Busy friday

Last Friday I had a very busy day. It started off with the final seminar of the semester which means I will have even more time to concentrate on my degree show now. I had to read into a text/website about the show TV Party which was done on public acces cable tv in Brooklyn during the 70's. I was amazed seeing this because the idea kind of felt like the way I lived with my friends in Berkeley (except for the drugs) during my exchange in the States. It's basicaly an out of control art party being broadcasted live. In Berkeley we used to jus drink and make stuff after we got home from college which I think is what making art should be like. It was an amazing time and seeining this stuff made me think about that time again and realise how much I miss those days.

After that I went to a lecture from Krijn de Koning. He is from the Netherlands (despite the fact that he keeps refering to it as Holland :p). and comes from an architectual background. I thought his work was very good but unfortunately the lecture felt a bit long since he was just talking about the same concept over and over.

Then I had to rush down to see Graham, the only tutor I havn't officially assigned to me as a tutor during my time here at ECA. I had a short talk with him earlier this week and he told me it was possible to sign up for a talk on this friday and so I did. I am very happy that I did because I had a great talk with him about all sorts of stuff. We talked about what interestst me in the people who have all these classic cars and the differences between the people who just polish their cars and make them look as new and never drive them. And offcourse the people who do drive their classic cars and how they become a part of the family (as they did all those years ago).

As if the day wasn't long enough yet there was also a Co2 projectspace opening from some of the 1st year students and I even met up with some people from the glass department. It is always nice to talk to them since they are from a different department/medium it is very interesting to hear their oppinion on things.

I'm going to leave it with this but I would like to show you this video which is a trailer for a documentary about the TV Party (if you read this by e-mail you should click on the top link so it directs you to my blog, since the video doesn't show up in e-mails).

Glassblowing

After little over a year I finaly got to blow some glass again. I talked to my friend Lance last weekend who is currently working at a glass workshop in Alaska. He told me blowing glass is like riding a bicycle you never forget it. Well I wasn't that good at blowing glass to begin with so I didn't have that much to prove. But to be honest I was quite surprised to see how my new cups came out. I have made better but I have definitaly made worse aswell.

I am thinking about a little side project using some model cars I have found over the years and paint them in a scrap yard kind of way covered by a glass stulp. Who knows!

Triads..... or not

This morning we had triads planned this time with a theory student aswell which was interesting. We started a bit late since our tutor didn't show up, but to be honest I think it went quite well without one. It felt that everyone was a bit more free in talking since the was no-one "keeping the score" it turned more into a kind of group crit quit quickly and I have to say I like it better that way. with the triads everyone speaks for 10 minutes uniterupted but we did it a bit more freely. I asked about the use of colour I have been trying out and told about still not sure wheater to use colour at all or not. It seems to work well on the smaller size prints but not so well on the big billboard size one.
It was also interesting to see and talk about their work and the time went by quickly. I am looking forward to see some progress in their work aswell.


And I finaly managed to take some descent pictures of the colouring I have been doing aswell as an improved stenciling version of the blue car I did this weekend.

CARisma

After 2 years I finaly made a little stop motion movie about my second CARisma project in Istanbul at the 5th Student Triennial in 2010. I'm still not good at making video's and the fact that I only have windows Live movie maker doesn't help much either. I did decided to try a little background song since the other video I did felt a bit boring with no sound. The music is by one of my favourite bands called Navarone.

Stencil pt 2

I just finished the second stencil and will try it out soon. The picture shows it laying over the print before I'm going to spray paint on it.

I've also talked to Lindsay (who has her studio next to me) about printing pictures of landscapes and transparantly spraypaint cars on that. I thought it was a very good and interesting concept which talks about all the car sites being cleared up an a part of our history that is fading out. I guess I will have to go and make some landscape pictures now.

Stenciling

Today I started the first try on some stenciling over my prints. I never really did stenciling before so it was a bit difficult to find out where to cut on the picture without cutting it so that the whole picture would fall apart. I think it went well for a first try but it definitaly needs some more work (I'm already creating a better stencil right now with some help of the computer). And taking pictures has again proven to be difficult (I brought a better camera in today so I guess it's just the studio light causing the problem). It's good to see the differences between all the colouring I am doing at this time so I can see what different things do to the image. I was a bit affraid that just spraying this flat colour over the image would make it too much of a graffiti painting. I am not sure wheater I still feel that way right now.

Tutorial

Yesterday I had a tutorial with Kenny Hunter. It was nice to have an individual tutorial for a change as I still feel a bit uncomfortable talking within a group sometimes. It also saves the having to explain what I am doing again and again and thus we could get strait to the point. I am experimenting with the usage of colour in my work and as you can see in my previous posts I have been using the airbrush to try out different things. Kenny suggested that I might want to try out some stenciling and see what a flat covering colour does with the work insted of the shaded airbrushing. I think it will be a good idea to try out and will try to do so before next monday when we will have triad crits.

I have also been talking to the billboard company in the Netherlands about my project and the possibility to get a billboard there during the degree show. It seems that it might be happening so I will keep you up to date with that aswell.

I'll put up some new pictures as soon as I made some new colour tryouts, can't promise when though.

Triumph Herald

It's bee a while since I took pictures of the Triumph Herald and today I finaly managed to print and airbrush one of those pictures. I feel like I am starting to get the hang on airbrushing again and enjoy it aswell. Looking at the picture now I think it still needs some work but I am quite happy about it.