Parallel Final

This here is a drawing (done in fine-point sharpie) of a rather oversized green plastic army man smashing a beauteous smattering of life-related personal items (wedding album, teddy bear etc). I read an article discussing some old war veteran who returned to normandy for the 70th anniversary of d-day. Both for the battle and his return, he jumped out of an airplane. With a parachute. All very cool. But then he said he'll probably do it again next year. This struck me as a little bit clingy to his war days. So for the project I decided to exaggerate this observation a bit and portray him as somebody who's so focused on this one past thing that it belittles and dominates every other aspect of his life. Thus the toy soldier crushing everything else.

Artists Develop Art Making Skills
Through my hard labor and toil in procuring this fine piece of markerwork, I learned how to create a gradient with a couple of sharpies. One simply presses the tips of two sharpies together, with the darker one on top, letting the darker ink run into the lighter pen. Then it just runs out in a dark-to-light gradient when the light pen is applied to paper. 

Artists Communicate Through Their Work
In this piece I communicated that whoever is bothering himself on a yearly basis with something that happened 70 years ago really ought to pay more attention to the rest of his 93 year old life. Feel the judgmentalism. Like daggers.

Artists Take Risks
The problem with sharpie is that when it's done, it's done. Pencil can be erased, some paints can be painted over, origami can be refolded. Not so with ink. When I finished the soldier I was really happy with it, and I was aware that I probably wouldn't be so satisfied with the rest, but I went ahead with it anyways.

Parallel Intro

For the parallel project we have to do something with taking a current event and making something basically symbolic of it. I don't really have any idea what I'll be doing. I've been considering doing something with the whole Russia/Ukraine thinggumy, but I have yet to have any concrete thinks. I am largely uninspired by current events.

Time Final

At the very first of fleeting glances, this may look like an ordinary arm. In fact, one may not even notice the arm due to the super distracting words "dunkin" and "donuts" in the background. But anyways, there's a sun on that arm. This magnificent phenomenon is caused by none other than the sun itself. Originally my plan was to cut out a stencil shaped like this or that and paste it to my arm. However, I discovered keeping paper taped to oneself is horribly irritating and tedious, so instead I used a thick layer of black acrylic paint. I painted the sun. Then I proceeded to make clever use of my pasty Caucasian hue by sitting out in the sunlight and getting a tan, except where the paint was blocking out the light. The result was a lovely temporary tattoo.

Artists Develop Art Making Skills
Well first off, I'd like to clarify that I detest painting. I don't usually voluntarily paint. Any painting at all is a step towards being better at painting, that's how little practice I get. And here I painted the sun. Also, I learned how to use something as everyday as the actual sun as a means of creating art.

Artists Take Risks
I took several risks when I dared attempt this project. First and foremost, I ran the horrible risk of getting skin cancer. Because that's what happens to people whenever they go out in the sun. I hiss in the sun's general direction. Also, there was absolutely no guarantee that this would even work. That's why I picked a simple design. I mean, look at how blurry the borders are anyways.

Artists Reflect
Not only did I thoroughly consider above risks during my intense reflection and introspection. I also had to plan ahead. We were going through something of a cloudy era at the time, so I had to be prepared for when the shy ol' sun finally showed its stupid face.

Perspective Intro

This is basically what we (everyone at my table) will do for our perspective project. Actually we already did this about five billion years ago, and this is a late post. But I'll write in future tense anyways, since this is the intro. So yeah, we will do this. It's a free expression tunnel. It will make fabulous use of the ever-puzzling conundrum that is one-point perspective. On the walls of the tunnel will be a whole mess of prime examples of street cred worthy graffiti. They will be drawn in perspective naturally. In chalk. Naturally.