Caution

Time spent outside is important. Time spent alone is important too. Time spent alone can expand the world from within. There needs to be caution, though, when time spent alone narrows the world instead of expanding it.

A reminder for myself, since I've been wasting much of my time spent alone.

Deadline

I have to say that deadline is an artist's best friend. With this thesis I'm working on, without the deadline, I don't think I would ever have the drive to revise the original ideas and eventually finish this entire film. Now I think about it, I have no idea how I'm gonna finish self-initated projects in the future, without strict deadlines that I would have to follow.

On Over-Finishing

Some paintings have the over-finished look. One places certain information on paper, be it shadows, form, or color. After one places the information with which he has a good understanding of, he can choose to stop. If he doesn't stop and then fills the blanks with other things, then he risks doing an overfinished piece.

How "finished" a piece is can roughly be defined by how much information it contains. Thus we can almost say that in order to produce more finished pieces, one needs to expand his knowledge of information. If he goes beyond his ability of grasping certain information, and "invents" information to add to the piece, then the result can be called "over-finished."

More Thoughts on Drawing

Shading deals with how form shows under light. Lines deals with how the form is structurally composed. When doing both out of one's head, they can be easily thought as flat impressions instead spatial presences. It is in when one forces himself to depict angles involving overlapping forms with only lines, that he forces himself to be in direct contact with the form that sits in space. Hence the way in which one draws doesn't just define the looks, but also his thinking/feeling/learning process. All ways of drawings are good, but to me the best one currently is one which that when you do it, it's not your habitual hand/thinking that's doing the drawing, but rather yourself - you in the most direct way possible, doing the drawing.

Reel 2008

I've finally cut my reel together. My favorite parts are the balls, the track, and the paintings at the end. The slow pacing near the end kinda fits well with the music. The track is called "Your Girl" by Blue States.

More thoughts on Drawing

I highly doubt the use of drawing anatomical parts out of memory as practice. And the reason behind my doubt is mainly because I've done so much of this kind of practice in the past. And I must say, the question of how fruitful it is aside, the practice itself is damn depressing. And it's hard to get good at something if you don't really like doing it. A person only has so much time in his life. To me copying old master drawings seem like a better use of time. Some people dislike the action of mere copying another drawing. I can sympathize with that. For me though, copying old masters' drawings that I like is a process that I can bare with, feels almost like a meditation sometimes. Again, better than all of that would still be to draw from your imagination what you want to draw, OR, draw from observation what you want to draw. To me these two seem equally meaningful, for they both come from the innate desire to portray something. The problem that comes up, then, is that you, wait I don't know about you, but for me, at least, I don't feel that desire most of the time. It only comes up rarely. What then, can one do, to improve himself as an artist, at down times like that? Up to this point I would say one thing would be to do copies of old masters' drawings. The other thing, that I often forget, is to actively seek inspiration. I'm bring this point up, because for the past 2 years, I've often found myself scribbling at my sketchbook, trying to come up with something "good". While occasionally something "good" did come up, now I look back at it, the time would have been better spent just solidifying my drawing skills by doing more concrete practices like drawing from observation, or actively seek inspiration, from movies/music/museums/videogames/traveling.

Figure Drawing

Out of all the drawings I did in Stephen's class last year, this one is my favorite.