DOCUMENTATION OF ARTISTIC REINVIGORATION - PHASE 5:

The studio and my other, more productive, colleagues:

"Aites, this is how it is done!"

The brave go for the textiles. Risky move ladies, but I like it.

Drying rack full of our dreams and wishes waiting to be realised in paint.

Feels like spring.

An Exquisite Corpse or two.

DOCUMENTATION OF ARTISTIC REINVIGORATION - PHASE 4:

So here are the bare bones of what my final screenprint will look like. 

It's something of a more personal project, I suppose because my main hope for taking this course was to do something creative for myself, as opposed to always thinking about what might look best on a store shelf or best boost sales for bread. Admittedly, it was a little difficult to try and do something without thinking about how I might be able to make money from it, but once I realized what I wanted to do... yes, I think the challenge became entirely about sorting out which animals best represented my family. (Have you ever done that? Sheesh, the skeletons come tumbling out of the closet, I tell ya'). The result: My father, the safari-researcher (complete with convincing disguise), my mother the ostrich, my middle sister the lemur, my youngest sister the tortoise, and me, the elephant.

Despite being warned, I was stubborn enough to believe that SuperMe would be able to fly through this one critical step. So believe it, folks; the biggest pain-in-the-ass about screenprinting is building that friggin' screen (actually, trying to find a competent wooden frame to start with may also tie for that award). I should probably mention that I complicated things by resorting to old screenprinting frames from OCAD that just happened to be ginormous. Who even knows how to spell "ginormous" anyway. Thus, I spent my last class stretching, stapling, rinsing, and coating my two gargantuan friends ready-to-go for next class. Fingers crossed.

DOCUMENTATION OF ARTISTIC REINVIGORATION - PHASE 3:

"My Thesis" separated into layers.

3 layers - background, highlights, and outline.

Subject: my zoology family portrait.

Thoughts & Feelings: I think I made this more complicated than it had to be. trying to figure out the ideal background (top layer in the picture above) was the main doozie. In the end, it all boiled down to just throwing in some text. Excellent.

DOCUMENTATION OF ARTISTIC REINVIGORATION - PHASE 2

At Function 13 in Kensington this past weekend was the closing party of Halo Halo's 100 Ways to Live show - tons of art, a brilliant live auctioneer who was more punk than pomp, and 100 sticks. I made $2 donating two $1 works of art to the auction (get it, 100 cents?), one of which was a collabo with this guy. Speaking of which, that means I owe him 75 cents, at least. Here are our one-day, one dollar creations:

By freshly_snipes

By Wooden_Tofu

What can I say? "Art" brings out the best, and worst, in people.

And some shots from the show and 100 sticks.

Sticks by Jeff. Didn't have space in my apartment for this, but came very close to bidding on this and reconstructing it on my wall. Ah well, someone more deserving out there is building magical leprechaun bonfires in their kitchen with this.    

Step-by-Step, Ooo Baby.

DOCUMENTATION OF ARTISTIC REINVIGORATION - PHASE 1:

So as I had posted a few weeks back, I had decided to take up the 'Screenprinting for Illustrators' course put-on by Halo Halo, led by Jeff and Jan (who both happen to be super talented but also so unbelievably nice that it's hard to be embittered towards them for it). Despite being a titch nervous going in, asking myself, "Yo, are you sure you're ILLUSTRATOR enough?!", within the first 15 minutes I knew I was in good company.

First things first, perhaps it is just my longing for some sort of education in anything, but throughout this thing I can't stop referring to things in school project terms. Think "homework", "group projects", and "thesis", but stick "super-duper fun" at the beginning of all of that. And we even had a guest speaker. All to the sweet sounds of Live Free or Die Hard playing in the background. The result? A fun, bizarro group project called Exquisite Corpses to whet our appetite for dundundun: The Thesis.

Photos to come, if you can handle it.

*Note: I just keep calling it a Thesis, they mostly just laugh in my face when I formalize it like that.

Innit she adorable?

FOR A WANTED CRIMINAL MAYBE!

That's right folks - this is the most invigorating and realistically surreal story I've read about in a loooong time. And Gus van Sant (or Vice, to cut their losses) ought to make a movie out of this because our generation would flock to see this bad-ass hipster in action. Starring Michael Cera as Kari Ferrell.

Load up on those carbs.

Toast your own art onto bread and by default $1 goes towards Feeding America. Think outside of the "Virgin Mary/Jesus-on-toast" concept. God's already been there, done that.

{Thanks to Danni L. for this great link!)

For those of us who need some self-control.

Temporarily make Facebook, your email, and Twitter off-limits to yourself for any amount of time so you can finally finish that best-selling novel, business plan that will save you from your miserable job, and write to your pen-pal. Courtesy of Steve Lambert.

Sadly, currently for Leopard users only. Oh well, who shall I Facebook poke now?