shake shake

This was my first monochromatic piece and I'm still not sure how I feel about the colours, it's so alien to work that way.



I don't know what sort of music you guys are into, but I love dron-y shoegaze-n-roll psych and one of the best bands out there doing it is The Morning After Girls.
This is a segment they did for a radio show, it's quite long but if you don't have time to listen to all of it, go to the middle and listen to the song because that one is really beautiful. I wrote them this a while ago:
i was putting together a short (there are four) list of songs that are currently, purely auditorily literally turinng me on and getting me off
and you've got two. so here's what i think
Lazy Greys: breathy count-off ...3, 4. the bass line is so interesting, i imagine it is fingers flickering over your warm skin and a body rolling around with you coming in and out of you, the reverby guitar i'm a junkie for is like the feeling in your throat you get when you're real turned-on and kind of nervous and the vocals are the way you breathe in when someone touches you just right. the harmonica is you trying to control yourself.
i can picture how you would play this, it's slow but i don't think that's less sexy, i think it's more because of the passion you can put behind everything. it'd be like grinding yourselves into your instruments, it's a total seducer song, i'd love to listen to this and panther-seduce someone
and Run For Our Lives i would just have a lot of fun fooling around with dancing to that live. the guitar makes me move and the bass line is such a perfect backup to fall onto plus the tambourine's has that killer backbeat that's the easy way
yeah!

you can find those two songs on youtube.


ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE:
Stop looking for approval in others.


As Mavis Staples would say, Respect Yourself.

(from Wattstax)

Detour semi-final

To Do:
darken shadow for car
define top right fight scene
bring over atmosphere to reclining woman

anything else, sugarsugar?

she gets off baby off baby off baby

I SPENT 6 HOURS ON THIS! you fuck
I deleted it off the UCF site because someone's comment made me really violent and I needed to prevent myself from attacking his passive-aggressiveness and insulting his manhood in what would have been a tirade that sealed my fate as a non-illustrator. Look, I can't work with your deadlines, I can't make myself do what you want. I'll get it done, no question, don't start lecturing me. Oh my god. If he has the actual huevos to bring that up in front of me, he's going to get it. I hope he doesn't because it's going to reveal my incapacity to be professional. Whatever. I have issues with passive-aggressive people. Don't fuck with me.

this is how i feel.


RTX is such the perfect soundtrack right now. feedbackkkkk distortionnn howling guitarr in distance, coming together, socking you in the face with building drums THEN weird metal tone " Well I'm the garbage collectorRRR *metal double
okay.
ciao chiquitas and chicossssss

The Evolution of Detour:

- one million ideas
- in thumbnail/sketch phase, sudden unexplainable loss of about 9, 999,996 ideas
- combination of two ideas
- 50 thousand sketches
- stalemate
- 50 thousand sketches
- slooowwww progress on final drawing/painting.
- lack of confidence.
- fear that it's too overtly sexual.
- fuck it.

The last two nights have been good because I've been going out and dancing. It grounds me, it keeps me sane, it makes me happy, it rejuvenates me.


I was looking at some old footage of go go dancing on youtube yesterday and I can't find the one I wanted to share, but this one is the best out there. It's probably new to you,



If I still end up going to NYC this weekend, I'm going to get those silver go-go boots at Trash & Vaudeville. Anyone who reads this and enjoys this type of music should go to Cheap Thrills. It's every Thursday at Zuzu, mostly it's free, but if you're going with me, and it's not, I can give you the password.
Also anyone who dabbles in 70s hard stoner acid psychedelic garage rock should, aside from Orange Sunshine (YES I WILL FORCE YOU TO LISTEN TO THEM), check out Dzjenghis Khan. I'd recommend a link to a clip of a show I've been to, but either they have basically no picture, or shitty sound. I spent a good chunk of time with them whilst in Holland, and they're worth your time.
Here, I'll make it REALLY easy for you to listen to Orange Sunshine.



