Hello & Update

Hello Everyone!

So, what have I been doing? I have been taking a class on the business side of art called: GYST (Get your shit together) and is offered By the Pasadena, CA non-profit Side Street Project http://www.sidestreet.org/ in conjunction with the owner of GYST-Ink, which makes organizational software for visual artists. This is a great class, and I would reccommend it to anyone in the visual art industry to get a perspective of the modern practices of the business. In a class disscussing types of venues that can be used to exhibit artist's work, we came 'round to the discussion of Vanity galleries. They offer a "Pay-to-Play" situation. I have had experience with that and shared my account with the class. Well since then, GYST-Ink has added a new blog to their website about bad galleries and art dealers to stay away from. They asked me to write my account down and it has been published as the first article for this blog.

You can read it here: http://gyst-ink.com/blog/?p=177

For any artists out there, I would definately reccommend check out both Gyst's website and sidestreet project's. Even if you don't take a class, they both offer informative articles and resources to help you out.

Palm leaf up close

SO I woke up pretty early on a weekend a few weeks back and just really felt the urge to go outside with my morning tea and draw something. At around 6:30am, it's really bright and sunny, but the birds are still singing, and it's still "moist" outside. So I sat on the steps leading to the upstairs apartment of my neighbor's, and saw this palm leaf through the steps that was backlight by the rising sun. I thought it would be both challenging and fun because it has all these little lines in the leaf, as well it does have an odd shape from this angle.

UnEmployed and loving it.

Hi Everyone,

I'm sure you could tell by the scarecity and randomness of my blog posts that I was a little busy with other stuff. Well after much thought and discussion with the hubby, I have decided to quit my job. I had no idea what exactly that meant until having a few days of not working under my belt. (Tomorrow starts my 2nd week of not working.)

With this new-found time on my hands, I have many projects that I will be working on, including an art fair, an article, and some commisions. Included in that is more dedicated time to sharpen my drawing skills, blogging and other ways of "getting the word out" about myself, and the development of a new concept I have in my head for a series of work. So do not worry, I have not turned into a bum, couch potato, or a housewife.

I want to thank you all for your support and interest and remind that I am available to answer questions or receive comments from you all. I will keep you all informed as more developments happen.

-Jackie

PS. The image below is a self portrait in pencil on white paper. It's about 10 inches in height and 6 across if you include the big fancy signature at the bottom of it.

Graphic Design-H&H Gardening

I did this flyer for my neighbor, Harvey. The economy is definitely hitting hard, and his regular work (construction) is being cut back. But he is taking advantage of the housing market to start a side business, focusing on lawn maintenance for REO properties. However, if you are in the Inland Empire (CA) area, Harvey can also do your yard work, landscaping, and even building custom fences and BBQ's. If you could use his services, please give him a call.

Canape' Show

Hello Everyone,

I am participating in the Canape' show at the Progress Space in Pomona's Art Colony. This is a group show, with many talented artists. All of the artwork is under 14 inches in size. I have two paintings in the show. The artists' reception is this Saturday, August 9th from 6-10pm. Click on the image above for more info.

Graphic Design- BEI

This is a sample of what I'm working on now, for client BEI which stands for Better Energy Ideas. We are working on creating a Promo Pack, which will be a handy little booklet for her salesmen to use to inform their client of the company and it's products. I started with this page, because it's relatively simple but serves as a good example of the entire promo pack (all the pages will relatively look like this. It is also a way to insert into the conversation what the content should be and in what order.

Diamond Logo

So I have been talking to someone who is interested in opening a retail clothing store. She wants to sell the brand as well as the merchandise. Of course, the best way to do that is to have a cool logo and sell t-shirts and inexpesive goods with the logo printed really big on it. It goes over especially well if you put sparkles or glitter on it too. So these are my initial sketches for the logo.

She wants it to have a diamond in it, and then some frilly detail that will offer up plenty of opportunity to cover it with sparklies. The first one here is me playing around, and is probably to detailed to be the best choice for a functional graphic.

