pet the sharks

This may or may not be entirely working but...eh I'll find out soon enough. I don't know what it means yet, it was fun to create though. (Beasts with pointy teeth and ladies is an under appreciated genre.). I think I'm getting faster...



And a sketch just because it was fun to draw....I think she inspired the above piece.

thought... processing

Over the last couple of days I've become very interested in minimalistic compositions with dense areas of detail or bright color. It's too tempting to use what little money I have at the moment on expensive books so google image search will have to do....

An artist that has peaked my interest that I've always looked at and known about but never really examined is Toulouse Latrec. There's no way I can compare to this guy, ever, but I feel there's a lot I can learn from the economy of line and shape employed in his pieces. Must buy book of prints. I love his compositions and how much he can say with a simple shape or a few select colors! His paintings are really where it's at for me though. It seems like the same ideology behind his prints is in his paintings yet he manages to keep the movement contained or barely contained within his figures. A still moment of his may as well be exploding with life. Yes, I'm really just that entranced.





Another artist is Hokusai, but I do own a book by him so finding images to study and dissect won't be so difficult. I enjoy the decorative and balanced compositions in Hokusai's work and I can literally spend hours just picking apart the lines he chose and the shapes of black he left in his work. I wish I could get my hands on a good Hiroshige and Yoshitoshi book so I could compare. I'd love to figure out what really worked for them, I'd like my work to be as memorable some day.... (wishful thinking ha)

Below are a few bad drawings and a terrible portrait of John Hendrix.

fewer colors = goodtimes

Trying to retrain my eye for color, so I'll be using minimal palettes for a bit. Here's a sketch from a crit, and a new piece about Stress or self destructive behavior...

Something different?

An experiment...

A small sketch post. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my projects and generally feeling very low overall, which has killed my production a bit. I'm starting a new project though, I've figured out what I'd *like* to do for my book project but I won't say anything about it here yet... in case I change my mind. On a side note, jonesray.com is going to be reworked in a few days.

I started my second semester of the SVA MFA program pretty well, at least initially. The goal of this semester was to plan and begin the creation of a book. The project could essentially be anything you wanted it to be as long as it was based on the basic theme "Things Important". This normally shouldn't be that complicated but I spent weeks just trying to figure out what I needed to do. I ended with this.

"A book based on relationships and the ways guys communicate involving them. Including but not limited to conversations during drinking, hanging out and playing videogames. Also illustrations of my and my friends experiences and misconceptions of relationships as they went through their teens to becoming adults."

I loved the idea at first, but when it came to actually getting it started I hit a wall. I was inspired by Paul Pope's "Pulp Hope" drawings to create landscapes of skin and sexuality or drawings I otherwise wouldn't do or was afraid of drawing. I created these images.




Sooo... I drew a lot of sexually charged images or just sexual almost softcore/fetish-seque images. They were fun to create but that was it. I wanted to express how many guys saw relationships as just an easy way of experiencing sex and the way porn alters that perception. Just another excuse to ink me some boobs, yah? WELL that may be true to some degree, but my interest in this project waned after this set of images.

I just wanted to draw the pornographic imagery...but ha thats not the type of book I want to create in all honesty. Unfortunately whenever I came back to my initial idea my mind was blank. I put together several failed pencil drawings for potential illustrations but ended up not feeling anything from them in the end. I have plenty of embarrassing situations to illustrate.... so i couldn't see why I lost interest.

Several crits later, with help from Marshall Arisman and Carl Titolo I learned that I was avoiding illustrating or being direct with my illustrations. I was attempting to illustrate relationships while avoiding analyzing my own which has been in a difficult place for some time. So I killed my project and told my class I'd have a new idea soon. So I'm on week 2 since the idea kill and now I'm not sure what to do yet. I picked up my sketchbooks and retreated for awhile. The idea will come to me soon, I'll just draw to stir up the ideas.

Here are some sketchbook pages.

These are the final 3 images I created for this semester's Cthulhu project, in the end I learned a lot about myself, like what size I like to work/need to work, the right inking tools for me, time management(ha) as well as a solid process for coloring I can grow with. Good times...I definitely recommend SVA's MFA program if anyone is considering it.

Something new for November... more Cthulhu inspired work. I can't wait until I'm done... I swear I'm not drawing another octo-squid-like anything for at least a year.

Busy busy busy...

A quick piece about Fall for my comp ill. class.




Another for my Cthulhu project... I'm still altering the colors on this one, not sure what I'm settling on just yet.