I was dancing exactly where the camera attempted to zoom into the crowd until the operator realized that there were no distinguishable bodies and only an inky black blob. Jesse (see Khan) and I were freaking out over Arthur's guitarage skills, Carson (see Khan) was probably disgusted at how sweaty I was when he was trying to grab my waist, and Graveyard was standing right behind us.

word. SUGGGGG

rider

final compositional sketch for Detour:

colour study (see left margin):

Also did a lot with my werewolf motorcycle rider piece.

Linda says I should just set out and do one thing and that I'm thinking too much, and I should just not even think about all the other stuff until I'm done with one thing.  I really needed to hear that, and I've been really productive since.  She also mentioned the possibility of taking a couple incompletes and finishing the work over winter-break.

L.A. seems so close.

I bought a street map and tacked it up in my studio so that I can learn the neighborhoods and it will inspire me to work as hard as I can.

At the bookstore I was looking at Annie Liebowitz' American Music and there is this amazing photograph of Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry after a show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1972.  Bo's carrying his own cases, and a girl is hanging around Chuck's waist.  Makes me think of the magic musicians have.

I'm listening to Fleetwood Mac's album "Then Play On," the Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, before Stevie Nicks came into the picture.  I remember playing this record on the vintage red Braun record player in Delft with all the lights off except for the red light.  

I can't help it, I'm a very nostalgic person.

I'm feeling a little dejected.  From a number of things.  I've felt pretty isolated lately, this year I made the conscious decision to be more open to people, because I'm pretty unfair when it comes to that sort of stuff.  I have ridiculously high standards for people I take into my life, and I sort of "test" people before I bother getting to know them.  Well, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of elitism lately, and I'm definitely not done thinking about it, but it plays into this.  The thing that's bothering me is that I feel like I've made 2 or 3 good connections with people, but when I try to take the acquaintance up to the level of friendship, I end up feeling rejected.

I've never understood the concept of acquaintance, it reduces humans to Filler, to convenience to your own comfort.  You don't really learn about yourself or others through this type of relationship, it's essentially useless and superficial.  Thus, I've eliminated it from my life prior to this exercise in openness.

I'm feeling frustrated right now because this is kind of proving to me that the method I was employing before was the right one.  Acquaintance relationships leave me feeling even more alone.

Another possible factor might be that I come across as too intense, or that maybe I'm too fast.  I prefer working in a small amount of time, because I skip the bullshit.  I was talking about that with my sister.  How the concept of waiting to kiss someone or have sex is dumb; if you're feeling it: do it.

So what is it?

Does it have to do with the East Coast?  Does it have to do with my intensity or speed?  

panther women

After days of stressing out about this, and trying to think of some kind of background, the answer finally came to me tonight.  I've been getting inspiration from blaxploitation movie posters, why not model the cover after one??  It seems so simple...

now.

So that's what I've been working on for the past 5 hours.  I don't know why things take me this long, but they do.  

My concept is to take the "xploitation" out of blaxploitation, and show badass super strong black women kicking pigs' and other white male oppressors' asses.  I don't think there's ANYTHING anti-feminist about being buck naked, feminism is about doing whatever the fuck you want without sex holding you back.  That's not to say I support the fucked-up, insecure girls who reveal their bodies to receive male attention. There's a difference in using your body as a power-suit and a big fuck-you, and making it an object separate from your Self, 'cause you don't believe in that self, do you?

I've still got to add tons of other small figures to this, and figure out one architectural element.  This is my main compositional inspiration:

more progress

These are my sketches for the Detour piece, colour studies will follow.  Stephen has been telling me a lot about African history and there is some of the richest imagery in those stories, so I want to put those in this piece.

It's playing off of blaxploitation and taking power back from your oppressors.  That's an idea I've been exploring for a few years.  I like turning the tables, I love dressing like the female equivalent of the classic 70's pimp because I feel like I'm spitting in their faces.

(how the title will be incorporated):

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the background, but it won't be a scene, it will be pattern or texture or flat colour.

Here is an update on the werewolf piece.  This is sort of an underpainting.

a detail: