High Contrast Grey.

Millard observation.

20x10.5cm

Dinner for one.

18x13 cm

Windy coffee.

Inspired by watching a girl walk by window of my bilingualism class.

4” square. Watercolor with pen and ink.

I finally finished enough of this painting to be happy enough to show it for my painting final. The professor rubbed his finger over the window to figure out that I cut it out to put the black paper behind, but didn’t really critique it at all. I still did well in the class, but he did comment on how overall I paint in a passé style.

So of course I am back to the questioning of; what is contemporary art? When I look up contemporary art trying to find new examples that could inspire my work I instead find art that is abstracted and not really in a direction that I would see as improving or inspiring my style.

I have finally finished painting in all the books in the bookcase. A slow process, probably made even slower by me wanting to mix a new color for almost every book, instead of making random books the same color. I never left the apartment Friday..

It is insteresting seeing how long I can hold back and develop a piece now just with the watercolor and not having to add in the ink just to make it feel complete.

I wish I could remember the name of the bookstore from my dream.

My painting professor asked me a question the other day, which was something along the lines of, ‘why are you so attracted to painting these things in a beautiful nostalgic timeperiod?’ It took me a while to translate and figure out what he was asking, but once I understood I didn’t have an answer in any language. Instead I thought about Midnight in Paris and the similar question it poses. The past is never as beautiful as we want to imagine it being.

and so marks the end of working on my personal artwork while I finish out this semester…

I just put these last two works in a juried show at university and I should find out Monday if they make the cut. I am feeling a bit nervous because I worked the process of getting everyone’s piece processed for the show and it seems that the quality and style of work is all over the place, so I am not sure how my work will be received. Definitely not the selection from the last juried show I was in in Billings..

The absinthe bar has been finished…

Although I still need to ink in the hinge on the window. (shhh…)

Out of all the paintings that I had hanging in the show, I was surprised this one wasn’t the one that sold, but it is my latest so I still feel the most attached to it..

I sold this painting at the show for the Artist’s Collective last night. The woman who bought it was in my architectural art history class last semester and told me it reminded her of Italy, which she visited this winter.

I celebrated with going out to see Jason Webley play his accordion, which perhaps was a bit detrimental to finishing my French homeworks… but oh well. It is going to be a crazy weekend this weekend with all the homework I will have.

It has been a rather lackluster winter session, in terms of working on art. Although it seems that Billings always seems to remove any inspiration or desire to work on art, I have since come back to Missoula to become distracted by a redhead.

A pleasant distraction.

I still hope to finish at least one of these two paintings before the end of the break so I can display them with the artwork of other members of the university artist collective. I am liking how the street scene is coming out. I seem to have a better understanding of layering every time I paint another watercolor, which is really helpful with trying to achieve a night like atmosphere. I seem to have misplaced my ivory black and had to go and buy a new one from Michael’s. They were locked up but I slipped my hand into the side of the case and retrieved the tube of watercolor. Part of me felt like just walking off with it as a repressed anger to the frustration of working there back in the day, but I suppressed the desire.

As a gift to myself over the break I broke down and bought the bottle of absinthe I have been eying via a liquor store website based in New York. La Charlotte with a slight green tint only from the herbs and no additives. Quite delicious. Although it doesn’t seem to soak into the sugar cube as nicely as the last and makes lighting the sugar cube on fire to caramelize the sugar a bit more difficult.

The universe decided to give me an ironing board (read as adjustable table for the living room that is long enough and skinny enough to function as a couch table) for the holidays. Shortly after making it to my apartment it was covered in artworks.

C’est tout.

My works in progress. I find myself working on them more than I should with my work load for university, but that just seems to be the way that life works. When you need to be doing something your desires transfix on things that are not necessary.

I have come to points of frustration with both of them lately, but thankfully the frustration is just because of little questions as to color and style and not something that would be detrimental to the pieces. My usual way around these road blocks would be to start inking in what I have already colored, but at this point I am trying my best to not jump the gun and get as much as possible painted before the inking process. In part because I would like to see just how well my painting is becoming before I cheat by adding the detail with ink.

