TOMS Style Your Sole

Recently the Sustainability Stewards, TERRA, and student government at the College of Idaho worked together to bring us the event TOMS Style Your Sole.  In case you’re unfamiliar, with TOMS, it’s a shoe company dedicated to sustainable materials, and for each pair of shoes they sell, they give a free pair of shoes to barefoot children in developing countries.  So buying a pair of TOMS shoes is not only a way of procuring fashionable, comfortable, eco-friendly shoes, they’re also guaranteeing that you’re helping someone in need.

The idea of the Style Your Sole event is to buy basic, plain white TOMS and then decorate them with your own signature style.  When groups or organizations do this, they’re ensuring that many pairs of shoes will be donated.  This spring the College of Idaho held a Style Your Sole event.  I bought a pair of white TOMS to decorate.  I made it my first art project of the summer to decorate them with my interpretation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.  Now I have a pair of comfortable shoes that convey my love of art to anyone who sees them.

Owl with an Edge

The following painting is a project I did for my Little Sister of KKG.  At the time I made it, I couldn’t make this post for fear the surprise would be ruined.  Now that the cat’s out of the bag and I have some time on my hands, I’m free to share it with you.

The owl is the symbolic creature of KKG.  Red is my Little’s favorite color.  So, with black to evoke night, I painted this barn owl in black, white and red.  It’s painted on stretched canvas with acrylic paint, and it took surprisingly little time.  I’m guessing under eight hours, though I wasn’t keeping track.

The nature of the red paint gives it a violent look, though I was trying to avoid this connotation.  I hoped to evoke more of a serene and mysterious feeling.  I’m happy with the finished product, though I struggled to get the feet right.  I guess bird feet are just always awkward. 😛

I also scratched into the wet paint of the background, trying out a technique I learned from a classmate.  I think it adds a modern edge to the painting.

The Welder

Here’s another project I neglected to post this summer.  I was commissioned to do some artwork to hang on the door of a local repair shop.  After some discussion I settled on the image of a hunched-over welder lit with eerie light by the sparks of his welding arc.  I painted the image with acrylic paint and enamels on a large sheet of plexiglass.  It took me a long time to complete it, but I’m quite satisfied with the end result.

The Palette As Art

Painter’s palettes are typically viewed as just tools used to create a painting.  But what if we turn around and look at the palette itself as a piece of art?  Think of it as a canvas in a different form.  Does it not transform with the application of paint, developing under the artist’s hand, just as a painting does?

I particularly am fascinated by this state of transformation because I leave the paint on my palette to dry, instead of washing it off.  I find it more convenient to peel it off once sufficiently thick layers have accumulated.  So my palettes can go for a long period of time, transforming in colors and layers to reflect whatever I’m working on.  These mountains of dried paint can create some really beautiful abstract images.

When I finally do decide to peel off the paint, the results can be surprising.  Sometimes the unseen underside of the paint layers is just as intriguing as the outer, visible layer.  The waves of color underneath reveal the progression of my paintings, going back in time to show the very first layers I put down.

Because I view my palettes as stand alone art I have hung them on my dorm room wall.  This is a functional way of storing them within easy reach while also displaying them as decorations with a personal touch.

A New (School) Year

For those mysterious beings called “followers” who supposedly read my blog, this summer was a disappointment.  But life is unpredictable.  Wait, scratch that.  The one predictable element of my life is that I’m always BUSY!  Work pretty much overloaded me towards the end of the summer, which accounts for the measly one post I made in August.

