First Week: Not Bad!

Let's go through the schedule! On Mondays, I have Anatomy for Toy Designers. We have a wonderful professor by the name of James Reid. I have heard from other professors that he is a master of anatomy; something that my classmates and I soon discovered. This guy REALLY knows his stuff. It is like being taught by an old master from the Renaissance. To be completely honest, I feel like I learned more about general figure drawing from a 2.5 hour lecture than I have in all my life drawing classes combined. I am psyched about the coming classes. I appreciate how laid-back the class is; we're allowed to use essentially any material and work in any size we want. We also learned that you can use skim milk as a spray fixative for your drawings. Awesome. On Tuesdays, we have Drafting and Product Materials/Safety Considerations. Drafting is, well...drafting. The first class I've ever had on the subject. Looks like it might be tedious, but I do love precise line drawings and schematics, so it'll be cool to learn how those are made. The Materials/Safety class is interesting, too. We learned about several types of plastic used in manufacturing this week. The second half of the semester will be focused more on electronics and stuff. At the end of class, we got a project: A toy that we will eventually take apart and examine. Mine is a medical kit: Included is a stethoscope, thermometer, syringe, band-aid, blood pressure checker, and a nose/throat examining doohicky. Wednesdays start out with Developmental Psychology, a course that I'm fairly stoked about. The professor seems really enthusiastic and very articulate, and the subject matter is extremely relevant to our major. We're going to have team debates later in the semester, which I am somewhat nervous about. I never got to do much of that in high school and I'm not excited about doing it for a grade. After that, we have Marker Rendering. The professor we have is new, but he seems pretty laid back and I'm excited to learn cool rendering techniques. His style of rendering objects is different from the one we learned in the summer workshop and Intro to Toy Design class, but I'm eager to see what he has to offer. Rendering things in marker is super-fun. Industry Overview is the name of our only Thursday class, and it's a really cool one. Each week, an industry representative will come and give us a lecture. This week, Franklin La Barbara (Vice President of Product Design) from Hasbro came and told us about the development of an R/C Car that just hit store shelves. It was such an interesting story and we learned a lot about what kind of work goes into the making of a toy. Check out the Ricochet 4x4; it's a really cool toy that can flip over and has a monster truck mode.



We will be making field trips in this class, as well! And on Friday, we have our hardcore classes: Drawing for Toy Design and Toy Design I. In the first one, we learn how to draw products in perspective and how to use our tools. We'll work out a few toy concepts later in the semester, but first comes the practical stuff; how to draw a toy concept and how to make it pop! The second is the meat and potatoes of the semester. Each week, we'll have a new concept theme to explore; for example, our first theme is a "Try Me!" toy. We'll have a week to research and come up with at least six toy concepts around that theme, then another week to make a presentation board and render it. It starts out slow, but we'll eventually be pumping out one board a week because the projects will start to overlap. We'll receive a new theme and have to research it while turning in concepts for the last weeks' theme while turning in boards for the theme from two weeks ago for a class critique. Whew. This week, we recieved our mission and took a trip to Toys R Us to research and play with the "Try Me!" toys on the shelves. It's a pretty broad theme, so I'm excited to see what our class will come up with. My first week of classes went very well and I'm pretty flipping enthused about the coming months of work. I try to not worry about the sleep I will loose or the social life I won't have; instead, I focus on where I'll be in two years' time. Worrying about stuff is a waste of time and energy.

Sorry about the lack of images, but there isn't really much to show yet. This coming week will be a short one, with class only on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sewing lab starts up this week for me as well; Tuesdays from 9-12 and Saturdays from 10AM-6PM. I'm not sure if I'm excited about that one yet.

Stay Tuned, -J

P.S. Here is what I ate for breakfast today. Bacon-pinach-egg-pepper jack on a soy pita. It's my breakfast taco. I love the Trader Joe's that opened down the street. I also love having an entire package of bacon to myself. The flash isn't very flattering, but...

'Twas the Night Before School...

...when all through the apartment,

Paced an excited young man who left the Fine Arts Department.

Hoping to make toys for chillun' all across the land,
He took paper, pencil, and marker in hand!
"A new year awaits!" he shouted, jumping with glee.
"New people, new professors, new places to see!"
Sweat, blood, and spirit over a two-year duration,
"MY TOYS SHALL BE KNOWN ALL ACROSS THE NATION!"

"Hee-hee, hoo-hoo, bwa-ha-ha-hah!"

"The world will be mine, la~la~la~la!"

***

Dear readers of Sharp Will, Dull Blade,

I have been a negligent blogger. I have left several of you writhing on your floors like drooling addicts craving your next hit. That's what I have been led to believe by a certain few people, anyway *coughalexandsaicough*

So I apologize for not blogging over the summer. Thinking back, there wasn't anything worth broadcasting to the world. Except for my nephew's powerful cute-fu.

