Felicitations!

Ah, finally things are changing for me. My stale life in Queens will be exchanged for a hopefully better life in upper-west Manhattan starting in Decemeber. I'm a bit excited.

Anyway, I have a new painting to show. It's a portrait of my friend. For my painting class my teacher offered an extra-credit assignment: do a portrait, so I did, last night from around 8:00-11:30 or so. The result is the picture you see before you. It looks much better in person though. Granted though, it's not perfect, but I learned and I realize my mistakes.
More to come soon, probably more personal things since I'm in a good mood.

Watercolor sketching

So, I finished the skecthbook that I started when I came here. In a matter of 3 months I filled that book, not a white page in it. Just about the whole book is subway sketches, me just sitting there on my commute to and from Manhattan. Anyway, so I needed to try something else for a change. I had gotten the hang of drawing people with pen and the subject matter (the people on the train) have started to get a bit boring...I see the same type of people everyday. So I decided to try something new...

Watercolor sketching. I went and bought a pad and devised a method of keeping my water secure by putting in a baby cup...but that didn't really make for a good method.

First of all, I was using regular brushes, a regular set of watercolors and the baby cup. So on the train it was hard to hold everything correctly and still be able to paint.

Secondly, that baby cup wasn't as secure as I thought it to be. On the often shaky train I got water all over the floor and myself, and one time I left the cup in my bag and it spilled all over the place somehow.

So, eventually I mentioned this to a friend of mine and he said I should look into buying water brush pens. Kinnokuniya had them supposedly. But actually, I found a whole set at Utrecht for $15. It worked pretty well, but then I saw that the brush was kind of cheap and ended up going to Kinnokuniya anyway.

The pens are awesome. Now I have a handy little set that can fit in my hand making watercolor sketching an almost effortless activity. Without this I don't think I'd really have gotten into watercolor as much as I have now, it was all so mendokusai before...

Well anyway, I put up some sketches that I've done on the train, enjoy.


My first attempt at watercolor sketches with the crazy set up I mentioned



I ease in to things with waterpen. The girl is someone in my painting class, and the rest is just me teaching my friend how I paint with some random sketches.

This was done today on the train.

and this was also done on the train. The lady in the middle is my friend I plan on painting her portrait before Wednesday for an extra credit assignment. Also I don't know what's up with that thing in the upper right, I just made it up, looks like an androgynous cat/human hybrid...sorry.

More Art

Just a small update to show some recent assignments for school...


A recent painting I did (last week)

My finished corn drawing...

Progress

I haven't really shown too much of my work since I've come to New York, mostly because I was just too lazy. But, I finally looked through my things and photographed a few things to show on my blog.

Looking through and selecting things to put up, I noticed how in such a short time I improved my work. It really is an amazing thing. My lines are more confident, and there is a definitive style to me work, and I can see that I've started to develop more of a sense on how to capture what I want.
It's only been two 2-3months, what will my art look like when I graduate in less than 2 years?






What I'm working on now...this will take me forever to finish...

All the red are from figure drawing class 20min-1hr poses


gesture drawing, 5min for each figure...


20min pose

Dumbo Arts

The big picture as far as things go for me in New York, is my involvement and exposure in the art world. New York is an excellent place to explore and create the realm of visual art. There are almost an infinite amount of inspiration for the creator and boundless activities and events for the viewer. So of course, I've been trying to get out to art related activities when I can.

3 weeks ago I went to the Dumbo Arts festival. Dumbo arts is a collection of studios in Williamsburg, one of the neighborhoods in New York which seems to collect a sizeable amount of

residents involved in art. At that time, many of the studios were open for public viewing and in addition there were various performances and festival like activities.

Williamsburg is also, one of the places I really want to live in at the moment. When I first went there, there was something about the air that attracted me. More or less, after though, there was a girl that I really liked (still like her even though I know I shouldn't). But regardless it's still a pretty nice place to live.



Anyway, the festival was nice. Though not many of the studios I saw had anything that really grabbed my attention, there were at least a few interesting things, inlcuding the flower sculptures and the medieval style christian paintings from the same studio. I forgot the guy's
name, but he looked like nicholas cage.

So basically, my journey went like this. It was a saturday, so I got up late as usual, and I headed towards my school for a reason I know have forgotten. Follwing that, I went to Dumbo and came across my fellow classmates who were on a field trip for their saturday 3-d design class.

I followed them for a bit, until the class was over. I'm sort of lacking in the friends department so I really didn't have much else to do after, and basically followed to of my classmates back to the area around my school and got something to eat by myself after they went home.

Again, I didn't have anything to do, so I went back to dumbo when it got dark and aimlessly walked around until I saw someone else I knew from school. I ended up not really doing much else after that, and went home somewhat late.

Anyway, it was still interesting to go to, maybe next year I'll find some more work that appeals to me more than this year.

Until then, here are some extra pics of Williamsburg and the festivities at the Dumbo Arts Festival. Click on them to make them bigger.