Richard D'Onofrio_Barry Mcgee

Richard D'Onofrio_Barry Mcgee

I've known of Barry Mcgee's work for about two years now. I was drawn to his style of work when i first came across it. Although not till this year that I've noticed his work had influenced me exponentially as I've watch my work evolve more to resembling his style of work. Barry Mcgee rose out of the graffiti boom in the San Francisco Bay area in the early nineties. His work draws heavily from what he calls the urban experience/everyday live frustrations. -(Which I like to base my work on.)  In doing this he creates bizarre faces which dominate abstract background with drips and odd patterns. To me his images are very iconic they stand out then most other artists work this is what I one hope my artwork to be viewed as.

Carolyn Searls _Gerard Way

Gerard Way is a singer/song writer/artist from New Jersey, Although best he is best known as the lead singer for the rock band My Chemical Romance he has done many visual arts related side projects,such as cartoon clips and even has his own comic book series.He also designed all the album art for his band.

MaryBethHietapelto_AlexGrey

I saw Alex Grey's artwork on all the Tool cd's ever since I was a kid. I always loved the art (and the music) and thought it was really inspiring. When I started looking up more of his work, I liked it even more than the stuff Tool used for cd's and band shirts. His paintings are massive! Overwhelmingly spiritual, and cultural explorations of what it feels like to be a human.

      I always loved this one. Probably the first piece that I fell in love with.
 The pieces hes made about birth and the connection between a mother and child inspire me a lot. I like how he paints people as if nudity isn't nudity, but just what we are. He takes nudes a step further, and sheds our skin. Are his subjects, black, white, old, young?

I encourage anyone who likes his stuff, to check out his website
alexgrey.com

MaryBethHietapelto_FirstDraft

Art is a place where you can be free. The feeling of freedom is like no other; energy with no boundaries, a body with no clothes, nature that is pure and unharmed, a blank piece of paper. I think feeling free and being free are ideas that I want to communicate. To me, feeling free is a lie, a half way thing, that this society will allow. I want my art to push people away from being okay with a feeling and inspire them to chase after what they don't even know they can have, truth, happiness, freedom, harmony, balance, and love.

Art is a place where you can be free, and that is why I choose to pursue art.

Drew Cossa_Edmund McMillen

I've known about Edmund Mcmillen for a very long time now. But I don't think his art started to really influence mine until just recently.

The expressiveness of his characters is something I try very hard to keep up with.

The first game I played by him was Super Meat Boy. An extremely hard platformer that is a homage to older ones like Super Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog. During the games hand-drawn cutscenes their is lots of sadistic and expressive humor that I find really appealing. It had been a long time since I was so charmed by a videogame. Imitation is the best form of flattery and a huge hint of his style is forever ingrained in my work.

Im a sucker for characters that have a missing eye or limb. This has always been one of my favorite pieces by this guy.

I remember seeing this character and wanting to draw more super-villians. Also look at that shading, LOOK AT IT.

I love this method of shading. I knew this was the direction I wanted to go in almost the instant I saw it.

Again, great example of an expressive face. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUY9iF7lAGc <-- A cutscene from Super Meat Boy that does a good job showing what he does best. 

http://digitalportfolio2013.blogspot.com/2013/09/character-select-2013-prisma-color.html <-- My work samples. I recommend taking a look if you want to see the parallels between his work and mine. 

cwicker_luigi serafini

I just resently heard of Luigi Serafini an Italian architect, illustrator and industrial designer of the late 70's. Luigi Serafini made a book, (codex) an encyclopedia of unknown, bizarre , parallel world. It’s about 400 pages long. The entire book is written in an unknown language. Luigi Serafini devoted 30 months of his life to create this masterpiece and from what I have been able to find is the only one of its kind by Luigi Serafini I haven't seen any other work by him threw research online. I absolutely love the illustrations in this book and the philosophy behind it I feel it oddly resembles my work in areas and a weird relation to an alien world which iv always been very fond of.

Amanda_HajinBae

I have drawn much inspiration from Hajin Bae, an illustrator whose blog I found on Tumblr. She most often does line-drawn portraits, and though she tries not to stray too far away from basic characteristics of the human face, the level of detail and care that she puts into her work is not hard to notice, and I find her patience very admirable.

http://www.almostreal.me/2012/05/28/introducing-soulist-aurora-illustrator-seoul/

NickS_Artist

 William Blake

He's known to most by his poems but I've always really admired his illustrations. Blake mostly did prints with a technique that he developed, then followed that with watercolor on top by either him or his wife. That made each book he produced have a soul of their own by never painting two the exact same way. I enjoy how creative, loose and dreamlike these images are. They are quite organically balanced within the composition in a literal sense, and also a figurative balance through his Christian and Pagan themes.

