Semi-Elliptical House

Another one I quickly sketched on the train ride home. The skewed vertical scale makes it look like the floor-to-ceiling height is somewhere around 12 feet!

Overall plan:

Montage Diagrams

I sketched these up on the train going home. It’s a simplified graphic exploration of methods of photographic montage. My intent is that I could use these techniques to further explore the capabilities of the digital photographic medium and subsequently the automated output of the basic splicing program that came with my camera.

Post-It Art

You can only do so much on a Monday...

Philosophical Vandals

It was late in the afternoon when we looked out our back windows and realized that the apartment building being constructed half a block away got TAGGED... on the vapor barrier! I perceived that this was no usual territory marking and decided to further inspect the situation. The full text reads "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe that they are FREE -> Goethe". As 2/3 of this message is visible from my apartment, I will take this as a personal message from the neighborhood intellectual radicals.


After taking that picture, Jess and I took a walk over to the NoHo park, where we found one of the park's "prohibited activities" signs covered in wrapping paper, held on by duct tape. I suppose that's one use for all the extra paper you have laying around. I don't quite get the point of it, but that's OK. People should do more random acts like these in redeveloping residential zones. It would make the area sightly more entertaining.

Bones + Skin

Please... allow me to explain.

I drew the image on top first, and the more I worked on it the more it looked like a series of interlocking bones. After a little while I began to wonder about the nature of a creature or organism that would have bones such as these. So, i decided to give it flesh and personality... and then I put a turkey leg in it's mouth.

I may have to make more of these.

Some Recent Photos

A cranny at the L.A. Zoo:


Outside The Guild at night:

"Light Painting" with one of those glow necklaces:

Locke Stuck In The Hatch

A couple of days ago, Jess and I looked in on one of our fish, Locke, a beta, after we got home from work. Soon after feeding time, there was a realization that Locke was not coming up for food, as usual. As an inspection ensued there was the awful realization that the fish had gotten stuck in the hole at the bottom of a small terra cotta pot (which we refer to as "The Hatch") at the bottom of the tank. It had gone halfway through, realized it couldn't make it, freaked out, gills expanded in frustration and was then prevented from getting back out.

I pulled the jar from the tank and relocated Locke and the jar to a sink while we attempted to resolve the situation. The fish could not be persuaded by force, leaving the only other option I could think of...

Crisco.

But when that didn't work...

The use of the hammer and a pair of pliers was a surprise success and Locke was set free from his ceramic prison! Total damage to the fish: scraped scales, chafed side fins and torn gills. Not to mention the psychological damage (he is quite spastic now). Two days later the fish appears to be in relatively decent health. He is now eating slowly (solid foods), slightly irritable and has a mysterious fear of cameras.

Overall condition: Stable

Train Sketchin'

Whipped this up while I was on the train. It's an elevation of a building of indeterminate girth and function! Click for some vague contextual sketches and diagrams...

Enveloping

This was something that I did relatively quickly at the end of the day while waiting for a ride to a lecture. I was inspired to draw this by a partially rubbed-away patch of white out tape on a work document that was on my desk. I thought the proportion and shape were appealing in some strange way. From time to time this happens. There are times when I find something as simple as a shape or even an odd line beautiful... and worthy of my attention. This particular one is on an envelope just in case I decide to send it to some lucky soul.

Photo Montage 1

I created this image tonight using an automated splicing program that came with my digital camera. Rather than montaging together the individual images in a Hockneyesque manner, I decided to see what this computer program would churn out. My first attempt actually looked a lot different than the image below, as the piece in the upper left corner was the first to process (it was a darker image), that somehow seeped into half of the other images, creating a muddy mess. It lightened up a few of them, which produced this. What was interesting was that not only did the upper areas brighten, but the lower portions actually spliced together differently because of it. What resulted was a strange fish-eyed, tweaked perspective. The house is my home back outside of Chicago, taken on a harsh snowy Christmas day.

Start it Off

Here are a couple images that I made using a Wacom tablet. They were a couple of my first, just to get used to the piece of equipment. I started with a couple of random small doodles that i had made on post-it notes and just worked them out here and played with them a little, just to learn technique. They were my first attempts at converting sketch to digital "painting".

...And So It Begins

As this is my first post, I feel like I need to make some sort of statement of intent, as if the description at the top of the page wasn’t enough. While I initially intended this to be a more structured blog, I feel that keeping it free-flowing with images of anything that I may be Working on would be far more beneficial, as well as appropriate, given my random nature.

My hope is that this will become my personal venue for anything remotely creative, whether it be drawings, photographs, sketches, writing, collage or anything else. I anticipate having somewhat of a trajectory in terms of content, but I make no promises to anyone else and especially myself. It is one thing to have expectations, but to be bound by them just inhibits the art.

The current goal with this is to post at least one sketch/piece a day and take it from there. They should be new, but I’m not opposed to kicking around something old and refining it. So, I’ll stop talking about doing something and actually do it.

Starting... now!