Love for Lichtenstein

Regardless if art makes your top ten loves list or not, everyone has a favorite artist.  You may not even know his/her name, it might just be a piece you saw in that one gallery in New York your family drug you too in high school or maybe you know their life story, but there is a favorite.  My favorite artist is Roy Lichtenstein!  He's a pop artist, often loved by those who also love Andy Warhol, but their art is quite different.  I would LOVE to own an original at some point in my life, but considering he has work in the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) I realize my chances are quite slim hahaha

I was going through an artistic slump last winter, it was during my midwinter break and I had an entire week break from my grad school and decided to use that opportunity to make art... however when I whipped out my sketchbook and sat down to draw I was having some serious artist block... I decided to back to a practice we learned in school, start drawing one of your favorite pieces by one of your favorite artists and have it take on a life of its own one you get started.  The obvious choice was Roy Lichtenstein's "Drowning Girl", by far my favorite art piece ever.  

My piece ended up being quite similar, but I decided to do mine in linoleum block print form and hand print it, hence the uneven ink pattern.   Sure enough, it helped lift the artist block too :)

Art as Procrastination

While I should probably just suck it up and finish the last of the busy work assignments and reflection paper due at the end of the week, I've decided that making art sounds like more fun, especially when after I found out today that I passed my final case study/assessment and have thus become a real teacher.  It's hard to stay motivated towards busy work, when you know that you've already passed grad school even if you don't do the assignments, however with that being said, as I'm getting my Masters in teaching, I should probably not have a double standard and slack on my assignments lol So yes, I will actually get them done, but until then, here is some more art to keep you occupied.  A couple are new and a couple are from the past year, but they are all portraits, therefore they get posted together!

The frist two are rappers, lil wayne (aka Weezy) and Ludacris (aka Luda), two of my favorites and they lend themselves well to being drawn :)  

Oh! the Auction! Well I ended up dragging Nat, we had a blast and turned the whole thing into a girls night.  As far as the art goes, I was kind of disappointed but hey, at least my piece was bid on.  It only sold for $50, but many pieces didn't get bid on at all, and two artists who have work in major galleries in Seattle who had starting bids of $750 did not get bid on, and thus someone was able to get both paintings for $50!

I shouldn't have been surprised though, art at auctions is really only bid on by a certain niche of people, pop art even smaller group, and urban art is even smaller, so the fact my piece was bid on at all makes me happy :)

More work to come, I'm thinking there will be more pin ups, after I finish the one I'm working on, I'll be sure to post it!

Auction Art!

Greetings! Wow it's been a long time!  Since I have started making art again, there was a year long break more or less while I was finishing my masters, I decided to bring back the blog!  A past co-worker of mine from the Bellevue Boys & Girls Club asked me if I would do a work of art for an auction in which the proceeds go towards putting a water well in a village in Africa.  While timing was not ideal, during the last 2 weeks of my masters, I decided there was no better cause to support or time to start making art again, and gladly accepted the challenge!  I decided to do a piece of social commentary, the title being "Peace Not War".  We'll see how it is received at the auction.

 Below are a couple of other pieces I've done in the last couple months too!

the pin up!

-back to urban street art style, maybe ill turn it into a painting in the future