Christmas!

    MERRY CHRISTMAS!


     Tis' the season for giving! I did a large painting for my aunt. She requested it a while back so I decided to finish it for Christmas. Photos soon to come, because of the winter break we won't have much to write about every day. So we will be writing at least once or twice over the break.
   
    I think the semester went well. I haven't checked my grades yet. I'm a little nervous to be honest. Cody has been doing some concept characters and they are very interesting. He will probably add a photo here: "I did" -Cody

[armadillo character designs]

    But who knows when that will be. "Today" -Cody

   Today we are spending the day at my aunt's house. Celebrating Christmas is so fun for me because I get to spend time with my family. We are a very close family and we spend every Sunday together but there is something about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Italian traditions that I just love.
 
    On the Eve we have a dinner that consists of seven sea food dishes. Anything seafood related. The Crab cakes are my favorite. This will be the first Christmas with out my Nonna[grandmother]. As well as Thanksgiving, which was hard for me because she is so important to our gatherings. On Easter she bakes Italian cookies with hard boiled eggs wrapped inside of them. They are a tradition to our heritage and to our family as well. I will miss our traditions that can't go on with out her presence.  For those of you who are unaware, she passed away May 15th of this year, the day after my birthday.

    On a happier note. We wish you a very Happy Holiday! Christmas, Hanukkah (which just ended yesterday) and all seasons greetings!

-Allison and Cody

Time To Get To more Work

    So Friday was my last day of the semester, I had my final in Perspective, and I should have done just fine. I understand the material well, I just rush and don't think clearly sometimes. So I'm not worried, I didn't really have a final in anything else. For our drawing, and painting classes we had home work as well as finishing our in class assignments to do.

    Tomorrow I'll be going in with Allison to get finished shots of some more of our work, especially or sculpture work. Since some of the smaller work may not be kept, and I'm going to try and cast my portrait I did around the time that we go back to school in January to submit to the juried show.

    I also plan on cleaning up one of my pieces from digital imaging for entry to the show as well. Either the crustaceous environment, with the lake in the cave. Or the last one I did here.

[Cody's bot hangar concept]

    There are a few things I definitely like about what I've got so far, and a few that I don't. I'm trying to pay more attention to the perspective, and the "camera"/viewers eye together so that the painting reads correctly. This one is almost there. I enjoy the energy that the designs of the robots have, I'm a fan of the prosthetic foot design on the mechs[giant robots]. The light sources don't entirely make sense though. So I'll push the lighting situation into something more "cinematic". 

[Cody's deep space painting]

    We actually lost power on the second to last day we were working on these paintings, so I ended up "finishing" it up at Allison's house over the weekend last week. I think it was a successful learning experience at least.

    the last few days in drawing we were working on cross-contour drawings like the cow skulls we had done, but with pen & ink. We mixed in a little cross-hatching[laying lines over each other in repetition at different angles] as well. These are a few of the studies we produced.

[Allison, and Cody's cross-contour/hatching drawings]

    Now that I've got some time to work on art for myself a little more frequently over the break, I'm getting to work right away. Starting tonight! I'll share some images and thoughts if they're worth sharing. I hope everyone is preparing for a good holiday no matter what/if you celebrate.

-Cody

    

Last Week of the First Semester

    It's been kind of crazy the last week or so around here, painting, drawing, and sculpting to try and get caught up for the last week. We also lost power halfway through our painting class last Wednesday so we didn't get to finish the paintings as planned so after I finish writing here I'm going to get some work done on that and the homework for that class. both are interior still life style paintings. I'll grab some finished shots of everything from all of our classes throughout the week.

    Today though, we had the last day of the first semester of Sculpture I, and my last day of sculpture for the school year. They way my schedule had to be built due to transferring made me push the other half to later, if ever.

[Cody's finished portrait sculpture]

    I'm pretty happy with how mine turned out, we were really nitpicking while talking about what I could improve upon, which is good. I feel like there weren't any "glaringly funky things", as I had put it in class, that I needed to fix right away.

[Cody's finished portrait sculpture]

    Once I found Kim[my instructor]'s palette knife like tool I definitely had the confidence in the mark making I was looking for. I was able to get the contrast through the darks created by the deep crevasses and crease I made with the tool. 

    Now I'm going to drink too much Mtn. Dew and try and finish off a couple of paintings, but I'll have more to share as the last week here goes on. then to break and more time for "personal" work!

-Cody

 [Allison's portrait sculpture]

[Allison's portrait sculpture]

[Allison's portrait sculpture]

    If I get a chance tonight I'll post a little about these. 

-Allison

 "There's a thin line between being a hero, and being a memory." -Optimus Prime

Almost There...

    It's almost the end of the semester here, this was our last full class working with our models, and the second to last class of sculpture at all this semester. I've discovered a great new tool that I was working with today that I love, it allows me to push, and fold, and turn around all the forms in the face. I was getting really into working on getting the likeness by getting way into the shapes of the bags under his eyes, and the way his cheeks fold by his nose and mouth. 

[Cody's portrait sculpture in progress]

    I spent a lot of time going back and forth trying to get the silhouette of his beard correct, while making it transition from his face to hair in as natural a way as clay can. I built up his neck a lot, then had to cut it back down as I adjusted his jaw/beard everything had to get shifted around. Such is the nature of sculpting from life.

[Cody's portrait sculpture in progress]

    I'm happy with where I've gotten the sculpture to today, and after critique, and another afternoon it can only look better. I've got some painting and drawing homework I'll be working on, and tweaking all of my previous sculptures up until next week. So I'll be able to keep busy, I'm also trying to find time to work on my own projects/work as well to get me going into break where that's all I'll be doing for art essentially.

    I'm thinking about maybe a weekly themed series of drawings/digital paintings or something, we'll see.

-Cody

    So I'm pretty much done with my sculpture. I need to fix the eye gaze, he looks cross eyed in these photos. The model is on this next picture. I wish I noticed the weird eye sight before I finished and took a picture. Its really hard to make eyes look like they are facing one direction and not two different locations.  I struggled with this piece for a long time. I still see things wrong with it, but my armature kept me from fixing the width of some objects because I started to hit the frame inside of the clay. I'm pleased with how it turned out though. I felt pretty good about my sculpting abilities these past few weeks.

[Allison's portrait sculpture in progress with]

   I gave him a septum piercing for fun and some earrings. Our model was really fun to talk with and he laughed at some conversations we had and he had to put up with my clumsiness because I would almost hit him a few times with my caliper. This photo seems to be a little warped. Unless I was actually that far off. My model had some interesting features so some things are not "average" , but I will be double checking my angles next class and really fine tuning the small details now that I have finished the eyeballs ( not the gaze still...) The mouth looks like it comes out a little too far.. or it might just be the photo taking it at a weird angle. It didn't look weird when I saw it, who knows...

[Allison's sculpture portrait in progress]

-Allison

"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?"
-Laurence J. Peter