To be honest, I don't think that any of these will make the cut, but they could be used as secondary design for shirts, etc. I don't think of these as a waste, the process of making these is what I really get out of it. It's a way to see "OK, this line works here, and this curve works there." And besides the possibility of being used later for something else, it is yet another something to show people that want to see my style, as well as can serve as a springboard for future visual concepts.

Lemons in Paint

Both were painted in Super bright daylight. These were in the sunshine. Even though I was in the shade, the sun was bright enough to illuminate everything. It also causes an influence on the colors. The white appeared superbright when painting, but when I took it inside the whites of the rind looked more like a very pale yellow. Also the yellow of the lemons has a bit of an orangy-ness to them. Still fun to paint, and these were quick: 3 hours from set up to clean up, and I got two paintings out of it.

Oil paint on 4x4 inch gessoboard.

Plans for a new painting series

When I daydream that I will actually have the time to carry out one of my ideas, I tend to imagine painting. Or I should say, images in my head that I would like to execute in one way or another. The funny thing is I see these images in time: moving, or my perspective moving around them, giving them a 3-d feel. It's hard to explain. It's also hard to translate into a finished artwork, because a moving image means I can't exactly memorize it as it is, the vision is always morphing or changing.

One Series I have been wanting to create is the a series of figures that are being taken over by an element. The images here are for earth. "Being taken over" is probably a bad description. They are not really moving toward or away from the element in question they are half element, half human (or half figure). This is a multilayered idea: I wanted the opportunity to take my drawings and make them more permanent (pencil and paper do not seem like they will survive to me), and I wanted an opportunity to marry some styles and paint from my head in the same way I draw from my head (as opposed to a model or reference).

Shown above is the original drawing (and detail), which I liked a lot and so I wanted to record it before I messed it all up with nonsense. I'm offerring you all a close up so you can scrutinize my drawing style. When I was in highschool, studying drawing I would draw every last detail and it would take forever. Great results, but it made me hate the thought of drawing because it was so boring and labor intensive. I have lost my patience and now do this quicker sketchy style, which to me has more "AhA!" moments. Lovely lines that surprise me, making me look at the piece and think, "Wow, I did that?" Plus it is a lot more expressive. I'm not trying to make everything perfect, and because I'm a little lax on the location of body parts, things become a little more elongated, angular, etc. It's also due to the fact that I left my hand move through it's natural rotation more, being to lazy to pick it up and move it. It all works out in the end.

Finished eggplant painting

So Here is the finished eggplant piece for your viewing pleasure. The shadows were indicated by lines when I left off, and haven eaten the eggplant, I couldn't do the shadows/background from observation which leads to me doing a vague and non descript background, which is fine, considering the subject matter.

Eggplant part 2

The thing that's tricky with eggplant is the leaf thingy/stem has nowhere near the amount of contrast or richness that the body does. In other words it looks flat. So with the painting I took a bit of artistic licence and added some bolder colors so in the painting the leaves could hold there own.

A real life photograph can pull of things that a painting can't. If I left them alone and kept painting a pretty benign green-brown, it would look like there was something wrong with the painting, as opposed to the plant.

So what I did to help that out was I painted those leaves closer to sunset. There is a harsher shadow available, which gave me something to work with. I used dark browns but also a little bit of the watered-down purple that I did in the plant. Which really helps it hold it's own, and helps the leaves look like they belong on top of the eggplant. The photograph shown here was taken the morning after the painting, and in my kitchen under yellow-ish flourescent lights. Seee what I mean... your lighting changes everything.

Eggplant painting

So here are some pictures of eggplants. I haven't finished them, cause the sun was setting and I was losing light. So I did what is usually a bad way to work on a painting: I completely finished both eggplants, instead of brinnging everything (both the background and subject) to level of completion. I marked the background in, and tomorrow will add lib it.

Garlic Still Life

I thought this would be fun to play with subtle colors: white on white, and all the slight tints in between. This painting is gouache on gray printmaking paper, and is 4.75 by 6 inches. It's also fun to play with the color opposites. Opposite colors on the color wheel are called complimentary colors (purple & yellow, red and green, and orange and blue).

