200 degrees thats why they call me mr. farenheit

figure drawings.

flatulant fanny

two of the paintings i've done in class alongw with my first etching. There are two versions of the ethcing, one is the origanl line etching while the other is an aquatint.

Well here is the piece i recently finished, as you know it's nothing new. But finally it's complete. It looks better in person, the camera doesn't capture the luminosity of the oil pait well. I guess thats something to think about when it comes to reproduction. I'm happy with parts but not the whole. Actually I'm quite fond of the bomb and the wagon. The boy doesn't seem to fit the image, because i didn't use colors from the painting to create his skin tone. The perspective is completely off on houses, so the image tends to flatten rather than give the sense of depth. Sigh... i guess these are just all issues that i can rectify in my next painting. My two largest dilemmas at the moment are color and value (most certainly taking jacks color class upon return.) More Specifically I'm finding it complicated to create value changes with color. I've added another painting course. So i have two sessions with the model a week, One 7 hour class and one 3 hour class. I just have to keep reminding myslef that i've only recently started painting. In regards to that, perhaps i was a little ambitious concerning the numerous elements in the piece. It might be best to simplify things at the moment. A portrait, a landscape, still lifes, etc.., not an illustration that encompases all of these elements. I'd like to here your opinions concerning these recent posts.

It's Coming, The MEGA POST!

Well i intended to post some drawings and a couple of paintings. However this website does not love me at the moment. Not much on my end other than paiting and drawing. I think i'm getting worse. I've discovered that despite painting daily i've been horribly unproductive. I've tricked myself into thinking that just because i'm in the studio daily painting for hours, that i'm making progress. Ha! well two weeks have passed and i have finished painting... i'm not too keen on it though. However i'm finding the need for a schedule. I've decided it's best to split my time bewtween studies and actual illustrations (paintings). As i've mentioned here before color is my primary dilemm at the moment; thus, next week i will be doing color studies and a limited color illustration. Also i'm doing six hours of drawing studies in addition to my 3 hours life drawing class. The basic stuff, hand studies, feet studies, portraiture etc... You'll see an increase in posts (Weekly) although they may not be finished products, just a means to further my skills which will inturn better my actual illustrations (I HOPE). I'm finding that i have to be far more assertive with my education here. Asking questions and soliciting advice from the teachers is a must in order to gain anything from this experience. Friday i'll try to post my drawings again. It will be a mega post! with life drawings, life paintings, some prints, and a finished illustration! OH NO, Holla.

So i am the proud owner of a ticket to see radiohead in amsterdam on may 10th (insert ejaculation here). New music by radiohead!! Don't fret dan, it looks as if they will do a small tour of the states in june. keep your eyes peeled and a bit of change in the coffers. I saw that they posted the art on the tool website, i'm ever so excited about the albums release!! I'm in need of some new good rock out music. what are you listening to these days, anything new and enthralling? How are you doing? enjoying spring break? i'd like to hear about the show in Pasedena. I"m planning a trip to Paris in april and on my way back i'm going to hit Ghent and catch the graphic novel art exhibit. Yay for art! i hate it and i love it. I'm constantly doubting myself and my abilities... it's a wretched mess. Well i hope all is well and that your using the break to recooperate. i'd like to know what your up to, anything... thoughts, experiences, food... shrug. I miss burritos,ranch dressing, chinese food, black beans and much much more. I'm in need of explosions and gratuitous violence... in short, a man movie. Well it's time to sleep now. I haven't forgotten about your inquiry, either. Good night, Good day,

yum, green plastic!

YES. YES YOU SHOULD. And one of those days, I will use voodoo magic to usurp your body and see Radiohead vicariously through you. BTW, I dunno if you saw this, but Tool posted the cover art & tracklisting for their new album, 10,000 Days on their website.

coachella for you, Radiohead for me!

today i came home and wet my pants to discover that radiohead is playing in amsterdam on may 9-10th... tickets go on sale on the 25 which is saturday. Should i go both days!?

