d&#8217;Arte Board

Stripes

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, colors, Painting on November 8, 2011 by jdhastings

These are all made of masking tape made to get patterns on canvas. They’ll be used in future quilts. Clearly it’s time to switch up the straight lines I’ve been using with some curves, dots and such.

Completed Quilts

Posted in Art, Collage, craft, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting, quilting, sewing, textiles on November 1, 2011 by jdhastings

This weekend I finished working with the quilts I posted last week.

Before starting these I had been having trouble getting started with these types of quilts. For a few weeks I’d had several false starts, or completely partial pieces that I wasn’t comfortable using on their own. Finally one night I began idly working the green part of this piece:

Each piece is 26″ x 26″, acrylic and paper collage quilted together.

I actually got a good 18″ x 18″ of it done. The next night I realized it was too green, as I mentioned last week, but the process had put me back in the flow of the process. The form in these is one I’d been meaning to return to. What followed was a relatively rapid process of completing the 3 pieces, cutting them up Friday night and finishing them Saturday.

Sub-Quilts

Posted in Art, Collage, craft, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting, quilts on October 25, 2011 by jdhastings

Lately I’ve been trying to do more of the types of quilts I started the year working on, but I’ve been having issues with color schemes. I have Piles of canvases lining my dropcloth divided into rough colors (Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Neutral) that are supposed to help me with this, but this actually just tends to limit me to a single hue. When I try to start combining the colors together, the combinations start getting too complicated to control.

Color schemes like this work well, but are harder to herd than you might expect. Complements make each other brighter, so the pieces you thought was underplayed prior to adding it suddenly become stark when sewn together. At that point the rest of the quilt becomes a series of reactions trying to wrangle the color scheme back from noise. If you become too conservative, though, the colors wash out into uniformity. This can be good at times when you want to emphasize the pattern of a quilt, but in chaotic patchwork of a hundred tiny pieces, you lose your focal point.

My response has been to work in more uniform fields, which I can then combine in larger, easier to control forms later. That’s what these are. I need to finish another color or more and then will make 3-5 pieces out of them, with overall shapes defining them. They will each end up 28″ square, but I need to add 4 inches to the green one.

-JD

From the Archives: I Don’t Have A Name For This

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, color, J. D. Hastings on October 18, 2011 by jdhastings

Whoever is in charge of setting up my scanner should really get on that. And buy me a new printer. This is getting annoying.

I’m not sure I’ve posted this before. This was originally created as a wedding gift for a close friend. Because of it’s dimensions, I’ll post a smaller version with a some bigger versions of 2 of the components after the jump for anybody looking for details.

Each part of the triptych is 10″ x 10″. While I didn’t really try anything radically new in these, it’s still one of my favorite pieces in terms of color relationships that I’ve made.

5 Comments »

Winter Approaches

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, color, J. D. Hastings, Painting on October 4, 2011 by jdhastings

Yesterday was the first real rainy day of the season out here in California. We only have 2 real seasons here, so this more or less marks the beginning of Winter. With it I found myself looking under my bed for something. While there I found this scrap of an old drop cloth, squirreled away like an acorn.

These are always hard to display because of their dimension, so I’ll post one small that will fit in your browser and one larger so you see more of the details.

40″ x 9″, Acrylic on Canvas

Larger after the jump Read more »

4 Comments »

Tribute to Jazz Label Art (and Miles)

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting, Photography with tags Art, Atlantic, Blue Note, Columbia, Impulse, J. D. Hastings, jazz, jazz album covers, miles davis, Prestige on September 27, 2011 by jdhastings

This is a piece I made using leftover parts for another portrait of Miles I made that is being used as part of a longer term piece. My vague intent with this was to convey the sense of an album cover from the early to mid 1950s.

It doesn’t imitate any exact label, but personally I’d place it somewhere in the Prestige or Columbia spectrum. Next to these examples, I’m afraid the piece doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like, but it got me studying it, so I’m happy.