But now I’m back at school, and although I’ll remain ridiculously busy, I do hope to at least punch out a few artsy blog posts now and then.  One of the exciting aspects of this year at school (I’m a Junior – eep!) is that I’m taking an advanced studies painting class.  The way this works is I have to create a contract vaguely detailing what I plan to do for the twelve weeks of this term.  I have to pursue projects related to some central theme, and then twice a week I meet with other individuals in the same boat to share my work and theirs and share words of critique wisdom.  At first this was debilitating freeing, because I always have teachers to tell me what to do.  And suddenly I didn’t.  For twelve weeks.  I had absolutely no idea of what to do.  But eventually, after much racking of the brain and a meeting with my professor, I decided to paint landscapes.  I love to draw/paint things from nature, such as flowers and animals, so this was like an extension of that but from more of a macro view.  I’ve actually done very few landscapes.  So I’ll be painting in my faithful acrylics as well as experimenting with new oil paints and water-soluble oil paints, both of which I’ve never tried before.  It’s sure to be an eye-opening experience.  To liven up the experience I plan to paint various landscapes from around where I grew up, ones important to me.  I’ll also try reworking a few prior paintings, paint in a more stylized approach, work in different sizes of canvas, and limit myself with a few color schemes.  So I’ll try to keep anyone reading updated with occasional posts about my progress.  So until then, cheers!

ΚΚΓ Coat of Arms

Remember how in my painted door post I mentioned I wasn’t in a sorority?  Funny story, I am now.  In a whirlwind of decisions this spring I decided to pledge Kappa Kappa Gamma and I am now an official member.  One of the aspects of being a new member is the assignment of a Big Sister.  I love my Big Sister very much, and in April I embarked on a gift project for her.

It began in a conversation where she expressed an admiration for the Kappa Kappa Gamma coat of arms.  She very much liked the design, and felt it was very classy.  When I heard this my mind connected to a previous conversation where she said something to the effect of: “I can’t wait to see what Kappa inspired art projects you come up with.”  This was like a creative challenge to me, so when I learned of my Big’s appreciation for our coat of arms I decided to make one into a gift for her. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I started to look at the coat of arms, to familiarize myself with its design.  It struck me as rather flat.  Don’t get me wrong, I love our coat of arms, but the basic print uses solid colors (devoid of value) and outlines, both of which flatten drawings.  I wanted to give it a little pizazz.  I brainstormed ways to capture and highlight its classiness:  silver and gold leaf, glitter, swarovsky crystals, shading, three-dimensionality,  swirling curlicues, etc. 

I decided to experiment with three-dimensionality, a style I’ve worked with in the past.  In addition to introducing value, I would literally add depth to the seal with a glue-gun and caulking-gun.  First I sketched out the design.  Then I selectively applied glue to accentuate edges and applied caulk to make the banner-like swirls at the top stand out.  I also decided to make the key in the middle stand out, and created one out of hot glue.  If I’d had a miniature key available, I could have glued that on instead.

Here you can see where the glue and caulk elements pop out at the viewer.

 After I finished adding the 3D elements I painted in the colors, taking care to add value where necessary for a deeper look that also suggests rich silk and satin fabrics. Once the main paints were on, I added some gold paint on the key, the owl, and the letters.  I admit I took a little artistic license with the letters, which are silver in the original coat of arms.  I felt the gold balanced out the other areas and added to the elegance.  To further heighten the luxuriance, I added a Swarovsky crystal to the neck of the key and smaller crystals to the owl’s eyes.

The coat of arms of Kappa Kappa Gamma

I’m very pleased with the final result, and the look on my Big Sister’s face when she received her gift was priceless.  She had no idea what creative mischief I had been up to.

Nail Polish

I bought ten bottles of nail polish this week.  I know, it’s a bit of a splurge, but after this week I deserve it (and they were on sale for super cheap).  Plus I’ve been waiting a long time to expand my collection, so it’s not like I do this all the time.  I love nail polish, and I have an extensive collection – forty-seven bottles.  Yup, that’s a lot of nail polish.  But as an artist, I find the colors incredibly inspiring.  Having a plethora of color options is important. (You needn’t worry, most of these I’ve collected as gifts through the years. Some of them are quite ancient.)

My collection prior to the new additions.

I think my fascination with nail polish is closely tied to my artistic inclination and visual predominance.  I love nail polish because it’s a socially acceptable form of painting on myself.  It’s a form of decoration that is temporary – I can change it as often as I wish. Having a spectrum of nail polish allows me plenty of options for every occasion.  Every color carries a different mood, and owning many choices allows me to mix and match for even more variety!