Chocolate goat penises.

My wireless connection has gone from bad to worse, and I haven't even bothered trying to use the internet for most of this week. I don't know what to do about that. So I went to the Gary Kelley lecture, and it was really great - he was one of those illustrators that I definitely respected, but that I never felt much emotional connection to. But I was really wowed by the stuff he showed in his presentation. Aside from his pastel work, he also does some AMAZING monotypes, and he actually has a book illustrated with monotypes coming out about the blues legend robert johnson selling his soul to the devil. I wanna get it. I figure I'm not THAT terrible of a cousin, since I had to fulfill my academic obligations. I mean, he'll have more birthdays, right?

I got extremely tequila-d last night. I have a drawing of a vagina on my arm that won't wash off. Good thing I'm not hungover though, cause around noon I'm going to be DRIVING TO PASADENA! Woo. Road trip! I have exactly one hundred dollars to fund this trip - and since pretty much all of that is going to go towards gas money and the motel (split four ways), I'm going to eat absolutely nothing but peanut butter sandwiches during the entirety of the trip. Driving down today, staying over sunday, driving up Monday. That's how we do.

That's that. I'm REALLY glad that it's spring break, I am definitely in need of a little away time from illustration so I can do my own thing. I'll tell you what kind of crazy springbreakian type of shit went down next week! It'll probably involve eating a lot of food at my parents' house. How are things Netherwards? Do they know what spring break is? Do they know what SPRING is?

PS Nikko, I thought you'd be interested to know that I'm currently compiling the Gangrene Pudding discography. I think I'm going to make them a website at the start of the summer, complete with album art and (hopefully) promo photos. The Pudding will live!

hope that you got through the week ok. and that you enjoy your spring break. Darin,Have fun in new york, and enjoy whatever it is you are up to Dan.

So... what was the choice, were you a horrible cousin, a slacker illustrator, or a giver upper of free movie tickets? I'm intersted in hearing about the lecture if you attended, i'm kinda bummed that i missed out. bye..

Sloth is Irish

no one wants to pay to see your day to day

Dag,
So i'm well on my way to learning dutch, but it's a useless language... I know it's sounds like i'm being an arrogant american, but it's true. I'm glad that you posted your work, it's nice to see what your up to. Also it prompted me to do the same. So here are some of the sketches i've been doing. like you dan, i've been drawing people on the fly. The drawings vary in the time they took to complete 5 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour.... I've been playing around with the idea of sketching vs. the concept of picture making. Some are sketches, a means to move my hand and get practice. While others are pictures. With these, i' attempt to create an image. thinking about issues such as composition and the placement of lights and darks. basically it's an amped up version of sketching and it's a very barron-esque approach. Although alot of the time end up trying to pull a composition together out of a somewhat incoherent drawing. The sketches are of people that i live with, people in my classes, Amsterdam, and various activites that i attend. We've discussed my inability to work in sketchbooks before, i realize that it's because i was so product oriented. After taking classes by mark and barron, and larry, i realize that it's about the act of drawing rather than the actual finished drawing itself. One can be pleasantly surprised by the results. Oliver grundy was my first complete sketch book, however a majority of it's content is writing. Mevrouw Visser, my new sketch book, is comprised of more drawings and is filling up at a steady pace. sorry the image quality is rubbish

Manohman

Is that anything what the Netherlands look like right now? Because that's my street in San Jose. What the hell.

NIKKO! my god! when bikes go wrong, they go REALLY wrong, eh? It's nice to hear about your productivity, at least. So I have a shitty dilemma. Not as melodramatic or painful as some that it sounds like you've encountered. But. On the 15th of March, my cousin is having a birthday party, which I should really go to cause my cousins are going through weird stuff because of my aunt & uncle's divorce. But I would have to skip Owen's class, which I've already done too much of. That same night, the illustrator Gary Kelley is lecturing, and I REALLY don't want to miss it. And if I go to that, I wouldn't have to skip Owen's class. And now, here's the kicker. I just got a pass for two to see V for Vendetta that same night at 7:30 in Oakland, meaning I would have to skip Owen's class, would be a HORRIBLE SELFISH cousin, and a total illustration slacker. But, I HAVE FREE TICKETS. Fucking god damn shit. Why, I ask, did those all have to be on the same night?