I took a color workshop class in high school taught by landscape painter Dwane Sabistan. He followed a lot of the work of Wayne Thiebaud, specifically Thiebaud's use of colors to create the illusion of form. He waould use complimentary colors (one for shadows and one for highlights) which naturally fight each other visually, to really make objects in his paintings "pop." Not that this is the most in depth study of that practice, but since I learned it early on, it has been a natural tendency for me to do.

In the Garlic here you have the lighter parts in warm whites and even shades of yellow. The midtones are brown, and some of the darker areas are a cooler brown. But the darkest shadows are purples. The yellow tones throughout the lighter areas are more exagerated by the purple shadows. It also is a great solution for painting shadows without black. Black anywhere in a colored painting can cause the painting to look flat and not as rich. Using dark colors for shadows instead make for more of a rich, lively piece. Also it makes it so the shadows can hold their own against the highlights.

Painted Tree

Here is a piece I did today, just to get back in the swing of things. This is a tree outside my front patio. I have been looking for a source of grey printmaking paper, and this is all I could find. It's ok, but a bit of a grey-yellow. I think would like something a little darker and more of a true, flat grey because it would show off my colors better. Painted in gouache on grey printmaking paper. (6 inches by 4.75 inches) This is for sale... it comes matted and framed for $150.00 (black frame 16 by 20 inches, white mat).
I did several today, and I will be posting more of the paintings throughout the week so be sure to check back.

Recent Work

I don't often share this image, for I think it's a little bit teenage angst. But it's fitting enough for this week.

I wanted to put in a detail in here so you can see my style better. This is done in Ball point pen as with most my black and whites. I just wish I could find a company that made ball point pens with a more colorfast and archival ink. I like pencil, but maintaining the sharpness and keeping it from smearing takes too much effort for me. I'm not a careful person and I -even when trying my hardest always wind up smearing the graphite and getting the paper dirty.

What I've been up to

I want to apologize to everyone, I have been slacking on the posts of late. Reason being, I have been trying to work out the final details of a lecture about my work. Well I just gave the speech this morning and I think it went pretty well. It happened in Dundalk, Maryland, my hometown, on the Campus of Baltimore County Community College. This also means I'm on a mini vacation back east. So I will keep the text brief and post a bunch of pics instead. After the talk, they had me go outside and judge an art show put on by some of their students, during the "Green" festival they were having.

Studio shots

I wanted to show you all my studio. It's not much, just a 36 inch card table piled with crap. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my husband and our kitty, so there is not much room for anything. Living in Southern California also means a lot of dust. We have a nice patio, but painting out there means getting yellow dust permanantly set into your canvas. That's why I have been working small, and in gouache. As a paint it dries immediately.

I also thought this would be an interesting way to show you my creative process. I very easily get impatient and I do not like waiting. There are a lot of times where you have to wait, mostly for things to dry or set. While I'm waiting I like to keep my hands moving, so I move on to another project. Even with a clean table it quickly evolves into this mess. I tend to get into these very agressively creative mindsets where I have fifty ideas and I want to work on all of them. I don't want to take a break, not even for the bathroom, I really don't want to interrupt this creative "mood." The waiting, to me, could do that. So I maintain the mindset by keeping it working. And bam, my desk explodes with art supplies.

If you look at the picture you can see a sculpey mockette I've shown before. I just painted it and poured gel medium around it. I'm hoping the gell will dry and look like water, or rather, look like glass trying to look like water. I will be showing it to an engineer tomorrow to get some ideas for construction of these sculptures. Should be interesting. I'll let you all know how that goes.

