High Contrast Grey.

I sneak in a mirror reflected reference photo. While we were in Toulouse we ducked into a nice little salon de thé that to me felt like something out of a 1940s representation of Europeans in Africa. Probably just the French dealing with the heat of the south. While at this place I noticed a girl sitting alone at one of the tables reading on her phone. Perhaps surfing the internet, perhaps reading a book, I couldn't quite tell as it was in Asian characters. I would guess that it was either Chinese or Japanese. In such a beautifully intriguing place I found it to be somewhat odd that she would pass the time ignoring her surrounding to immerse herself in her phone. I remember they also had nice restrooms. The girl then left and we stayed a bit longer sipping on our drinks, which if I remember right were not actually tea but something cool to counter the heat of Toulouse. Taking a breather in the hectic nature of our vacation. It was one of those towns where I ...

 Another scrap of watercolor paper resting in the pages of my sketchbook. This time not premeasured for an empty picture frame but this time the left over scrap from a previous project. With my time in France starting to come to an end I have taken to sitting at French cafés while I am still able to. Sitting. Observing. Filling up pages in the sketchbook with little observations. While sitting at the Tavarne watching art school students in their non symmetrical hair cuts and leopard print this older mad walks over and begins to hunch over while sitting at one of the small café outside tables. Rolling his own cigarettes as those french like to do. Flat cap and a red scarf like Jessye's. Collar flipped up. As with the girl drinking coffee in the wind I was having troubles thinking up a background. The original setting just didn't seem like it would work properly. I find a good collection of Victorian wallpapers on the internets. Millard. Something to fill up part of backgrou...

18x13cm Watercolor, ink, and tinfoil. Another small observation piece on some nice watercolor paper I have had in my sketchbook for about a year now. I recently learned about the Arte Povera movement from Italy in a modern art history class I took. From that I took a fascination with the idea of using reflective surfaces to bring the viewer into the piece. Being poor and about to move halfway across the world I have forgone purchasing anything that would work properly for this idea and have instead used some tin foil that was wrapped around a crêpe with nutella I got from university the other day. I thought that the scrapings of trying to get it smooth added an interesting texture. As usual I have mixed observations. The man I saw at a crêperie a few weekends back. He was sitting on the terrace and could therefore have a cigarette. I took some sneaky photos of the terrace. The lighting, as well as the contrasting elements of compacted buildings, were amazing. But I instead wanted ...

I have finished the little painting. Now to just get it back to the frame back in the states, or perhaps sell it and get a better frame.. I like how the contrasting between inked and not inked worked out in this. She separates from the setting, but with her legs she still blurs in slightly. Perhaps since it will be a while still until I get this back to the frame I will continue to play with this. A nice 4" square to keep in my sketchbook for now.

Fulya was looking at my sketchbook the other day and remarked that she liked the random sketch that I had made of some girl that I saw walking along with a little plastic cup of coffee during the wind storm a few weeks past. As I still have some small pieces of very good watercolor paper [that I had sized to be used for some small frames I had collected but did not have anything to put in them yet], I thought that perhaps I could transfer a little sketch to a little piece of paper to play with techniques. Namely the layering of water colors. Something that I know I have been working on a lot, but practice makes perfect. I also wanted to see how using my new mechanical pencil filled with blue graphite would work in hiding my lines as I initially worked. I forgot to take a picture of the transition between not having the girl inked at all to inking her and starting the background. I was having a hell of a time trying to figure out a setting in which to put her. At first I was th...

I finally finished enough of this painting to be happy enough to show it for my painting final. The professor rubbed his finger over the window to figure out that I cut it out to put the black paper behind, but didn’t really critique it at all. I still did well in the class, but he did comment on how overall I paint in a passé style. So of course I am back to the questioning of; what is contemporary art? When I look up contemporary art trying to find new examples that could inspire my work I instead find art that is abstracted and not really in a direction that I would see as improving or inspiring my style.

I have finally finished painting in all the books in the bookcase. A slow process, probably made even slower by me wanting to mix a new color for almost every book, instead of making random books the same color. I never left the apartment Friday.. It is insteresting seeing how long I can hold back and develop a piece now just with the watercolor and not having to add in the ink just to make it feel complete. I wish I could remember the name of the bookstore from my dream. My painting professor asked me a question the other day, which was something along the lines of, ‘why are you so attracted to painting these things in a beautiful nostalgic timeperiod?’ It took me a while to translate and figure out what he was asking, but once I understood I didn’t have an answer in any language. Instead I thought about Midnight in Paris and the similar question it poses. The past is never as beautiful as we want to imagine it being.

and so marks the end of working on my personal artwork while I finish out this semester… I just put these last two works in a juried show at university and I should find out Monday if they make the cut. I am feeling a bit nervous because I worked the process of getting everyone’s piece processed for the show and it seems that the quality and style of work is all over the place, so I am not sure how my work will be received. Definitely not the selection from the last juried show I was in in Billings..

The absinthe bar has been finished… Although I still need to ink in the hinge on the window. (shhh…) Out of all the paintings that I had hanging in the show, I was surprised this one wasn’t the one that sold, but it is my latest so I still feel the most attached to it..

