If I didn’t have to work for a living I’d get a lot more art done. And read more books. In fact the world as a whole would be a better place.
I came tantalizing close to finishing something to post this weekend but got caught by the buzzer. Instead, here are some designs I scribbled while teaching myself some of the art of tessellation.
There’s more after the jump. Read more »
These are some things I’m working on that will be used later on in other stuff. More pics after the jump.
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Here’s another fabric pattern I was messing around with. I don’t know about the plaid in the background, but that can be easily changed out. I might try polka-dots instead.
I managed to get this group of monsters to wrap around after fiddling with them forever on the computer. I’ve wanted to try this for a while to get some fabric printed with my characters in the pattern. The pattern doesn’t match exactly, but close enough. I’ll probably just have a swatch printed with this exact pattern. I’ve had some fabric printed with monster faces before, that I made into dolls, but not an original drawn pattern. I’ll have to experiment more with.
Pattern is at the heart of everything. Mathematics, nature, music. Its everywhere. Our brains are built to recognize them (even when they aren’t actually there).
In art, I’m drawn to patterns. I respond to them much like I do to music. I don’t actually hear music when I see them, but I feel like I do…
So obviously I use a lot of it. The doodle above is a pattern I made this week. I thought I’d use it to explain my basic methodlogy for making patterns.
My favorite patterns have a logic to them. A hawaiian shirt is a pattern, but only because its loud mess finds ways to hide that its borders repeat. I prefer patterns that are built up out of some sort of repeating process. None of these are complicated things, but they take on greater impact when used repetitively or in conjunction with each other.
I start simply, with two circles touching.
From there, create a rule: Trace half of each circle, alternating sides:
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Congratulations, you now know how to make a sideways S. Even in this simple shape there is the basis of a pattern, though. You have a relationship between 2 forms that develops in a basic fashion. Now take this shape and multiply it:
As basic as it gets. But I’ve ridden this pattern for the last year or two:
 Cut by hand in 2008. |
 Cut by Machine 2009 |
Painted:
I go into more depth after the break. Read more »
Literally. Apparently today marks the beginning of Monsoon Season in San Francisco.
I own both a rain coat and an umbrella, but when I walk, the excess water from both these implements stream directly down the front of my pants, soaking them in a manner shaped like a pair of leather chaps that stays damp for the rest of the day. Am I the problem here or were these rain implements just poorly designed? I’m from Los Angeles originally so dressing for the rain is to me a lot like foreigners trying to put on those water recycling suits in Dune. And I’m no Paul Atreides.
Whatever. Here’s some eerily apt art for today:
“Dark Days” 23″ x 23″ acrylic on Canvas, with safety pins.
This continues my recent forays into mounting smaller framed paintings onto a common understructure (here, here, here and here).
For this piece I saved all the darker pieces I had accumulated and thought I might use them in a way that references some of Ad Reinhardt’s work. I don’t know if that comes through, but a starting point is only that and the intent was never to slavishly recreate his work.
When I constructed this over the weekend, I did choose the diagonal slanting composition of the different colors in part to reference rain, but had no idea this would cause a hurricane on the day I posted it. Maybe I should travel to Africa next. Or Los Angeles.
Anyways, detail shot after the jump.
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This is a birthday Present for a friend. It’s probably 3 months late by now, but that’s how I role.
It’s pieced together out of fragments of Ulysses by James Joyce, Death In Venice by Thomas Mann, To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Hamlet by William Faulkner and In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.
Basically, it’s a pun about the literary methods of the artists of the early twentieth centur. But if you don’t see that, it’s not necessary.
-JD
I thought I posted this already but I guess not.
A year ago I made a piece out of a lot of circles. No surprise there, but it left me with a lot of sheets of paint covered masking tape with large holes in the center. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, so finally made this thing. It is about an inch thick of crooked, unwieldy glory. Enjoy!
-JD
Okay, I’ve posted other pieces made of these nested squares before. Each times I made those, I’d end up with extra bits trimmed off the side. Here, I have joined those into this. Is this good enough to call it it’s own art piece? Probably not. I apologize.
-JD
I’m doing another day posting more smaller pieces instead of one big piece.
This one came about because I’m stupid. I had been cutting up little pinwheel pieces for an early Pazzles piece but accidentally cut this piece with the pinwheels facing the wrong direction. So there wasn’t much to do but use these pieces with themselves.
Voila! Art is born.
More later,
-JD
If anybody can come up with a worthwhile name for this, I’m game. It’s creation was a bit of an accident. I tried to cut the dominant painting in it into the shapes of the lesser pieces in here but the paint was too thick and dry for the machine, so I only got a handful before I had to give up. Rather than throw the rest away, I plugged the hole with other pinwheely shuriken type shapes. Ta-Da!
-JD
I’ve been working on some illustrations of monsters. I decided to put them together with some other stuff into a little monster themed zine thing. I’m hoping it will be funny and cute. Here’s one of the pages.
Also, an update on that fabric I ordered last week. It already arrived! Man that spoonflower.com is fast. The colors did shift a little bit but that’s kinda why I went with primary colors, anyway.
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Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.
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