I'm glad you liked Dune. I'm completely set on doing it for my thesis, I'm gonna do a piece this summer. And I say "a piece" because I plan on making it 4x6 feet.

DARIN. I am totally okay with Tonia moving in. Tonia is awesome. But it should be made clear to her that we will NOT be hosting parties at our house. She's not as crazy as freshman year, and she's a really awesome person, but she still likes hosting parties, I know that much. And I refuse.

Okay, time to worky worky. Until next time.

oakland 48, new york 62, boulder 34. degrees, that is.

nikko, we haven't got a fish yet. but when we do i'll take a picture for you! actually/sadly, all i had to do was sign up for junior review and go to the little orientation thing- its not until april 4th i think, so when it finally arrives i shall be sufficiently freaked out. however, the week is over with all assignments and papers done. phew. am needing to go to new york right now.

you guys. i need to ask you something:
how do you feel about tonia taking mari's place when the lease is up? she needs a place to live, i told her that mari was leaving, and she thinks our house is beautiful and is (i am pretty sure) willing to take the dungeon. i think she could be a friendly improvement. to be honest, i have been sort of afraid to ask you because i know she was excessively rowdy and hyperactive freshman year, but it seems like shes purged that from her system. besides, a little bit more energy in our house wouldn't be the worst thing. talk amongst yourselves and let me know how you feel.

pictures: eaten flan, hugo misses nikko

pickled pugs face

my knee hurts, my side hurts, my dignity is damaged, i'm a mess. Mehh... how can a week start out so nicely and go so wrong? please do tell? Productivity has been excellent, worked in the studio about 7 hours each day, Left to my own devices i could spend months on a painting. I'll have to fix this dilemma though. The five projects that i had once started has now been reduced to 3. However, one is a series of 3 portraits. If you got a fish for the house you're all bastards and i hate you! but relax these wounds will mend with time and we shall once again be friends when i return from the netherlands.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were excellent. i was making steady progress on my painting. befriended two beautiful swedish girls and had shots of jagermeister while dancing to "just a little bit". What more could one ask for? Thursday and Friday were horrid, and now i'm in a vile loathesome state. First thing Thursday morning i recieved a 50 euro ticket for riding on the wrong side of the street. Then production slowed in the studio and after 8 hours of work the painting looked like shit! have you ever attempted to render reflective metal? it's hellishly complicated. My ipod delete all of my songs again... no radiohead, no rammestien, no tool.... No happiness was to found in thursday. Riding home i almost got hit by a car. y tire was 3 inches away from the front of a car. I've decided that i fucking hate bikes! you'll soon learn to hate bikes too my friends. Then when i arrived home i had kitched duty, meaning i had to clean the kitchen along with everyones refuse. meh. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that i'm going to destroy my ipod with a bat! ala office space. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!

