12/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours. 12 paintings. Done done done done done.

11/12

Today, 11am-11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings, and I've only go one left. I imagine this has a sort of narrative with the last one I made. Wait and see where it goes from here.

10/12

Today 11am -11pm. 12 hours 12 paintings, and only 2 left.

9/12

Today 11am- 11pm. 12 hours 12 paintings. Only 3 left? Really?

8/12

Today, 11am- 11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings. I'm 2/3 of the way done. Here's something I've never done before.

This was fun, but I'm just not sure.

7/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours 12 paintings. More than half way there. My stomach is grumbling, I'm going to try and get this next one done with enough time to go eat some food!

6/12

Today 11am -11pm. 12 hours 12 paintings. Im' half way there!

Not quite done yet, but you get the idea

5/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings. I can't believe I'm already done with number 5.

Feathers are a paradox. Both beautiful, delicate, free, elegant and dead, detached from their bird, at the mercy of the world. They can be sad and lonely or poignantly free.

4/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours 12 paintings. I'm a third of the way there now, and about a half an hour behind. All this cutting things out takes time. Homeward Bound by Simon & Garfunkle played as I finished this one.

3/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings. Painting number 3, not quite finished, but I've gotta keep going. Expect more feathers.

2/12

Today 11am-11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings. Here's number two.

Not really sure where this came from, let's see where it goes.

1/12

Today, 11am-11pm. 12 hours, 12 paintings. Here is the painting for the first hour.

I'm still thinking about the wild swans poem by Edna st. Vincent Millay.

Day 79: It begins

11-11, 12 hours, 12 works of art. Here we go.

Day 78: Great Things To Come

Being a very good boss, I gave myself thanksgiving off. I'm in Miami until the 5th, but don't plan on taking that much time off. I'm diving back into it starting tomorrow when I am doing another 12 hour marathon. For those who have never witnessed such an event (well and for those who have), stay tuned tomorrow when I will be making a painting an hour for 12 hours. Yes, that means 12 hours straight of painting. If your curious to see what this would produce, stay tuned, I'll be posting as I go tomorrow, and if you simply can't wait to satisfy your curiosity check out my posts from october 13th.

Day 74: Learn a New Artist Tuesdays

A decision, rather, a declaration. Announcing "Learn a New Artist Tuesdays". Okay, so not the most eloquent name, but I'll work on it. The idea though, has me plenty excited. From now on, I will research a new artist every week, and post about them on tuesday. A good way to learn some more art history, and share the wealth.

First ever Learn a New Artist artist:

Tamara de Lempicka (suggested by the woman curating my dad's show):

I started out with a google image search, her work is so compelling, beautiful, powerful.

Her work mainly features the female figure, with powerful tones and colors. There is often a slightly cubist aesthetic to her paintings, sometimes more subtle than others. A brilliant insight she had about cubism, she saw it as the destruction of something, which certainly informs the dark quality of her paintings with their rich tones.

Though she was a baroness, her life is hardly what one would expect. She collaborated with many big name artists, and had many many lovers (male and female). What ever failure she might have experienced as a mother and wife, her art was extremely successful. Check her out for sure.

Day 72: Packing and Travelling

Not much to report, except that as always, I have left packing to the last minute. Oh Miami winter, like summer sun, we're soon to be reunited.

Day 71: Moving Right Along

Any self-respecting artist knows the importance of hands. We live or die by our hands, and our ability to draw them. That is why my newest painting has me so excited/ anxious. It features hands. I wanted to draw the gesture of opening hands. I did a little prep work and the underdrawing for the painting.

I also feel like I'm being courted by markers, they are winning my heart little by little. I'm going to have to start using other things soon so markers don't just become my fall back medium (it isn't always that professional looking). Anyhow, here is the underdrawing.
I'm excited to see what comes of it. Alas, I leave town for a few weeks on Monday, so tomorrow is my last chance to work on it for a while. Don't feel to bad for me though, I'm going to spend two weeks in Miami with family and Art Basel.

Day 70: Daunted? Me? Never.

I forgot to mention about last night's post that that was the final page in my sketch book. Generally starting a new sketchbook is agonizing procrastination, and I will go for weeks denying that I am daunted before finally making that first mark on that first pristine white page. Well, it is with great pride and satisfaction that I bring to you, just the day after the completion of my last sketch book, the first page to my new one!

Back! Back timidity! I even made a sketch for the painting that will eventually (no, make that soon) be that large white masonite board I posted a few days ago.

