sketches from life

7 minimalistic posters representing various mental disorders - 22 Words

I'm taking a short break from work on a painting for class (due tomorrow! Yikes!), and I thought I'd come share a few things that I've been learning and working on lately. Namely, painting with encaustic.

Our last project in painting was to paint a small panel with encaustic. For those of you not familiar with the term, encaustic is basically painting with hot wax. It's mostly beeswax and pigment, and can give some really vibrant, beautiful colors. It's a very different medium, though, from anything else I've worked with, and it was really fun to experiment with it.
When painting with encaustic, you have to keep all the paints in liquid form by keeping them hot, so all the pots of color are kept on hot plates or griddles, and when you paint with it, it sets up very rapidly, since as soon as it begins to cool, it hardens and becomes more opaque. That being the case, you have to work pretty fast. What is fun about it, too, is how easily it takes to things like collage, transfer, and building up texture or layerss. You can incise lines into thick layers of wax and fill them with color, you can scrape away layers to reveal what's underneath, or you can attach globs of warm wax to build up semi-sculptural aspects on a piece.

The pieces we did were small, and mostly, I believe, just for the experience of working with the new medium, but it was really fun to play around with. People who know what they're doing with the medium can really do some cool things with it, too. It's also interesting to note that encaustic is incredibly archival and will last for incredible lengths of time as long as it is not exposed to enough heat to melt the wax. We know it has been in use since the time of the Ancient Egyptians, who used it to create mummy portraits. Cool!

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.                         -Thomas Merton

I just began reading a book called Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, and even as little as I've read so far, I've really enjoyed it. It has already made some very good points. For instance, it talked about the struggle in continuing in art, and not quitting. They rightly recognize the fear behind most instances of quitting. Basically, it's a fear of failure. That's common. It's human. But it's also dangerous.

We allow fear to stop us from accomplishing anything. We let ourselves get distracted by what's going on around us. We become discouraged when other people are doing better than we are. We call it an inability to comply with deadlines or to work under certain conditions, or sometimes we simply contribute it to laziness, but what it boils down to is a fear of failure. The book makes a very good point about this -- one which I've recently come to realize myself as well: that when we label ourselves as artists, we identify ourselves with our art, and therefore, a bad piece of art translates to mean that we are bad artists. We become so closely identified with what we are creating that if once we fail, it instantly means we are a failure. But that's not true!

As a young artist, still trying to figure out what I have to say and where I'm going with all of this, I am right there in the middle of a lot of what this book is saying so far. Basically, art is scary. It makes you vulnerable. Creating art is like opening up a bit of your soul for people to look at, examine and criticize. It's a bit unnerving sometimes if you are still figuring things out. But that's part of what makes it so exciting. It really is an adventure!

Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working. - Stephen DeStaebler 

I did warn you that my "sketch of the day" was not likely to be a daily thing, and you can't say I didn't tell the truth. But I'm not giving it up completely! I have a sketch for you today, and I also have some clay projects to share as well.

Hello there! Happy Tuesday. I hope your day was pleasant. Mine was pretty good. Less productive than it should have been, but oh well, it happens. I was struggling with ideas (or rather, the lack of any idea at all) for my drawing project during class today and didn't get much work done as a result, but I think I've come up with something interesting now. Stay tuned to see if it pans out. I'll wind up posting about it in a week or so when it's done, I'm sure.
Ok, well time to continue from the last post. There are still several more paintings in the series!
Let's jump right in.

Phew, it's been a crazy week or so. Projects had piled up on me and I wasn't able to get around to sharing! But thanks to one of those projects, at least, I have some fun things to share with you, readers. One of the projects that had me so busy was a painting project for which we had to paint nine small, 1'x1' canvases or framed panels. Going into it, I was concerned by the number of them, and the rather short time we had to finish the project. However, it is now one of my favorite projects we have done. I feel like I learned quite a bit, and really had some fun playing around with things that I've never been brave enough to try before.

The assignment required that for the first small painting, we started by responding to a part of our last painting (for me, that was the large Janet Fish still life). For the second painting, we responded to the first small one in some way; for the third, we responded to the second, and so on and so forth, so that it was like a visual game of telephone in a way. My final series wound up looking a little bit on the random side, the connections being more conceptual than visual, but that's okay with me. I wanted to use the project to experiment and stretch myself. I wanted to try new things and play around with mediums.

I painted all of them using acrylics and acrylic mediums, which in itself was a stretch. I've gotten so comfortable with oils that going back to acrylic was a little irritating at times. I really wanted to play with the various acrylic mediums that our professor had shown us, though, so it was worth it to me to put up with the acrylic paint in order to allow for the experimentation!

So, enough talk, let's get down to it! The first few paintings in the series:

First off, let me take this moment to say....

