Canopy

Was at work late tonight finishing up the modeling of a giant freaking canopy in my project in Revit. Took about a day and a half to get it right and to make sure everything around it also worked. Bit of a pain, but satisfying at the end. and tomorrow I'm sure it will all change anyway.

Was trying to sketch out quick what the canopy was doing to Jess when I got home. The LA Weekly (and a sharpie) was the closest paper I had to me, so that is what I used. I think I only confused her more.

Abstract Geometries

Bit of a quick sketch here. Now that I scanned it in and sat back and actually took a look at the composition, it kind of looks like the building I have been working on... although quite disheveled and possibly crushed in some way. Only if you squint, though. Maybe I'll save a more literal dismantling for another day.

Regardless, this sketch is getting back to a more abstract architectural free-form.

Climbing, Preliminary

Working idea for Illustration Friday "Climbing". Rough. Really rough.

Blind Shadows

This is a photo that i took with my iPhone at work. Just happened to see this visage on the wall in one of the hallways. The window blinds were completely mangled and were shining a bizarre shadow and reflection on the wall. This is not a reversed image.

Morange

Couple more orange peels from last night's tangerines. I suppose that would make them tangerine peels. Thought I would turn things around a little bit, see a different side of the peel. With this reversal the photo becomes less about the color and more about the texture.

Shapey

Quick sketch that i started on the train, came out a bit jagged and scribbly, so I kept working over it when I got to sturdier ground.

Pale

Another one of my small strip collages. Wanted to post this one on Illustration Friday, but I'd feel a little lame posting it the following Thursday. Maybe next week I'll get on the ball!

Regardless, I am pleased as to how this one turned out. Again, the scans really don't do any justice to these pieces, there is a whole other dimension to them when you see them in person.

Change Hath Come

It was a great and historic day for America today! The world is abuzz with the notion of Change and our new President Barack Obama who is the focus of this. The figurehead of the movement that has gripped us for months and years and we hope will drive us for many more into the future. I will keep it short because I know almost everyone is feeling it, and my words might only blur the excitement... We did it!!! Now, lets get to work...

I took this pic this morning on the front door of our apartment building, as I left for work after watching the inauguration. I'm not really sure how long it's been there, but I really only noticed it last night. Only two words are still seen on this torn sticker, but we all know what the missing word is.

Quick Post-Its

Been a long day... so a couple quick post-its are all I have in me...

Spare Parts

A quick sketch for tonight. An idea salvaged from an old memory of how I used to make puzzles for myself, of scribbles and colors and squares. Only now, in this iteration: create, divide, reassemble and disseminate.

Getting Sculptural

As promised, I started looking at the gesture form as a sculptural object. Here was my first attempt at the idea of two intertwining gestures, three-dimensionally. I used some thin aluminum tubing as the frames, and black masking tape to form the undulating plane betwixt them. There are two things that I learned while doing this piece:

1. By forming a gesture out of a malleable piece of tubing, without guide or preliminary spontaneity, it ceases to be gestural. Sure, its curvy and sort of suggests a swooping gesture, but it is not pure in its nature. I am not exactly sure how I can make something volumetric that reads as a gesture. This is something that I have also had to deal with architecturally. How does one keep the gesture pure and keep it grounded in reality, that is to say the physical existence as opposed to a theoretical one. Which brings me to...

2. It is very easy, even starting with two relatively uncomplicated "gestures" and intertwining them, for the shape to become a physical impossibility. My original intention was to divide up the segments into equal segments and then connect those points with its equivalent on the opposing segment, thus generating form. Again, this was not easily done, and I think that I eventually had to cheat and break that rule to get the form to work. This was acceptable as it gave me a physical way of dealing with a partially non-physical problem...

Vitamin C

I think I may have the scurvey.

Breaking it Down

This started out as a diagram of the last painting I did, then I started adding some connective lines about the circles.

The really bizarre thing is how the placement of the circles happened in the painting... I had intended for it to be spaced differently but something else happened. And now here I am trying to break down my accident to get to the bottom of it.

Pressing on...

Circles In Acrylic 2

Another in the continued series. This one is 8x10. I had done a wash on the canvas in a light orange color, and had started working on the background, fully intending to work in blues for the circles, but the orange tones grew on me and ended up working little bit better for this one.

