A stick, a stone, a motive.

I forgot to post all last month!

2009-04-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

I'll put more stuff up this time, then!

On the train to Seattle:

Vancouver:

The Oregon Coast: Granville, Rob, Daniel, Ritchie, and Mary

The Oregon Coast: Ritchie and Melissa

The Oregon Coast: Melissa, Granville, Rob, and Mary

The Cascades from a plane:

More Apple sketchpad stuff!

Rushmore:

A Mac Pro:

2009-03-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

Lindsay Chastain (Nov 2007):

Maggie Corley (Mar 2008):

Kyle's parent's farm (Iowa, May 2008):

Sketches from an Apple notepad (Apr 2008):

I don't do that much drawing anymore, really. I'm taking a LOT of photos, mostly putting on hours for Memphis Roller Derby. When I do draw, it's ballpoint or pencil in a sketchpad. I'm sure I've done some other pieces, but nothing notable. These are the gems.

I'm currently sitting outside of my apartment on some steps, leeching internet from whoknowswhere and downloading episodes of Dexter. Fuck you, Lauren Rae, for getting me addicted.

Not really, Lauren. LOVE YOU!

A year and four months later . . .

2009-02-25T17:26:00.000-08:00

Lauren Rae reminds me that I should update this. We're going to start with a few photos from around the time we left off.

A house across from Stax:

Peelander-Z

A sketch from my old phone:

Since November 2007, I've travelled around, worked a handful of jobs, had a few girlfriends, and had a few haircuts. That's about it.

I HATE BLOGGING.

2007-11-05T15:24:00.001-08:00

Well, I hate doing it here. LOOK, ANOTHER PHOTO DUMP!

SKETHCBOOK DUMP! It's all old stuff.

Soooo . . .

2007-07-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

So here's me lately:

Lots of photos, not much drawing, and some earrings.

I am a photographer at a portrait studio and I'm actually learning quite a bit.

Haven't been doing drawn portraits like I said I would, but that will change, hopefully and soon.

Joel, if you're reading this, hopefully you will like this

It's been a long while!

2007-06-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Well, some things I've done since December:

Finished that piece.

Moved.

AWESOME!

WELP.

2006-12-07T02:59:00.000-08:00

I feel that I really cannot discuss my artwork without getting overly personal. I promised myself I would make an attempt not to be so (improper word choice), but my senior show piece will be be a good example of that.

I'd say I am a very surface person. As in a lot of what I am comes to the surface. If I want people to know me, I want them to know the real me, and all of it. So my work as of late has been pretty personal, just as my writing has been. So let's pick me apart:

This year has been a very strange year for me. I've been trying to find shortcuts to fill voids and as opposed to stripping everything down, knocking out the dents, welding the holes, and smoothing/priming/painting things up, it's more like I've been using Bondo as a quick fix That's never a good solution.

To set out on a self-discovery quest, I did a lot of shit over the summer. And over the fall. I've been trying to learn more about myself by living more and making mistakes all over the map. I've made plenty of mistakes and boy, have I been learning from them. I know now that finding someone else is never a proper solution to completing myself, so that quest is over momentarily. I know that I shouldn't let matters like that flood my work, I go through feeling on relationships like water and my opinions on the work I want to do suffers from a quick lack of interest. About a month into the semester, I decided that it would be a good idea to do a more personal piece and, by that, I mean to do a work that is based on me and not necessarily specific relationships with other people. So that's where the Operation self-portrait came in.

Of course, to do a self portrait in this style requires lots of thought in order to execute it the way I want. It was decided (with Joel's help, of course) that a full-sized scale would be the only appropriate way to go about the matter. With that being said, this would mean a very big piece. So most of the work I have been doing has been thought process. I've had the hardest time trying to just wrap my brain around approaching the piece properly but since then (a few weeks ago), the production has been smooth. Not "in a timely manner" smooth, but working out pretty well.

I was pretty aware that the project I decided to take on was ridiculously ambitious. This is coupled with the fact that I was trying out a lot of new things. I've never worked over 22x30, I've never worked on wood, I've never used electronics as a part of my pieces. Suddenly, I found myself trying to make a 70 lb., 6 feet tall and three and a half feet wide vibrator. I bit off way more than I could chew and I choked pretty hard.