I'm an optimistic person and dont' like to dwell in the past, So i thought to myself friday can't be nearly as deplorabel as Thursday. O my friends, it was a deceptive day! Friday reserved it's vengance for the evening. Of course it was filled with more painting and bike riding. in the evening i decided to go out with some friends, on the bike ride to the center it started hailing. My face was being singed by the frigid cubes of ice that barraged me constantly. I proceeded to wipe my glasses clean so i could see properly, and the next thing i hear is screaming. I remove my hand from my glasses only to see anohter bike rider 7 feet in front of me. I broke madly but that did nothing to prevent a collision. Screaming in dutch ensued, incesant appolgies in english followed. The accident was pretty much my fault. I came out unharmed but shoudl have taken it as a sign to return home. hail and bike accidents fortell ominous things. Went to a couple of clubs had a little to drink. around my 6 beer i started feeling a tad intoxicated. But it was not all fun and giggles, instead it was more contemplative. I started looking around the place thinking about painting. In fact, how exactly i would go about rendering the dark smokey atmosphere. I came to the conclusion that color, value and light, were the keys. I had no one to discuss my revelations with, no dan, no raymie, not a soul to share in my artistic insights. Alas i decided around 3:30 it was time to head home. The hailed had been transmuted by the hand of god into snow. As i previously mention in another post, bikes and snow are a deathlt combitation. It was cold and i wanted to get home in hurry, i took the first turn to rapidly and fell on my back sliding for about 6 feet. It was actually rather amusing and enjoyable, slightly like the luge with a bike tangled between my legs. Again i wasn't physically hurt, just my pride. two accidents in one evening come on! Well the third time is a charm. Apparently the fall had dislodged my bike chain, and as i was riding on it slipped coming off the gears. i lost controll yet again, this time hitting my side on the curb and my knee on hard upon the pavemet. And now i sit here in pain writing this web log.

How are you all doing? Darin how did junior review go? is it spring break this week? Dan are you heading down to LA with mike and ama? if so you'll have to let me know how the show is. I finished Dune about a week ago. it was excellent. I now regret borrowing the the other books. hope to hear from you soon. I hate your fish!, no thats not true...i'm just disgruntled and need to take my anger out on something. I harbor no ill will towards your fish

to add to a horrible day, i just wrote an entire entry and had it deleted. AGGGGGHHHH

Barf.

I think we should name our fish Paul.

night 1 of 4

dan, we never really talked about the pet rock option. i think that is almost as good as a beta fish. maybe we could have both and they could be friends. what shall we name our new fishy? hey, this girl in my weaving class, who is a bit of an imbecile, brought her dog to class today. it was this little baby chihuahua and she named it.....SQUIRREL. yeah. so at least we can think of a better name than that, no matter what we get.
you guys, this week is CHAOS. there is too much work- it is all tangled spaghetti inside me.
junior review? barf?

I drew these in a crazy Starbucks by the Berkeley campus that has a second-story loft - perfect for sniper drawing! They had no idea what hit 'em. These creepo guy decided to come sit at my table with me, though. I was drawing for about 3 hours, and he sat there, right across from me, the ENTIRE TIME. This wouldn't have bothered me if he was studying or reading or something, but he was just SITTING there, starting across the table. Every once in a while he would get fidgety and get up and walk around and then come sit back down. Fucking creepoid.

Stuffzors

I've been doing a ton of drawing in my sketchbook, so here's some of it. I've been REALLY enjoying drawing people on-the-fly lately, and I think the practice is helping me tremendously.

bleugh?

YO WASSUP SIZZLER. POPCORN SHRIMP COMBO $6.99.

Uhhhh...kay, lessee here. Me and Nyk and Cav saw Nightwatch! It was..well..disappointing. The best way for me to describe it is that there's an EXCELLENT movie buried somewhere deep inside the atrocious and sickening editing job. The entire 2 hours of it were about as fast paced (and coherent) as the trailer was.

Me, Nyk, Mike and Ama went to Shawn Barber's show last night...it was freakin awesome. There were so many people there, and Shawn was tired and glassy-eyed from the lack-of-sleep/socializing-overdose combo. Barron showed up, and I got to talk to him while clutching a pint of Sierra Nevada that I had purchased from a very happy storeowner around the corner. He'd even popped the cap for me, what a guy. Shawn said Dugald had been there earlier, too. All in all, it was a really great show and a lot of fun. I also got an autographed book from him. Shiggety-Shwa.

Hm...anything else, this week? I don't remember...it was kind of shitty, but not in the way that's fun to talk about. Thanks about my illustration, it is indeed oil pastel, and yeah, the head looks too big...overall, I spent so much time on the head that I think everything else about it looks and feels rushed. But I had fun doing it, for the most part. The next assignment is children's book, and I'm skipping class tomorrow to get reference of a mother holding her child's hand. I'm pretty excited about what's gonna happen with this one.

