Creating your own photo reference

Originally published on 06/14/2008

PHOTOGRAPHYWe all know how boring it can get to see the same few poses, faces, or roses tattooed again and again. It’s a strange ethical question in some ways- is a still from a film, a figure model on the internet, or a flower you find on google, stolen property if you trace/redraw slightly, and tattoo it?

You can start fixing this by beginning to create your own photo reference library. If you have a relatively decent camera, whether or not it’s digital (although digital is easier, and what I’ll be discussing here) you can acquire a lot of reference that nobody else has access to.

Photograph everything. Get a big memory card- it’s a write-off- and start taking pictures of the flowers in your garden, ask your friends to pose for you. Have them stand and sit in different positions and make different faces, different emotions and moods. Just be sure to organize your pictures by sunject, not by date! That way you can always find “red rose bud” in the mass of pictures you will end up with.

This brings originality to your work, while allowing you to stay fairly true to life. If you plan to specialize in photorealistic or “color zombie portrait head” style work, you’d better start shooting now, because if I see another devil’s rejects stillframe #13892 again I will scream.

this is a test post.

floral paintings, flower art, floral tattoo flashI’m trying something out

with formatting (more…)

Three things I miss about 1989.

tumblr_llv78nlRaH1qepg0fo1_500I miss watching Female Trouble a few times a week.


It was the first movie I had ever seen that completely acknowledged how I felt about life, that made perfect sense to me. It was reassuring in all the right ways and it influenced my speech, my life in fact. It made me feel all right about being a xenophile, and being unable to fit in. We were strange people and the world shit on us regularly- and somehow this movie made it all ok, because it meant there was a whole world of other strange people out there, and they all had been through it and survived. 

And yes, it came out in 1974- around when I was born(ish). But I saw it in 1989 and that for me is the era I associate it with, being that I was only a toddler when it was made.

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6 reasons to post your art online (even if you’re nervous)

shy owlI know, you’re shy! It’s ok, so am I.

Posting your art online can feel very exposing, much like a gallery show. Posting it to social media or other sites can feel scary; and a lot of the time the fear of negative response keeps people from presenting their work online. You don’t have to be afraid, though. Yes, you may get negative responses to your work. You may get criticisms, or even personal jabs at you. But there are benefits to posting online  that definitely outweigh the emotional turmoil these things can cause.

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Gel medium to transfer drawings and sketches, DIY

So I got a huge tub of soft gel medium, and immediately decided I wanted to put some of the drawings I’ve been doing (mostly figure studies) onto some cedar planks I had. I searched for a how-to, and could only find people discussing photocopies, printed photos.

Nobody seemed to be interested in putting their own drawings onto other surfaces- or if they were, they were willing to photocopy them first.

I wasn’t interested in that- I wanted to draw the piece on paper myself, in reverse, and then transfer it right to the wood.

I read up about the way gel medium works. If you’re using something that soaks into the paper, it won’t transfer. You need to be using something that sits on the surface of the paper, like prismas on tracing paper, or like inks on copy paper, or dry paints.

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color symbolism part one

on the meaning of color in roses specifically, and symbolic images in general (more…)

composition 101

Composition is just the science of combination. It’s learning how to draw the viewer’s eye exactly where you want it to go, in and through your artwork. With tattooing, composition is probably the most important aspect of the work.

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on becoming outgoing

the ghost writerI used to be really, really shy.

I went through years of just never talking to anyone, just going home after work. Reading. Spending time alone or with one or two friends. Then I went through a long, angry phase of hating people who were social. That lasted a while.

At some point, BAM! I was no longer so shy.

As soon as I didn’t care what anyone thought, things got a lot easier. If someone doesn’t like me, it doesn’t really matter. I mean of course there are people that I’d like to have like me- I still don’t feel all the way happy in a crowd- but now, it’s discomfort, a bit of anxiety, whereas before it was crippling and it kept me alone most of the time.

Of course some people don’t like me much, now that I am a loudmouth. But then again…some people wouldn’t have liked me no matter what I did.

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youth of today

I once came to the conclusion that I usually have dated younger men because men my age are bitter old farts who just want to complain or make babies. I don’t think this is true in all cases but …

I do enjoy being around someone my own age and when I go out with guys my age or close to it I get really happy because the weird stuff I think about they just…get it right away. There’s no explaining why “piano wire and a block of ice” is a funny reference when I see an emo kid, or why singing a certain riff from xray spex is awesome, why long duck dong said fast makes me giggle, why I think jocks suck, or or or…

I was born in the early 70s. I remember watching the monkees on tv. I remember brown and orange and avocado green rugs. I remember not worrying about accepting candy from strangers (much). I remember a lot of stuff that just…doesn’t exist after about 1981.

And I was just old enough during the 80s to finally take part in the culture. Like during the 70s I listened to the music my parents played, but once I was 12 or 13 I started getting my own records and watching my own movies that I liked. I started being able to create and participate in my cultural environment, and ever since certain things have had a very warm place in my heart.

I was a geeky, dirty, awkward kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Then I went to a punk rock show and people talked to me! Nobody really cared what I looked like, because I could write and draw and add and was smart. They made me tapes, took me in when stuff was rough at home, and showed me how to spike my hair. I found people that cared about the same stuff I cared about…I tried many ways of living. I experimented with my own life in ways I never would have thought were possible without their influences.

I tried everything.

I still do.

I wonder how it is for people younger than me- if the roles we cut out for ourselves then broke in that scene ever carried over? If they feel stuffed into boxes, if any of them escape how we did? In groups or alone? I see very few younger people that are really different from the majority … I see few leading the way to the future, really thinking about it. I like it a lot when I DO see it, though.

I hope I haven’t lost all my vanity, enthusiasm, all my drive to change the world. I’m doing it in different ways of course but I still have hope that it can be done…and that I think is what I miss in men my own age or older. I love extremism, idealism…I want more of that. No matter someone’s age.

This is really just more rambling. Glad you guys keep reading it all…I don’t know how you manage.

 

 

originally written in june, 2010

just out of the oven.

CAM02745[1]I’m baking all the clay I have been working on, today. And I am finishing up an e-pipe from some of it.

I’ve also put up a slew of new prints, too. And a few downloadables. I’ll have a handful more next week, too, I think.

I’ve been working on making some ivory-look clay, I think I want to try to make a pipe that looks like ivory. I’m carving out another skull too. I think I may start messing with shapes, since the clay can be any shape at all I can make an epipe look like anything really.

Messing with some iridescent power pigments too.

I am also thinking of making a few drip tips- long crazy ones, not churchwarden style but long like that, maybe a twisty one. If I seal the mouthpiece part (or use a tiny bit of silicon to cover it) it will be safe to put in your mouth, at that end.

This is today’s project. I started sanding and carving the Meat Pipe too but I don’t have process photos ready yet.

Here’s some of the new prints and downloads in the meantime.

flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (7) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (6) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (5) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (4) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (3) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (2) flat,140x140,075,t.u1 (1) flat,140x140,075,t.u1il_170x135.498528713_37av il_170x135.439961484_lf3s il_170x135.490900072_eo2y il_170x135.496864927_qfl4 il_170x135.496814182_bs30

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