Tattoo Girl

A friend is thinking about doing a line of T-Shirts for Tattoo lovers. For the logo and main design she wanter a pin-up style girl nude with tattoos all over. The sketches here show what I came up with for the visual. I read somewhere that guys and gals approach tattoos differently: women tend to get tattoos that flaunt, accentuate, or compliment their bodies, where as men get them for the purpose of comradorie, because they look cool (or so the wearer will look cool), in a place where they can easily be shown off. My aesthetic would be the first one, personally. But the friend who initiate this project wanted a little bit of both. I must say, it was difficult for me, I was gritting my teeth at some points.

Whenever working for someone else, you have to imagine your hand as an extention of their mind. You aren't creating for you, you are creating for them. A lot of artists do not like the thought of creating something you don't like, and admittedly it takes a lot of patience and restraint. But once you get it right and that person sees the finished product it makes all the labor worth it. Besides work like this is always a challenge and puts your skills to the test. Clients do not understand that you only do this kind or that kind of art. They think you are good at everything because you are an artist. And you can't explain that. So you are in the position of trying to make the client happy by doing things you are the best at and don't always do. Which is good for you.

Recylced/Eco-friendly Sculpture Project

I have some more pics to share with you. These are photos of some sketches to add into the pile for this sculpture/installation proposal that I'm working on with the Baltimore Medical System. (Check back to earlier posts to see other concepts for this project.) This first drawing is another visual of a lichen-esque design. I imagine it being installed in an atrium or large lobby area with lots of natural light. The pieces could be mounted on the walls. The skeleton would be metal or plastic, and the filler material could be fabric, acrylic, glass, or something else that would be transparent. If you had fabric you could dye them different colors, and when the sun shone through them it would cast those colors (or combinations) all over the lobby.

The hardest thing about this is that it is such an open ended project, and that I have no visual as to what the location looks like. (For teh record, the building doesn't exist yet.) So what I'm going on is that I will either have a flat surface that I can work on. Whether that be a flat wall, floor, ceiling, or possibly a corner of flat surfaces. The other tough thing about this: when I do get to see visuals I think it will change my perspective entirely and I may not have the time to design something better for the space.

So I was looking at pictures of Maryland, most particularly wetlands, thinking that the building and the BMS are geared toward reaching out to those in the Baltimore region, and so the art work in this building should do the same. As I was reading online, there are cypress trees that grow in the wetlands. It's a not-too-common occurence, because the cypress is a sub-tropical tree and even though Maryland can get just as hot as any other southern state in the summer, it tends to get colder in the winter. I love the drama of the roots and how they quickly smooth out in to straight narrow trunks. The wood is basically immume to water rot so when the tree dies, it leaves a stump poking out of the water like a stalagmite. So I came up with this idea (the drawing to the left) for a free standing sculpture. Flaring at both the top and the bottom I'm hoping that it gives the feeling that is has a personality. Well maybe not a personality, but I hope that it feels figurative, even living. I'm am still racking my brain as to the best approach for construction. I will have to make several sculptural models to figure that out.

Another idea, which would probably be a little far fetched for an indoor public space would be the conversion of a lobby floor into something more of an organic rock like landing. For functionality, winding stairs could run through the middle. This idea was inspired by overhead photos of the Chesapeake marshes, where lines of trees, tall grass and other plants/rocks rose out of the water, segmenting it. From a helicopter's height the bay waters are very smooth. So in the photos you see this contrast of a smooth blue gray water and textured green things. It's really beautiful. I'm starting to realize that I'm really attracted to ambiance. Not just objects but entire spaces and how it makes you feel. I have a lot of ideas for creating full environments (not just those shown here). It's always good to realize this stuff, so you can embrace it and use it to the fullest.

Modern Day Artists' Struggle

My apologies for falling off the earth yesterday. Work left me mind-numb and for the worse. Like all other artists out there I have a day job. Currently I have 2, a full time and part time one, and both are office gigs, which can really drain you and stall your creativity. So how do you deal with that? I'm still trying to figure that out. I come home and force myself to dabble in little things (sketch) or prepare for a bigger projects (research images, plan compositions, prep canvas, etc.) which I execute on the weekend.