Is he not the cutest thing you have ever seen? He is...9 months old? Or almost. Maybe almost 10. I'm a bad uncle.

So, yeah. Summer. Went to California for a wedding. Went home and semi-vegetated for a few weeks. Got some wisdom teeth removed. Came back to my cozy lil' NY apartment.

***

I read a ton of comics over the summer after getting back in to Western mainstream stuff back in May. I've decided that I am a Marvel guy and I really enjoy the Avengers books. I read the first volume of New Avengers (from after Disassembled to Siege) and Dark Avengers. I didn't realize that Mighty Avengers was also part of the saga, so that's on my list, too. Right now, I'm reading Invincible Iron Man, most of the new Avengers books, and some random DC things. I'm really excited about New York Comic-Con this year because I'll actually be familiar with artists and writers and will try to get stuff signed!

I've also recommenced my bass guitar self-edumacation. Seeing Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (saw it twice and want to see it again!) inspired me. Now I really want to be in a band, but I won't really have time for that. Ukulele-ing is slow, though. I haven't progressed much on that front, especially when compared to last summer.

***

Today, I finished my summer marker rendering assignments for Toy Design. Earlier this summer, we had a workshop where we learned how to do compose and render a toy board. It was pretty much review from the Intro to Toy Design class I took, but we got a little more in-depth with the rendering aspect.


I'm pretty happy with how they came out; at the very least, I've gotten better at staying in the lines when rendering.

***

To say that I'm excited to start this semester would be a gross understatement. Meeting new people, learning new things...I'm finally going to do what I wanted to do in college. I don't mean to discount the last two years I've had; My time in Fine Arts was awesome! I met some great friends and professors and grew a lot as an artist. But, starting this semester, I get to take my first steps into the world of design! Not just design for the sake of aesthetics or controversy, but design with purpose and practicality.

With the workload of the program, I may not be able to update the blog as often as I'd like. There might not even be a lot I can talk about; I don't want to give any toy companies free ideas! However, I'll do my best to make at least one post a week offering a vague description of what goes on in the Toy Design program. Or post something random and spontaneous, like this short film my friend from high school stars in:

I laughed out loud at least five times. Asian people crack me up! I giggle every time I look in the mirror.

***

Aaaaand that's a wrap for now. To everyone who has kept up with my blog over the past few years: I think you're crazy for wasting your time reading about the thoughts and artwork of a silly Asian kid. Thank you so very much for reading.

Stay tuned! Things are gonna get crazy.

-J

Venus of Where?

Yeah, yeah. Almost two months without a blog update; I've been slacking. But instead of boring you all with stories about how I was ridiculously busy with final projects, entertaining my parents who came to visit, trying to take a break from the world, and reading an obscene number of comics, I'll just jump in and tell you about my favorite painting I've done.

The mission for our final Figure Painting was to take the model and place her in an environment.

Initially, I was thinking of doing something completely fantastical and crazy in the background, like aliens attacking, the apocalypse taking place, unicorns, dragons...

But then I thought about the pose (which was debated about for almost an entire class period because compromise doesn't make people happy...) and this painting from art history came to mind.
So I decided to mesh the two together: A parody of a painting from art history with surreal and fantasy elements. Oh, and a mini self-portrait, too.

We were on a pretty tight schedule and only had a few weeks to work on this one. I ended up putting in around 12 hours of work in one day to finish it in time for our final critique. Thankfully, I wasn't alone...I had some powerful backup in my homie and former roommate Marcel. He was there working on about eight of his abstract paintings at once. It's always great to have someone to bounce ideas off of, especially when he's Marcel. Check out his new website, by the way! iammarcel.com

And here's the end result. See the little mini-painting of Venus of Urbino in the background? Isn't it clever? Isn't it?

There's a little cow there, too! For all of my out-of-state homies, that's the Empire State Building in the background. And Godzilla.
I was going to add more to the table there, but I was running out of time and had no references for what I wanted to add. So a lonely egg timer sits on the table, waiting for the day it will be used. Unfortunately, that day may not come because Godzilla is not far away.

It sorta looks like me. Am I tipping my hat or is it slipping off my head? And what is that mysterious book? Marcel suggested that it be "Mein Kampf" and I thought that would be hilarious because my sense of humor has been twisted by my friends. But I left it blank.

Ad a closeup of the model, Lauren. It took me forever to get her face ironed out...the way it connected to the neck and the shape of her face and a billion small things were throwing me off. So I added more hair so you can't see much of the neck and it was magically fixed! Cool how that happens, huh?

