The Donor gave us a piano. It became a metaphor for my experience here

Donors like to give money to the arts and things, I'm told. I have to trust this information, as I've never been a patron of the arts (in that I can donate things like entire buildings or entire personal collections of works on paper or, oh, let's say pianos) and am not likely to be in my lifetime. What can I say? I'm a maker of things, not a runner of businesses or an inheritor of many generations of goods and monies.

So anyway, some donor out of the goodness of his heart (I assume) gifted MICA with a handful of pianos. They're lovely instruments, well tuned and with a warm, round voice. This was done because many people who make art objects also like to make music in their spare time. In that way, it was a thoughtful gesture that no doubt reflected positively upon the donor.

What we did not get, however, was a place to put the pianos. So they've just gotten....placed. One was placed on our floor, which is the one floor that literally everyone has access to. It wasn't placed behind the doors to our studio so that if people needed to concentrate on their work they could restrict access to the piano. No, it's out there, in the open. And wow, you would not believe the number of people who think they can play the piano (and play the piano and play the piano and play the piano) who cannot play the piano at all.

Have I mentioned that all the walls in this building are super thin? Because they are. There is literally no escaping the dulcet tones of the demon piano.

And thus it becomes the perfect metaphor for my MICA experience overall: people doing things with the best of intentions and to the best of their ability but with limited knowledge of the entire scope of the circumstances who then end up making life way super difficult for everyone on accident.

But it wouldn't be all that bad if maybe folks were a bit more considerate of each other and would stop playing the piano during finals week.

The magic's back!

Didn't get to spend much time over the weekend working, but I have managed to do these two pieces (and finish one commission piece) since Thursday:

Oh and also this IronSnorlax, because it is pokemon profile picture month:

omg

Jo Smail just told me to do comics because it's obviously what I love doing. Like, way more than painting, and it's ok to do the fun and easy things and I don't have to paint and she said the videos were good too and that the animation course I'm gonna take next semester will be really good for me and and and

you guys. Jo Smail's the person who told William Kentridge to stop trying to paint and just draw instead.

I'm just gonna go sit in a corner and happy cry now. Don't mind me.

I got rejected from a thing so I can post this now

I did this one a month and a half ago, maybe? Before Halloween, certainly. The theme of the book was 'Haunted,' and I wanted to challenge myself into not doing something Super Over Dramatic, which, I will admit, was my instinct (I don't do a lot of supernatural-themed stuff, ok?) 

Looking at it now, there are a few things that I'd like to fix--the placement and integration of the smaller figures is a bit off, maybe? Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with it! 

idk what to title this post omg

self 09

I needed to walk away from this other piece that I was working on, so I did this real quick (took a little over an hour, I think)

Sketches and composite

These are for my next assignment (yes, still done some assignment based work), which was to do a piece based on either Inferno or Pergatorio. So I decided to work with the three animals that chased Dante down to the start of the story. 

Karkat

Karkat is my favorite troll. There have been so many, but somehow he's always #1 in my book.

Also: it turns out that if you're a student, they'll sell you Camtasia for fewer monies than if you're a regular human, so I bought it. Welcome back to the world of recording my paintings! 

Single Lily

Hello, my name is Beth and I paint flowers sometimes even though I'm in grad school. *facepalm*

Finally switched to cs6! Gotta say, I'm kind of super loving it.

This piece is available at my Society6 shop, if you're interested.

Found some older drawings

I was updating my site and looking for something specific when I came across these four:

I'm not really one to toot my own horn, but those drawings are pretty darn good (the last one is maybe a little ridiculous, but other than that...) Kudos to past!me.

And the website update continues. I've got all the images on it, though some of the thumbnails need to be fixed and images are still taking too long to load (even though I made sure to bring them down to 72 dpi :/)

In progress: website update

OH MY GOD, I AM BEING A RESPONSIBLE ADULT AND UPDATING MY PROFESSIONAL ADULT-TYPE WEBSITE.

I've got a lot of new digital work up right now, and I'm going to be spending some time tonight photographing and editing my traditional work, so that should be up pretty soon, too! 

*pats self on back*

Shuffle step

Did this off of a gif that someone did of Chell from portal. I'm pretty darn happy with this, for all that it's the first one out of the gate--looking forward to doing more :D

two drawings, three paintings, and some text

I bought a sketchbook not from barnes and noble for the first time the other day. Plus some new pencils. This is me, trying things out, and I am super happy with this. Also this one, the first sketchbook with brown paper that has a texture that I'm happy with:

I know that I haven't been talking a lot about my work when upload it recently, and that's for a very good reason: I'm a bit lost with it. It happens to us all, and if you're someone who's just getting into art, be prepared for that. My solution in the past has always been to just keep painting, because I've had a consistent intellectual underpinning to unify my body of work. 

The difference this time has been that my problem is with that intellectual underpinning. I'm not sure what I'm painting about anymore. Drawing doesn't have that same stress. I love them both, but a sketch is, well, it's just a sketch. If it turns out well, then you're double winning. 

Hm...I don't think I'm gonna be able to talk about this coherently without putting up my three latest pieces. Have some more instagram, errybody:

Text is back, baby! 

And then I went to class and completely forgot what I was going to say here. For sure, the concluding remark was going to be something like: 'gotta keep working, will figure it out' which is true so we'll just go straight to that. 

Three paintings, one color scheme

What can I say? I churned them all out pretty quick, so that happens sometimes.

"This painting brought to you by the letter H"

"It's a painting of a flower, stop thinking so hard"

And this last one I haven't named yet, though I did upload it to a few places with the caption 'squarish things in squarish things' so I might end up calling it "Squarish" or "Ish"

Curl

Solved this one this morning: 

EVEN MORE PAINTINGS (except one is a bit older)

My tablet decided to turn off and never turn on again the other day, so we'll be hitting the traditional painting pretty exclusively for the next week or so.

