Getting Started

What I have realized is this... When you take too long of a break from your work, it's hard to get back into the groove.  People say that taking a few years off of school and then coming back makes them work harder.  They wait until they are ready and excited to go back, which leads them down a path with a higher success rate.  I think the same goes for art, however I do believe you can wait too long.  I have noticed myself playing with my paper and organizing my car part image library rather than actually sitting down to do the work.  Right now, unfortunately I am unable to locate a paper large enough and archival enough for my work.  Newsprint will not last long enough for my paintings to survive.  It's too fragile and gets brittle with age.  I am almost at a stand still right now.  Where do I go from here?

As of right now, I am going to finish up organizing my image library and then just start doing work.  I think I might use the suggestion of painting these parts on paper, cutting them out, then organizing them as a collage instead of painting them flat.  This could give me better depth than what I have now.

It's really important to love what you are doing.  If you don't, you get burned out and can't even force yourself to create that work.  I stay in love with what I do by moving onto different projects that are suggested to me, knowing that they could be fun, but not something I would love.  So I try, but in the back of my mind I'm always thinking about my huge paintings.  Now with fresh eyes and stronger motivation, I will be able to do more than what I was thinking in the first place.

I'm having other problems at the moment.

New Ideas

Brainstorming.

-Continue with hybrid ideas 

 -how?

  -cut out hybrid shapes using mixed media: scrapbook paper, glitter vinyl, metallic paper, exacto knives and straight edges.

-draw hybrid ideas using Stonehenge paper and graphite. 

 -use color?

-ditch hybrids and continue on my path of over-sized car part compositions in non-functional ways

-yes.

I think I want to do both of these ideas simultaneously so I don't drive myself off the deep end focusing on one thing.  I definitely don't want to stop with my large paintings, mainly because they are so fun to do.  I could do without the hybrids, but when I start adding color or adding in glitter vinyl (because as the girls know, this is what actually keeps the world alive) I think I will regain my interest because I will be able to do more with my hands than just sketching out ideas nonstop.

 I do think that the hybrid idea was greatly beneficial to my work, because now I just want to continue making work, instead of sitting down and letting my mind wander to other unrelated projects.

When art is involved, I think it's highly important to be able to step back and do something else for a little bit to get your mind working in different ways.  It also helps let your mind have a break so it can come up with new, more fresh ideas.  You're also able to look at your art with new eyes.  I hadn't looked at my car part compositions in a few weeks while I've been reading, drawing, and starting other projects.  Now that I have separated myself from those large compositions, I think I am definitely ready to jump back into it.  I can't wait to see what is in store for the future of these pain tongs!

Next experimental project

After I played with rolling car parts in ink and then on paper, I was told to make hybrids of all of my favorite vintage things, most of which are furniture pieces.  I began by cleaning my entire apartment to make it suitable for photographs.  I then photographed each and every vintage item I owned and then did research on items I do not own to gather an image library.  I presented my findings, as well as a very ridiculous list of my favorite things to my class.  It was then suggested I marry each item together and create pieces using each item.  

This is the front of my list, including doodles and a glob of metal flake nail polish.

Back of my list.

From here, I began sketching these vintage hybrids using items I own and love.  It was suggested that I do this because my professor overheard me speaking to my friend about some vintage furniture.

I did about 50 of these, so this is a very condensed sample of the sketches I have done.  I want to take this to a different place, either making these images larger and drawing them with much more detail, or maybe going very kitschy and cutting paper and making them look like scrapbook items.  I have not yet decided.

Getting Conceptual

I can say honestly that I am not a conceptual artist.  I know it's contemporary and very popular, but I would rather, with my art, be straight forward.  Conceptual art just isn't my thing.  My professor suggested in passing that with the parts I harvested from the Pull and Pay (see previous post for pictures), I press them on paper.  At first I scoffed at the idea, mainly because I couldn't figure out a way to marry the two, conceptual and my own enjoyment.  So I decided that with the parts I had gathered, I was going to dip them in ink, to mimic oil without having the issue of eroding my paper and never drying, and roll them vigorously on 8.5x11in paper.  Again, this is something I did for my professor and the sake of experimentation.