Linda_ Caitlin Hackett

Caitlin Hackett

I fell in love with her work when i randomly bought Hi-Fructose Vol. 17 magazine at a bookstore, and it was an awesome find of a modern inspiring art. She is a huge inspiration for me to become an illustrator. Her large scale works pushes me to remove myself from the tiny frames and palm size works that i typically create.  I love how her works gives such an peacefully haunting enjoyment with her morbid mutilated part animal part human figures. 

In Memory

The Escapist

Vulpes Masquerade

Insatiable

Ashes to Ashes

Links:

Works

The Hidden People Interview 

Hi-Fructose Article

Prints

FB Page

Jovana_artist

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres is my inspiration for creating photography, I learned about Jean from my high school humanities class, his work inspired me to take a true appropriation for detail, Jean's painting's are very detailed in the method of his brush strokes. My favorite paintings out of the hundred paintings that Jean painted is Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere, when I first came across that painting I was flabbergasted by the amount of detail and the color in the painting I find is very beautiful and elegant.

Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere

Linda_ First Draft

Artist Statement:

I didn't choose the artist life, i was born to create art. 

Growing up, I've always struggled to verbally express the difficulties I had with others, I quickly picked up a crayola and created worlds of wonders that I bounced to and from. Currently, I've become much more passionate about being a woman and exploring what it means to truly be free within my works. With the huge movements of feminism currently taking hold of this 'mans world,' I've felt it was my job to express  my meaning of being a feminist; to become more of a woman than what the history books have written. I love the sexuality and the beauty of being a woman. I explore by experimenting with different  techniques and mixing  different mediums to announce the multiple wonders of the types of women I've known. I'm set to combine the sweetness of a woman's physicality, but with a bitter and morbid twist, to bring what it means to the women within my illustrations. 

Helen Dardik

My favorite artist/illustrator has to be Helen Dardik. She has influenced how I've chosen colors and looked at art for quite some time. Helen seems to have no fear when it comes to pairing colors for her illustrations. They are playful, witty, and light-hearted. I'm most drawn to her work because it has a retro feel to it much like artists from my childhood.

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Her work can be found at One Lucky Helen

You can read about her life and her work on her blog Orange You Lucky. 

Her etsy shop.

kelliebeck_firstdraft

I don't make art, I'm learning art. Every day I learn a new way to use my tools and new artists and their styles. Right now I'm learning as many techniques as I can and use them to my advantage. I'm developing my ideas, I'm learning the world and how I want to speak to it, coming from a small town doesn't give me much to work with, and I am going to explore as much as I can. I experiment with shapes, color, technique, and anything else I can. I see how far I can go with a medium, knowing it's form inside and out. 

kelliebeck_artist

Every Saturday or Sunday morning, when I was in elementary school, my mom and I would watch Donna Dewberry's One-Stroke Painting tv show together. She is the first artist who inspired me. It wasn't until summer 2005 when my mom signed me up for my first basic Donna Dewberry class with the art league in town. This class made me realize that art relaxed me and I enjoyed this one-stroke technique. After I took that class I was painting on everything; glass, folders, cork boards, and whatever I could.

drewcossa_First Draft

Art is a therapeutic method I use to calm my brain. With it I can express my current emotion in a very elaborate and stylized way that is impossible to do with words. What kick started my fascination with art is probably a combination of early childhood "Nintendo" games and a steady dose of "Captain Underpants" books. I especially enjoyed the simplicity of the art style and it made me very eager to try drawing for myself and here I am today still drawing. I try and have a stark contrast of cute characters that are stuck in particularly violent and serious situations. I normally draw myself in certain moods that I am currently in, but I try to be much more upfront about it then most other artists by avoiding vague abstract concepts that are too open to interpretation. I My work is mainly comprised of cartoon representations of other people. I enjoy taking certain features from them and putting it to paper in a cartoon friendly matter. I am reluctant to compare myself with "caricature" artists that you would normally find on the streets of New York as I don't really care for the medium much and I find the look of my work quite different in the fact that it resembles something more along the lines of "South Park anime". I enjoy redrawing people very consistently until I get their cartoon representation down to a science, I want to master drawing them from a wide variety of different angles and emotions because nailing it is extremely satisfying.

Its not a medium I've experimented with too much but I also fairly enjoy writing because it's clarity sometimes surpasses that of pictures or other visual media.

What's equally satisfying is having the approval of the person that I've drawn. I not only try to incorporate facial features from them but also they're hobbies and interests. If someone is displeased with my drawing of them I will try and refine the piece in question to a point of perfection. I do not want to fail someone I am drawing as an artist. 

Posting Assignment for Mon. OC 14

Consider an artist that has influenced or inspired you to either create a certain series of work or move into a particular direction. Collect images, videos, URLs etc. and create a post this week that highlights who this Artist is. This does not have to be an artist that works in the same media as you.  We will have an in class discussion on these Artists next week.