I got the idea in my head that a senior show had to be really big. I think they should be. They are supposed to represent everything you are capable of over eight or more semesters of schooling. I really wasn't seeing that in a number of pieces in the current show, but at least those people were completing things on time. I, on the other hand, will settle for no less than something ridiculously complex and just really fucking cool to look at. I don't think there is any way my project could have been completed in one semester, much less half of one.

While I am making up excuses for my shortcomings, I am more than glad to back them up because I know I am at fault for not having a show in on time. But I will say that I am disappointed in myself for disappointing my professors. So many of you really put your necks out on the line for me and I just let you hang and for that, I am truly, deeply sorry. I'm not sure if I can offer any sort of consolation that will be worth a damn, but I will try to make up for it to the best of my ability in some way, shape, or form.

I don't think Prillaman is going to pass me, nor do I think he should. I've missed countless classes, way more than what is acceptable. Dropping my GPA and graduating without a double emphasis is fine by me, I've made peace with that. I just hate the fact that I've made it this way.

At the beginning of the semester, I felt that I was really ready for school to be over with. I think I have finally realized that there is a difference between being ready to graduate and just being over school. Taking a semester off really wasn't an option for me, so I took one halfway off illegitimately. I still don't feel that my concept are strong enough for me to make it in the real art world, that I really don't have much to say, but I think that this is due to an inexperience of living in general. I just don't have shit to say.

I'm not as articulate as I'd like to be when it comes to art and my work is very vague. I need to learn to address the issues I want and I need to learn to do it precisely. I don't think that will come along for several years, and by then, I still might not have much to say.

What I have to present are photographs of a box and a little comic that I did. While the box is grandiose and whatever, the little comic strip says a lot more about me than the gigantic self-portrait ever will. It is the piece that I'm most proud of to date.

The metals pieces will be photographed as soon as I finish smoothing things out. I was literally fitting the pieces together and patching them up with Bondo and epoxy and I just can't live with that. I'm making the pieces hollow again to finish adding elements that will show on the backside.

I still don't feel that I am ready to graduate, but this is no longer about graduating, but moving on with this stage in my life. I've been trying to hold onto it for too long and I just need to let it go and live a little the way normal people do. I need to do things for myself and on my own time before I can feel confident enough to start producing work for other clients and stuff. I don't need to go home but I can't stay here.

2006-12-05T10:03:00.001-08:00

I DIDN'T FINISH MY SENIOR SHOW ON TIME LOL.

I'm not going to post any pictures of it yet because it's kinda shitty. Here's something I did yesterday:

And here's something that got tattooed on someone yesterday:

BETTER THAN ANY SENIOR SHOW EVER.

TIME TO LEARN Y'ALL.

2006-11-22T00:41:00.000-08:00

So here is a drawing of something i have been semi-doing. I have been doing shallow raising to create some organs for my painting. I took pictures of the whole deal, but they were fucking horrible, so I drew the process of raising metal on several napkins to explain.

For the next few napkins, we have some tools:

- a tripod
- a torch
- a quench bucket full of water

- a raising stake
- a raising hammer
- a better raising stake (the one that will be featured in the illustrations)

- another stake (which will not be appearing in today's tutorial)
- a nylon hammer (doesn't scuff your shit)
- a planishing hammer (for a final finish)

So we are starting with a circular form. Actually, let me explain the metal a bit more.

The metal in question is copper, but you can use brass, bronze, copper, silver, nickel, gold, w/ever. Copper, silver, and gold will move the easiest. Brass, bronze, and nickel are super, duper hard.

Metal is malleable, so all I am saying here is that it can be hammered. I haven't specified really. Anyway, the process of raising is called raising because we are going to raise a vessel from a disk. You might think you can only hammer metal to make it thinner, but what we will be doing will be the opposite. We will be compacting the metal and making it thicker, actually. Hopefully, the process will explain, but I have produced some shitty drawings.

I have a cut copper disk. I now realize that I didn't explain how to use a jeweler's saw, so just assume you found a piece of metal in a circular shape and it is perfect. Good. Drawn on it are a series of circles. The inner circle will be the base of the vessel. We don't need it to be curved, so we won't be manipulating that area. What we are trying to do is hammer from the inner most circle to the outer most circle, pushing the metal upwards and in a way, together. I will explain that in a bit.

Also, before even doing that, we have to anneal the metal, which is what the first napkin is for. We set the metal on the tripod and take the torch to it. I didn't draw this, but the torch has a gas and oxygen knob. Some don't have this, so that's ok. Anyway, we're cranking the gas and lighting it, the turning on the oxygen and creating a blue cone with our flame. The cone can be pretty long, maybe an inch and a half or two. You want a good, strong, broad flame. It doesn't have to be super small and precise because we are just trying to heat the metal up.