I think at this point I own all of the major colors.  Because I’m admittedly a bit OCD I enjoy sorting my collection according to color.  The best challenge is to try to line up every bottle in a color spectrum from one end to the other, fading from one color to the next as smoothly as possible.  It looks pretty neat when I succeed.

This potential for color spectrum inspired a recent project in an art class.  The assignment was to create a color wheel prior to exploring color theory.  Naturally my nail polish collection sprang to mind.  I went home and created a nail polish color wheel for reference, substituting bottles where I didn’t have the right hue.

As I created the reference shot and sketched my initial color wheel, I was intrigued by the wide variety of bottle shapes/styles.  Some where round while others square, rectangular or triangular.  Some had sharp angles while others gently curved with smooth planar transitions.  Some bottles were stubby while others were tall.  There were white caps, black caps, gray caps and chrome caps.  The caps varied in height and circumference, some completely vertical while others widened toward the base.  Our schema of a nail polish bottle tends to be pretty simple, but when you start to analyze their designs you realize how different each brand is!

In my nail polish color wheel I incorporated these bottle design differences, making them different shapes and sizes.  The innermost bottles, the primary colors, I left without caps so that their “polish” might spill inward and run together.  The secondary color bottles I included caps on, and made their caps slightly darker than those on the tertiary bottles, to subtly define the different tiers.

 Because the focus of the project was on color, not value, I limited my use of shading, and instead gave the bottles faint highlights of white paint and shadows of black paint.  I kept the lines crisp and clean, so as to barely hint at a glossy glass bottle.

A nail polish inspired color wheel. Unfortunately my camera was unable to faithfully capture the darker colors. The blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet don't show well in this photo.

Van Gogh Sunflowers

Vincent Van Gogh is famous for his sunflower paintings, many versions of which he began painting after 1887.  In fact, he painted several versions of Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1889).  Done primarily in yellow, these paintings carry a warm, sunny connotation. 

However, I’ve always felt like a depressing subtext runs under surface.  In these paintings the sunflowers exist in a variety of stages from lively full bloom toward withering death.  I chose to explore this morbid undercurrent in a color theory assignment for intro to design.  The assignment was to take a famous painting and reproduce it with a different color scheme than the original while preserving the values of the original by tinting and shading hues.  The new color scheme could be complimentary, analogous, monochromatic, achromatic, triad, tetrad, warm or cool.

I decided to use cool colors, known for their connotations of night, sadness, and depression.  We say “feeling blue” for a reason.  I wanted to highlight the  droopy-ness of the dying sunflowers through the use of cool colors.  (Don’t worry, I’m not depressed.  I just wanted to explore an idea opposite to popular “sunny” opinion on this painting.)  Furthermore, purple is the complimentary (opposite) color of yellow, and happens to fall within the cool tones.  So I used blue-violet paint for most of my interpretation.

The challenge I faced was in interpreting the value of the original and maximizing contrast while staying true to the inspiration.  Because Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers is primarily monochromatic, it actually lacks contrast.  From a distance its easy for the flowers to blend into the background.  I experienced this problem in my blue interpretation, especially since my colors are darker.  If I could do this again I would add more white to the background color and perhaps paint the petals in a slightly darker blue-violet.  Additionally, due to time constrictions I was working in acrylic.  It was harder to get the thickly textured petals and flower centers with acrylic paint when Van Gogh’s originals were done in oil paint.  A third struggle I experienced was with the slight shine on the vase.  In the yellow version this shine is mostly white, but because yellow is such a bright color it doesn’t stand out too much.  In my version the shine maintains its high value, but against the blue it was glaringly obvious.  I felt it was distracting, and lacked subtlety.  It also looked more like a mistake to me than a shine, so I deepened the value a bit to correct this.

I’m pleased with the final result because I feel it captures the mood I was shooting for.  My classmates agreed that the cool colors really exaggerate the mourning transience of the dying flowers.  In fact, they honored me a spectacular compliment: they felt my version better explored the mood than the original!  Quite a compliment, though I’m sure plenty would be willing to disagree.  Nevertheless, it was a fun exploration of an alternate interpretation through the use of color theory.