One of the things that help with an artist's success is a large quantity of work, on top of it being good work. In order to do that, you need time to make a lot of works, or money to make a lot of reproductions (prints). How can those that are trying to be artists even enter into a level of success while trying to pay debts (car, student loans, rent, etc.) and spend the money (materials, studio, gallery rent, website) to do the whole art thing. You also have an under/uneducated audience that may enjoy art but are way too intimidated to talk about it much less buy it. So living the artists life means falling downhill. Why bother?

This is what people just don't understand. There is no other option. I can't just not do art. You want to see a person becoming a non-functional member of society? If you take away an artist's brushes you will watch them turn into a depressed, unmotivated, can't move, can't eat, suicidal heap. This may sound like an exageration -but it's exactly how I feel. The artist's struggle that people refer to is not the old fashioned (and cliche) struggles of completing a work and the anxiety of showing it to the world. Today the struggle is surviving, living this double life and attempting to fight this mindset of the public. It's something that I have to deal with because not creating is not an answer.

Consider this a bit of ranting and a sympathetic shout out to any of you out there trying to live the creative life. Happier posts to come. Promise. ;)

New Painting: Drips

This piece was just me playing around with gouahe. I dripped some colored gouache-water onto the clayboard and let it dry, knowing it would form these blobs with a dark outline. Then I proceeded to fill in the blobs with different colors to similate light (pink) and shadow (blue). Though not the most conventional of color choices they plesently form this 3D look to the blobs. I added in layers of purples and white to control the form of the blobs a bit more, but also to practice mixing and blending on the surface of the piece. (Gouache doesn't like that too much.) At the very end, I added globs of white paint on the outside of each blob to see if it would emphasize the 3D-ness more. (It's hard to see in the photo) The background is the raw clayboard surface, a gray-white. This piece is another of those 4x4 inch squares.

I would hope I mentioned this before, but it would bear repeating anyway. The works paintings shown are available for purchase. There are also other works listed on my website for sale. (www.sylasstudios.com) Feel free to contact me with any questions about it.

Figure Sketch

I wanted to show you all this. A nice drawing, not the best thing I've ever done, but decent. And not even finished. I was adding some color to it just to spruce it up and I spilled the paint on the piece. I was so mad at myself for doing that. I just wanted to share with everyone, even if you have talent it still takes a lot to have a piece reach the point of finished. I don't know how many times I have smudged something, ripped paper, dropped a pen on a art piece, scratched paint of a finished painting. Some of it you can go back in and work out, and some of it you just can't. This being the later.

I have done a few works like this, but to me it's just practice. Something about figures, it's hard for me to take the figure and do something with it to make it a more in depth piece, rather than just a drawing of a person. I have this idea of taking the figures, in similar poses to this one and having them melt into the four elements. (Kinda along this organic / nature / environment theme.) I tend to have lots of ideas like that but when I get to creating the piece the people just look cheesy. I think it's because in my head they are almost in motion, I see the figures from many different angles. The images in my head, even though they are ideas for 2-d work are almost three dimensional when I visualize them. Maybe it's better to describe it this way: all the different components of the painting: the background, foreground, specific objects or textures get re-arranged as I play with what the layout would be. I also tend to imagine myself working on the piece so I see it from different angles as I imagine myself working close-up and then stepping back.

The sketch is done with graphite and gouache on paper. To be honest, I was getting carried away with the paint, I watered it down a little too much (instead of adding white to lighten it), and the water made the paper all wrinkly.

Welding Intro with Bill Gardner

If you're wondering where I was yesterday, I'll tell you. If you're not wondering you might find this interesting anyway. I met this guy at the Riverside Community Art Association named Bill Gardner who offers welding classes out of his home. These are very basic, one day workshops to introduce you to the tools/equipment, and the technique. (Classmate using plasma cutter pictured below.) The class talks about Oxy/Acetylene welding and cutting, TIG welding, stic welding, MIG welding, and plasma cutting. Bill walked through all the details on how to set everything up safely, discussed the best uses, etc., and we each got to try a few rounds of welding with the apparatus. (My weld in Oxy-Acetylene on steel, below.)

