Nature and Still Lifes

So I'm taking a drawing for electronic media class (I know, so challenging), and I figured I should put up some work from it (none of which I really tried too hard in). The blue dog (It's a Pokemon) and the dinosaur with the bunny were just for fun between projects.

Starting again

Well, my mind has been working overtime over the past six months, and I figured it's time I put it all somewhere. I'll try to post schoolwork still, but occasionally I'll put a post on what I'm thinking about. It might be about video games. It might be about music. But it'll probably be about my beliefs and spiritual life. 

Also, I'm going to redo the design of this blog. Eventually. But it will happen! I'm changing it to something more me-ish.

For tonight's thoughts: What do you like in a church?

Painted dragons

I started painting the dragons today. I wish I had finished them before class ended. Oh well. This isn't their final paint job.

Dragons, dragons

I started my dragons about two weeks ago. Here they are all covered in clay. I'm making little instruments for them to turn them into a band. They're all based off of friends of mine who play instruments, want to be in a band, or are just good friends.

Tiny Giant Elephants

For my public sculpture piece, I made several tiny elephants and placed them on the floor of crowded rooms and filmed the reaction that took place. My concept was to see how well people could ignore the "Elephant in the room". I'll post pictures and video as soon as I can get a hold of them.

A gallery-going goblin

Here's my finished sculpture piece. He's a goblin in an art gallery. I made him with clay, fired, then painted details, and covered him in fur.

A Gallery Goblin

For the art show this month, I'm making a "Gallery-going Goblin":

After he's fired, I'm going to paint details and add some fur. I'll be furring him using this technique with white, orange, and green faux fur:

http://beetlecat.livejournal.com/8094.html

And a couple different lengths of fur for accents.

Getting a head in the art world

The first assignment in my sculpture class was to create a realistic life-size bust of yourself. Since I'm normally a happy person, I wanted to make myself smiling with my mouth open.

It didn't work so well.

So I closed my mouth and went with another approach.

I'm much happier with this one, even though it still doesn't look exactly like me. I edited it a little after this, so the final product will look different. Pictures coming soon!

What is Sculpture?

So my first assignment is to define the word "sculpture." Now I am an abstract person, but I get very concrete when it comes to art topics. I believe that sculpture is the art of molding, shaping, or carving material(s). The root of the word is Latin for "to carve". Which is probably because a lot of Roman sculptures were carvings.

Naked people carvings.

(found on a blog site here.)

So as you may have guessed, I am a fan of actual design or realism in sculpture. Granted, the sculptures I've made (save a few) have been cartoons or fantasy, but I still took the time to plan out my work and design it.

Sculpture in the real sense has logical thought. After all, you can't make a 40-ft wide sculpture stand up on one 4-in wide stand. At least, not without some thought about the physics behind it.

As for materials, pleh, take what you can get. I personally have a bias against using metal, though, simply because only metal sculptures can withstand the elements, and those types of things are EVERYWHERE (regardless of actual quality). I even count origami as sculpture.

So sculpture, from a classical standpoint, is carving, molding, or shaping materials. Regardless of the materials. Regardless of the subject matter (although that's not always a good thing).

(Found here.)

4D Studio - Final Project

So I made speedpainting of a triptych for my final project.

Here are the videos:

Part 1: Chariots

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1730848145689

(I had to upload these to Facebook because they were too big.)

Part 2: Battle

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1730852265792

Part 3: Broken

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1730860025986

I had a lot of fun with them. I missed painting on the computer, and this was a nice exercise with it.

Here are the pictures (without the videos):

3D Studio - Final Project

For my final project, I made 15 dinosaur toys.

I grew up with dinosaurs and I was nice to put my knowledge of them to use. I made these little guys out of Crayola Model Magic. They probably took maybe a half hour at most to complete, so these would be an easy and fairly cheap source of income. -nods vigorously- I made the little "promotion" picture with Adobe Illustrator (which is rather fun to use) as well as the tags. Sadly, the models aren't as sturdy as I hoped, so I may not be able to use them as actual toys.

But oh well. I had a lot of fun. :D

3D Studio - Woodcarving

For my carving project, I made an itty bitty big horned sheep.

I put my ipod there for size comparison. He took at least 8 hours to finish. I'm overall happy with him (my first carving!) but I definitely learned what I'm changing for later carvings.

I think his butt is cute.

I started a bunny one, but I won't be able to finish it in time. Maybe I can keep going and do the entire Chinese zodiac in itty bitty woodcarvings.

4D Studio - The Internet is Really Really Great

...for artists!

For my Internet assignment, I made my own website.

http://racecarartstudio.wordpress.com/

It's just an online portfolio for now. I want to add a page of links and a store later.

3D Studio - Count Duckula

Thus, I present to thee a scene from the book Dracula, played by wax ducks on cardboard background.

Yeah, I'm weird.

This was for the moldmaking assignment. I took the ducks I already had, made molds, and poured wax into them to make these ducks. I put the set together with a hot glue gun.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it looks, and everyone in class seemed to like it too.

4D Studio - Animation project: Laverne the Camptosaurus

Because of this, I now have "The Entertainer" stuck in my head.

So this is my spin off of Gertie the Dinosaur. I figured it was fitting, considering that this is my first claymation/stop-motion, and Gertie was the first successful animation. I made her out of Sculpy clay and used Photoshop, iMovie, and Quicktime to make the animation.

Special thanks to  my sister for letting me use her camera, and Windsor McCay for the idea.

4D Studio - Animation change of plans

Well, I lost interest in the fox animation (a natural occurrence). So I'm changing to a claymation short. I'm going to mold a clay camptosaurus (which is like an iguanodon) doing things around my desk. I only have three different colors of clay, so hopefully this works. He'll be mostly white and made in a very cartoony style.

Just a quick doodle of a possible design. I'll probably make his neck longer. What do you think: stripes or spots?

3D Studio - Count Duckula

Ever wonder what would happen if you combined Dracula and rubber ducks?

No? Oh. Um...

Well, now you can wonder no more!

For my casting multiples project, I am going to recreate a scene from the book Dracula using my large collection of rubber ducks. I'm going to make molds of the ducks and full the molds with wax instead of clay, so I an put the scene together and not have to fire anything. I'm gong to use cardboard to make the scenery and other things.

3D Studio - The Hand of DOOM!!!

So the assignment was to sculpt my hand in clay.

It started out innocently with a basic pose and lots of detail.

And then...

I produced this:

So yeah. It turned out scarier than I expected.

Another note that I learned while making this: I have really tiny hands!