nice rack!

painted these for the small works! holiday show at royal nonesuch gallery in oakland. there's just something about catalog models and deer horns that makes so much sense. and they're holiday themed :)

street cow sacrifice

didn't post any daylight pictures of my cow sacrifice.

i went out early the next morning to take these pictures.

it got painted over later that afternoon. d'oh!

swooning over swoon

i figured if i was gonna be doing any wheatpasting, i better learn much more about the artists that have already discovered this medium. my favorite so far has been a new york artist named swoon. she makes life-size wheatpaste prints using her feet as a press. and while she is a very talented and clever printmaker, she is much more than just a technical bad ass. i found this article about a project she created and coordinated to crash the venice biennale.

cojones! love it.

three apples

two weeks ago i went to culver city for work to help with the 'three apples hello kitty 35th anniversary retrospective'. it's a 3 week product exhibition, art show and pop up store housed in royal t, a cosplay cafe/ art space in culver city. i work for sanrio in the stores department and was there to work on the pop-up store portion.

the art show portion was curated by jamie rivadeneir from the store japan la in los angeles. there were over 90 artists in the show and the work that was produced is amazing! the exhibition is going on until november 15 and is a sensory overload. the product exhibition is very extensive, the cafe serves hello kitty themed food, and of course the pop up store is full of awesome product!

i was there solely to work on the pop up store portion, but was so excited about the art. below are some of my favorites.

jason mecier

i met this guy at a cosby sweater party some friends had a couple years ago. was so excited to see that he was going to be a part of this. i was having a stressful day when this piece showed up at our office and something about the overabundance of hello kitty product just reminded me of why i do what i do.

angry woebots

gary baseman

yumiko kayukawa

don't know who this is, but i love it!

melissa contreras

she was super nice when i recognized the necklace she was wearing at the gala from the painting.

another artist whose name i don't know and another piece i love.

buff monster

he showed up to help and was an amazingly nice person. i said hi to him, but i was way too shy to strike up a conversation. boo!

tim diet

sacrifice for the street art gods!

went out for tonight with some wheatpaste and a cow for sacrifice :)

this is the first time i've done any wheatpasting.

watercolor, graphite and a little dirt from the wall.

i think it went pretty well, we'll see what it looks like in the morning!

i heart wabi sabi!

i learned about "wabi sabi" while studying ceramics in art school from a japanese student. he told me that the concept behind the two words this is very difficult to translate, and it took a lot of explaining and reading to get a grasp of what it stands for. this is my favorite interpretation of the japanese phrase. thanks wikipedia!

"wabi" may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations... especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; "sabi" could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or limited mortality of any object, hence the etymological connection with the japanese word sabi, to rust.

imperfect quality, let go to inevitable limitations. reliably imperfect. but there is beauty in letting go.

i love this concept, but something in me routinely disagrees and fights against it.

my drawing process

i think it's time for me to write about my drawing process. i've been experimenting with this process since the end of 2003, which is when i started tracing instead of freehand drawing for paintings. it all started with pancho and lefty. something about tracing the cover just felt right; even if i was such a snob about it when i was a kid. i've been changing and adapting this process ever since. currently this is what it is:

first i find an image that i am interested in painting. today it's the slinky siamese from kittens usa 2010 annual magazine. it's from the editors of cat fancy magazine so you know it's quality :) i find images from all over the place; magazines, catalogs, vintage books, the internet. recently i've started taking my own photos to use as images.

next i'll make a xerox copy of the image.

once i have a xerox, i'll start tracing the outline of the image with a soft graphite pencil. i like 6B pencils for this. but i need to check out mechanical and drafting pencils because i want my lines to be more precise. the lines from regular pencils gets thicker as you keep drawing.

after i finish tracing the outline, i transfer the image onto a sheet of paper. i do this by flipping the xerox over onto whatever paper i'm using and rubbing the back of the xerox with a bone folder. my transfer process is similar to making a print.

the soft graphite lines transfer to the paper without needing carbon paper.

From here, i'll either make a painting or make a master tracing; depending on whether or not i want to make multiple paintings of the same image or if i decide to manipulate and refine the image.

for this image, i'm going to make a master tracing. i want to refine a couple lines a tad and get rid of a bit of clutter.

once i get the image right, i make a xerox copy of it.

then the process begins again...

trace outline and rub one out :)

for this painting, i'm using translucent yupo. it took the pencil really well, but the pencil lines will disappear once i start to watercolor.