I have gotten into buying prints lately. It started off in January when I was in Santa Monica and bought a few prints from the Multiplayer art show and continued to this past Friday when I bought four prints from Alex Pardee. The latter stemmed for wanting the Charlie Sheen "Winning" print and seeing the others that I felt I needed to acquire too. I am not yet sure where I will hand them or if I need to frame them and stuff. If so, that can get pretty expensive. We shall see. Anyway, I am actually working on an Alex Pardee feature for the Complex Art blog for next week and will post that once it is up. Here are the prints that are on their way to me now...click them to view larger.
"TIGER BLOOD" Giclee Print 17" x 22" Printed with Archival Inks on Acid Free Velvet Cotton Rag
"I HATE MONDAYS" Limited Edition (of 200) Giclee 12.25" x 12.25" Printed with archival inks on Epson Velvet Cotton Rag Paper
"URKEL JERK" Unlimited Giclee Print 8" x 10" Printed with archival inks on Velvet Cotton Rag Paper
"DOUBLE RAMBO" 22" x 17" Printed with archival inks on Epson Velvet Cotton Rag Paper
This past Tuesday was Camille's birthday and she wanted me to paint something for her as a present. I considered doing a canvas, but then got the idea to go beyond the traditional painting medium and to customize a toy for her. I was going to get a Munny and work from there, but Camille loves Hello Kitty, so I wanted to do a Hello Kitty variation and the ears would be a problem with a Munny. I went to Toy Tokyo in the East Village and found a Bax Bear:
I saw that Maurice customized a Munny using clay so I called him about it and went to the store and bought some Sculpey to modify the Bax Bear. My idea was to make a zombie Hello Kitty, so I started to mold the head of the bear into a Hello Kitty-esque form with pointed ears, a nose, and a more oval face.
I also gave it a tail.
Then I put it in the oven at 275 degrees for 15 minutes.
I did have some problems with the angles in the feet melting and making it fall over. The instructions were for a Munny, which doesn't have creases at the feet. Now it doesn't stand that great, but it does (you just have to angle it just right).
Then I began to paint it. It took a few layers.
I used a gold marker to draw the eyes, whiskers, and detail.
Then I used some more paint to add the battle wounds.
I wanted to give her a bow that could be taken off and a weapon, so I molded them and threw them in the oven.
Then I took some markers and used a blowing technique to splatter two shades of red over her.
Then I coated her with some glossy lacquer to finish it off.
I found those bunny shoes at Michael's. I think they are for dolls, but they just barely fit her feet. It fell a few times and I need to fix it up, but she was pretty happy with it. Speaking of Camille, she just sent me this:
Here is some more of Veruschka's work, including some photos from the Africa shoot. I wish that I could find more photos, but they are not so easy to find online. I would love the book, but it costs $350-500 and that is way more than I would even spend on a book. I guess these will suffice for now.
Here is another video with some insight into some of these shoots:
Back at NYU, I took a few photo classes, one of which I was introduced to a couple photos of Veruschka von Lehndorff (real name: Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort). Veruschka is a German model who was huge in the 60s and 70s, mostly due to her artistic approach to photos and body paintings. The photos that caught my attention were the ones in which she was transformed to blend in with her backgrounds. Apparently she was more proactive than most models and played a huge part of these productions outside of just being the model. She was so into these shots, in fact, that she left the fashion world in 1975 to focus on the art. Here are some of the photos"
I will put up some more photos tomorrow, but for now check out this video and watch how the process of painting and shooting her went. I am imagine how uncomfortable that paint must have been, but the pictures came out amazing.
So I decided to head over to the Volcomics show at Fuse on Saturday with Camille.
There were some pretty sick illustrations by a couple of my favorite artists: Todd Bratrud and Michael Sieben.
Bratrud:
Sieben:
I almost bought this one by Mike Aho, but somebody beat me to it:
A couple of random others that I liked:
Rodney was there getting his sauce on with the open bar...and Camille is always ready for the impromptu photos:
So I mass texted like 18 people to go skate yesterday and only two people ended up coming through: Scottie Schwartz and Billy Rohan. Less people than I envisioned, but it was a dope sessions nonetheless, even with getting rained on. I will not divulge anything more about yesterday than saying that Billy is a monster and can pretty much skate ANYTHING! On a random note, we came across a few of these squirrel-fox things...
Speaking about wildlife, Camille and I were walking through Central Park a few days ago and hear this dude outside of one of the plant nursery things (where they keep all the plants they are going to put into Central Park) yelling, "Hey you! Get out of there!" We thought he was just being really crazy, but it turns out that he was just being sort of crazy. There was a raccoon munching on the plants right there in the middle of the afternoon...no shame.
(*Sorry about the horrible photo, but the zoom on my phone camera is not the best)
^^^Aren't those pants swass??? Acid washed jeans are making a comeback, I think. And this guy is leading the revolution:
Friday, December 22, 2006
I found this on 90th street and Columbus Ave.
I have always loved stop motion, but this deserves bonus points because the artwork in it is sick.