Most exciting of all is to finally have many projects going at once. This is how it should be, the simultaneous development of many ideas at many stages. Yes, this is it, this is how it should be. Am I daunted? No! Never!

Day 69: Getting better

I spent most of today resting up so as to be quickly rid of this cold.

I went over some more poems and found (courtesy of my brother) the one I want to work on next (pictured below). I thought it would be interesting to get some feedback on images ideas emotions anything that other people get from this poem. Leave a comment, send an email, lets have tea and let me know what you think about it.

Day 68: To New Beginnings

What's brown and white and sanded all over?
My new masonite board all prepped and gessoed!

And what is red and congested and in constant need of tissues? Alas, my nose.

Day 65: Mission Accomplished

A new painting

Wild Swans

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

I looked into my heart while the wild swans went over.

And what did I see I had not seen before?

Only a question less or a question more;

Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,

House without air, I leave you and lock your door.

Wild swans, come over the town, come over

The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

Day 64: Taking care of business

This is a painting very very very near completion. If you have any ideas or suggestions, speak now or forever hold your peace. Tomorrow I will post the finished version with its poem.

Day 63: The march of progress

I swear progress is being made, not quite yet perceptible, but big changes are coming, I promise.

Day 61: Everything has changed.

Now that I am 23, nothing is the same. I can make two flavors of ice cream in one day now that I am 23. I can have cupcakes topped with frosting and ice cream now that I am 23. Yes, I feel older, wiser, stronger, better, even peanut butter sandwiches taste different now that I am 23. Nothing is the same, everything has changed. Even the painting I started yesterday is as unrecognaizable as I am to my 22 year old self.

Okay, you got me, but hey, the painting is definitely completely different.

Day 60: beginnings and endings

I started a new painting, today, on my last day as a 22 year old. The finished product will probably be unrecognizable. Look forward to it, and tomorrow.

Day 58: Art Games

Saturday night I went over to visit Annie for dinner. A nice little party.

We played art games with big pieces of drawing paper and rules. The best thing we made involved little circles and big circles and coloring things in depending on overlap made by Annie, Peter, Joey and I.

This drawing is like 4 feet tall. I was amazed by how long you can play theses games for without losing interest.

Day 57: A poem and a painting

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

-Pablo Neruda

All those men were there inside,

when she came in totally naked.

They had been drinking: they began to spit.

Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.

She was a mermaid who had lost her way.

The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.

Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.

Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.

Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.

They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,

and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.

She did not speak because she had no speech.

Her eyes were the colour of distant love,

her twin arms were made of white topaz.

Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,

and suddenly she went out by that door.

Entering the river she was cleaned,

shining like a white stone in the rain,

and without looking back she swam again

swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

Day 56: Progress

So not quite done with this painting yet, I got into texturing the whit parts too, so I have a lot of meticulous gluing to do. Here is what it looks like now, tomorrows changes will be subtle but indispensable.

Day 55: Lots of little black lines

I'm working on a big drawing to go with a Pablo Neruda poem. Here are some very early progress shots, I decided to color a vast space with a small marker. I like the effect it gives, but it is slow going. Still I plan to have the drawing finished by tomorrow, here are some early shots. Expect it to look very different when I finish

Day 54: Swans, and Spiders, and Hearts! Oh my!

Other than making some very very delicious ice-cream with my housemate Joey, it was a day spent hard at work. I've been looking for and analyzing poems (yes I am very much open to any poem suggestions) for the past few days,

and I've been a little anxious about how I'm going to make art about any of them. There are two ways that I can see it going horribly wrong.

In way 1 I try to stay completely faithful to the poem, working to display every aspect of it as literally as I can until the painting becomes no more than a muddled trite reflection of a shadow of the original poem.

In way 2 I abstractify the poem, mostly ignoring the original ideas to focus on the idea of how the poem is composed, and thus make a jumbled meaningless mess that doesn't even reflect a shadow of the poem.

So while I sort out my anxieties, I'm hatching a plan and mulling things over. I've decided I will do a 12 paintings in 12 hours deal at least once a month, so now that it is november, I've got that in my near future. I've also decided to familiarize myself with the imagery of these poems, so I spent much of today drawing swans and spiders and human hearts. I never knew I was repulsed by spiders until I typed "spider" into google image search. The camel spider that came up... well, I'll probably have nightmares. Hearts are pretty gruesome too.

The point of this self torture is to be able to manipulate these images as freely and easily as a writer would call them into a poem, so that when I do my 12 drawings in a day, I can focus on exploring this poetry idea without having to stumble over the imagery. Here are some things to look at.