Paintings

These are the paintings I made last semester in Beginning Painting. I've left out the first half of the semester, because I entered this class having forsaken paint and pretty much most color for the past six years. Thank you, Carl Baratta, for making me love painting.

This is the only piece in this post done in acrylic. After this we switched to oil, and I swear I'll never go back.


This is my first oil painting; that's a pen I own covered in skulls. I got it at Pantheacon one year.


This is one of my favorite painting still, and hangs in my kitchen.


We had an assignment to do a "painted collage". Basically you take random images and paint them on top of each other.


An in class "incidental painted collage". Our classrooms are pretty industrial, so all I found of interest was a door and an outlet. This painting is unfinished but remains a favorite.


Last but not least, this was the final for my class. I'm sorry the photo sucks, the painting is very dark and difficult to capture at 9.00pm in a doom room with only a desk lamp for lighting. Another painted collage, but more situational, this is set in the Tado Ando gallery in the Art Institute of Chicago, featuring Magritte's red dot from "The Banquet" (my favorite painting ever), and creeping around is the Llama Man from my childhood nightmares. Opposite him is a common theme in my mental compositions, the Arm Umbrella. (Stay tuned for my first etching sometime soon also featuring an arm umbrella.) There were some crazy qualifications for the final project.

Figure Drawing

Here are three out of the four figure drawings I've done so far this semester in class. (The fourth one was collaborative and sucked.) The first is from the second week of class, and the second two are from the week before last. I'll try to put up my drawings as I make them, and you all can tell me if I get any better. I wasn't supposed to shade any of these, but I got bored after shaping the form with lines. My teacher yelled at me a lot.

Pantheacon, Insignificance

This was me last weekend, running Anne's booth three days in a row. Pantheacon is a Pagan convention that my family has been attending since its inception. Naturally I felt it was important to support mainstream music (The Strokes) while selling music no one ever listens to (most of what's in front of me).


I was also attempting to sell cards, buttons, envelopes, and portraits which, through being so utterly brilliant, blindsided most potential customers into utterly ignoring them.




I handmade all cards buttons envelopes etc myself and was continuing to make buttons all weekend. Most of them were made of cloth from old t-shirts. The cheap ones I stamped with potato stamps I cut, and the sewn ones I embroidered and embelleshed before turning into buttons. For the cards I cut a linoleum print of a witch smoking and drinking (in honor of all my lovely role models in the Pagan community) and then tore cards of my own design (when you tear - as opposed to cut - the edges of paper forms it gives them a nice fine quality). I made the envelopes out of old calendars.

I also made all the signs. They're also torn paper, held together with armature wire. The letters are stamped on from two kits I purchased last winter at Paxton Gate. I used the same stamps on my Christmas presents this year, as seen below.


And, because I know you don't care, here are some pictures of my dorm room walls and what is on them.




My dorm room contains a kitchenette which I don't actually stand on all that often. All paintings in this picture are mine.


Here is one last closeup of some of the buttons I made at Pantheacon, being worn by their owners, my father and sister.