ART That - New Youtube Series

Hey everyone!  Check out my new Youtube video:

It's on Artist's Block and Motivation and hopefully it's less awkward than my last video.  I'm thinking of making my ART That videos into a series.  If anyone has any topics they want me to cover put it in the comment section below.  My next video will be a quick one just describing my charcoal experiments with some progress pictures.  I'm almost done creating it, I just have to do the voiceover, which I should be able to complete today.  I don't know when I will be able to upload it since this last one took 3 hours to upload.  I might just have to wait until I get faster Internet speeds, which should happen in the next few days.

Charcoal Experiment #2

For the second day in a row I created another charcoal oil pastel piece.  (I apologize for not posting my religious theme story like I promised in my last post, but it's 2 am and this was easier to cover before bed.)

This time, I continued with the whole fabric thing I have going on at the moment.  Funny enough, I'm still referencing and being inspired by pictures I took 2 year ago at college of my roommate with my bed sheet over her.  I'm so glad I organize my reference pictures by year and subject so I can easily access them.

This time, to further experiment, I tried to apply the charcoal to a base layer of Portfolio series water soluble oil pastels instead of my usual Mungyo Gallery soft oil pastels.  The reason for this being that the Portfolio pastels are incredibly cheap and I have tons of boxes of them.  Therefore, I love to use them when I work on huge projects, like when my professors tell me to do 3 feet x 4 feet projects (which actually happens quite often).  My Mungyo pastels are far to precious to waste like that, so I sacrifice a little bit of quality on my larger works so I can save money (college student budget).

This time, my piece turned out quite well with no noticeable changes as far as the charcoal sticking and blending are concerned.  This piece is 5.5"x 8.5" and was created on Strathmore Sketch paper (my favorite kind of all-purpose sketch books).

Experimentation and a Possible Theme

So this week I've been thinking about my strengths and some possible theme ideas for my BFA.  Originally my theme was impermanence, which I then narrowed down to my religious experiences.

I went back and looked at all my old artwork and found that the pieces I was most proud of were from two years ago during my foundations art year.  Those pieces were drawn mostly from life with some intense shadows and dramatic light sources.  I also found I love the methodical process of drawing fabric.

Though it wasn't my original idea to use religion and fabric together, now I find myself wanting to find a way to fit them together.  I promise the next post will go into my whole experiences with my church, but for length purposes, I thought it would be better to separate the posts.

I also want to say that I am in no way anti-Catholic or atheist or anti-church.  I still identify as a Roman Catholic and go to church regularly.  I've just had some bad experiences with corruption in the church that have made me struggle with my faith.

Now onto what I've been working on today.  I love drawing fabric, but find it's easiest to draw with pencil and charcoal.  The only problem is that I despise charcoal since it can just be wiped away in an instant (done it before by accident) and I hate breathing it in and getting it everywhere.  But now, I think I've found the perfect solution for me.

 My main medium is oil pastel, so I did one layer of pastels, blending them in with my fingers and I had a slight gradient to them to match the lighting of my reference picture.

From there, I did a separate drawing of the same figure on a piece of paper (the same size) mapping out the lights and darks of the piece.

 I then cut of the dark forms with my box cutter (since my xacto knife is mysteriously missing) and cut out the background as well since that too is dark.

Next I ground up some vine charcoal on some scrap paper, wiped my brush in it (just the cheapest paintbrush I could buy) and dabbed it on the stencil over my original oil pastel background.

I then removed the stencil and continued to play with brushes and creating lines and gradients in the picture.

My first test with a snowflake pattern cutout

The oil pastel locked in the charcoal so it doesn't move (unless I blend it out) and stays fixed to the paper.  It also creates that lovely smoky effect that charcoal is known for.  I want to experiment more with this because it sounds like a pretty awesome idea and I definitely need to work with it more.  It would look amazing as a large scale drawing, but I think I may be running low on my preferred Mungyo Soft oil pastels, so we'll see.

 As always, feel free to give me feedback and tell me what I should do next.  I want to make a Facebook page and get more of my art online, so we'll see when I decide to take on that project. Until next time!