All the Words of a Language | Blog

my art gives good face

I had a photo shoot with my artwork It was really great to work with. It gave a lot of face. Overall it was a good photo shoot. "Why take photography of your work" you may be wondering? Because I'm back in the Etsy game. I decided to only sell originals and maybe a few prints here and there of the originals that I choose to covet for myself, but don't expect too much as far as prints go. I HATE making prints. Unless they are giclees, they are not worth chezz. I'd rather do an original and make new stuff then constantly print old stuff, half assed, on the cheap. 

Yea, I'm anti-commercialism while trying to sell on the most capitalist website ever. I'm complicated. 

Back to the photo shoot, I'm not sure if I'm ready to sell my Witch of Blackbird Pond illustrations yet. They are still pulling me under.

 

Inspiration pool: Man Ray + Erwin Blumenfeld

I was really stuck and hated this image I made for The Witch of Blackbird Pond cover before I went away to France. I'm happy I stopped working on the concept because I would've never foreseen the fact that I would go away and come back inspired by the photographs of Erwin Blumenfeld and Man Ray.

 

things i've seen recently

It's been a weird summer.  Everyone in my family has been growing.  We each have our own way of keeping our feet on the ground and our head in the clouds, but I've never seen us all do it at once, and in different directions.

35 mm film

Lately, my artwork, or anything creative really, needs to be in meaningful, tangible objects. The internet is pushing me away. The point of taking photographs is to have a tangible remembrance, right? 

Digital is just like the minds memory, except, it cuts me off from the experience even faster.  I'm so over social networking these days. Give me reality. Give me form.

i'm a victim of these photos

I wanted a new and creative photo involving words for my about page on All the Words of a Language site (you know my regular website).  With a white board marker, my lil lil sis had written on her mirror the lyrics to the McDonald's filet of fish commercial so she could remember it and I thought, "mmmm I LIKE THAT!"  I put my own twist on it; write lyrics from The Shins and bring the mirror outside (wow I'm so clever!).  It was a lot better in concept than in execution. 

These suck because: I didn't consider texture.  There's too much.  Desaturating couldn't even help that.  There's not enough white space to balance the darks.  There's not enough darks at all.  A simpler background might have helped the tension in texture of the dress and grass but that mirror was too heavy to move.  Speaking of which, perspective was tricky to play with because of the reflections in the mirror.  Texture then created no contrast in color.  In desperation I went blur tool happy in photoshap.  Personal Lesson: photoshap can't save crap because it was crap to begin with.  Balance texture with white space (don't take white space as literal white space).  Try again.