Coming outward, each circle is twice the diameter of the previous and was placed on the tangent sides of the first and third previous circles. Following that rule, I found that the centers of any adjacent pair of circles aligns with the center of the second consecutive circle following the larger circle of the pair.

I think.

Failed Sketches

I sketched these on the plane today, exploring an idea that i had jotted down a while ago. The idea was that i would take two individual gestures and graphically "loft" them to make an image a sort-of swirling knot. The idea was to take the gesture to the next level... the next dimension. Unfortunately, trying to render a knotted ribbon out of two haphazard lines doesn't quite work so well on paper. In fact, they are downright awful. In the shapes' two-dimensionality, the intended knot was not the actual result, but a muddled mash that merely suggests knottiness emerged! I determined that this is definitely something that can only be explored three dimensionally, at least for now.

They aren't particularly worthy, but sometimes even failures are worth noting.

NoHo Station Floor

This is a quick photo from my iPhone (not the greatest shot, I realize)of the Red Line train station in North Hollywood. I was standing there waiting for the train to show up, looked down and saw this visage... I thought it was a slight blending of a couple different ideas from my recent pieces with just a hint of collage.

The Perfect Peel

The golden section never tasted so delicious...

Quickie Scrib

This was a quick scribble done to get my sketch in for the day. It didn't start out with a pure gesture, as most of my "scribble" pieces do, so I suppose that would make this more of a doodle. I continue to think that these things are much like Rorschach ink blots in that you can see a lot of things within them. I see this starting to look like a head or face, so of course this must mean I have a subconscious desire to destroy all humans.

Spiral Escalations

I was pretty tired tonight and I contemplated scanning something old to throw it up here, but that's kind of defeating the point, so I whipped these up. They're not particularly fantastic or detailed but the initial Idea is there, and can be hashed out further later, should I desire to do so.

First Scribble of Aught Nine

It ain't easy bein' green, especially when you are green with the ink from a pen that I found on someone else's desk. Sorry, someone else, but look at what that pen was capable of!

Circles in Acrylic 1

Hey, I finished my painting early! This is my first crack at one of my circle sketches in painting form, and is 4"x5". I'm not sure if acrylic is the right medium for these pieces, but I am willing to explore it further.

The intention of these pieces is to make images made entirely out of circles, and the forms would take on these organic shapes. I don't think this is quite successful yet at getting to that idea, but it was a good first run, and took on some unexpected celestial qualities of it's own. I also realized that color pallettes of these are going to have to be chosen more carefully.

Study For Small Painting

Just a simple sketch for today. It's a quick study for a painting that I also started tonight. The painting is fairly small (much like the sketch!), but I should be finished with it in a couple days. So far so good.

Letterbox Collage Studies

Here are a few collage studies in a new "letterbox" format that I'd eventually like to try out. The techniques are the same, but some of the shapes feel fresh to me.

Prelude to 2009

Welcome to the first post of 2009! Words cannot describe how glad I am to be rid of 2008. If i could find some way to somehow graphically represent the satisfaction of finally making it through that year, I am sure it would find it's way here or possibly just seep out gradually in the shadings of a pencil or the strokes of a brush.

That being said, December wasn't a complete bust productivity wise, though there were major distractions (exam, holidays, etc.), so I took the entire month off on hiatus here. And while the beginning of this year is shaping up to be just as busy, if not more insane than the last few months, I am hoping it will be a painless and productive breed of craziness. This year should prove momentous in it's capacity for change in every facet of my life, but as we all learned last year... change does not occur by itself. At the very least it takes persistence and someone to push it along.

The last few days have been mostly a reorganization and revitalization of the life and spaces around me that have also been neglected as a result of said hiatus. Tomorrow I head back to work and begin chipping away at the mountain that is waiting for me there. But there is Work to be done on my own time as well, so it seems appropriate that it should begin tomorrow as well. I have been called out by my friend Daisy and challenged to do a drawing a day for the year. In a way, the challenge stares me in the face every time I come to my own blog... "Not A Day Without A Line Drawn", it means.

Perhaps it's time to live up to my own audaciousness.