Road Trip! Pt1

No real drawings for this one folks, I'm on the road, so no scanner! (Might be able to swing a few photos of the sketchbook though, I'll keep in touch!)


Anyway,  as said in my last post, school starts next week. (bleh)

And in ONE LAST DITCH ATTEMPT to embrace the freedom given to me and my mother by being an unemployed 20-something college student living at home and a stay at home mom/freelance photographer, respectively, we decided to hop in the car, and see where the road would take us.

Option 1 was west. Towards the mountains. Towards Yellowstone. It'd be a loooooong drive, flat, but with seriously awesome results.

Option 2 was south. More mountains. a road well traveled, but a place we really do love.

 

Option 3 was to the East, and slightly north. Towards ocean breezes, mountains, and awesome fishy foods.



Well, we chose one of these options, and piled our stuff in the car. BIG pile there. And we drove.

 I have photos from some of our stops, and rambles about our adventures that I'll post as  I feel like it, and plenty after the fact! I'm not even posting on facebook where I am. That's half the fun.

Figuring Stuff Out

 

So, I was getting ready to start a new painting last night, when it hit me. I have a week and a half till classes start. I'm going to be on a road trip for that entire time. So as much as  I really want to paint, I'm going to sit, do a few more drawings and small paper paintings, and wait to do the BIG stuff once classes start up again. I'll have a studio space, I'll have 12-20 hours a week of required work time, I'll have friends to bounce ideas off of and pull be away once I get to the point of having a staring contest with my work. I'll have other distractions, too, but yeah, it'll be nice to get back into a setting where it's easy to find someone to talk about my work with. 

 I'll start with the ideas I have now, and I'm sure that as the semester goes on, they'll grow and change and I'll be pushed to do something different. But at least I have something interesting to start with now, unlike last semester, where I was overwhelmed not knowing what to do, and with no help or guidance to figure it out.  Now that I have something to start with, I'll have something to move forward with. I'll also have art history and art theory classes to help me think and keep me reading. In fact, the only non-art class I have is a feminist theory class that also involves video games. Which, while not art related, is still super cool and I'm sure I'll have lots of fun with it. No Japanese this semester either, which is very odd for me. I'll hopefully keep up with it, especially since one of my roommates is taking it.  

I'm glad I took this summer to focus on art. I've made a lot of good friends in IRC and other forums, and I've gotten a bit more confident about my work. My ideas have solidified to  something that looks good and I can defend easier than shit I did last semester.  I got nearly an entire sketchbook of drawings, a chunk of small paintings, and one really strong painting that will be a spring board for even more.  

These drawings are all pulled from the sketchbook. They're quick studies, or slightly more developed ideas. I'm still stuck on the city, with its overwhelming architecture, light, and crowds. I loved the idea of being isolated in those crowds, yet infinitely bombarded with so much stimulation. So I'm taking some of the city scapes I did in response to NYC and Time Square, and trying to introduce figure into it. The figures need to be stylized to fit into that space sensibly, which is what I'm still trying to figure out. My earliest days of drawing is starting to peek through, and so is my love of cartoons, anime, and comics. Which, oddly enough, is something my professors have been encouraging me to pull into my art for a while. I'm fluent in Japanese, and have spent so long studying the art and culture, it seems odd that there's only hints of the influence in my work.