hellllooooo

So! Critique tomorrow! My piece isn't fired, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm really surprised the fingers haven't fallen off, or drooped and messed themselves up. For all of you who haven't seen it, it looks something like this, except all the fingers are intertwined

Hey guys! So I started working on that new piece. Like I said, like the claw hand, but smooth and flowy and all tangled up. If you guys have ideas or suggestions for my piece, or pieces I should do to incorperate into my concentration, I'd love to hear them. I've heard a few really great ideas already.

So, you all saw what I have been working on lately--- that claw-talon-hand sculpture. For my next concentration piece I was thinking about doing some sort of the same thing with the whole elongating the fingers in the hand, except I was going to make them super smooth and flowy. Sort of like if you've ever pulled a handle for a ceramic mug (which, I assume you all have). I've been slacking pretty hard on the details of my hands, though. They have a decent amount of detail, especially in the curves of the palms of the hands, and some of the knuckles, but I can do a lot more. With the next piece I'm going to spend some time really focusing on getting preportions right, giving extra definition to the way the skin stretches throughout the hand, and defining the knuckes better than I have been doing.
I was also pretty inspired by Collin's smoker hand, and I was thinking about doing one of my concentration pieces where you could see the bones in the hand (and probably some muscles, too!). Maybe something like where I have some skin stretched over the bones, enough to cover most of the hand but still have gaps where you can see in to the bones and stuff. The thought is still being mulled over, tell me what you guys think.

Projects!

So unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, but lately I've been working on this cool hand-claw-talon thing as my latest concentration piece. I really wanted to burnish it like Ryland's been doing with all of his pieces but I left it out and uncovered last thursday or friday before I left for the weekend...so it dried out. Which is alright, because it's basically finished anyways. But I want to find a dead bird for it to be holding. Does anyone have a dead bird laying around they want to donate? I think Ms. McBride might have one I could at least borrow for the pictures, so I'll ask her about that tomorrow. Also, does anyone have any good ideas for glazing it? I'm tired of just staining my projects...it feels boring and empty to me. But I also don't want to distract from the form of the piece.

untitled.

Oh jeez...I just saw Ilya's blog and realized that I keep completely forgetting to drop off the AP art poster with the guy who sponsored me! So I know this news is of no importance to any of you, but it's kind of a reminder to me to GET CRAP TAKEN CARE OF! Anyways, I had fun on the field trip on Wednesday, it was a much needed break in the week. I thought the Raphael exhibit would be much bigger, but it was still cool.

scholastic essay!!

Hello art people,

First of all, right now I'm trying to write that essay thing for the scholastic art show, but I can't find the guidelines for it anywhere!!! I totally forgot about it all last week, and I'm pretty sure it's due on Friday. Which makes me pretty late. But does anyone know what the guidelines are?? Or at least where I can find them???

Concentrations and stuff

So the general idea for my concentration this year is human nature. I haven't hammered out all the details yet, like whether or not I'll do the whole thing in clay or use other mediums, but I think I'm going to express the concentration through hand sculptures. Why hands? Because I think hands are amazing, and I love how they work together. I also think they are extremely expressive of how we act and who we are. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of my first piece yet, so here are some pictures of an artist's work who has really inspired me in the past. Her name is Jacqueline Hurlbert and I first discovered her work at OCAC way back a few summers ago. She is from Oregon, works with clay, and has a lot of work focusing on people and aspects of our personality. She inspired me to think about a concentration based off human nature last year, but I ended up not going through with it until this year. Here is a link to a variety of her works being featured in a Palm Desert Gallery: http://www.codagallery.com/palm_desert/art/index.php?artist=68
In this link you can see some of her work focusing on the human torso/figurure, however I was more inspired by her work with heads and faces and dealing with personas. She was featured on OPB's "Oregon Art Beat" a while back, and I've found the clip! So here's the link, check it out: http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/segments/view/140