We're heating the metal to soften it. Annealing is a process of heating the metal to a dull to cool red. Any more than that and you're just melting it. Actually, if you apply flame to the metal, the flame will come off orange if it is annealed. If the lights are out, the metal will be a dull red at that point. Doing this sends the particles in disarray and softens it, making it easier for us to hammer. As we hammer the metal, the molecules are compacted and it hardens. It is necessary to anneal the piece every course of raising, maybe a few times if the metal becomes too hard to work.

So we have heated every part of the piece up to a dull red, it all doesn't need to be red at once. We quench it in the water and clean it off. I forgot to draw a pickle pot, but imagine a small crock pot full of water minus a couple of inches, then some pickling salt is mixed in, a few tablespoons. Heated pickling salt will clean the surface of the metal because when you heat metal, it produces firescale. Moisture is actually pulled out of the metal and then dries on the surface, along with a little bit of copper. You'll see it flake and get all over your hands and shirt or blazer. So we clean the surface to draw on it, plus we don't want to hammer that firescale into the copper, or the hammer, or on our stakes.

So what we have above is an annealed, pickled (and then rinsed in a sink and dried with napkins or whatever you might have) piece of metal that is drawn on with sharpies. We are drawing the circles about a centimeter apart, maybe a little less. Draw them as straight as you want, maybe use a compass too. I never use them and all of my work ends up wobbly.

Here, we are setting our disk against the raising stake at about a 45 degree angle. We start and the inner most circle, placing that line right on the point of the stake. You'll have to guess where it corresponds, but I have faith in you. Now, the planishing hammer has two sides, a narrow side and a broad side. We're using the narrow side at the moment to just move in one circle at a time. Strike above that line, or between two lines. We are not trying to hit the point of the stake, but right above it. The sound will be a bit hollow, then you'll hear the hammer hit the stake. Stop hammering! We are trying to move the metal, but we aren't trying to squash it. You want to rotate the disk and hammer some more. Your blows should overlap to make your courses even and smooth. Keep hammering around in a circle, going clockwise or counter-clockwise. You'll switch this up every course or raising to keep things from going lopsided.

Keep going up the circles! The metal should get wavy like the third drawing. When you are hitting a wave like that, what is happening is the metal is hardening where the the hammer is contacting it, possibly at the peak of two of the waves. The metal inbetween that is resting on the stake is being pushed together by the metal surrounding it. So in those areas, the metal is actually getting thicker. Keep doing this until you have this cone sort of shape. Well, a cone with the top lobbed off.

Once you have done that and come close to the final shape, you're going to flip the hammer over and use the broad side on the whole deal, overlapping blows and making everything really flat. Remember, we are moving the metal until it contacts the stake and nothing more. Your surface should be pretty smooth and uniform.

We are annealing the piece, pickling, and drawing more circles. You're going to start your circles one below where you last started to create the shape we want. Just draw more circles, hammer some more, and when you reach the end, go over the piece with the broad side of the hammer and smooth it out. Anneal, pickle, more circles, hammering again. Now we've got a shape that resembles a cup, but has some angles to it. We can knock those in, so that's ok. We want that shape pictured above.

The other side of the raising stake is curved. We're resting the cup on the stake and using a nylon hammer to knock the raised parts in. You should have some nasty looking indentions left from your raising hammer. We can get rid of those by using a planishing hammer against the curved stake. Planishing hammers have really flat faces and leave smoother, wider marks on our metal. We are hammering all around the piece, starting top or bottom, it doesnt matter as long as the whole surface is covered. We are hammering just hard enough to flatten out the marks left from the raising hammer. You'll do this over and over, making softer blows as you go. By the time you are done, the piece should be quite hard, which is exactly what you want, so there will be no need to anneal the piece after planishing. From here, you can file the surface, sand it, polish it, give it whatever finish you want.

This is a really shitty tutorial. I should upload the pictures I took anyway.

I hope some of this made sense. I think it took me two hours to actually make the piece and way more time to try to make it into some sort of understandable digital format.

oh yeah

2006-10-25T00:38:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER PAGE:

BUH BUH BUH BUH

2006-10-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

SKETCH NOTES:

Page one is some random girl shit. The comic sucks, but it's loosely based on a conversation that Sara and I had over INTERWEBS or TXTMSGN but I can't remember.