Anyways, having done this research (after the fact), I thought I’d offer an informal guide to Jazz Album Art style across different labels. The site http://www.birkajazz.com/archive is absolutely invaluable in this, and I recommend studying their extensive collections by label.

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Blue Note

When people think of jazz album art they immediately think of Blue Note Records, and for good reason. Designer Reid Miles and photographer Francis Wolff gave them a consistency of style and voice that allowed the full label’s stable of artists to present a unified visual identity.

This piece is representative of the early Blue Note style, which often fits the mold of photos fit into random shapes with text randomly arrayed aligned it.

This image kind of fits the same vein, but the parts are all simplified, and the sense of design is more confident all around, leading to a period when the photograph would be allowed to dominate the proceedings more freely.

This is the quintessential Blue Note cover from this early period. An expressive photograph is given the majority of the space, with an overlay of blue used to flatten it somewhat while the title shouts itself from the perimeter in a stand-out white that boxes the photograph in. It’s perfectly simple and yet also perfectly manipulated.

An early typography experiment that points towards the future.

An example of the line drawing you will find on some albums, in this case, if you can read the signature it belongs to a young Andy Warhol.

I’ll continue this at length after the jump. Read more »

Rhombicuboctahedrons For Mental Health

Posted in Art, Drawing, J. D. Hastings with tags Art, Drawing, geometry, J. D. Hastings, mental health on September 20, 2011 by jdhastings

Last week I was having energy and anxiety issue. Finally, one day at work, I forced myself to draw this:

As I said then on tumblr, “When the world seems particularly stupid I get an obsessive urge to make perspective drawings to assure myself order still exists, even if it’s just the illusion of such.”

Since then, my computer has refused to acknowledge my printer/scanner combo, my cable television cut out and as of this morning, my building’s water didn’t work. Possibly due to a crackhead stealing it’s pipes. Clearly, a fancy cube wasn’t going to cut it. Thus I present you, the “rhombicuboctahedron,” a term I had to look up on google this morning. I had been calling it a 3D octagon, but will now pretend I knew it’s real name all along.

(I apologize for the appearance of these photos. Due to my scanner being out I used my camera and apparently messed up the entire enterprise.) This version was inked with drafting pen on vellum (the vellum I’m using is basically high quality tracing paper). This allows me to preserve states of the original so I can go different directions later if I choose.

This is an earlier state of the same drawing showing the completely transparent rhombicuboctahedron. It may take a while to understand it as such, but I assure you it’s true.

The next 2 drawings are blurry. I apologize, but they help give context to the above 2 drawings.
Read more »

Mo Blam

Posted in Art, art on paper, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, Lichtenstein, paintings on September 13, 2011 by jdhastings

What I wrote before still applies to these. In fact these were actually assembles prior to the pieces in that post and looking at them now, there’s more that I like in this batch. A few of these have some issues where the bottom layer is wavy, or some of the layers got rubbed raw in the gluing process and that’s made me ambivalent toward them, but this morning I was pleasantly surprised.

I’m also very tired. Last night I had a dream that was such a Matrix rip-off I found myself thinking in-dream “Not another Matrix rip-off!”

More after the leap. Read more »

More Eruptions

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings on September 6, 2011 by jdhastings

These are the remaining Volcanos I made last month. They probably aren’t as good as the originals, and I forgot to scan 2 of them better ones cutting them up again, but such is life.

More below the jump.
Read more »

John Henry Died With A Hammer In His Hands

Posted in Art, Drawing, J. D. Hastings with tags arrt, computer art, Drawing, J. D. Hastings on August 23, 2011 by jdhastings

I remember reading the John Henry legend in second grade. It stuck with me because it was so weird. Why was anyone that proud of hammering? Does the fact that he won the race signify that no machine can conquer the human spirit or the fact that he died signify that an inconcquerable spirit is a long term negative?

I don’t know, and at this point in human development it’s probably irrelevant as we either won or lost that battle a long time ago. In most disciplines. Some artists still have opinions on photography, let alone digital art. Honestly, they already have computers composing music so if this is a source of anxiety for you, you’ll want to stock up on Ativan now.

