16, 17, 18.

16. Hilary White


Hilary is an acrylic painter and illustrator.  She takes famous paintings and reinterprets them with a pop culture twist.  I really enjoy her style.  I was thinking about doing something similar if I decided to paint for senior sem.

 Her other works can be seen here.

17.  John Kuhn

In his Flickr, he describes himself: " I am an artist, retired drag queen, whiteface clown, former nudist, born again Christian, average 46 year old guy...well maybe not exactly average!"  He took up a 365 day challenge as well, but this time with face paint!  The Michigan based artists takes objects, foods, and other things on his face!

18. Camargo Valentino

The Texan artist had an epiphany when he was in the US Army that he no longer wanted to pursue a career in the military.  He enrolled in the Art Institute of Huston to pursue his dream in the arts.  His style integrates pop culture iconography with classical technique.  His paintings show what things the artist enjoys such as comic book characters.  A lot of his paintings show the boxers he likes.  His other work can be seen here.

Mischief Managed

14. Stéfan Le Dû

365 Days of Stormtroopers

 

 Stéfan Le Dû is a photographer, whom in 2009 challenge himself to take a picture everyday of his beloved Stormtrooper toys.  He is a member of the online photo sharing site, Flickr, and decided to engage in this challenge after being inspired by another similar 365 day shoot involving Star Wars LEGO figures.

He puts his figures in playful situations using things around his house.  Despite their mask covered faces, the Stormtroopers are very expressive with body language.  I like how Stéfan poses the toys and integrates his shoots with big and small Stormtroopers.  The photo below shows Darth Vader showing the Stormtroopers how to parent.  How great!

15. Dave MacDowell

He is a local artist who lives in Va Beach.  I stumbled across his art randomly in a google search.  I was amazed by his crazy acrylic paintings that make fun of pop culture and media.  In his intro on his website, I don't think any words could describe his work better than: "Disneyland on acid."

"David is not afraid of tapping into the dark side of American media worship. He tops off celebrity renderings sprinkled with crying babies, candy colored nightmares, and a hilariously acidic sense of humor."

 

 

Here's his facebook

Project One?

So I have this idea for senior seminar to make a list of 25-35 classic movie monsters/villians and then re-create them using make up in a character transformation.  I want to show how special effects make-up is still alive and can transform regular people into real life monsters.  I am in need of some more supplies for my kit, but won't worry about replacing them until I set this as my senior thesis for real.  So here is my first monster

ZOMBIE

 Here I begin with a fresh cleaned face, mine!

 I started out by using spirit gum to paste tissue paper on my face and I concealed the edges with some elmers glue.  I wanted to create an exposed jaw.  I also sealed down my eyebrows with some glue too.

 Here is my base coat of a seafoam dead flesh green.  In this step I put a wig cap on to get my hair frizzies out of my face :)

 Here I added some red to my exposed jaw and some black for shadows.

 Final detail work is added.  This was right before I added the blood to my jaw, to make it look fresh!

Here is the final product, scary zombie me!

I plan on displaying my "portfolio of monsters" in photo form.  If this is the route I choose to go, I have plans to update my camera to a nicer one.  I hope I could also display my makeup at the opening of the art show by painting and costuming a model to walk around with me for the show.  But first, I need your input! 

On a roll

10.  Kumi Yamashita

Born in Japan, and now resides and works in New York.  She earned a bachelors at the Cornish College of the Arts in Washington, USA and earned her masters at the Glasgow School of Art in the UK.

I don't feel like I need to say much more, just look:

 

Done with nails and a single piece of thread on a white panel.

 

Crazy, right?

Origami silhouetts

Talk about exploring new media and using paper to create shadows.  Not like the silhouettes we do at Busch Gardens!  I can't imagine using a single piece of thread in the string work.  What happens if you run out?

11.  Eckart Hahn

And now I will roughly try to translate this German artist's page from what I remember from High School German class:

He was born in Freiburg Germany and studied Art History at the Eberhart-Karl University.  He then traveled to Stuttgart to study Graphic Design at the Johannes-Gutenberg School.

What drew me to his work, was his amazing description of texture in his paintings.  Here are a few done in acrylics:

Remember in Art Foundations when the teacher crumpled up a paper bag and made you draw it to describe texture and shading?  Yeah, well how about these?

12. Greg Stones

He was born in Rhode Island and went to Bates College in Maine.  He wanted to be a cartoonist but he had a change of plans during his senior thesis show in school when a newspaper rejected his comic strip.  He ended up selling landscape paintings he did for his show instead.  But who could paint just plain old boring landscapes?  So he spruced his up, with humor

13.  Mike Shankman

Landscape painter whom went to the University of California to study Global Studies.  Then did a Studio Arts program in Florence, Italy after graduating.  His recent paintings are paintings of "broken landscapes."  His rough brush strokes and amazing use of bright colors caught my attention.  Reminds me a bit of looking at landscape artists in painting class last semester.

I love the black shadows and contrasting colors in the first one.

Still trying to get inspired by my artist research to pic a topic for senior seminar.  That is mostly why I have been researching an array of different artists using different mediums.  I love looking at all of the painters, and I think shortly I will begin a painting I have been planning out.