And a question for Darin, because I never think of it whenever I actually see you: what kind of low-maintenance pet are we talking about? A fish? A lizard? A vegetarian fairy? A rock shaped like a chihuahua? The ghost of Bob Hope?

Oh yeah, and Nikko, I saw that Madonna was added to the list - that's awkward. What the hell is she doing at Coachella? Almost anyone would seem to fit at Coachella, it's so diverse, but...not Madonna. I'll definitely see her if there's nothing else going on at that time, but I'll bet there will be.

nikko,
raymie filled out the form for the house show, including vaughn in case he wanted to be in it too.
the applications are due on the 7th for all undergrad shows, including senior shows.

Well i think it's been about a week since i've posted. A good deal has happened in the past seven days. I went to amsterdam last friday and saturday and what luck it was sunny! Although quite cold. I Walked the city three times over, exploring all that it has to offer. It truly is a strange place, culture, sex and drugs coexsiting peacefully. The red light district surrounds the oldest church in the city. One can't help but fell the irony; The sound of church bells resonates through your ears as half naked women bathed in red occupy every line of site. One of amsterdams most intriguing aspects are the numerous canals that disect the city. Three major crescent shaped canals encircle the center and there are various smaller waterways throughout. I also went to the rijksmuseum which houses a great deal of rembrandts and an amazing collectin of vermeers. Although i was slighty disappointed. The museum is under construction and the collection, which usually occupies some 60 rooms, was condensed to a general best of selection housed in 12 rooms. In short too many people in too small of space. Next time i go plan to visit the van gough museum which is currently home to a rembrandt carravagio exhibit.

This week it has been snowing, it's funny i'm like a little kid in the snow. Since i had a childhood devoid of snow i've decided to make the most of it. Biking in the snow is far more dangerous than biking while drunk, The breaks tend to slip on the frosted pavement, needless to say i've had quite a few close calls as of late. I got my studio on wednesday, so after a month now i can finally start to be productive. Oil painting is kicking my ass, i have a great deal to learn. It's nice not to have deadlines, i can experiment and be more playful with the medium. I'll have new work up by the end of next week. Speaking of work, i think your movie poster is quite good dan. My immediate impression was that the head seemed to big, followed by where will the text be placed? The composition is strong, i can see that your developing a strong grasp on the concepts learned in visual organization. As for me, those concepts are still quite unnatural. When painting from the model or drawing from life ,my composition are relatively weak because i don't have the time to sit and work out the large shapes and the secondary shapes etc. It doesn't come so simply thats all, just another thing to work at. Did you do your poster in Oil Pastel? Also of note in your piece is the value stucture, looks some ideas from black and white is color are showing up. Lighting and value are two of the primary issues i'm having with painting right now. Basically i'm a horrible illustrator, i can't compose, nor can i direct the eye with light. sob. Maybe i'll be able to do something about that over the next 4 months.

This is question segment of this post and will conatin various questions to various people.
How is life, that's direct to everyone who is now posting on here. Darin it's nice to see that you are now a memeber, writing so many different emails becomes time consuming, it's a difficult thing to keep in conact with people. I could sit in my room for hours a day writing emails. What kind of things would you like to know about the house that i'm living in? Who was your friend that came to visit darin? Who is the new poster on the blog, is it nyk? this is question segment of this post and will conatin various questions to various people. Is the house registering for a group show, i received an email about registering for shows? Oh, does this mean we have to register for our senior shows now? Dan are you going to shawn barbers opening this weekend? i read on his site that the opening is today? i'll have to pick up one of his books when i get back. Did you see that Madonna got added to the coachella line up? All right i'm off, i've got to cook for an international dinner tonight. i'll take pictures and you can see some of the people that i live with. sorry it's been a while between posts. hope all is well.

Dui as they say it