Page two is a to-do list and loosely based on Lindsay talking to me but I actually waspaying attention. Also chunks of song lyrics from a handful of songs.

So I have been listening to nothing but THE BLOW for the past week. It's a brave venture into pop music, but the music is well thought out. The music is fun and dancy but not in your face and the lyrics are somewhat minimal, but each word seems to have importance. So it's smart pop. Very smart.

After Adrian kinda ripped into me about working on contemporary subject matter than 19th century romanticized bullshit, this music made me realize that I like what I am doing and that I can do 19th century love-whatever, as long as I feel that I am bringing sometihng new and fresh to the table. And as soon as I can stop ripping off Matthew Woodson. But I'm not digging his latest works so much.

So I am graduating on time and I have a lot of work to do. I'm not working Tuesdays anymore, so the plan is to get a sleeping bag and sleep at school two nights a week until the senior show stuff is over.

I decimated an art history test today. But "decimated" means "probably passed" in this case.

If school was open all night on Tuesdays, I would never be late. Because I would just sleep in the illustration room.

SUP UPDATES?!?

2006-10-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

So I DON'T think my new scanner is messed up, but the software might need to be reinstalled, otherwise this would have gone up last week. I just used the school scanners to do some stuff, but I forgot my camera at home so no photographs of electronic stuff yet.

Lindsay, I don't mean the last part on your drawing, but the space was empty.

So the first is sketchy stuff for my previous senior show idea. The third is a sketch for my last piece. The last is some sketchy stuff for what I want to do now, which I may have discussed?

Photographs will be up soon.

Edit: I got the scanner working and since I was home, I nabbed this photo from the camera. This is what I had last week. The new sketches are of mechanisms that will make up a few key organs of the body.

HAY DUDES.

2006-10-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

Due to Joel putting us kids on the spot in his new blog, I feel that I must update you. Here's my artistic sense of being.

I am a fucking mess.

So yeah, I've changed my senior show idea maybe six or seven times over the course of a year and a half. We started with graphic novel. Then I was going to do a good relationship piece. Then a self-exposing self-portrait thing. Then a bad relationship piece. Then a big albatross and illustrations based on Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Then drawing some other girls. Then I drank a lot. Then I did a drawing of the one person from last week. I think that due to my life being a mess, it reflects on the status of my work. I am cutting out other infatuational influences and going with a self-portrait in the form of a large scale board game Operation. I don't have time to change my mind anymore, so this is it. Life-sized, head to toe ink drawing with gouache and pastel on wood. Cutouts for the organs and big, surgical tongs connected to a series of batteries, buzzers, lights, and maybe electric motors.

We are talking some real gangsta shit here, people.

So I'll get some sketchbook scans up ASAP but I really haven't been doing a lot of drawing lately. I have a sketch or two form the last project and I can photograph some failed attempts at drawing girls and stuff. As usual, there is all kinds of junk at ihatejim.com if you feel that you've missed out on anything. I've been doing some photography and maybe I'll get brave and post some soon. I've really been enjoying my creative writing class and here is a story I did yesterday. The exercise was to make something dialogue driven. Okay.

"Hey." He extends his arm out to move the hair from over her eyes.
"Well hey to you too." Her head pulls away slightly. Feet dangle and touch. She glances towards the floor.
"Nice shoes," she says.
"Thanks. I take after you." Between the both of them, they have four peas in a pod. But the peas are black boots with thick, yellow stitching on the soles. Soft, rubber soles.
"So, do your feet get fatter too, or-"
"Haha, how about fuck you." She breaks into a fit of laughter he hadn't seen in years.
"Ohh, I kill me. Slay me, even." She loves her own jokes.

The train pulls away from the station. Inside, a mother squeezes her son's wrist and grits her teeth. A couple minutes earlier and her incisors wouldn't be lodged in her sinuses. The boy grits his teeth to forget about how much his wrist hurts.

"Hey, lemmie see your hand."
"Yeah sure," she says. He reaches under the table. Her fingers are unusually thin. A divot a ring sat in months ago is rediscovered. A small sigh is let out.

