Posted: May 26th, 2009 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Finished Works, Sketches | Tags: 2009, collage, compilation, digital, doodling, notebook, Sketches, spring | No Comments »
Spring 2009 was a weird semester for me. With only one studio art class my art productivity went wayyyy down. Some of my favorite drawings have been done in my non-art classes amidst the horizontal lines of notebooks. I’ve decided to collage these to create a “summary” so to speak of all my doodles for the Spring 09 semester:
Playing around a little more I did a portrait of a relative (so to speak) using the collage:
I enjoy the natural color of the scanned pen and paper. Its definitely tough balance achieve a coherent image with the chaos of layered lines. Chaos definitely won in the first image.
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Posted: November 5th, 2008 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Finished Works, Projects, Thoughts | Tags: beyond parallax, digital, etsy, history, parallax print series, timeline | No Comments »
Back in the summer of 07 I made it my goal to make a living off art. Naive, inspired, and determined I sought to sell my work, because.. well.. thats what I really wanted to do. And I did. It took quite a bit of research, experimentation, and courage. I lost money, but gained knowledge and experience that was well worth it. I was trying to not only find ways to sell work, but also to find work to sell. Because I had only been in art school for one semester I had no work suitable for sale (or so I thought). One result of trying to find work to sell was the creation of the Parallax Print Series (PPS).
The PPS was born from some inspiration I had from drawing class. We had been doing ink washes and when school was done, I decided to play around with it some more. What resulted was a short body of work that was energetic, exploratory, and fun. Over several weeks I produced a large number of ink splatter paintings which I digitally ‘vamped’ with high contrast. It was later, from the suggestion of my roommate, that I overlap the photographed paintings and then manipulate them. This brought the work to a whole new level. By the time I had the PPS printed and starting to sell, new digital works were being created including the Beyond Parallax series.
However, because of the way I was thinking about my work at the time did not harness the potential of growth and critical artistic thought. My commercial interests were more important and so once I began selling work real artistic growth stopped. I began seeing through a lens of what could sell. I think it is good to be aware of the art market’s personality, but I was unaware of what my own potential really was.
The internet was one of the main venues through which I tried to sell my work. Over the past year I had profiles on RedBubble, DeviantArt, Etsy, CGSociety, Facebook, Myspace, Yessy, Boundless Gallery, Artist Rising, and more. Eventually I built a template website for myself, which I rebuilt from scratch into what it is today. Despite my persistence online I never sold anything. Until now.
Last night after a night celebrating with Obama and the world I came home inspired and finished setting up my Etsy Shop. Today I sold two works. Now, it is too early to make to many conclusions about why I sold these works. However, when you compare the old Etsy store featuring the PPS and the new one featuring sketches and studies the difference is clear. The PPS is about art for profit the Sketches are about art for understanding. There is something to be gleaned from a study that cannot be found in a PPS work. Its about effort, thought, exploration.
As a general lesson I have learned something about what it is to sacrifice one’s artistic skills as a thinker and as a craftsman, in exchange for an understanding of art business. Now that I have been to the extreme business side and have returned to the extreme artistic side I feel like I can merge the two together to suit my needs. With my new store that sells only exploratory works I can both grow as an artist and help fund my education at the same time.
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Posted: October 27th, 2008 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Thoughts | Tags: cgsociety, digital, digital painting, mediums | No Comments »
I found this forum post. Pretty cool (there are over 1034 pages to explore). Photoshop painting fascinates me. I haven’t really tried it for sometime, but now that I have a better understanding of oil painting and color it might be time to delve back into it.
Another great place to check out digital paintings (an just a great site in general) is CGSociety. Digital painting is the new oil in some circles.
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