IT'S SPRING BREAK! YAY!!! I have a whole week of no classes to look forward to! Though I do still have a lot of work to get done for classes....But oh well. It's still a break!

Ok, now that I've gotten that out, we can resume. I'm keeping my word and I have some sketches to post!

I started playing with a white conte crayon the other night, and then I found some gray pastel paper to work with it on. I've never used a white conte before, and started having a lot of fun with it! I got a little carried away, too....I was up till like 2:30 AM playing with doing figure drawings and such with it, knowing that I had an early class the next morning. Not the smartest move...but sometimes I get started and I just can't stop. Anyway, now I have two sheets used up front and back with figure sketches and such. I thought about spreading them out over several days of daily sketches, but I decided I'd just post them as a group, and they can count for yesterday, today, and tomorrow...and maybe the next day too, depending on when I can get more up!

Anyway, here they are, in the order in which I drew them. Some are more finished than others, but eh, they're sketches:

Happy Tuesday! How are you today?

Happy Saturday! Hopefully you're having more of an actual weekend than I am! An Art History midterm has eaten my whole weekend/week and left nothing but crumbs behind. Sad day.

This one is for the girls.

Yesterday, I was frustrated because my face was breaking out a bit, so I did a google search for homemade purifying face masks. After sifting through some recipes for masks which required ingredients I didn't have on hand, I found one for which I had all the necessary ingredients, and which would be easy to make. So, my roommate and I decided to try it together. Here's the recipe we used:

1/2 Cup of instant oatmeal, cooked (microwave is fine)
1 egg, raw
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/4 Cup (or thereabouts) of honey

After mixing it all together and letting it cool a bit, we smeared it on our faces. Granted, it looked really nasty, and the clumps of oatmeal on our faces looked kind of like some sort of terrible skin disease, but apparently it tasted pretty good, because my roommate ate most of the left overs! (Note: 1/2 a cup of oatmeal made a LOT of face mask!) We let it dry for about 20 minutes, washed it off with lukewarm water, and rinsed with cold water.

Well, though the application of the mask was kind of gross (and led to much laughter and my roommate flinging some of it on me), it worked wonderfully! This morning I woke up with super-soft, clearer skin, as did my roomie. Needless to say, this recipe is going to stay in my arsenal of tricks, though next time, I might try smashing the oats a little more before hand so it's a little less lumpy...

Ok, this is going to be quick, because I'm actually in the middle of studying for an Astronomy test and an art history midterm, but I just wanted to share this before I continued.
We're still in the first chapters of my astronomy text book, and it's talking about the simple stuff: Earth's rotation and revolution, the celestial sphere, etc. Yet, even though this is all very basic and most of it could be considered common knowledge, it struck me how precise and delicate the whole system is. Every little detail of the way the solar system works is perfectly set so that life is possible on Earth.

The thing that really got me going on this train of thought was a passage in my textbook in the section explaining seasonal changes based on Earth's revolution around the sun. It was explaining how the tilt of the earth has far more to do with the changes of seasons than does the Earth's actual proximity to the Sun. The earth is actually closest to the sun in mid January, and if proximity was the determining factor for seasons, the entire earth would experience summer at that point during the year, and winter during the opposite. However, because the seasons are determined based on the tilt of the earth instead (because this affects the angle, and therefore the intensity of the sun's light), the earth is closest to the sun during summer for the Southern Hemisphere, and winter for the Northern Hemisphere. The cool thing is this: were it not for the fact that the Southern Hemisphere has more area covered by oceans, which reflect much of that light (and heat) back into space, the earth would heat up far more during these months than it actually does. So if the distributions of the continents were not as it is, summer in the Southern Hemisphere would probably be fatally toasty!

All of that to say, God is really cool.

Just think: if the angle of the earth was different than it is, our seasons would be all out of wack and thus the growing cycle wouldn't work properly. If there was more land mass in the Southern Hemisphere, we'd roast over there in the summer. If the distance between Earth and the sun was any greater or less, life on Earth would be impossible. There are so many factors that play into the working of our delicate existence! I just can't understand how some people believe this all to have happened by chance. There's just no way. This has GOT to be intelligently designed. It's just too perfect.

"The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."
-Psalm 19:1

I'm in a literary mood today. Well, for more than just today, I suppose. I'm on a literary kick right now. I recently started reading Jane Austen novels for the first time, and I've really enjoyed them. I started out over Christmas break by reading Emma, then moved on to Pride and Prejudice. I had to stop once the full swing of classes recommenced, but I plan on reading the rest of her books eventually.

