Lyrosa in Sculpey

I find it is easier to draw something when you can see it in 3D. I made this sculpey figure to help me draw a character, but the figure itself is pretty cute. Click the image for full view.

4x4 Process

There was a charity show at the Brush Gallery in Lowell and I donated a piece.
The theme was 4x4, and everyone got a canvas of that size to make art on and donate.

Here is my quick painting process as documented by my not so awesome cell phone camera. I was pretty happy with it for one afternoon of work but looking now it could use improvement.

Sketch

Warm tone on the canvas. Some background started.

First go at the background.

Brightening in some places, small refinements.

Just one layer of white!

Final!

New Header and Brush Show!

The badgers were getting a bit old, so I updated to a new piece of work.
This photo is an excerpt from a piece called "Tea Party" that was shown in the Brush Gallery "Welcome to the Neighborhood" Appleton Mills Exhibition. The opening was the same night as a chili-tasting contest so it was pretty busy!
Here is a photo from another angle of the piece in the Brush Gallery:

Tea Party, at the Brush Gallery in Lowell

This was my first mixed media sculpture that heavily involved taxidermy. I've done a number of taxidermy pieces leading up to this piece, but they were standalone and not particularly conceptual.

More photos from the event.
http://blog.culturehive.com/2012/02/art-and-chili/

Valentines

An explosion of cute, commissioned by the Harvard Citizen Kennedy School Student Newspaper.

Harvard Forest

During J-term, I took part in a mini-course at Harvard Forest. It was sort of an interdisciplinary art and science program, so we learned about forest ecology and processed core samples one day and had a writing workshop the next. I put my writing below the jump. Here is one of the drawings I did on our visual art day where we used pencil and pastel on brown paper. This exercise was led by artist in residence Debby Kaspari.

Cynomys

I have been making some sketches with my water pen recently, sketching from my new "Animal Skulls: A Guide to North American Species" book. This one is a species of squirrel.

Hitchens

I've been putting off posting this project for months now. Maybe I just hoped that it wouldn't matter how long I delayed in posting. Either way, I'm never comfortable with my depictions of humans and I'm not at all happy with this one. But why not just post it now...

In my 3D illustration class we had to create a bust of a person "in the news"... sort of a 3D editorial cartoon. So of course I chose Hitchens. His cancer diagnosis was relatively new, and I had just completed his book on Thomas Paine. He had recently completed an interview discussing his cancer, and his hollow, haunted look wouldn't leave my mind.

But he just looks so sick here. I just hoped he would get better and write more books and articles, and host more debates, and... well, just be Hitchens for another 10 years. I hoped I could file this project away during a triumphant rebound and never have to remember just how discolored the flesh is, or how sunken the eyes are, and that glassy look of a man who has not just glimpsed his own mortality, but has realized that the outcome of the fight might be determined within the hour.  But unfortunately my sculpey bust remains relevant, and here it is.

Materials and methods: I used flesh-colored sculpey on a wire and tinfoil armature. Color was added in thin washes of acrylic, and the shirt was hand sewn from scrap fabric.