In that thread, and relating to last week’s post about the need to stock up materials for future projects, I give you art drawn by my computer:

My Pazzles cutting machines are able to make things like this if you replace the cutting blade with a pen. The trick for me is then to design the patterns for them to draw using bezier lines.

The piece above shows the primary limitation of this method. While it’s pretty straightforward to tell a human “Use a flat tipped market to collor the shapes in” anything translating a digital command to a physical action by a computer is much more complicated (anyone who’s ever cussed out a printer understands). The machine only understands lines. Even if it could hold the flat tipped marker, it would still have to be programmed exactly how to move it in linear fashion.

The result is that if you want a block of color you have to teach the machine to block them in with a large number of lines. The piece at the top does that using all straight lines. Directionality of the lines distinguishes the different zones.

This piece (also included last week) has 9 different “fill” textures. Tiny wavy lines, circles, regular lines and a variety of those things cross hatched together. It probably could never be drawn by me at the level of precision the machine could get, but it now takes the machine less time to draw than it took me to put together online.

It’s not perfect though. The machine has a weird tendency to forget to pick up the pen between shapes, which leads to some of the random lines across the page in some of these. This is weird to me because of all the problems I attribute with computers, absent mindedness isn’t one of them. Regardless, I’ll take it in return for the advantages.

I drew this one by hand. It probably took longer than any of these and, while it has block color, still is kind of clumsy. Oh well.

In addition to these patterns I developed, you can also just plug a photo in and as the computer to interpret everything itself with interesting results. Here’s my computer’s drawing of a cat:

More samples after the jump: Read more »

6 Comments »

The Definition of Irony

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, colors, irony, J. D. Hastings, logic, Painting, quilting, sewing on August 9, 2011 by jdhastings

In the past weeks when I mentioned I was making collages as materials to use in other collages, these are those other collages. Ironically, of the 5 collages used in these, only 2 have been shown on d’Arteboard. All of these are 8.5″ x 11″, mixed media.

Along with the collages, there are also quilts and sewn paintings among the materials that went into these. Those that contain no representation but the formula “A ≠ A” are presented in landscape, while any piece set into a collage with portrait alignment was kept that way so that the intrusion would be more apparent. If it’s still not apparent, though, I’m fine with that.

Now would be a good time to post an artist’s statement for these, but I’m afraid I haven’t written it yet. I may try to write it once I’m better caffeinated, though. I’ll post an update at the top if I do. After the jump, 7 more.

4 Comments »

Thanks, Flickr

Posted in Art, Drawing, J. D. Hastings with tags Art, Drawing, J. D. Hastings on August 2, 2011 by jdhastings

I uploaded images last night and now that I’m at work, they aren’t there. Fantastic.

Instead of what I had planned I guess I’ll post these drawings I did of a painting I also don’t have a photo of here. Maybe you can guess what it looks like.

I drew these a few years ago when my camera was broken so I couldn’t get real critiques on art online. In response I started to draw the paintings I was making in MS Paint and posting those. The people online got hilariously angry at me for trying this so even after I got a new camera I kept posting things like this instead of the photos. These drawings are of a masking tape paint collage that, as I said, I still haven’t gotten around to photographing.

Now if you pardon me I’m going to swear at my computer some more.

-JD

Yet More Dillas

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings with tags Art, Collage, J Dilla, J. D. Hastings on July 26, 2011 by jdhastings

I told you I had 9 more of these.

I still plan to crank out more editions of different prints but fell behind this week even as I make it harder for myself by making more complicated source materials to go into these… which are still intended to be source material for another project I should be working on. Anyways, I’m wearing down a bit. Fortunately I had these ready to go.

All are mixed media, 11″ x 8.5″

These are basically made with leftover parts from the last batch. In those, I cut out the shape of each layer below it. These are the shapes that were cut out. The only added element in these is the background I mounted them on. As with any batch made in volume some of these are much better than others.