A piece based on an OPed article in the NYTimes about the trials in Jena. No sketches this week for the sketch section. :P

A quick piece for Vooy's magazine. These two images are connected to the same novel. The top piece has to do with the death of the main character and the thoughts imposed upon him from the writer(who becomes an actual character in his own story near the end).... and the second piece has to do with the ambiguity of whether or not the main character had his lower leg taken from him by God (who is the cricket in this image... you'd have to read the story). My favorite part of these assignment's from Vooy's magazine has to be the freedom of expression and the exposure of my work to an audience that otherwise wouldn't see it. The magazine is based in Sweden and it's nice to think of my work "transcending" language.... hopefully that doesn't sound too cheesy, lol.

This piece was a lot larger originally but I cropped it down to a more to the point composition... it's rare for things to work out that way. I imagined the character dying of old age sort of and his brain..well, wilting? I love to draw tree-like elements so I had a lot of fun with this. If I had a bit more time I would've added more details but my class schedule ran into my deadline. (Started near midnight with the original drawing, completed at 6am... they're 6 hours ahead so I had to tie it up that night.)

The part of the story where the main character loses his leg, I played with a lot of textures in this piece, I wanted it to feel natural. This was completed awhile back but thought I'd post it now to connect the two assignments.

It's been a long time since I've posted.. (don't I always start off this way?). I FINALLY started grad school!! Sooo I've been busy being well... a grad student. My schedule isn't too busy but it is very very dense, I only have class on Tues (9am-12)/Wed(10am-10pm)/Thurs(1.5 to 9pm), but of course I'm expected to be working on my days off. Tuesday is a short class, Computer Illustration portfolio-- which is also my favorite at the moment. It's only from 9am-Noon, but so much information is packed into that small span of time. The class is primarily a re-intro to photoshop, but having not had a formal introduction to Photoshop it's nice to refresh on what I know. The teacher is Matthew Richmond and he runs a Design Company that uses a lot of illustration and exciting designs . He literally knows ... basically all there is to know about pho'tochop...orr definitely enough to get everyone started on a professional level. The variety of talent in the class is really amazing and I'm looking forward to growing artistically with my classmates. Below are some sketchs, all of them done during critiques.... don't get me wrong, I pay attention during crits! And give my own advice when I feel its necessary, but I can't seem to keep myself from drawing during lectures and crits. Old habit I guess?





This last drawing was actually partially for an illustration I made about what it was like to be stung by a jellyfish, its like part ant bite, bee sting(though i haven't been stung yet), skinned knee and burn x10 in one tiny location... it's a type of pain you really have to experience to understand, and I don't recommend it to anyone.

A long long long overdue post. That slump I mentioned awhile back? Basically, it hit me...like a truck. Then backed up to finish the job. I don't think I've EVER wasted so much time. I guess the time wasn't a complete waste, I spent a lot of time thinking and planning for things art and otherwise, but when it's all in your head or on scraps of paper.. there really isn't much to show for it. Anyway, I've been working on this image for awhile now, mostly because I haven't had time for it, or just wasn't happy with it. It's had maybe 5 stages.


The first of the images... I just didn't feel like I was pushing myself, and I guess I was tired with whatever it was I was trying to say during my senior thesis, and using this "visual language". I had fun drawing and inking this, but during the time I was going through a move to another state, had some life troubles, blah blah ...I lost interest in the piece. I still wanted to work with the concept though, so one night I redrew some compositions for the piece.



I settled on the last image even though I wasn't a 100% happy with it, but I was desperate to start drawing something new. About this time I was coming down pretty hard on myself, I felt uncreative, uninspired, unmotivated... All the good stuff! The imagery was boring for me, I needed something fresh! BUT again I decided to stick with it. I spent the next hour or so trying to pencil this concept into something I'd be happy to take to final.


I think I failed. At the end of this I was so bored with the idea, I ended up setting it aside. There was just too much going on in the piece..too many elements thrown in unnecessarily. It reminded me of a montage, or collage without a meaning that was trying reeeealy hard to have one. Eventually I remembered one of my teachers once giving me the "Less is More" speech, so I tossed this drawing and tried to narrow in on a concept. (By toss I mean set aside into the pile of drawings in my corner that no one should ever see....). I had fun drawing the beasts and the plantlife, and decided to again exclude any human representation and allowed myself to let my lines "breathe".

Pencils.
Final.

So in the end, I did draw some more ethereal-smoke-like-hair fire- forms, animal life, and some of the abstraction I enjoy creating. I revisited the visual elements I thought I was tired of, but it turns out it was the compositions I was getting tired of seeing. This probably isn't my most successful piece, but it feels good to resolve something like this, and essentially put an "end" to my senior thesis project.