"So how's the south treatin' ya?"
"Well." Her hand retreats to her knee. "Foods great. I can get fried anything. Everything, really. Pickles. Snickers. Cheesecake. If they can dip it in batter, I can eat it."
"So is it anything like Deliverance?"
"Haha squeal like a pig, no. It's New Orleans so it's a bit different. It's Creole and spicy and it- it just is. I mean, I like Chicago and all, I LOVE Chicago. But it lacks the same sense of history. It's so 1920s. All of the time."
"Well, I like the twenties. And I like to hold on to these kinds of things." His hand goes to scratch her tummy right above the bellybutton. She moves his hand to the side and reaches for her purse.
"Well. Some people don't."
Her hand continues to rummage through her belongings. Her cigarette might as well have already been lit.

So the exercise was pulled from a short that Hemingway did about two people at a train station and the guy was talking the girl into having an abortion. STORY OF MY LIFE.

P.S. Blogger told me that I misspelled "gangsta". It is really spelled "gunshot".

New development.

2006-09-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

You found my weakness.

I'll be putting some sketches up pretty soon, but this is what I've been up to for the past few days.

I'm doin' it.

2006-09-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Joel said it was too late for me to change my project but I CHANGED IT ON SUNDAY and I LIKE IT SO MUCH BETTER so eat that, Mr. Priddy.

I bet you'll hate it, though. And give me a bad grade.

Some jawnk.

2006-09-15T04:10:00.000-07:00

I am doing some warm-up work to a senior show piece, which could be one of the pieces in itself. I am working on an abbreviated history of infatuations.

This isn't it. This is something I did during the summer in Italy. This scene in particular was done in a park at the north gate of Florence. This wasn't the park, but a view from across the train tracks over by this big thing that looked like the Crystal Palace of that one old World Fair. It was delapidated and full of wild plants, I'm sure it was once a greenhouse. I hope I photographed it.

This girl I really liked lived not too far from there. She had the most awesome red hair.

New things:

2006-08-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

Well I have a new router which means no more losing internet connections and veen blogging from the living room!

I have tickets to see Jenny Lewis!

I think I need to order some new Series 7s when I get my loan return in. I keep losing mine.

I cannot find the painting for my next tattoo.

Here's what I meant to type for the last few sentences:

I am going to work on a senior show based on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I'm going to me doing one illustration on really big paper that, for the time being, will consist of me looking majestic on the edge of a boat with an albatross on my neck or over my shoulder. I'm not sure if it'll do it, but I plan on doing a flat pink wash over everything in the drawing that isn't me. Since water, the moon/night, and boats are often affiliated with femininity, I was hoping that maybe I could relate this to the fact that GIRLS ARE GROSS AND I HATE THEM.

I am also going to make a giant albatross out of copper to wear around my neck for the show.

NEW COMIC.

2006-08-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry if you actually subscribed to my syndication AND you are on my Myspace as well, for this is your THIRD time seeing THIS.

If you go to my newly re-designed WEBSITE, you can see that comic for a FOURTH time, if you love me that much, that is.

2006-08-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

Because I haven't drawn much of anything lately or even have a means to scan it in, here are some photos.

NEW2U?

2006-08-18T13:00:00.001-07:00

Photo totally by Wes Hoover.

So I don't know if I ever posted this one. This was done between the whale and the girl with the peach, but the point was to illustrate an obituary. I chose Leslie Smith, the creater of the whole Matchbox car deal. I think this 1930s-ish Rolls Royce was one of the first models. Maybe the first model was actually a tractor, but I'm not sure. This car isn't a real car, I just used a lot of reference to make one up. Watercolor and gouache.

New sketches:

2006-08-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Here are some selected pages from my latest sketchbook. These are pages from Italy, Boston, Louisiana, and Borders.

WHOOPS!

2006-06-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

I might have to call my senior show off because of personal issues.

LAZY.

2006-05-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say that I haven't done anything art related except for getting really drunk the other night.

SHEESH.

2006-05-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

Nobody ever told me I DIDN'T POST MY COMIC ON HERE.

MORE CRAP.

2006-05-18T23:11:00.000-07:00

WHAT SOME TATTOO RELATED WORK WHO WOULD GUESS?

UPDATE FROM HELL

2006-04-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

This is the illustration that never was. I was going to ink it and color it last week, but I came across my new project and pretty much dropped it as if it were quite hot to the touch and me without my oven mitts equipped. This really happened in a way. I was a Memphis Pizza cafe with Jon. I omitted Shane and Ashley because as an artist, ultimately I am an editor. That was an awesome explaination. Anyway, our waitress asked if I had remembered her and I said "YEAH" because I thought she was cute and looked familiar. I didn't remember her. I was getting very close to asking her how her family was and crap like that and if she still talked to anyone from school/work/whatever. I decided against this and settled on telling her that I lied to her face. I worked up some nerve and said "HAY" when she came by and startled her. She knocked Jon's beer into my lap and immeadiately started wiping it up. I then told her I lied and she said she's served me before and was wondering if I had remembered.

