Most of the info I got back from our critique today was pretty helpful in forming my final ideas for my pieces. As I've put a good amount of work into my latest "train" piece, I focused on it the most during the talk. For one, I need to desaturate some of the colors in the pieces, namely the train itself, the rock bed under it, and something needs to happen with the water as well. There's also a number of basic changes and fixes I need to make including placing the wiring behind the transmission towers and making the gash where the tower fall larger in order to emphasize the destruction of the forest. Another good point that was brought up was to make an elevation change for the forest to follow in order to see the gash for a further amount in the distance; have it follow a mountain or something.

As far as my quarry piece goes, I need to roughen it up a bit. Right now it seems like a play on geometric space, which it essentially is, but it needs a touch of art finesse as well. Obviously I haven't spent as much detailed time on it as some of my other works, but its getting along. It will most likely be the next piece that I focus heavily on. 

Going back to the tall, overarching and blatantly apparent structures that set me off in the first place, I wanted to go for a more suburban environment and showing its industrialization on the fringes of wildlife. I'l have a small town in the background behind the raised platform train tracks to show man and nature coexisting very closely to each other. At the same time, I'll have these large, grandeur, transmission towers looming over the habitat, making a clear path of destruction where the tree line no longer exists. I like the concept throughout my pieces that while we may see our advancements as beautiful and life changing structures such as cities or highways, that to an unaccustomed eye, these same objects are tools of destruction and impedance. I want to show this clash, and I think that this piece will do that well with being able to show both sides, and the divide between them

I've also decided that I want to get all of the framework and base put on this last few pieces so that I can put the finishing touches on all at once, and have the final products look a bit more similar to each other. I want a fluent style between the set, and I think if I do them all at different intervals with different ideas coming in over time, that this style might change too much. I am actually hoping that my final product can look more similar to Sweeney and Apostolescu rather than my initial completed piece. I think color palette and outline detail will be a large factor in this respect

I'd like to use this blog post to talk about one of the artists I've been interested in lately. Will Sweeney is a storyboarding and illustrating artist that uses offbeat colors to portray worlds of fantasy and outlandishness that I first noticed while watching Birdy Nam Nam's "The Parachute Ending" which was designed and produced by Sweeney. With further research, I realized that I had seen Sweeney's work many times beforehand in the past few years, mostly just on the internet, but also for the fact that he draws cartoons and comics in popular media. One thing that really strikes me about Sweeney is his retro style of art direction, the colors and methods he uses are from an age past, but a classic one at that, and the intensity and boldness of his work really jumps out at the viewer. His wide use of fluorescent colors blends well with his 80's palette and often shows off his comic book influenced background. While his work can appear crude, it has a sense of refinery in the way the color and outlines seamlessly blend on very simple surfaces and textures. I'm thinking that for one of my books, I'd like to grab his one of his comic books, "Tales from Green Fuzz"

Below is some of his artwork as well as the fantastic music video for "The Parachute Ending"

The Parachute Ending

I'm trying to add some lighting and texture to the piece so I can get the overall effects that I achieved with my first one. It'll hopefully all come together when I start flattening layers out and getting the proper blending modes for everything. The file size is pretty large right now and its slowing down work in general with the processor trying to keep up. I've been putting in work almost every day now, even if its just a little bit so I can try and get everything done on time

Since I am doing a rather traditional type of artwork this semester, my presentation plans are most likely set on framing my pieces with basic, but clean looking frames. I don't think it needs anything too fancy as I like to display my work as crisp, and sleek, reflective of the artwork itself. I already planned to have these images framed from the beginning of the year, as I've standardized all the sizes of my pieces that I've started so far, in order to not worry about custom frames. Due to it being a series, I'm thinking of getting the same type of frame for each piece, and laying them out in a simple horizontal manner. Below is the begininning of my newest piece concerning a quarry

correct lighthouse width, cap
clean rooftops and building edges
add lighthouse light source, moon light source
add waves, water depth
water loss details
erosion
more boats
more contour lines, cliff, ocean