This is the merry group of random parts and hood ornaments I dipped in the ink.

What I find really interesting about this group of pieces is that they almost look like Chinese brush paintings.  

As I said, these were experimental and were not received well in critique.  I made about 40 of these before I realized this was not what I wanted to do.

Taz at the Sketch Pad

One of my all time favorite people and one of the absolute best for hot-rod related art and event hook ups is my good friend, Taz.  Taz owns the Sketch Pad, a kustom pinstriping, low brow, hot rod house of art.  Taz holds the best Open House in the tri-state in September, gathering maybe a hundred or more cars with pin-up contests, live bands, food and more.  Not only does this man throw a great party, he is an extremely talented artist.  Taz has a mural at Quaker Steak and Lube, and is currently working on murals at Harley Davidson!  Let me introduce you to Taz of the Sketch Pad.

Taz working hard on a wood panel for Cavalcade of Customs, Cincinnati, OH

The finished product

glass etching, titled "Border Lords"

A master of One Shot, Taz creates some beautiful work!  Hopefully I will have the pleasure of working with him on some future projects in the future.  I can't wait to work with such a talented artist!  Check him out!

Sketch Pad Blogspot 

or

Check him out on Facebook!

Sketch Pad Facebook

VooDoo Kings and Tri-City Auto

During the summer, there's a drive in movie and car show that happens in Hamilton, Ohio.  Here, we watch old movies with beautiful cars and wonderful people.  For Halloween, the VooDoo Kings and VooDoo Rodger Thompson at Tri City Auto create a great night of cars and movies! Ghouls and Gears!

 We all had a great time and had a fantastic turn out!  Here are some photos of the movie night.  Enjoy!

Myself and my friend Whitney enjoying the cars

Myself with car enthusiast Mark

 A greasy hand must have!

 This is my good pal, Dave Anglin, Gasser extraordinaire and also happens to be one of my best friends in the whole world. Here, Dave is modeling a hose.

This is also a way that I conduct my research.  I surround myself with knowledgeable peers  who don't mind me asking a million and a half questions.  They are wonderful teachers and amazing people to have.  I was even allowed to touch all of these parts on this shelf!

Needing A Break ?

I needed a break from this.  I am on a great track and I'm enjoying this with my whole heart, but I need to back down for a bit and explore other things before I get burned out, which in my case is inevitable because I get bored with things pretty fast.

It was suggested to me to read Crash by J.G. Allen, which was told to me was about a fetish about cars and wrecked cars.  Instead, when I read this book and took a million notes, I found myself totally perplexed as to why exactly my professor would compare me to this and suggest that I read it.  It was very gruesome and not enjoyable for me at all.  These men would "get off" by looking at and watching car wrecks happen and watching the drivers and passengers get impaled, decapitated, die, bleed.  It was horrific.  While reading it I was literally sick to my stomach and totally disgusted with the book itself.

The one positive I found about this book was that the often compared cars to the human body.  This was interesting to me because as I have previously stated, my figure drawings are described as being metallic.  I am still searching for some other positive thing I got out of this book.  I may be searching forever.

Unfortunately for me, this was not a satisfactory break, so I will try and find some other type of break to take from my work.

Starting on the parts

After my last experimentation with Bill's car, I wanted to drive straight into composition making with my car part research.  I was told to plan it out and be crazy with it, but I like to do things spontaneously.  No, it's not because I'm lazy, but because if I plan my compositions, I go a little psychotic and over plan.  When I get to that point, I can't even create anything because I'm too crippled by planning.  This is what I came up with.

 Composition 1

Composition 2.

These were really fun and you can see that I'm getting the hang of using ink.  I have a clearly defined gradient going and definitely a lot more confidence in my mark making.

The edges are pretty rough, so I need to figure out a better paper to use than newsprint.