These are thumbnails and two partial pages from my next comic. You can see how I process thumbs and come to conclusions. Some of my sketches are more detailed than my finals because I had intentions on making this comic pretty realistic, but that never happened.

HOW MUCH CAN I POSSIBLY UPDATE IN A DAY?

2006-04-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

I printed like seven sheets of vellum with different stuff on it, different layers of various opacities. I decided on a two layer for the first piece, lineart on one layer and the hands and text on the other. I found out that if you layer too much, the linework gets really soft. I don't want that. Here is a shitty photo of the printout.

I think I am changing my comic. I am going to do some practice comics for this show piece, seeing how I will need between three and six-hundred comic panels. Let's hope I have at least 10 pages inked by Wednesday.

I am totally making up for it.

2006-04-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

PING not done but close? The final will have lighter chunk of text, but it looks pretty fucking hot IMHO. I have to give super thanks to Paige for giving me some handwriting samples because that was awesome but I have to give ULTIMATE SUPER THANKS to Sara because she scanned her handwriting and had it to me in a fucking day. Awesome. I traced her penwork with a brush and that worked out really well after a few tries. I also printed up variations of different parts on six sheets of vellum to layer/stack/play around with. Now to draw comics.

Whoops.

2006-04-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

Instead of doing anything pertaining to school, I decided to revamp my website. I don't have it working yet, but here's what it will look like. All the text and thumbs will be lower right.

For all of the posting I HAVEN'T done

2006-04-15T20:40:00.001-07:00

Here's step by step of how this piece is going. I'm laying this one out, I've added hands but I'm not sure if I like them. I think I want the same fingertips to touch.

I started talking to a contact about framing for my piece. She says she can ship me most of the materials for the frames for 30 bucks a frame. The glass, I will have to get on my own. I'm still not sure how much the vellum is going to cost me, but I'll need like 60 feet of it at least.

Paige helped me a lot here. I had the hands further up but she gave me the idea to make one line meet at the mouth and the other to fade earlier. I never would have come up with that solution. Shane said it's brilliant (the piece, not stupid Paige). He also said I was a bastard. This is true, but I am a bastard that works from a lot of photo reference.

I am gonna slap some text on tomorrow and see how that goes. Since 24 hour access starts on Monday, I will spend the next two weeks at school most likely.

SCANS.

2006-04-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

I AM TOO LAZY TO ROLL OUT OF BED SO I AM TYPING WITH ONE HAND AND SIDEWAYS.

Joel, if you dont know about the photo merge feature in Photoshop, you will kill yourself. I used it to put these together and it did an amazing job. I didn't have to do a thing, really. I think it is under File>Automate>Photomerge.

ALSO

2006-04-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

Here is something I am going to finish next semester, along with making a companion portrait.

Approx two by two.five feet.

I DO NOT LIKE POSTING DUDES.

2006-04-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

So here are some photos of pieces I am working on. Actually this is for one piece, and you'll see the end result before the end of the semester. It's for a piece having to deal with long-distance relationships and will be a part of my senior show next semester.

Both are on eleven by fourteen sketchbook paper.

I am going to scan these in and print them on a sheet of vellum, then I am going to print digital halftones on a sheet fo vellum and put that layer behind this one. THEN I am going to make silhouettes of hands (from the forearm) with dotted lines coming from the mouths and touching at the fingertips. THEN I am going to add some text on top of that.

I am pretty excited. Every piece of work I have done for this semester has been an idea for my senior show and I've fiinally come across a solution that I am very pleased with. The end result should be a triptych, two end pieces measuring somewhere around three by five feet and the middle something like two by four (the piece above). The other two works are going to be nudes cut off at the head and hands, with the two figures facing each other and one arm outstretched. All printed on vellum, a layer of halftones, tattoos (I would like that thrown in there to add to the identity thing, too bad I only have one tattoo, I should get another before I finish my show), and finally, a layer of very tiny comics about the relationship (maybe 400 little panels?) to serve as something to activate the background. I'm very excited to see how the stacking of the vellum is going to work. I've seen Daniel Freeman do it with a piece upstairs and it looks really great. My main concern is holding all of it together in frames so that there is contact on all surfaces, allowing for the transparency thing to work. My other main concern is me naked in front of everyone including my mom. Ahh, the sacrifices we make for art.