5 More after the jump Read more »

Ring of Fire

Posted in Art, art on paper, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, paint on July 19, 2011 by jdhastings

I guess these aren’t special anymore.

I spent the weekend making 18 new Volcano collages as source material for the same project I made last week’s J Dilla collages (in addition to the 9 in this post, 9 more were drying as I was prepping these for posting).

In general these were more problematic than the Dillas. I used more elements that had already been collaged in these (see the concentric circles, wavy lines and Q-Bert squares in some of the pieces). Additionally, the design itself is a lot more detailed than the Dillas. Thicker materials plus more detailed cuts mean more headaches with the cutting machines. I had to throw out 1/4 to 1/3 of the materials I tried to cut. That doesn’t matter much when it’s a sheet of newspaper, but is a real pain in the ass when you have to throw out a collage that took a few hours in itself to create.

The results are generally worse than last week. I think 2 of these came out well, The rest range from serviceable with reservations to kind of terrible. Strangely, the 9 I prepped yesterday seem more successful despite being made of the spare parts from this. Anyways, I got the 1 or 2 that I’ll need for the larger project.

The other 5 are below the jump Read more »

Grippa Dillas

Posted in Art, art on paper, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J Dilla, J. D. Hastings on July 12, 2011 by jdhastings

I made 9 of these simple J Dilla Collages this weekend to help with another project. I made so many in order to ensure that I got 2 that met my needs. I got that, so now I’ll find a way to group the rest and either sell them or give them away. I actually have another 8 drying right now (a byproduct of making these actually). I’m going to be spitting out a lot of different collages like this the next few weeks.

First, a group of 4:

Each Dilla is about 10 x 7. Multimedia.

Close Ups:

These are the best 4 to me, hence including them in a set. After the jump I’ll include the other 4, including the 2 I’ll be using in the future product. I didn’t use the best ones for that product because they’re going to be cut up further so there’s not as much reason to.

16 Dualities

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, colors, J. D. Hastings, Painting on July 5, 2011 by jdhastings

This may be the biggest and most substantial single project I’ve ever taken on for myself.

“16 Dualities” 40″ x 40″ acrylic and multi-media on canvas with safety pins.

Each of the component pieces of this work are miniature versions of this work, which itself was one of the most challenging pieces I’d taken on.

The challenge is, if you look at each piece’s 2 colors one at a time, you hopefully notice that they each have their own hole in them, and that the 2 holes link with each other. This is accomplished by weaving 2 entirely autonomous pieces that cross over each other.

Unfortunately, this was the piece where I learned the benefits of using lighter wood for the frames if I’m going to attach them all. The entire piece weighs so much I’ve never even attempted to hang it and may choose to display them separately, if the occasion arises.

After the jump I’ll post a close up of one of the pieces and some of the alternative patterns I was thinking of aranging these in. It turns out that exercise is similar to some of the considerations you have in regular quilting.

Charlie Brown Sweater Dropcloth

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, color, Painting on June 28, 2011 by jdhastings

Another piece made by painting other pieces on top of it.

“Charlie Brown Sweater Dropcloth” I don’t know how big it is. ~30 inches wide? Acrylic on Canvas.

Detail after the jump.
Read more »

Dune Collage

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings with tags Art, Collage, Dune, J. D. Hastings on June 21, 2011 by jdhastings

I posted the rough sketch that became this last week.

Here’s the result, now collaged with a mix of paint, fabric and print media. This is 1 of 16 tiles for a large piece I’m making for a friend (hence the curved edges where it’ll be joined to another tile). It’s 12: x 8″ more or less.

In it’s current state it’s a lot harder to read what’s going on. The worm head stands out, but the body doesn’t. The dust clouds fade into each other. On the other hand, it’s still kind of pretty, and I don’t entirely mind that the represented object isn’t totally clear. It’s something the viewer can work on if they want to.

I still reserve the right to make changes if I feel like it, but I’m satisfied for now.

-JD