Rhythm is a Dancer

Our next project in Design is to create a piece of art that illustrates rhythm.  Specifically, to translate music into art.  I sorted through my mp3 player for a few minutes and eventually settled on Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap!  Ironic, I know.

• I interpreted the higher pitched notes as brighter, and up higher in the composition, while the deeper, lower tones are darker colors toward the bottom of the composition. 
• I interpret music as running left to right, like writing or sheet music.  So I organized my painting in horizontal registers intended to be read from left to right.
• The deep, pounding bass notes are the large purple circles.  I imagine them as heavy, large blobs.  The rounded shape is sort of like a big basketball bouncing along, pushing the beat.  The various lighter and darker outlines near the edges are intended to convey the movement and pulse.  If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park, you might remember the scene where the cup of water has ripples from T-Rex’s footsteps.  Imagine these around the purple circles, vibrating the shapes with the intensity of the bass.  Or imagine looking at a large speaker moving forward and backward because it’s turned up so loud.
• The slightly higher pitched beats, heard early in the song have a somewhat fuzzy quality to them.  So I did smaller circles just above the purple bass notes.  These I did in transitions of purple and blue.  To convey the fuzziness of the sound I outlined them in squiggly lines.
• Other higher pitched beats are the small green circles, repeated.
• Now and then there are sharp cymbal claps in the song.  I interpreted these like explosions, and used a spatter technique with bright green paint to capture this quality.  I also interpret green, yellow, or a gray/silver as the metallic sound of this clash, so I chose yellow-green.  This color fits nicely in the spectrum registers.
• The woman’s voice rises and falls, and is rather fluid yet crisp.  The orange lines toward the top represent her voice.  The thin lines rise and fall, coming together to form an overall sound wave.
• In contrast, the male’s voice is deep and choppy.  I used sporadic lines rising and falling towards the bottom.  His rhythm of rapping is jarring and staccato, so I used short, separate lines leaning left and right to convey this.
• Throughout the song high-pitched synthesizer notes seem to skim along the top of the song.  I used bright red, semi-rectangular shapes to denote this.  The shapes remind me loosely of piano/synthesizer keys.  They seem to bounce as well, so I organized them loosely, leaning this way and that.  These sprightly, energetic cluster rhyme with the choppy lines of rap at the bottom.
• Other high-pitched synth notes run delicately through the song.  To me they evoke sparkling and twinkling.  I used yellow and white along the top of the composition to create dots and stars.  I wanted to capture the bright, flickering in and out of stars/glitter.

This project reminded me a lot of Fantasia, in that it translates music into visual art.  In particular, the assignment reminds me of the Fantasia sequence Meet the Soundtrack.  This fun little intermission exemplifies how the Disney artists interpreted sound into the animation of many parts of their film.  If you want to learn more about why we pair certain colors, shapes, and sounds together, check out these Wikipedia articles on synesthesia and synesthesia in art.

Yearbook Pages

I do art for my college newspaper and yearbook, and my most recent project was divider pages for the yearbook.  The yearbook will be divided seasonally, and my task was to create three divider pages: fall, winter, and spring.  They are done in acrylic paint. 

Fall Marigolds

Winter Ornaments

Spring Graduation

Window Painting

In 2008 I decided to try my hand at window painting.  My mother has been holiday window painting for years, and is quite good.  I was eager to follow in her footsteps, and initiated a tradition that has lasted several years now.  I paint my grandma’s deck door window, updating it seasonally.  I spent Thursday morning creating the most recent rendition of the window.  The lighting was terrible for the photo, so keep in mind the colors are off.  It features a winter centerpiece of three maroon candles surrounded by pine boughs with golden ornaments, red berries, pine cones and snow.

ΚΚΓ Owl

A while back a friend, who is a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, requested a piece of art from me.  The owl is her sorority’s animal, so I decided to do a painting of the elegant barn owl, tyto alba.  Other important symbols etc. of ΚΚΓ include the color blue,  fleur-de-lis/irises, keys, and sapphires.  You can see how I incorporated these into the final acrylic painting.  I spent about three days actually working on the piece.  I still might make a few minor touch-ups, but otherwise it is finished.