FOTO UPDATE.

2006-03-30T17:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a sketch of my next painting. Hahaha.

Lots of:

2006-03-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

Lots of doing stuff un-related to this class. My sequential stuff seemed to go over pretty well. Here is an online version of that.

Lots of playing with illustrator. I messed around with it yesterday and made this:

And Blogger has the uncanny ability to make everything look like shit.

Lots of Annette telling me how great all of our blogs are. More people are looking at these than I thought. HAY DUDES.

LOTS OF JUDAS PRIEST.

Jesus McFuckingChrist

2006-03-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

Everyone else is typing stories, I guess I will too.

She ate and ate and ate.

Amazingly, she never gained a pound. She always had an excellent metabolism and she was always known to put food away. Her mom called her a garbage disposal. That became one of her childhood nicknames. If it wasn't "garbage disposal" it was "the dumper," coined by her older brother. She shared the bed with her older brother when they were five and eight. At one point, she came down with a horrible stomach virus which in turn lead to horrible diarrhea. She shat the bed. And she shat the sheets and she shat her pillow and in turn she shat him. He would call her "the dumper" until she turned twenty-three and they were at their dad's funeral reception and she was drunk enough to tell him how she felt about it.

O WAT A CLIFFHANGER.

Apologies to everyone, but mostly Joel

2006-03-18T12:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posing much lately because GUESS WHAT?!? I haven't been creating much lately. I am ditching my sequential work in illustration because I am so tired of drawing comics for sequential AND illustration.

I do have some illustrations I want to do based on the comics I have done. Basically, I want to create a new illustrations that have some kind of underlying narrative. These illustrations won't necessarily be related, but they all will have similar styles and themes, mainly about ignorance, handicap, communication and crap like that. Some will or will not be fiction. I want to see if I can mix in some of my own life experiences, but most of all I want to create a feeling of characters that are believable. I have realized throughout this semester that I am more interested in the characters I write about rather than the stories. I usually write background information on someone, then a story develops based on that character's past or something. I let myself become familiar with the character and write a little vague, leaving the reader to fill in the rest.

I am really enjoying creating these normal, everyday sort of characters and I really want to explore them more, but not in the medium of comics. At least not yet, I'm just not sure I'm ready for that tremendous amount of work.

So this semester is going to be about character development and technique, then next semester I will exercise putting these together under one theme and super master thesis or whatever the hell you call it. Oh yeah, ARTIST STATEMENT.

I have every intention on posting my comics, but I HAVEN'T FOUND THEM YET. STILL. I KNOW, I KNOW.

Hey guys! I'm a little behind! And not in class today!

2006-03-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

So here's what has been going on lately. This past weekend, I spend Friday through Monday looking for a car. Why does Jim need a car, you ask? Because on the weekend before, he moved back in with his parents! Across town! So during most of the time I would have been doing school work, I have been either packing, moving, or calling numbers and answering to "yes ma'am". Very busy and stressful, so I haven't been able to do all of the work I've wanted to.

I can't work by my normal schedules because I actualy have to worry about waking people up now. Usually, I could set an alarm, wake up after a couple hours of a nap, and then get up and work. Now, if I use my alarm clock, it wakes everyone up at 3 in the morning. I tried using my ipod as an alarm clock last night through my headphones, but that obviously worked well. This weekend is the first weekend that I won't have to do anything, so I need to make up a lot of stuff and figure out a new work schedule before I screw up too much.

I wanted to post some pages I've been doing, but I think I lost some pages in the move. I have some things to touch up on last weeks pages and this week's ages aren't quite done. Here are two of the pages from last week, but with the four missing from the week before, this will make so sense. I hope I can find the other pages.

Judging by the sounds of the rain tapping on the skylights, I'd say our picnic is cancelled tomorrow. Maybe we'll have it indoors, but I was looking forward to eating under the big magnolia tree. Sipping sweet tea and stuffing my face with macaroni salad and cucumber sandwiches.

2006-02-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this is really illustration related, but I'm thinking about dropping life drawing. I'm enjoying it, but for personal reasons, I could use some extra free time in my life right now to ponder over pretty much nothing. Would this offend Fred?

I'm enjoying my new camera. Photography is helping fill in some artistic void I've had for a while. Whether or not it's helping my work is another question, but whatever.

