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.