Drawing glass, Drawing class

I've been rummaging again. I needed to remind myself how to render glass with markers. So I can teach my class how to do it. But first I have to get them to appreciate and draw ellipses so they can draw their projects. And they need to be able to do nice, even grey gradations so they can shade and shape their objects. And then I want them to at least be able to take a stab at shading their projects as if they were solid, opaque objects. And then we can start rendering them as the transparent objects that I think they have in mind. That's all. Maybe we can do all this Thursday night.

[sigh]

That's a real brain-fart - - having them start off with a project for which the solutions lend themselves to being transparent. Oh yes, very much so. And, I forgot: Drawing transparency is hard! Doh!

As long as my class is willing to stick with it and seems to be having fun (knock on wood! Which is a little easier to render!), we'll keep going. I think it's going to build a good deal of character in all of us, though.

Eeeeee!

So, I managed to find exercises that I did, way back when, to render glass objects (imagine that. Whew!), and we're gonna do them in class. Yup. It's scary the stuff I still have, squirreled away. And imagine this! I actually have a pressing need for this old, old stuff! That's all I need - - some kind of validation that it was good to have held onto my really old art projects and exercises. Scary. Very scary.


Yeah. So, I think I'll be practicing drawing glass for a while.


But ... in the meantime, I did find more very old stuff that was done before even the drawing-glass-with-markers exercises.

Imagine: Life, before I needed to know how to render glass, brushed aluminum, concrete, orange peel, grass, chrome...

(Outside)


(inside)

Circa 1991

I have to smirk here:
I'm going to have to do another one of these very soon.
Maybe I should just reuse this one.


Circa 1990

Carnival weekend!

What's that, you say?
You have this strange craving for malasadas? Me, too. I wonder why...
You were kind of wishing you could find some really good mango chutney, too, huh?
Hmmmmmm. Strange cosmic coincidence? Or ...


Gasp! I was hoping to find some Carnival memorabilia, but everything considered, isn't amazing that I still have this stuff?

Okay guys, think fast:
If this weekend is Carnival 2007 weekend, then that means that the 1982 Carnival was ... uhhh .... 25 years ago. Remember the unintelligible team mumble/grumble on the Sound Booth? Was it really 25 years ago? Wow.

Now that's a Walk Down Memory Lane for ya'.


Carnival Trivia:
(from the Punahou School website)

The two hamburger booths each cook 108 patties every 10 minutes. At that rate they could make over 31,000 burgers at the carnival. Eat them your way: plain, teri or with cheese!

The Haku Lei Booth began in 1972. That makes 34 years. Do you have one?

2,100 gallons - over 33,000 cups - of Portuguese Bean Soup are enjoyed at Carnival. Why? It's great!

There are 64 booths and 18 E. K. Fernandez rides at the Punahou Carnival. How many have you tried?

In 2006, 8,000 jars of mango chutney and 2,000 jars of lilikoi butter were made for the Carnival. Fruit picking and cooking is completed during the summer. They still sell out on Friday!

Over 5,000 pounds of sugar was donated to the Carnival for malasadas. Is that why they are so good?
---

Anyone that plans on going - enjoy that malasada for me, okay?
Mmmmmm, mmmm.
I've missed that simple pleasure of life, and I've missed you!
With much aloha, especially this weekend,
-w

Way back when

... when we all had big, permed hair. You had big hair, too. 'Fess up.

Circa 1989, Harmony, CA.
On my way to SF.
In my Tercel.

I'm going through my stuff, mercilessly tossing stuff. Well, almost mercilessly. There's a lot that's getting chucked out, but there are quite a few treasures that are being unearthed. In lieu of drawing and painting, I have to admit that it's been pretty enjoyable running across memories like this. And there's even more to share, too.

I took the coast route and about halfway up, my cassette deck (remember those?) died. When I got even further north, I ran out of radio stations to listen to. Aiiii.

I stopped overnight in Morro Bay and wandered through town. I remember picking up a postcard with a drawing of a person, sitting outdoors, drawing a scene of Morro Rock. Now that's kind of a sleepy town, or at least it was for that weekend.

I used to go up north to the Bay area for Labor Day weekend for the first few years after I moved to LA. I think we typically drove; now I fly. A few years ago, a bunch of classmates and I drove to Monterey for a conference, but it wasn't quite the same as before, not quite as leisurely. We were on a tight schedule and couldn't really stop to explore the towns along the way.

Life gets busy, huh? We all manage to travel pretty far - - every day for work - - but we really don't actually go anywhere. I mean, well, you know what I mean.

I feel like wandering a little bit.

Feels like time for another day-trip up the coast ...

from the Archives

This should get your attention:



"Oooooo!"

Oh man, I heard that squeal of delight. Whether for the promise of cookies or more cartoons, it doesn't matter, huh?

I was trying to tidy up my living room (yeah, I should give up). I should've known better - there are more piles of old archived art stuff from the old place. So, I found more Christmas card art, a number of oversized newsprint pads with life drawing sketches, color theory gouache painting assignments and marker sketches from UCLA (pre-dating even Art Center. Holy cow! How is that possible? There was art before Art Center? OMG!), my application portfolio. What am I s'posed to do with this stuff? The good stuff, I'll keep, but I think a very good chunk of it, I can get rid of. When I get to it. This stuff is in amazingly good shape, for having survived at least two moves. This'll be good stuff to go through and scan or photograph and share, and I found a few things that still appeal to me that would be really nice to re-execute.

Anyway, this is from 1991.

Click this image for the full card


Looking back at this, what does this say?

My haircut is the same, I've had an enduring love for somewhat involved Christmas cookie baking, and manage to find myself in the company of men who love cookies?
I figure that's not really so bad, as far as constants in ones life.


But, you know, I really ought to - - and I've been really thinking about this - - update my logo.
Or something.

Mmmmmmyeah, I dunno.

Every so often in the past 15+ years, I'd go and do little thumbnails to try and update it to where I am in life, but never followed through with finished artwork to use on my stuff. I stopped using a logo completely, actually, I think, once I started design school. There was an instructor from my application portfolio preparation days, that said I should update it; a new logo would represent an evolution, a new state in life, something more far more [ahem] refined. The thought there was that the old logo was just kind of, what?, uneducated, or something. I'll add here that I was never quite crazy about this particular person and his outlook on life. I almost bagged the whole idea of studying design based on conversations with this person... so that should say something.

And lookit me now.

Yeah, my design stuff and my design portfolio, that's something different, and I have a specific format that seems to work well, tells a bit of a story in its reflection about my design work and outlook.

But to be honest, I never came up with anything that quite spoke so clearly to the spirit of what my doodley art was about.

What do you guys think?