Fortunately, I've got two more for you that I hadn't shared yet.

This one would actually be more at home with the last set. It's maybe the second or third traditional piece that I did this semester. This was actually the first time that I've done a painting directly from a drawing in....gosh, ages. I didn't draw the model's eyes in the original and then tried to add ridiculous anime eyes, but they just ended up...working. Unfair. 

Talk about lost in translation. In addition to oil paint, this one also has three layers of resin on it with different things sandwiched between them (gesso and walnut ink on the first, acrylic and india ink on the second.) The bright blue and orange were done in oil after I put down a layer of acrylic gloss medium on top of the final layer of resin. The bottom layer you may remember from two posts ago:

omg have some paintings!

I've been pretty remiss in keeping this thing updated. To be fair, that is because I've been starting to work traditionally again and, as I may have discussed (ad nauseum) previously, I am pretty terrible at documenting my work.

So, in that vein: have some instagrams of some paintings.

Stage 01

This image is going to serve as the base of some new things that I'm gonna try out.

I hope they work out, because I actually rather like this painting, hahahaha.

testing testing

bloop! did another one, still testing things out. 

Number 6 + a test

I can't believe I didn't put this one up here the other day. We pseudo-critted this today:

And then we have something that I'm going to be kind of playing with for a bit, so I hope that y'all like animated gifs, 'cause they're gonna be coming your way.

4 Lillies

Start of school--> less frequent updates (which is kind of weird, when you think about it; I'm definitely working the same amount, if not more. Ah, well)

This piece goes with Meter, in that I'm going to be printing them both out so that I've got some color in my room. 

Malevolence Poster 03

This marks the halfway point for my commission work for this game.

For the next three, we'll be switching so that the character is on the right side of the poster. 

Carter

More fanart, this time of Detective Joss Carter from Person of Interest. I'm right at the end of finishing a rather detailed commission piece, so this was a very welcome break from that.

EDIT: I should know better than to upload something as soon as I think I've finished it--I always find something I want to work on.

Duet

Not much to say about this one. Worked on it as a warmup/cooldown piece between other things,wanted to work on the contrast between looser, brushier sections and more highly refined areas.

credit where credit is due

I managed to correctly track down the source of the reference I used for that 'meter' piece. Yay me!

Original photo by Karen Kavett who can be found at http://karenkavett.com and http://youtube.com/karen

The really excellent thing about tracking her down (and the reason I was so determined to do it, other than that it's polite) is that I now have permission from her to sell prints of the piece on my society6 account. And, in fact, I've put up a bunch of new prints recently, so you guys should check that out. 

Which, actually, brings me to my next point. 

I mentioned here a couple of times that I was having computer problems, since fixed. The fixes were not exactly cheap, and all signs point to my motherboard failing in the not too distant future. All of which is handleable, but difficult. And then I moved to Baltimore. 

And then three days after that my bike got stolen. 

And those together just really made me look at all the imminent expenses involved in moving to a new studio and classes and books and, y'know, replacing the bike that I've had and loved for the last five years, and I just sort of...freaked out a little bit? 

So I'm opening sketch commissions. 

How these work: you pay me ten dollars to my paypal (which is linked to my sparkselrose@gmail.com email account) and for you I will sketch, digitally or traditionally, anything you request. 

Literally anything. 

You will then receive a high resolution image from me, and I retain the right to post a low resolution copy to my sites and blogs and things. 

These are gonna be quick images along the lines of what I do for the one hour contest; I figure that I know for sure that I can fit those in around my class schedule. 

If you're interested in this (or interested in commissioning a larger/more finished piece even) please shoot me an email at sparkselrose@gmail.com and yes, I will be keeping a sharp eye on my spam box so that I don't miss you :) 

Mask 01

Set up this still life in order to test out my new screen recording software.

Still figuring it out, only managed to capture half of the video that I wanted, so hopefully the NEXT time I post an image, there'll be a video to go along with it.

Meter

Currently tracking down the source of the reference I used on this one so that I can share that person's work with you as well.

The original image is of the inside of a parking meter.

I've got two more paintings planned that are going to use the same/a similar color scheme, though unrelated subject matter; I didn't bring any work with me when I moved to Baltimore, so I'm working on getting the walls decorated :)

EDIT: Original photo by Karen Kavett who can be found at http://karenkavett.com and http://youtube.com/karen

Reese

whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone, three posts in a row that are actually of my work? aw, yes, gettin' back into the groove.

If you're thinking it looks really similar to a previous piece of mine, worry not! This is by design. They're both characters from the same show (are you watching person of interest? you should be--it's pretty great, dvds available soon), so, thematic linking seem like a good idea.

Anyway, orientation for my program is tomorrow. Should be interesting. I met with some of the other people in the program yesterday for drinks. They all seem really cool. Universally, we all want to get into our studios really badly, which, coming from an undergrad program where a good chunk of people would complain about the most basic work loads, is really really refreshing. And exciting.

I am excite.

yes.

Malevolence Poster 02

I'm in the middle of a couple fairly intensive paintings right now; it's good to finish one so that I can share something again :)

(copypasta description from my other malevolence poster because it's pretty late: )

This is the second of six posters that I've been commissioned to do for Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkronax

1 hour contest, once again

ahahaha, was not prepared at all to win. oops? Anyway, if anyone's interested in participating and has a dA account, head here: 1-hr-contest

Fortunately, not a day goes by when I'm not working on some personal project or another in and amongst my other (currently marginal) responsibilities, so I dashed this reference together

I'm actually really pleased with this and will probably go back and finish it up/refine a few things (feet? who renders feet? get out of here) in the near future.