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letter to future AP2D art students:

future AP2D student, look forward to this class. it is a unique opportunity to hone not your technical skill, but your conceptual skill. to really form a style and a cohesive body of work. this class gets you to think about not just how the art looks, but what the art is about, which is the most important part of making art in my opinion. this is something that is not discussed nearly enough in art classes, and the chance to learn about it in this class should be savored [especially if you will not be attending an art college after high school].

as for how to do well in the class, you should always make sure you have a good amount of time to work on your concentration outside of class. for instance, i got an early release after the class so that i always had extra time to work. also, go big or go home. i made one huge piece at the end of the year and i loved making it. i actually wish i had done more of that size [it was up to my neck]. people love seeing big art that makes an impact, and every time someone made something huge this year, the whole class loved it, so don't be afraid to make huge, grandiose art.

also, put some thought into your blog, and read others' blogs. i don't think the blog thing was utilized enough this year, and i think it could have been a great way to showcase who/what inspires you and what you were thinking about when you made certain drawings and things of that nature. all we really did was comment. but i had fun doing the actual blog updates about inspiring artists and writing some of what i was thinking or inspired by during the updates for my drawings. so have fun with it.

and that goes for the whole class as well. just have fun with it.

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favorite drawings from this year:

Order

 The Garden of Plenty

Wizards Summon Ancient Wisdom

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The central idea of my concentration is this:

Rituals as a way for humans to understand their surroundings, as in art. 

I hope that that makes sense, but it's the simplest way i can think to summarize what my concentration is about.

My drawings work with this concentration in this way:

Rituals are a way of visualizing concepts, just as art is. Just as a tribesman puts on a costume and does a ceremonial dance to celebrate the changing seasons or fertility or something like that, I draw cool scenes that symbolize similar types of concepts. Both rituals and art [at least my art] deal in symbols and function because of them. Specifically, because of humans' unique ability to draw unseen meaning from objects. This is why the scenes I draw can have meaning to a viewer. The individual things I draw and their arrangement on the paper symbolize whatever concept I wish to communicate, and at the same time, look pretty. The concentration also works on a literal level because the scenes in my concentration all depict mythic looking rituals.

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My concentration has worked out pretty darn well so far. The concepts I wanted to communicate being communicated [hopefully] and all my pieces connect fairly well. I have a few things that I would have done differently. For instance, though I still have a lot of interest in them and they still connect with what I draw about, I sort of wish I had picked a concentration less restricting to my visual subject matter than 'rituals'. But then again, I've really got no other ideas that wouldn't end up being really vague. And I also would have been more careful about the way I draw people, because some of them ended up being more 'cartoony' [for lack of a better word] than I would have liked. But I can't complain, my concentration is still rad.

As for what I will do for my next pieces, as I finish up my concentration, I really want to make sure it is cohesive enough. While many have remarked on the cohesiveness of my work, I feel like it's just because I'm the only person here doing illustration. If there were other people in this class who made up characters and drew scenes like I did, than I might have to put more effort into setting my style apart and making sure it looked like my art. But I want to do this anyway, regardless of how cohesive it already looks compared to non-illustration concentrations. So with my last two drawings [pictured in last update] "Present" and "Dignity," I wanted to combine the design themes that had appeared only once before in my concentration and combine them with other seldom implemented design themes to really make all my stuff connect well.

We only have, what, four more pieces or so? So, I will make more drawings that unify the design of the concentration, but for my last couple I want to really go all out. Since I'm just a high school kid, my resources for making really epic art are often limited, and I want to make my most epic drawing yet. First of all, I want to make it really freaking big: at least five feet in each direction. It'll have a lot of blood in it. And more animals and women, which I don't draw too often. Trust me, it's gonna be wicked. Also, I want to do one that isn't really scene at all, but a hieroglyph type thing with a couple characters and symbols drawn completely in gold, on a background of straight up marble looking texture, and it will be pretty big, too. I want to do these because even though they should be cohesive, a god concentration should always take risks and go for broke at times.

____________________TL;DR: I like my concentration, but I want it to be cohesive, and I also want to make some big epic drawings with lots of blood and gold.

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 "Dignity" (in progress)

"Present"



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 "Wizards Summon Ancient Wisdom"

"Two Costumed Hunters"

Here are two finished drawings I made. As usual, everything is a symbol, so really analyze the pictures if you want to get it.Victorian illustration and eastern european folk art are some things I thought about when drawing these. Also I was listening to bon iver if that helps
Ever heard of tarot cards? Look up "the magician"


[my concentration is on rituals]

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Here is the picture of me with the lady i sold the ad to. She is from Chrisman Frames in downtown LO. I apologize for the tardiness of this picture.

On an unrelated note, it surprised me to learn that I have 4 pageviews from the Ukraine and 1 from Italy. Hello, eastern Europeans. Thanks for your pageviews.

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