*Update* I decided the composition still needed something to balance out the bottom right corner.  I’ll be adding the silhouette of some pine trees soon.

(UPDATE: I think it’s pertinent to say I’m now a proud member of Kappa Kappa Gamma)

Lily Door

NEWSFLASH!  Update on the door painting, which is now finished!  Yay!

My final exams are over now, as of Thursday evening, so I spent my newfound free time doing what else – art.  I’d been dying to finish the Stargazer lily I started on my dorm room door this weekend.  I’m quite pleased with the end result, but I may make a few touch-ups as issues appear out to me.  Here’s a slideshow of the process:

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And the finished product:

Stargazer Lily Dorm Door

Door Painting

Today was my very last day of classes for the fall term.  No more until after Christmas break.  I still have final exams next week, but I decided to indulge in an evening without study, just me and art. 

I’ve been wanting to redecorate my door for a long time.  We’re allowed to paint them, if we fill out paperwork, and I didn’t like the current paint on my door.  It was a depressing shade of forest green with messy purple fleur-de-lis.  Apparently the previous occupant of my room was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, and the fleur-de-lis is one of their symbols.  Since I’m not in a sorority and I didn’t like the current color scheme, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to repaint my door.  Tonight was the night.

As you can see, it’s still in progress.  I’m too much of  a perfectionist to leave it in this early stage.  I spent probably about three hours tonight priming the back white, painting the green background, and beginning the petals.  It’s a Stargazer lily (I love lilies). I’m using acrylic paints.  Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the door this weekend.  Until then the remaining hours before bed will be spent working on my figure drawing final some more.

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Na’vi Halloween

Those of you who are my Facebook friends will be familiar with this next project, but maybe you’d like to know the history behind it.  I was inspired by Jame’s Cameron’s recent movie Avatar.  The movie was a visual feast, and afterwards I stumbled upon some YouTube tutorials (video1, video2, video3) on how to modify yourself into a Na’vi using Photoshop.  Sadly I do not have Photoshop, as I cannot afford it, but I can achieve quite a bit with my own hands.  Yearning to try something similar to the Photoshop tutorials, Halloween presented me with the perfect opportunity to paint my face without receiving too many strange stares.  Using my painting knowledge and experience from competing in technical makeup at drama districts and state, I decided to put my skills to the test.

Halloween 2010

Using acrylic paint, my brushes, and a lot of finger painting I was able to create a rather satisfactory result.  I began with a blue base, added highlights to my upper cheekbones, forehead, and chin before counterbalancing these areas with shadow, especially under my cheekbones.  I briefly switched from acrylic paint to watercolor to create a light, semitransparent blue wash around my neck.

I paid special attention to my nose, painting the sides a lighter tone to eliminate shadows where my nose actually slopes to my cheeks.  Then I painted in faux shadows wider than my real nose to create the illusion that it is wide and flat, like the Na’vi.  I painted the underside of my nose a darker shade in a cat-like triangle.

I painted my lips a blue hue before moving on to my eyes.  I can’t enlarge my eyes to the size of the Na’vi, but I can adjust them slightly with illusionistic paint.  I painted around my tear-ducts white, pulling the corners of my eyes in and downward to give them the sense of a cat-like tilt.  This was enforced with a thick black outline, darker along the outer corners of my eyelashes.

Finally the painting was complete with some Na’vi stripes and glowing white dots symmetrically placed along the vertical axis of my face.  Everything was done by hand with paint except for the irises, which were modified from my blue to bright green using Picnik.

I topped the look off with a blue sweater, a necklace rather reminiscent of the ones Neytiri wore in Avatar, and a couple of small braids.  I had a blast playing with my paint and my imagination, and my Facebook friends got a kick out of it.  Too bad we didn’t get any trick-or-treaters.

Disclaimer:  Acrylic paint is not intended for use on skin, and has not been tested for such use.  It is best to use skin-friendly stage/costume makeup for use on skin.
I personally have never had any adverse reaction to acrylic paint on my skin, but it’s a case-by-case basis, and shouldn’t be worn for long periods of time.