LEGO

So Ian and I found his childhood LEGOs and instruction books.  So recently we have been assembling some of his childhood sets and using the internet to find some of his other sets.  Along with spending too much money at the LEGO store on our way home from DC, I thought it would be fun to google "lego artist"

What did I find?  Pure awesomness.

9. Nathan Sawaya

 Nathan is a New York based artist that works in LEGOs.  He was born in Washington and moved to Oregon before settling in New York.  He works as a full time freelance artist, working on commissions from individuals, companies, and conventions.  His inspiration to work in LEGOs came from childhood, as he played with the colorful bricks as a young boy.  After attending NYU for college, he re-discovered LEGOs as a medium.

I love his 3D style and his ability to create human forms.  The thing I like about LEGOs is that they are bright and colorful.  You can create anything out of them!  Sawaya really takes brick building to a whole new level.

I found it interesting to read that he glues his creations together, which makes sense if you're sending LEGO sculptures all over the world.

His Q&A is really interesting to read about the process http://brickartist.com/about/

 I'm rather jealous of his LEGO studio.  I wish I had a ton of LEGOs to build frivolously with.  Maybe one day...  We have a decent sized box of LEGOs but not enough for a senior seminar's worth!  I really want to see one of these things in person.  I don't feel the pictures do it justice.

DC Trip

Well, I've fallen behind in blog posting this summer.  Busch Gardens has absorbed my life.   Are you surprised I haven't melted away in this heat yet?

Ian and I did manage to escape and take an educational field trip that I thought would benefit me in my seminar research.  It is so much better to go look at art than it is to look at it on a computer screen.  So we packed up our bags and headed to DC to see an exhibit at the Smithsonian Art Gallery entitled, "The Art of Video Games."  I was really excited to see some concept art in real life, especially from games that I have played.  I was lucky enough to snap some pictures and the artists names to research them for my blog.  So here it goes:

6. Adam Adamowicz
 

Adam is a concept artist living in DC.  He works for Bethesda working on famous titles such as Fallout and Skyrim.  Above are concept sketches from 2005.  One is of the locations in Fallout 3 and the bottom most creature is a monster he designed for the same game.  I could not find out any information on his educational background but he apparently spent a "lot of years surviving on odd jobs from driving an icecream truck, building haunted houses, fabricating window display sculptures,to apprentice tattooing, and yes, as a cake decorator for a bakery specializing in erotic cake designs" (from his personal blog).

I was heartbroken to find out upon researching Adam more that he recently died earlier this year.  Well,...there goes that whole researching a "working artist in the field" thing.  He is very recent and I had looked forward to his concept sketches for more Fallout games to come.  Artist #6?

7. Chris Metzen
 

The top image is a Forest Troll concept from the game World of Warcraft, done in 2000.  The one on the bottom is an early Kerrigan concept drawing, from the game Starcraft, in pencil from 1997. 

Chris Metzen is a concept artist for Blizzard Entertainment.  He has provided work for Blizzard's most popular running games: Diablo, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft.  I also learned that he has provided voices for some characters as a voice actor!  He holds the title of Vice President of creative development for Blizzard.  Chris Metzen says that his style is "heavily influenced by Walt Simonson's and Jim Lee's penciling styles for form" while preferring the "costuming, themes and general feel of Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson's fantasy paintings."  I love the loose sketchynes of this drawing style and I was really excited to find concept art for one of my favorite video game characters (Kerrigan).

8. Thomas Jung

This concept drawing is of Northshire Abby in World of Warcraft, done in 2000.  Thomas Jung, whom now works with Stray Bullet Games as an environment artist, drew this work for Blizzard Entertainment.  He has educated at the college level in concept design at the Art Institutes of California-Orange County.  He served as the Art Director in 2003 and 2004 for the school.  He is known for his works in big titles like: Diablo II, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft.  It's a shame he is no longer with Blizzard, especially since the release of Diablo III last month.

Well we had a lot of fun in DC, especially at our exhibit.  If you get the chance to see it, it was totally worth it (and free!).  I believe it will be in DC until September.

Oh and here's a picture of me with my blog background,...minus Darth Vader :).

Monster Man

Cleve Hall

Made famous for his show on the SyFy channel, Monster Man, his work inspires me as a makeup artist.  He grew up in Florida next to his family's cemetery.  His parents regularly took him to see low-budget horror films as a child.  That is what inspired him to make a Godzilla suit that caught the attention of Six Flags Amusement Park.  They hired him to make another.

Even in a world where special effects rule the movies, Cleve still creates his monsters by hand.  He is the creator of his own special effects company, Imagimation Productions, which has been running strong since the 1980s.

He won an Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design/Styling" for the kid's show, Yo Gabba Gabba in 2007.  Guess not all of his creations are scary monsters!

He has a daughter that works with him in the special effects business.  A family that builds scary monsters together, stays together!

he is a gallery of his creations from the show:  http://www.syfy.com/monsterman/photos

I thought about doing something like this for senior sem.  Creating the classic movie monsters, but I don't think I'm good enough to build a Godzilla (just yet).  I love the talent that it takes to build these things and that after years of movies going with digital effects, it still lives!

Maybe I can try some things out with some good ol' paper mache and face paint.