And not only have I been reading her books, but also watching the movies. That started with Pride and Prejudice, the most recent version with Kiera Knightly. That's such a beautiful movie. It's really fantastic. And I was pleasantly surprised to find, upon reading the book for myself after having watched the movie, that the movie did a great job of capturing the essence of the book, even though it had to condense the story. Shortly thereafter, my mom (who also loves Jane Austen) called me to tell me that she had found a few other Austen movies, so I've been visiting my parents to have movie nights with my mom. So far, we've watched Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma. All of them are lovely stories, though none of the other movies come close to the level of cinematographic excellence of Pride and Prejudice. I'd still recommend them to anyone who likes that style of movie.

My last movie date with my mom consisted of a Jane Austen movie (Emma), and also of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. After having seen this older version ("older" only by comparison -- it was made in 1997), and especially since I recently saw a preview for a new Jane Eyre movie to come out in the near future, I became very interested in reading that book as well. However, as I mentioned before, now that school is back in full swing, I don't have much time for leisure reading. This was a problem.

The solution, I found, was a free app for my i-pod touch: an audiobook app. I've never really been one for audiobooks, as I really prefer to actually hold and read the book, see the words, and feel the pages. Somehow, listening to someone else read it feels like cheating to me. But with so little time that I can give up to reading, guilt free, it felt like a good option. I can listen while I'm driving to and from class. I can listen during my drawing class, clay class, and painting class, as long as the professor has nothing to say. I can listen while doing any homework that doesn't require reading or anything left-brained, really. I just finished Jane Eyre, and I only read about two chapters from the actual book. I'm really enjoying this app. It lets me get my "story fix" and yet I waste no time. I'm able to be productive and even use class time to read. I'm now trying to decide what book I'll listen to next!

Cool fact of the day:
Deep breathing gives you health benefits similar to aerobics.
Cool. Time to go do some breathing then.....

First, let us start off with a cool picture for the day:











Ok, maybe two pictures. I couldn't decide which one was cooler. They work better together than apart. These  were taken by Clark Little. Bravo, sir. Very cool!



















Ok, now on to the item of the day.
My roommate and I were talking the other day, and the conversation turned towards the way people think about "knowing" God. You see, for a lot of people, and even for a lot of Christians, knowing God just means that they know who He is. They know some of the stories about Him, they've gone to church, they've listened to preachers and other people talk about Him. But despite all the head knowledge they may have of Him, they don't really know who He is.

This is the difference between knowing about someone, and actually knowing them.

Think about it this way: Say you have a favorite celebrity, and you know all sorts of things about them. You can know their name, the names of their family members, what their favorite foods are, and where they live. You can know their likes and dislikes, their pet projects, and what they stand for. You may even claim to love this person, respect and esteem them. But if you've never spent time with this person, no relationship exists there. In all likelihood, they don't even know you exist. You can't truly know someone until you've invested time in building a relationship with that person. It doesn't matter how much head knowledge you have. Until you have built heart knowledge about that person, you don't really know them.

It works similarly with God. Many Christians today only know him through what they hear about from others. They get their weekly dose of God and Christianity on Sunday morning, and the rest of the week they just coast through and do their own thing. They say they love Him. They believe He's there. They may even try to adjust their behavior to suit what they think He wants. But what kind of relationship is that? There's no communication, no expenditure of effort, no heart knowledge. You can't know God by spending an hour once a week listening to someone else tell you about how they know Him.

What God wants from us is not a charade of obedience over an indifferent, distant heart. He wants to know you. To really know you. He already knows everything about you. He created you. The Bible says He knitted you together in your mothers womb and knows the number of hairs on your head. But that's not enough. He wants relationship with you, and He wants it enough to have sent Jesus to die a horrible death to allow that relationship to exist.

And yet, rather than embrace that opportunity for the prize, the treasure that it is, we let it pass us by. We're content just to squeeze all of God into a Sunday morning sermon (if even that) and go on without Him the rest of the week. But that doesn't even begin to encompass what it means to know God.

To know God, you must die to yourself. You have to spend time with Him. Read the Word for yourself and talk to Him through prayer constantly. How else is a relationship supposed to grow? Just as with earthly relationships, if you don't spend time with someone, the relationship atrophies. If you only speak to Him on rare occasions, of course it will feel awkward when you do. But it's not meant to be that way. When you spend the time to get to know someone well, you become more comfortable with them. The same is true with God. The more time you spend with Him, the easier it becomes to talk to Him and to hear His voice. And only then will you truly begin to know God.

So don't settle for just knowing about God. Take advantage of the sacrifice He made so that we can truly know Him.

Valentine's Day is coming up! So guys, you've got to get ready. I know this can be a time of stress and pressure for all of you, so let me try to help you out a little. I'm going to give you a girls perspective on some Valentine's Day ideas. Disclaimer: I am only one girl. These pointers are not all inclusive, so you have to take your date's personality, likes and dislikes into account when considering these things. But I'm going to help you out. Here are some things that almost every girl will appreciate.