Evangeline and Louisa

Several weeks ago


Last Wednesday

I finally finished this two-figure painting in class on Wednesday. It's really interesting to see how certain things changed in the process. In this painting, the woman in the foreground (Louisa) ended up changing a lot. Her pose shifted bit by bit as the weeks passed.

At the pressing of my professor, I changed her head almost completely, among other things. Since we're slated to have the models for another week, I'm planning on taking a smaller canvas that I've had laying around to make a quick portrait of her.

Here's a closeup of Evangeline.

I might go in at some point and make the right side of the hair a bit darker. The highlights on the left side might not be as bright as I like, so I may also fix those. But as you can see, not much changed in the weeks.

Overall, I think this is my favorite painting that I've done so far, perhaps because we had a really long time to work on it. Even though we had two models, I felt like I had enough time to work each thoroughly with just enough time to develop a simple background. I almost wish that I painted the classroom instead of a flat purple background, though.

Many thanks to the two awesome models! Working with students must be interesting, if only for the weird conversations one can overhear. As always, thoughts and criticism are welcome in the comments!

-J

I'm So Vain...

...I probably think this painting is about me.

Sorry, couldn't resist. It isn't about me, it is of me!

So, here is a series of progress pics taken over the past two painting sessions. In Figurative (Figureative? We're painting the figure, but I don't know if we're painting figuratively...I'll stick to "painting" for now) Painting, we're doing self-portraits from observation (using a mirror).

Yes, a lot of things look "off" about it, but I think it's coming together alright. It's tough to paint yourself using a mirror and with one hand pulling an eyelid up partway...I move around a lot, to say the least. But I'm having a lot of fun painting it. I wish it were a more comical, exaggerated face.

I've also picked up a fan brush, which has been interesting to use. I have always been fascinated by their shape and when the local art store had a big sale, I couldn't resist picking one up. So far, I've only really used it for blending, which it excels at. This is both a good and bad thing; It makes beautiful transitions, but it moves me away from more expressive color placement and brush stroke. But I'm okay with that because I don't do expression very well, unless it involves a punching bag.

***

As for my other classes...well, I'll upload some pics of my other work whenever I remember to take pictures >_<. But so far, the semester has been going fairly well. I've been preoccupied with my Toy Design home test, which is chugging along slowly. I'll post all about that when I'm finished with it.

'till next time,
-J

Aesthetically Pleasing

When I began this semester, I was initially very skeptical about enjoying abstract painting. But now, with about two or three weeks left to paint, I have come to appreciate the freedom in the class. It's very liberating to paint non-objectively.

For our last two projects, we have several options. For the first one, I decided to go with a geometric theme on a 5' x 3' canvas. Here is a picture of what I have done so far.


Basically, all the coloring is finished and all I have left to do is outline the rectangular forms. I didn't take any in-progress pictures because I didn't think it would be interesting (that, and I keep forgetting my camera). All the process involves is, well...painting shapes and taping off the edges so they're straight. Pretty boring!

I am really happy with how this is coming out. In contrast with figurative painting, it's much easier to paint something you find aesthetically pleasing. My professor thinks that I should add some red or gray, but I'd rather not. Red would look nice, but I feel like I fall back on the primary colors too often. I enjoy the simple yellow-orange and almost blue-violet I have going on. Maybe some gray, but I'll have to finish filling in the lines first.

Not sure what I want to do with the next one...I think I want to do something organic because I have a tendency to do stuff with hard edges and lines.

Welcome (Back) to the Jungle!

*insert obligatory apology for a long silent period here*

Well, I'm back at school! After the first week of settling in, we really hit the ground running once classes started. I haven't become overwhelmed yet, and I don't intend on allowing that to happen! This semester, I'm signed up for Sculpture II, Figurative Painting, Printmaking II, Life Drawing, Abstract Painting, and my one liberal arts class: Film Art/Critique.

At this point in the semester, I'm most excited about Printmaking. Last class, I did a number of quick and easy monoprints of a sketch from my sketchbook using a sheet of acetate and ink. The volume of work somebody can produce in that class is amazing. I'll have pictures of the monoprints, which I'll use as a springboard for more complicated prints, in another blog post.

Overall this semester, we seem to be pushing toward an open, abstract body of work. I'm not a particularly big fan of abstract art, but I'll take this opportunity to really let myself go before things tighten up next year. The amount of freedom we have this semester compared to last is almost overwhelming. Expect some posts with cool artwork in the future!

***

I've gotten a lot of requests for pictures of my massive three-person dorm room, so for all those wanting to see...

This is taken from the dooway. My roommates' wardrobes stand in a fairly long hall.

Turn the corner and you see the path to the living area. Bathroom door to the right, eating area to the left, and kitchen is a little further down.

Peek inside the bathroom! Toilet has a stall door type thing, which is great, and the shower is huge!