I'm not sure if I want to do the graphic novel for my senior show anymore. I miss painting. I wouldn't mind doing some portraits, or self-portraits in my whale-esque style. Ideas, anyone?

The things we did or didn't do last night.

2006-02-16T05:33:00.000-08:00

BLOG REQUEST FULFILLED?

2006-02-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

To help you guys understand my work a bit more, here are some things I like:

Comics, obviously. I read a lot of Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Craig Thompson, and Jeffrey Brown. Most of the other books on my shelf are reference material. I don't read many novels, but I need to start.

I like music. I listen to pretty much anything. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Rilo Kiley.

I like stuff. Photography, bicycles, stuff with moving parts. I like making technical drawings, but I hate my results. I like things that are heavy and sturdy, big on craftsmanship. I like making stuff.

I am a big fan of honesty. I love structrural honesty in architecture, honesty in storytelling and songwriting, honesty in art. I don't care for tricks and deception, but it always has its place.

Filler

2006-02-06T00:36:00.000-08:00

Here is a snippet of my life drawing sketchbook.

And here is a snippet of my illustration. It's the first page to my comic!

hXc day

2006-02-02T23:56:00.000-08:00

I posted my hourly comic here if you're interested. I hear the dean might be reading this so HELLO DEAN. JOEL IS AN AWFUL TEACHER.

I kid, he's pretty great.

When my camera comes in next week, I will start posting chunks of comic. I guess I can post all of the pages every week, but I'm not sure. Oh well.

2006-01-27T04:16:00.000-08:00

I just wrote my comic for sequential and I am very excited. I shouldn't hype stuff up like this, but I can't help it. I'm pretty sure this is the best writing I've ever done, so I need a comic that'll do justice. I've been experimenting with taking pictures of large pieces of paper so I can transform that into a flat black and white format, but I don't have the proper lighting to do it. I might do this comic on 18x24 with conte.

I think my largest problem is the fact that we are supposed to have work days and a review day before the comic is due. I don't want ANYONE to see it until I am done, so I am not quite sure what to do. I might show off one or two pages for class, but I don't want to show much more.

In other news, Tomine is releasing a new graphic novel in Fall 2007. Fall 2007 couldn't seem any farther away than it does now.

(x-posted)

for you!

2006-01-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

My newest mini is now available. Price is $2.00 USD. Click here to purchase.

I'm kidding, its free.

Five pieces

2006-01-20T03:10:00.000-08:00

This is my third entry.

Why?!?

2006-01-20T02:24:00.000-08:00

I have had various implements of blogging in the past, why start another?

"Joel made me."

SRSLY, this is a blog required by IL460 Advanced Illustration. I've never had to blog for a class, so I am pretty excited. I would use the blog on my current webpage, but I really hate that website. I was supposed to do a redesign over the break, but I am a lazy fucker. I would use my livejournal, but this blog exists to serve a different purpose other than ranting about Joel and cats (Mr. Perkins ran away today, but he came back). This blog created specifically for the purpose of exploiting the thought processes behind "Advanced Illustration", or "Jim Duong draws comics".

Because my Sequential Narrative class is so closely tied to this, I will pretty much use this blog for both classes. I'm sure this will roll over into Advanced II, and hopefully I'll keep this after I graduate and continue to blog about art and whatever.

So what do I plan to achieve through the class?

Simply put, I'm not quite sure. I do not have a message or point to get across though the medium of comics. I am not doing an auto-bio because I don't find my life that interesting. I want to tell a story and I want it to be decent, but I really don't care what it is about. I want this project to be an exercise in creating a large, consistent body of work (I haven't been successful in the past with similar projects) and the processes involved with publishing a book. If I want to have a 120 page graphic novel printed by the first of December, I should be doing about 3 pages a week. Hahahahaha you have got to be fucking kidding me.

Most importantly, this will be a writing exercise. I believe I have a sufficient (at least kindof O.K.) amount of knowledge when it comes to visual communication in the form of comics, but I've never been too interested in my own stories. In my own opinion, my best work was the comic translation of a short story that I didn't write. I doubt I will like any of the work I do this year, but I need to like it enough to drop a grand or two on publishing the damn thing. This means I either need to work harder or lower my standards.

At this point in my college career, I'm all for lowering standards.
It's much easier that way.

Aww, yeah!

2006-01-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

WHO YOU CALLIN BITCH?!?