pieces of pieces

I recently completed a 12 piece series for Ms. Cooper's painting class, and I chose to paint things I have broken in my lifetime. It was funny looking back and it kept me interested (I'll put pics up later). This was a continuation of what I focused on senior year of high school..

I've had this concept of feeling incomplete and breaking away into pieces since sophomore year of high school. It started with my "Alzheimer's triptych" showing some old guy(Lou Reed) losing his mind/memory, literally. I liked showing the physical pieces representing as emotional pieces.

Alzheimer's Triptych - 22 x 38 in Acrylic on Paper

That continued to these "Self confidence" pieces where a girl rips away the ugliness to shine through her inner beauty. It's sorta gruesome to think of, but representing them without blood, gore and METAL keep them somewhat sophisticated.

Ripped 1 - 20 x 26 in Charcoal and White Conte

Ripped 2 - 20 x 26 in Charcoal and White Conte

Over the summer going onto senior year, all the seniors went for a month back to school to produce work for college auditions, like a head start. I chose to continue with the concept and came up with 3 self portraits. I felt really boring and wanted to be more open and confident. I wanted to break free of my self conciousness and just be myself. SOO I produced 3 portraits of me letting go of my inhabitions and bad feelings. Doing them made me feel a lot better. I also got to explore color! woo

Breaking Free Self-Portrait/ 22 x 24 inches Acrylic on Canvas

Letting Go Self-Portrait/22 x 24 inches Acrylic on Canvas

Falling Apart Self-Portrait/ 22 x 24 inches Acrylic on Canvas

I feel like the self-portraits are my strongest pieces. I had to continue though, so I did portraits of my friends breaking apart too! They had fun.

Blowing Away- 22 x 26 inches Acrylic on paper

Falling Apart 2- 26 x 32 inches Acrylic on canvas

Facing your pieces - 26 x 32 inches Acrylic on canvas

Pick up the pieces- 22 x 28 inches Acrylic on Canvas

I took traditional photo senior year, and to coincide with making my portfolio for college, I did more! This was supposed to be for a show called Progressions. I got the idea to make a story of peacefulness, to oH SHIT IM BREAKING APART. It has some of my quirkiness that isn't seen in the other ones

Progression- 12 x 22 inches Photo Installation

After seeing a Dash (another design school in Miami) senior show, I was inspired to do more installation work and have things coming out and displayed 3D.

Change of Scenery - 36 x 6 Digital Photo Installation.

To continue, I thought it would be cool to have photos of someone doing something, and then the photo being manipulated. Melissa has a lighter and the photo has been burnt With Jacob, he is cutting with scissors and look at that there are pieces where he cut! I miss being such a smart ass.

Burn away- 8 x 10 inches Digital Photo Installation

Cut Away- 8 x 10 inches Digital Installation

I'm really proud of my work in senior year of high school. It was a big part in helping me express myself. The Ringling guy who interviewed me saw my work and said I should go into Fine Arts. I want to minor in it because I don't want to lose that side of me. Part of me feels like I've improved in certain things here but I should really push myself to keep thinking and not just do technically good work. I want to have awesome concepts and keep going though I'm not sure which teachers can help me do that. I have time .

-Kristen


PS. I'll put up my college work soon! :P

Old Artwork from high school

As some of you may know, I transfered in as a sophomore even though it's my first year of college. This was mostly because of dual enrollment credits since my high school (New World School of the Arts) was right next to a college, but I'm assuming it's also because they thought I was capable of the workload. At the time I didn't realize how awesome going to a magnet art school was. Now I can see how I was prepared and having experience in stuff like figure drawing and acrylic paint has been helpful.

So here is some old artwork I did from high school. This is mostly stuff for my portfolio that I used when applying to all the kewl art schools. enjoy :)

Mixed media



Acrylic

double self portrait in charcoal. the shy side, and outgoing side.

figure drawing in oil pastel

charcoal

Acrylic self portrait

acrylic toilet painting that won me an honorable mention in scholastics! lol

cartooon

my friend cat with her power animal the dragonfly.

I really loved traditional black and white photo class. I did a lot of sky pictures that ended up being part of my portfolio. I thought of it as more conceptual which I'll get into eventually.


lol

double exposure of crazy flock of birds


near my house

on the road

my stomach has a mind of it's own

woah fisheye

endless


junior class caricatures


piece called satisfaction. she's unsatisfied with the plain ribbon, so she takes it upon herself to fix it and is finally satisfied.



I'll post more soon. I have more conceptual stuff that would have made this post too long.

-Kristen

inspired

I'm have so much inspiration right now, but I don't know what to do with it. I feel like there's not enough time to explore what I want to because of the hassle of homework. I've absorbed what friends, teachers, and artists say and want to jump right into things. I want to make the most of this break by working. If not on assignments for school, then on personal assignments.


On a side note, maybe I should drink tea more often.

On another side note, I wish I knew how to speak more eloquently like when I write. My history of illustration paper on Jessie Willcox Smith sounded so good! Big words and thought out sentences. If I were to talk about her in person, my nerves would get the best of me; I wouldn't know what to describe or where to begin, and I would stumble, forget words and UHH about 50 times. I want to work on that, to catch all the "likes" and learn more vocabulary.

I'm excited!

i feel weirdd

It could be the new pill I'm taking, but I've been feeling sorta off (more than before). Slight mood swings, dissatisfaction with things, skin feeling numb, blah blah. Then again, it could just be that I'm a woman! and those are things we are known for. I've been going out to sushi a lot, which is hurting my bank account. It's not my fault the food at school is sucky. Mexican and Tampa rolls are my favorite. Eel sauce is tasty. Tevi came over for vday weekend and it was comforting having him here. Cuddling and getting crumbs of food on my bed were some of the highlights.

I checked my mail and got my absentee ballot!! I requested it about 4 months ago, but now I can finally vote!!!! ugh. On my way out of the mail room, I glanced at the garbage and saw a thick set of pages. I pulled it out and it was a perfectly, untrashy issue of Elle magazine. wtf?! at least recycle it-shit. ANYWAY, I'm reading the watchmen for inspiration to come up with a comic idea for the comic/graphic novel club DIP. We'll see what happens.

Here are some stuff from my yellow sketchbook:


rub on letters.



rachel

intro to ill notes



leaf plus yarmelke





i had stained the page with tea sort of. history of ill. i'm sure everyone will have a sketch like this by the end of the year lol.

hay grace ;)




and this was great...


ps. I'm seeing Dr. dog tomorrow in tampa and I drew this thinking I was seeing the one in orlando.



:)
-kristen

Figure work

I've been horrible in updating this. For the longest time I've been wanting to put my old artwork up here to show what I was doing before, but it's all formatted 4 by 6 with black borders and I need to crop them. They'll be up eventually. This new spring semester is promising! My classes are all benefiting me in one way or the other, and history of illustration reminds me of ap art history with lutness (but not as fun necessarily). I feel overly prepared for Intro to Illustration...I have to take it to graduate eventhough I've been taking Illustration 1 last semester and this semester lol. Greenberg shows us different contemporary illustrators like Marcos Chin, Sam Weber and Anita Kunz and asks who's familiar with their work. Barely any of the freshman raise their hands but I guess thats how it is at first. Familiarizing yourself comes later.

Here's some figure work to tide you people over. I think I work best with vine charcoal which is funny because everyone hated it in high school and preferred charcoal pencils. I was so ignant.




















P.S. I hate it when people look at your sketchbook, give it back with a half smile and say nothing. WHAT IS THAT?