I sold this painting at the show for the Artist’s Collective last night. The woman who bought it was in my architectural art history class last semester and told me it reminded her of Italy, which she visited this winter. I celebrated with going out to see Jason Webley play his accordion, which perhaps was a bit detrimental to finishing my French homeworks… but oh well. It is going to be a crazy weekend this weekend with all the homework I will have.

It has been a rather lackluster winter session, in terms of working on art. Although it seems that Billings always seems to remove any inspiration or desire to work on art, I have since come back to Missoula to become distracted by a redhead. A pleasant distraction. I still hope to finish at least one of these two paintings before the end of the break so I can display them with the artwork of other members of the university artist collective. I am liking how the street scene is coming out. I seem to have a better understanding of layering every time I paint another watercolor, which is really helpful with trying to achieve a night like atmosphere. I seem to have misplaced my ivory black and had to go and buy a new one from Michael’s. They were locked up but I slipped my hand into the side of the case and retrieved the tube of watercolor. Part of me felt like just walking off with it as a repressed anger to the frustration of working there back in the day, but I suppressed...

My works in progress. I find myself working on them more than I should with my work load for university, but that just seems to be the way that life works. When you need to be doing something your desires transfix on things that are not necessary. I have come to points of frustration with both of them lately, but thankfully the frustration is just because of little questions as to color and style and not something that would be detrimental to the pieces. My usual way around these road blocks would be to start inking in what I have already colored, but at this point I am trying my best to not jump the gun and get as much as possible painted before the inking process. In part because I would like to see just how well my painting is becoming before I cheat by adding the detail with ink. What is really holding me back on the city painting is that I would like my cliché of having a character existing within the scene, but I am not sure what they should be doing. I have gone d...

I have finally finished the painting for Amy. Or so I keep telling myself. Give it a little while and I will probably find something that I need to add. It never fails. One of the final things holding me back from calling this done was that I wanted to give Amy an chandelier earring like those that she wears so often and my idea for how to accomplish this was to use a gel pen that can go over the black ink that I had already laid for her hair. But of course I didn’t really want to spend the $2 or whatever it is for a purple gel pen, so I took the painting by Michaels and just used one there in the way that they have them out so that they can be tested. I felt quite clever about this technique of being a cheap artist using my surroundings to my benefit. Better to be clever than beautiful and even better to be clever to create something of beauty. My painting that I did last summer of Noir Marché is in a show at the moment at the university. The president of the university asked...

I thought that one of the pictures that people seemed to like from my sketchbook I would turn into a larger watercolor picture. Old watercolor paper lying about with an old sketch I was going to turn into a painting for Shea before she moved away abruptly. A local character, who only seems to know me through the facebook, is trying to get a gallery off the ground and asked me if I would like to contribute. She is wanting a selection of western, surreal, and erotic art though. Not really my forté. I used to do a whole lot of erotic art, but over the years of trying to get into a more ‘exploratory relationship’ and away from those things vanilla has never seemed to pan out and with it my art and drifted from that subject. Photography from time to time still, but the painting, not so much.

Finished my painting of the underground market finally. I went and got some prints of my last watercolor picture that I finished and while signing and numbering over at Bernice’s the people next to me bought a print. First print sold. I pushed myself to finish this underground market painting so that I can get prints made of it tomorrow and start preparing for a show.

14th and 42nd. Finally finished after months of working.

The final hurdle.. I still don’t know what to put in the advertising mural above the entrance to the hotel. And I need to come across some pretty fabric/paper for the final rugs. Plus, of course, all the minute ink details still left to do…

I’ve been working more and more on my new painting. Its gotten to the point where I only have the color purple left on my saucer since I’ve only been working at cafés and don’t have the ability to add more colors when I finish one off.. So to fix this problem of stagnation I have begun inking. I’m finding more hangouts and continuing my horrible diet of tea and baked goods. This is going well as I am reading Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell. Living off small portions of bread.. I am as well trying to track down where the artsy alternative kids hangout (somewhat like Bauhaus on Capitol Hill) and have been having lots of confusing results. The café that I thought was ‘the one’ the other day was today filled with old people, transients, and a punk rock kid sewing his clothes back together. It seems promising still. Luckily its not too far from the Senior Center where my salsa class is so, when I have to kill three hours before class I can go there. I woke up with Pian...

I spent the day working on my new painting. Since my classes aren’t really filling up my schedule too much I thought I’d try working on my artwork more. Also hoping to get this done for when I go to Seattle on the 19th. My ruler is too short. I went café hopping today while working on this. Needed to get out of the apartment. I kept getting complements today. It was nice. It seems that today was the artwalk in Missoula, but I didn’t really know what was going on. I didn’t really want to do the whole artwalk thing though because I had both my bags and didn’t want to be wandering through crowded areas with that much ‘junk in my trunk.’ Instead I drank too much tea (well, lots of tea, can’t really admit to it being too much) and worked on my painting. The paints were just the one’s left over on my saucer from the last painting, so I ran out of most of the colors that I really needed.. Just need to re-add some colors and I’ll be good. Well, namely black, which is a shade, not ...