Richie D'Onofrio_first draft

-richie donofrio_first draft


Creating art is not just something I love to do. It is a necessity in my life. Art is my escape from the mundane day  to day affairs in this world. With it I can be instantly transported to a world all my own  outside of  reality filled with bizarre creations and oddities of my imagination. My art is a jump into this world I have made, where I draw ideas from repressed memories which are usually remnants of dreams. Fueled my music, I replay these events in my head and let my emotions counter act with them spewing out surreal creations that give me an instant sense of euphoria not only because of their likeness to the images replaying in my brain but to how I was feeling emotionally at that point in time of the creation the piece. I do not like to openly express my emotions to others but with my art I can do this, allowing me to slowly dive deep inside my mind and become at peace with the world around me.    

first draft

All my life I have always had this fantasy of living a very simple life, I grow up meet a boy, fall in love with that boy, married him make baby's mostly live out my life as a home maker for my husband and kids. This ideal life was manifested by the fact that my mother was a single parent. My mother was only twenty one when she gave birth to me and since then I was my mother whole world, she worked to support me, she work several jobs to feed me and to make sure that I had a roof over my head. 

My mother is a great influence on my life and how I see the work force, I always though that I was going to study to become a Doctor or work in a sort of blue collar work force. I have always wanted a way to  live this perfect life, so that I Could sort of escape from who I was and where I came from. I believe because of this view I was susceptible to influence from my peers, I remember thinking I had to be live my friends their lives are perfect. But as the older I got the more I realized that I had to chose my own path in life and not follow what everyone else was doing. 

Photography became my out let express myself in a safe enviorment, and a way to express my true feeling's, my photography is meant to express my fears of life and my fear of what society would see of me.  

meagan_firstdraft

I think photography was always meant to mean something to me. I grew up in front of a camera due to my lovely, proud mother. I never thought that being her life-size Barbie could guide me to what I really hope to do in my life. For a long time, I didn't believe that I could actually make photography a respectable career, worth working for. 

I'm very obsessive about the way I want a photo to look. I'm very detail oriented and every last detail has to be exactly how I see it. I tend to get easily frustrated when I can't express what I see in my mind. Even though photography is my world, I love to experiment with different mediums. 

I'm very passionate about art and I want to be versatile with it. I like creating and destroying, only to recreate, and I can't always do that with photography. Photography is my art and I plan to continue to incorporate it into whatever medium peaks my interest at the time.

amanda jones_first draft

Making art is something that I love. It's always been a constant in my life, and it always will be there. I feel that it's not only a record of my life, but it has become an extention of my very being. I have always been shy by nature, and in the past I've had a hard time expressing myself with the ease which most everybody else seemed to be born with. But I don't have to tell people how I view the world, because my artwork does it for me. It is my way to connect with people, and with myself. At this stage of my life, my work is very experimental, as I begin to build up more knowledge of how materials act, so that I may know how to use them in the future.  I am beginning to understand that there are many ways to accomplish any task, and I like that I can look back and see my progression. There is always a a small thrill that comes from finally making sense out of a bunch of chaos.

erika_First Draft

    My artistic journey started later in my life. I didn't believe (due to my upbringing) that design can be a means of making a living and that one can be happy creating art. I struggle with my mother's voice telling me that what I do isn't practical. Versus my inner voice that reassures me that following my dream of being a designer is what I'm suppose to do because it's the best thing for my soul.

My work is truly ever changing. I get inspired by many things in my environment. An ad in a magazine, a geometric pattern on fabric, an instagram photo, my daughter's artwork. I'm drawn to geometric shapes and finding basic shapes out of convoluted things. I get inspired by colors and patterns and their relationship to one another in something. I'm primarily attracted to colors of something then the pattern.

I try to interpret what I see into digital piece typically a digital mood board then into a blog header. At times I will sketch what I see in my notebook that I carry with me at all times. I love to write as well so jotting down my thought of my sketch is something I like to do. I'm a bit obsessed with dates and time so chances are you'll find that in my sketchbook. It may seem organized but it's only because I like to know when the inspiration hit me. I'm always trying to find patterns in my inspiration since I have major peaks and valleys of design motivation.

I go through bouts of design creation and written word for days sometimes weeks. One thing that has been constant throughout my life is that I journal ever since I was 6,  so I like looking back through my journals to seek inspiration there. At times even my own handwriting is inspiration for me. That is the reason why most of my work features typefaces. I'm constantly trying to find balance between white space, color, and type. It is a never-ending struggle for me. A struggle that I welcome and is the driving force behind what I do.
   

cwicker_firstdraft

              Artist Statement

              The exploration of thought and the oddities of an unknown universe are perceived as dreams. The subconscious, acts as a guide for narratives from the ever expanding unknown  to our tangible reality. With my work I search for an answer, "Who are we and who are we to become." I look into the unforeseeable future with no preconceived notion of triumph or tragedy. As my characters gain life, history morphs a new period of great change. Within my collection of work, I travel from reality to the unknown or other worldly. Throughout this body of work, I represent human form by depicting futuristic historical portraits of nameless men. Taking odd seemingly manmade commodities left behind as lost children of this unborn land and recreating entities of a new power.

                Cody William Wicker