A shell of a game

This is the calm place that doesn't change but just sways lightly in the current; growing scales, barnacles, pearls... transforming shipwrecks into coral.  Making a bit of a whale sound, but whooshier.  

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy – a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty, or a battleground, or a prison of it, but that does not make it any prettier.”
Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

RIP bird sundae

The finished product!  WEll... mostly.  I lucked out in that the professor had snapped a pic before I lost it, so there we see it indeed have wings!  They're a bit cut off on the side because I hate Safari browser and it's inability to let me position photos correctly, but you can see it up close at my Flickr account (and click on "All Sizes" to view it in more sizable glory).

I was thinking of ice cream while painting it.  Ice cream and beetles and organs, oh my.

Stolen or Given Away?

I've lost you, painting.  *weepsniff... oh well*

This is what happens when you procrastinate about picking up your artwork from studios at school... I managed to find 4 of the 5 that I made this spring, but unfortunately not the largest one.  And my favourite one.  It looks like that picture up there, except more refined, and with huge white wings, and I don't even have a picture for my portfolio!  That might be the worst part.

On the other hand, ephemerality of art, right?  I'm not actually crushed, I guess.  Onto the next works...

Speaking of works and ephemerality -- I worked on a delicious batch of vegan Carrot Cake Cookies while working on a drawing piece for Fatigue Magazine, and both turned out beautifully.  (the cookies are ephemeral because I ated them!  the submission because I am handing it to the editors on sunday)

Hope everyone's having a happy May so far!  I know there're readers out there, regardless of no commenting, so to all three of you, I wave and send a virtual cookie, can you smell the cinnamon? :)

make a drawing from 8 reference photos, okay

My last drawing assignment for Uni got an offer, as in, a classmate wanted to buy it.  A good omen, yes?  Oh yes!  I should say so.  Some small part of it might be the antique frames, which are admittedly gorgeous and make my disparate doodles less... disparate.  Actually, this whole thing had a magnetic kind of cohesiveness, for, if you look at it a certain way, doesn't it look like a dragon kind of creature passing by the windows?  That's the idea, anyway.  It's a sum of parts, and if you go to the Flickr link you can see exactly what each piece was.

Working title might be something like "how to turn a pedestrian drawing assignment into a work of meaningful art", or something, whatever, I'm terrible at naming things, generally.  Names are pretty bollocks, yeah.

The girl who offered to buy my piece?  Made this.  I fell over, a little bit, inside, when I looked in her white diorama ceramic sculpture-thing.  There were marshmallows, bird-like marshmallows making silent tender conversation in stop-motion video at the end of that dream-like music-box-sized corridor.  And she wondered if it was Art with a capital A, and to that I say -- Bollocks!  This is gazing inside someone, something, and if that isn't worthy of the A, I'm out of the game.  I ran up 3 flights of stairs and back down to the basement floor just to grab my camera and remember this.  Enchanted....

post-soleil. the setted sun?

This one's rising.

Well, I made it until noon.  Noontime, sun at the zenith.  I captured it with a masking tape circle on the floor, which is actually an enso really.  No, really.  I had a 76% urge when I showed up to not even open my pencils at all and fudge everyone out who happened to show up with that trick.  To be completely honest, it's probably more powerful to expect a huge drawing performance and find only a bare floor with a circle on it, than to see some art student draw yet another random project in the hallway.  It's like those monks who whack their disciples over the head to shock them into enlightenment.  Much more penetrating.  Much more better.

That said, I like my sun.  I think I'll fill the rest of the page later on at my leisure, over the summer, to be a giant flaming flower planet-thing.  And I need to figure out how to attach the little mirror without hurting the paper.

I also found out this morning while reading up on Shinto for class, that Amaterasu - the epic-ly epic primary Shinto Kami of the sun -- is often represented with a mirror! (!)

I love Amaterasu.  Ever since I heard about the legend where she hides herself in a cave, until getting tricked outside to bring light back to world, well... I thought she was neat.  Female deities are soooooo often associated with the moon, but not this girl, no, she was flaming from the get-go!  Her brother Tsukiyomi is the Moon Kami.

"when you want to harvest these just use a razor with delicacy on the edges of their travel compartment"

Everything's swirling together for the finish line: 1 more week of school left, and 1 week of solid studio critiques to look forward to.  My projects (my babies!) are just about incubated, grown solid limbs, hot off the presses (so to speak).  The booklet was the most nebulous until very recently.  I actually wasn't sure if it would come together at all, but an inspired format change to the font was the missing element it needed, and I got happy with the layout late last night.  *wipes giant anime sweatdrop from off of head*

I just have to figure out how to print it at a higher quality than a usual casual zine, give it an appropriately surrealistic-yet-delicious name ("Apocalypse Popcorn" ?), and then my first art-book will be done.  Go life accomplishments. :)  

Also, happy happy: I got more mail in my metal conjuring box!

A girl named Sailor sent me a postcard full of my favourite things: children's book cutouts, maps, paint names, bubble-balloons, blood cells, and.....

Beautiful bugstamps!  I'm so grateful, these look like treasures.  Thank you, Sailor!  I'll leave them in their clear cage for now, save them for a world-saving letter, or perhaps save them forever, chittering behind the plastic making talk-time with Waldo and the swatch called "New Spring" :)

I do love mail correspondence... I picked up a bunch of free pastel boxes today, I think I'll fill them with small neat things and send them around the world soon.  AFTER school is done being stressful, that is.  Oh, I'm gonna go apeshit with the sparkles and reality tv after this week is done....

I think it's entirely possible to evolve into a foolproof machine

Imagine if you might... the top floor of this building is a dislocated airport atmosphere, an ice age wisp-moment, a lavender ghost shark air-quarium.  It'll be my home for a full day of drawing, all my pencils scattered around me as I slowly, slowly grow a sun in graphite, flames licking in slow motion to fill a gigantic paper on the floor.  My temporary home and magic carpet ride, ha!  

If I could extend this to a 24-hour performance and watch the nightlight twinkle in all colours of the city all around me, all alone in the sky........ I would, oh I ..... all for the want of an after-hours pass. :/

This will still be glorious, though.