What is really holding me back on the city painting is that I would like my cliché of having a character existing within the scene, but I am not sure what they should be doing. I have gone down the list of either the character being male or female and if they should be sitting, standing, walking, drinking, smoking, lighting a fag, carrying shopping bags, playing accordion, or just posing/resting with an instrument. Meh.

I have already had a request for a print of the painting of the woman with flowers in her hair. It is not my usual style with there being no architecture, but I still feel as though it fits because it is based on the the girl that I saw at the masquerade ball in Seattle back in February and so it is just showing one of the characters from this city that I continually portray. An interesting thing to note that is if I am able to have a show my my art that this painting of the woman with flowers in her hair would fit perfectly in the picture frame that I keep my dangly earrings. I was hearing that the list to show at the Butterfly is stretching back deep into next year though… so that might not be happening. Perhaps this summer in Billings when I get stuck there? It would be nice to have a show before I go abroad because I probably won’t be taking my art with me as it would just be too much of a hassle and too easy for it to be lost or damaged.

One thing that I would like to start doing with my paintings is to start writing random things on the back. Comments, notes to people, observations of life, what was going through my mind as I made the piece, et cetera. I have done this before with a few pieces and I just think that it would be a nice thing to compliment the piece and be one of those things that since the back gets covered up that would create an air of mystery over what is there because I know that I will forget what I write and I know that I enjoy having my life made up of little bizarre secrets so I probably won’t tell many people at all, if anyone (sans the people who read this, although then again isn’t this another writing on the back that if people look for they will find? I know I almost never tell anyone about this site of mine and just leave it for people to find if they are interested).

Blah blah blah. I should probably go to bed.

I have finally finished the painting for Amy. Or so I keep telling myself. Give it a little while and I will probably find something that I need to add. It never fails. One of the final things holding me back from calling this done was that I wanted to give Amy an chandelier earring like those that she wears so often and my idea for how to accomplish this was to use a gel pen that can go over the black ink that I had already laid for her hair. But of course I didn’t really want to spend the $2 or whatever it is for a purple gel pen, so I took the painting by Michaels and just used one there in the way that they have them out so that they can be tested. I felt quite clever about this technique of being a cheap artist using my surroundings to my benefit. Better to be clever than beautiful and even better to be clever to create something of beauty.

My painting that I did last summer of Noir Marché is in a show at the moment at the university. The president of the university asked to have the artist collective show some pieces during the regent’s board meetings and we jumped at such an offer.  That will only last until Friday, but at least this gave me the push to finally get it framed. I still need glass and to give the character a belt buckle, but right now it is all about baby steps of progress. Although I found out that the file that I had to keep track of all the shows that I have presented in is on my broken external, so now I just need to push myself to call those people up on Friday to complain and hopefully get that fixed for something less than a grand.

On yet another good note for the day, I had a meeting about the study abroad program so the lady who seems to coordinate the program at my university could meet me and figure out my plans et cetera and she told me today that my application was great and I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Late December I should know more about what is going on, which at this point is really not far away at all. She told me to not be on ‘pins and needles’ about this, but I have a feeling that I still will, probably up until the point that the plane lands in France…

I thought that one of the pictures that people seemed to like from my sketchbook I would turn into a larger watercolor picture. Old watercolor paper lying about with an old sketch I was going to turn into a painting for Shea before she moved away abruptly.

A local character, who only seems to know me through the facebook, is trying to get a gallery off the ground and asked me if I would like to contribute. She is wanting a selection of western, surreal, and erotic art though. Not really my forté. I used to do a whole lot of erotic art, but over the years of trying to get into a more ‘exploratory relationship’ and away from those things vanilla has never seemed to pan out and with it my art and drifted from that subject. Photography from time to time still, but the painting, not so much.

Finished my painting of the underground market finally.

I went and got some prints of my last watercolor picture that I finished and while signing and numbering over at Bernice’s the people next to me bought a print. First print sold.

I pushed myself to finish this underground market painting so that I can get prints made of it tomorrow and start preparing for a show.

14th and 42nd.

Finally finished after months of working.

The final hurdle..

I still don’t know what to put in the advertising mural above the entrance to the hotel. And I need to come across some pretty fabric/paper for the final rugs.

Plus, of course, all the minute ink details still left to do…