Bill is a retired civil engineer from the city of Riverside, and since retirement has been offering these classes, working on commission projects and creating his own sculptures. The Mission Cross (Bill's landscape ornament with mission cross shown below) is frequently included in his work, and is considered the logo of the City of Riverside.

Attending the class means you also get to partake in this fantastic view (shown below), as Bill lives at the top of a hill overlooking the valley. I have determined that when I buy a house (which will happen soon) that I'll definitely have to pick up a TIG welder if I can help it.

Lecture at BCCC, Dundalk Campus

I would like to invite everyone reading this to come join me at Baltimore County Community College (Dundalk Campus) on April 25th at 10:10am for my lecture "Environmentalism as an Art Movement." This is geared towards artists, but there will be many things discussed that are appropriate for any art lover, or earth advocate. I will first start off with describing this new movement, where artists in subject matter, in technique, or materials are bringing attention to the environment and nature. Work of international artists will be shown. (I will also briefly delve into my own work.) Then I will discuss ways that artists can be more eco-friendly in their art and their materials and studio set up. This will open up into a Q&A session. I expect everything to last about an hour, but I will be around for the remainder of the day to talk with everyone. I will also have some very small examples of my work on display for people to see. This is all coinciding with the College's Arbor Week. There will be a fair going on at the campus that day as well. This event is free, and open to the public.

New Painting: Planets

Here is another 4x4 inch gouache on clayboard painting. (I bought several packs of these painting boards at a trade show, so you will see at least a dozen more of these...) By the time I got to this one (right after I finished "Pipes") I figured out the best way to be subtle was by mixing colored water as opposed to using just watered down paint. Because of the clay surface, it doesn't take forever to dry, and can handle having water poured on it repeatedly. (By colored water I mean water with just a hint of paint.)

This one was all about color. I have a tendency to paint in all jewel tones, which makes it hard to through in the yellows and oranges. So I was trying to create different usable palettes that still use jewel tones but that more comfortably fit all the colors into the piece. I started with yellow fading to green as a wash in the background, then added layers on top. Gouache is like it's cousin watercolor, in that it can be transparent, or more correctly translucent when watered down.

By the way, if anyone out there has a suggestion for a high quality scanner, I would lover to get your opinion. I went shopping for one last weekend and everything in the stores are meant for offices and are either really cheap or those "3 in 1" machines that are expensive but still cheap. (An oxymoron, I know, but still true.) I would like to take the little paintings like this and scan them. I think that would make a better image for you readers to see.

New Painting: Pipes

This is another mini-painting, done in gouache on clayboard. I started by playing with the background, dripping colored water on it and chasing it around with a brush. I think that's what makes this look a bit awkward. That's fine with me, because it was so much fun to do. For those of you who don't know, gouache is a finiky medium, and it doesn't help that I'm painting on clayboard, which absorbs all the liquid in the brush. It's a challenge to be subtle.

New painting: Empty Heads

This is a small painting that I completed about a month ago. I haven't displayed it yet, as I'm still deciding how I should frame/mount. I think that is the hardest part. You finish a piece, and it's not yet it's not considered complete until you frame or bolt to a pedestel or something. You don't want to cheaper the piece, but at the same time you need to make it ready to display so you can show it. (Can't just lay it on a table and hope people will respect it.) Of course I made things more complicated by putting the clayboard on it's point.

The imagery in this came from a drawing I did last year called Open mouths and Empty Heads. The piece was done more to play with the surface and paint (I used gouache on a clay-coated massonite) rather than do anything specific in terms of a statement, unlike the drawing mentioned. But it could be argued that the empty heads with open mouths represent all the garbaged spewed out by the media, politicians and others. Something is coming or about to come out of their mouths, but who knows what the hell it is, and you can expect that it has very little value. This piece is 4x4 inches and will be available for purchase when I have figured out the whole mounting/framing thing. This was image was taken in the overcast sunlight outside, so it is safe to say that the color is pretty true-to-life.