The kitchen. Typically cleaner, but our sink is leaking like crazy, keeping us occupied. We have lots of cabinets, too.

Dining Room!

Big, open living area. My nook isn't pictured.

Home entertainment system! 22-inch TV, PS3, and lots of Rock Band! If you do a 180, then directly behind you...Is my corner! My desk is crammed in there, but it's really nice and cozy. I'll take more pics later.

We're planning on adding more stuff, like a functioning lamp and some wall decorations. In about 3 weeks, we'll probably have the coolest pad in the dorm.

***

Finally, some artwork! This past week, the Fine Arts students started up a free Life Drawing session from 6-9 on Friday nights. It's awesome because it's totally student-run and we're free to do whatever we want, which is liberating to say the least. Because I love to draw portraits, I spent most of my 40-minute stay drawing the model's face. Here are two I did with a charcoal pencil:

Both were done in about 10 minutes. I'm trying to speed up that drawing hand a bit by cutting out the under-drawing phase (circles, proportion lines, etc.). The likeness may not be the greatest, but I'm hoping to iron that out along the way.

***

That about sums it up! I've also taken up crocheting as a side hobby, but I haven't touched my crochet hook in a week or so. I plan on posting pics of work as I get stuff done, so keep an eye out on my Twitter for updates! Or just check back every few days!

-Wishing Helvetica was a selectable font for Blogspot,
J

All These Things That I've Done

Ok, lessee if I can make a longer post than last time! I have fun, adventurous things to speak of!

First off, I'll fulfill the prophecy foretold in my last blog post: updates on PRINTMAKING!!!!



Currently, we are working on etchings. To the left here is the amazing Renaissance etching Knight, Death, and the Devil by Albrecht Durer. Of course, our professor wasn't expecting us to do anything as intricate as this one.

Initially, I had no idea what to do for this project. There are so many options! Because of the nature of the medium, you can be as fine or loose as you want with the lines. Compare the above etching to this series by Picasso:
Pretty big difference, yeah?

So for inspiration, I was reading this awesome dark fantasy manga called Berserk. The artist, Kentaro Miura, has ridiculous skillz and uses a lot of techniques that would seem to translate well into etchings. In the end, I went with this:
Here, you have a swordsman standing in front of a castle with a solemn look on his face. Pretty simple, right? I feel kinda bad because the cape and the sword is pretty much ripped off of Berserk's main character, Gatts.....But capes and swords are totally badass, so I couldn't not have both of them.

The process of etching is covered pretty well by Wikipedia here. It's a pretty straightforward, but time-consuming undertaking. Here is how my etching plate came out:

I had to transfer the original image on backwards so that it would come out facing the right way (although it probably wouldn't matter since I don't have any words). Shiny, ain't it? This is a zinc plate. You can also use copper, steel, or even plexiglass. The problem with plexiglass is that it'll wear down a lot faster than the others, so you can only run a few prints before they start losing quality.

Anyway, here is a pretty crappy image of the end result:
Not bad, I suppose. The print is in a display case, so my reflection is showing a little bit. I was a bit disappointed in the face. The eyes are completely different and now it looks too anime-ish. Well, it was pretty anime-ish to begin with, but the facial expression is still really different. Luckily, you can still add to the etching after dipping the plate into the acid bath.

So, expect a better picture later on and maybe some touch ups.

And now for some more GanPen prints!

Sorry for the bad pics. Bloody display cases.....Why are my prints so good?
Anyway, this here is an embossing. The idea is to run a print with thick, damp paper and no ink on the matrix at extremely high pressure. The end result is an impression of the raised parts of your matrix that looks really cool under certain lights. It works a lot better with a wood matrix...mine was linoleum. After the paper dried, I took a can of spray paint and painted at an angle to hit certain raised parts and to bring out some really cool shadow effects. Pretty cool, no?
And this is a simple print over a pastel colored background. The linoleum block slid around a bit, so there is a bit of image ghosting, but I think it came out pretty well.

With only 2 weeks left of school, I don't see us doing anything else other than printing more etchings. This is all I really want to do, anyway!

***

Now for random stuff in my life! Today, I went on an adventure to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's Sakura Matsuri with friend Julie. Unfortunately, it was raining, but it was still lots of fun. Despite going to Japan a few years ago, I'd never seen a Cherry Blossom tree until today. Here are some pictures of flowery things!

Mysterious grape flowers!Koi pond!

Closeup of Cherry Blossoms!

Part of the Path of Cherry Blossoms!

Like I said, it was really fun to see. There were a lot of Japanese cultural events, but we both had a lot of work to do so we couldn't stay for very long. If only it were a sunny, windy day so that the petals would fly around and look super-pretty like they do in anime...

That about sums it up! Dunno when the next update will be, or what it will be about, so keep posted!

While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done.

-J