Purple Haze

For my brother's 18th birthday this month, I decided to pay tributes to both my hero and his with a Warhol-inspired painting of Jimi Hendrix.



My brother, an avid drummer and guitarist, is also a big Hendrix fan. I had already bought him a Hendrix shirt a few birthdays back, so I figured original art of his hero would be a nifty change this year.

While Googling reference pictures, I came across one that had been edited to resemble a Pop Art portrait. I'm a big fan of Andy Warhol and I liked the look of that picture best, so I figured, "Why not?" Hendrix was also a well known psychedelic drug user, so I thought the colour scheme and aesthetics associated with Warhol's work would be appropriate as well. ;)

I think it was a fairly successful leap into Pop Art. I'm rather satisfied with how it turned out, and my brother (thankfully) likes it!

Drawing class

I finally decided to photograph some newer drawings, if only to prove that I can draw. These are two of my better ones from the Intro to Figure Drawing class I took at NSCAD in the winter.


This was an assignment early in the semester. We had to do a mirrored copy of a Master drawing. I mirrored Raphael Santi's "Nude Study" (which can be found here). I noticed as I was pinning it on the wall that the man's legs and feet look just a little bit small, but I'm not super concerned. The muscles in his back were pretty fun to draw.


This one of Acid Betty was drawn as part of my final project, a series of drag queens. I fell in love with her look after seeing her on season 4 of Project Runway and immediately knew I wanted to draw her at some point. I cropped out her hands because they gave me such a headache when I tried to draw them. (Note to self: practice hands and feet!). Other than that, she was some of the most fun I've ever had drawing. I'll definitely be revisiting drag queens in my future work.

THE POWER IS YOURS

I must have had some sort of nostalgic episode tonight because I felt a compulsion to go through some of my old files from high school. Between my oekaki doodles and my pet chemistry project (a comic about nuclear energy) I found this little gem from eleventh grade.



This was originally done for a poster when I decided to run for Arts Rep on my student council. (I lost.) It proved to be quite useful again when my twelfth grade Political Science class put together a mock election and I was campaign manager for the Green Party. (We won!)

At the time, I thought I had some mad Photoshop skills, but looking at it now, it's kind of ridiculous. I decided to cut out the poster text and throw it up here for a laugh. I'm pretty sure this cartoon was actually TERRIBLE but I still love as much as I did when I was five. I mean, it's a series about villains that pollute the earth solely for the sake of being a douchebag and the hero has a green mullet. You don't see stuff like that in cartoons anymore. (On the Metro Transit late at night, however...)

Mo shirts!

I suckered my friends Kandis and Katie into taking some photos of my final screenprinting project yesterday. There are two shirts with this design and 4 with a smaller Mo drawing that I still need to get pictures of.



I'm currently trying to find a place online that will custom print shirts for a decent price. I'd love to go into business selling my own work but it's much too expensive and time consuming to hand-print these multi-layer designs myself. I was looking at setting up a CafePress store but the licensing of my content to them under the Terms of Service makes me uncomfortable. Suggestions?

Southern Ann-Margret... On steroids.

My final project for figure drawing class is a series of drawings of drag queens. After researching photos of Varla Jean Merman, I fell in love with her retro-Hollywood look and did this drawing as sort of an exploration of the subject manner. Drawing a figure that's both male and female is an interesting challenge.



I think my cat, Mimi, really liked this drawing.

This is one of many creative obstacles I deal with every day.

In which there are BUNNIES!

I decided it was high time I actually post some artwork here. For the last couple of weeks, I've been doing repeat patterns for my Introduction to Screen Printing class. So far, I think I like them! So now I'm sharing.

The first assignment was a 2-way border repeat on 3 meters of fabric. I had used koi fish once before on a corset that failed miserably (it was my first time sewing one) so I decided to take a second stab at it. Despite some minor goofs, I thought it turned out rather well.

Spring break gave me an extra week to punch it up a little, so I decided to break away from plain white cotton and venture into colour territory. I used an unbleached factory cotton and dip-dyed it a pretty orangey-gold (inspired by goldfish) with Remazol dyes that I mixed myself. I mixed pigment with transparent base into what I describe as "blood orange" so the print would have contrast without being overpowering or looking too Halloweeny.



The second assignment was to do a 4-way repeat. I was kind of on a roll with a cute animal theme so I did bunnies inspired by Derringer's pet, Elliot, in Friendly Hostility.

I only had one week to print the fabric instead of two like I did for the koi fish, so I used the plain white mercerized cotton for simplicity's sake. However, rather than print in plain black, I decided to use a magenta pigment that I had bought but never used. :D I like the colour combination of bright pinks or magentas and white (because lets face it, hot pink and black is SO overdone). I also thought the magenta would lend to the silly/cute idea.



So far, I'm thinking bags for the koi fish and pajama pants for the bunnies. :D

Horrorfax Harbour

This is actually a little bit older, but I wanted to share it anyway.

"Horrorfax Harbour" is a little video project done by my dear friend Katie Hillman about life in the Halifax Harbour. Using Nick Park's "Creature Comforts" as inspiration, she asked friends and family to say something about the local landmark (watermark?) and then animated each interview as the sort of deformed sea life that might live there.

The creatures (that include a fanged seagull, three-eyed harbour seal, garbage fish and a seaserpent) are all animated in different styles, which lends the video the sort of creative twist that makes Ms. Hillman's work such a visual treat. I highly recommend you mosey over to her DeviantArt page and check out her other works. And if you like claymation, take a look at "Alles Gute Zum Gerburtstag- a german expressionist birthday."

Oh yeah, did I also mention that she asked me to voice the seal?