrong places.
Haha, I just put the hat in the scanner and the picture quality turned out surprisingly nice.

I think I'm learning to just accept my fate as it comes. Lalalalala hello 3 midterms next week!

BTW, I highly recommend this webcomic to all who like history and humor:
Hark! A Vagrant
You will learn much about Canada, and naval heroes.

Some more art stuffs...

Just some more stuff I did in painting class...

Color theory...
The still life set-up...


and the painting I did of it.

My brain is itchin'

I spent almost 7 hours Sunday afternoon working on the following piece of evilness...
Here's a lame bad lighting cell phone picture that inexplicably turned out pink.
For those of you (do you even exist?) who read the previous post, I've been doing value collages in my painting class where I rip up bits of grayscale paper and glue them in a primitive analog for painting. Last week was 3 value collages; this was a 5 value collage. It was a study after the Titian painting Diana and Actaeon (below).
...see any resemblance...? I was quite numb in my brain after the first hour or so (that was pretty much just Actaeon). It's quite a frustrating exercise, but in a way I think it'll help with the painting.

And this is just something I doodled in EGR 191 class today... for some reason my brain was more interested in drawing Lanat as the Jedi Exile from KotOR 2 than paying attention to the velocity of a rail car a passenger is throwing metal balls off of. I like this doodle - maybe because of the blank expression in his eyes that reflects my state of mind in 9:00 class - I might color it sometime.

Speaking of KotOR 2, if you have any interest in the game whatsoever, here is an amazing restoration project! If you know anything about KotOR 2, you know it was rushed onto the market before it was finished, causing the programmers to leave huge chunks of the game out. It was really criminal, considering the half-written code for the unfinished goodies were sold with the game... and even the unused voice files!! Anyway, some insanely dedicated noble and great fans managed to restore this lost content and make the game what it should have been.
I have no time to play it at the moment, but...

I'm really learning to love Shakespeare. And not just because Rufus Sewell was Fortinbras in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

Is it a bad thing that the classes I enjoy most are Shakespeare and painting? I think I fail as an engineer...

Great, another picture dump

Yup, I have finally moved in to college! I returned from an equal parts harrowing and fun Outdoor Action (Princeton's preorientation program of camping/backpacking through the woods).

First, some lame cell phone pictures of my dorm. I'm kind of miffed at my mom for taking my camera with her back to Cerritos...

My bed! Fitted completely with linens from the Target in Nassau Park Blvd. My God, we spent like ten hours in there.
The view outside my window. That building is Alexander Hall or something.
This creepy plaque is on the wall. It is huge. The worst part is, it's on a protruding part of the wall, as if it was the marker of a grave and the body is stashed inside...


This is my armoire. Inside of it I taped my posters I bought from AX.
This is my desk. It's rather small, and my wires are getting in my hair. Ahhhh! Check out my cool wave keyboard though.
I got a amazingly cheap $40 scanner/printer/copier from Walmart here in Princeton, so I finally got the chance to scan all my crap!

This watercolor is from summer. I went to Rancho Los Alamitos with my mom. It's a tiny little historic site in Bixby Hills, a nice gated community next to CSULB. You can get in past the guard if you say you're going to the ranch.


This is a sketch I made on the trail in the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut. It was really, really, really pretty. But alas, mosquitoes and daddy long legs were abundant. My legs are pockmarked with wounds...
This was the first rock climbing site we went to! I navigated my way up that crack formation in the middle using my bare hands and these funky rubber soled climbing shoes. There was a safety rope, of course.

This was a picture I drew on the plane ride from LAX to Philadelphia. It's the Jedi Exile from Kotor 2, haha. Placement is kind of random here but moving pictures around in Blogger posts is such a pain.
This is a Photoshop painting I did on my Cintiq (which I managed to smuggle here, hurrah!) of the view of Alexander Hall from my window.
Another sketch from OA. That little blob on the left on the hill is our climbing support guy, who was some insane wilderness EMT/Ranger. He cleaned up our veggie chili when it fell on the ground... by eating it. That's part of Leave No Trace (LNT), which means basically you can't leave any sign that you've visited a campsite. This entails holding on to your used toilet paper or just using random leaves in the forest, eating food that falls to the floor, digging little holes for your shit, etc.
The sketch on the right is of one of the funky climbing shoes. They were surprisingly comfy! I might want a pair for normal wear, just so my feet can stick to steep surfaces...
I feel like my blog is increasingly centered around only pictures.

Anyway, I'm only in the second day of orientation week, so outside of Outdoor Action, not much has been going on. That is, besides the obligatory welcoming lectures and speeches. That said, I realized it annoys the hell out of me to see people chewing gum and texting during the interfaith "Opening Exercises" in the chapel. I think I am a stodgy old coot after all...