MOVED!

Come visit me at: www.sdammer.com Thanks!

Summer Project

Inspired by The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. My goal is to paint it by the end of the summer. Fingers crossed.

Painting Triptych Part III

So here is Othello. This one is definitely the most realistic of the three and closest to the original photoshopped image. It might also be the one I spent the most time on, maybe too much time (I kind of got sick of it). Anyway it's all done!

Painting Triptych Part II

I can't figure out how to format this the way I want but here is Desdemona. Again a little distorted with slightly different colors but that's how it goes.

Painted Triptych Part I

So here is
my Iago version.
As you can tell I took some creative liberties with the painting. It's not done yet but I thought I would post this progress piece. It probably won't change much, unless my painting professor decides in needs to be revamped completely. The painting is a lot more colorful than the original, and a bit more distorted. I'll post pictures of Desdemona and Othello next.

Another drawing from class

I don't know if you can tell but I was much more interested in her body than her face. I still want to find a way to make this one more complete. I'm open to any suggestions.

Make your own image library

vi.sualize.us is a database of images that lets you pick your favorites and recommends new ones. This is how I've been getting my inspiration as of late. Be warned though it can be addicting.

This image is from lukechueh.com which is also pretty interesting if you wanna take a look.

Octapus Puzzle Piece

Just a little fun for PLAY as part of the puzzle that went to the Tucson Children's Museum.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

NASA has this great archive of astronomy pictures for everyday since June 16 1995. Well not exactly every day but for most days. Regardless there are some cool artist interpretations of outer space phenomena and actual pictures too like this one. You can find them all here. I used the site a lot when I was illustrating that book for my Color & Design class last semester. Happy Browsing!

Looking back over my sketchbooks

I found this ink and watercolor drawing. Just a little post for this morning.

recent obsession

I found this magazine on one of my many day-long trips to Barnes & Noble. It begged me to take it home, so I did and we fell in love. Full of pretty pictures and well-crafted fonts and layouts, Lula is my most recent obsession.

www.lulamag.com

This is from a while ago.

It's a kind of concept sketch for a project for my class last semester. Loosely based on the play Paper Flowers by Egon Wolff. I think I have the final project posted somewhere. I should find that. . .

In honor of my figure drawing class this morning

e
I've decided to share a great website for those of us who don't have access to a model. It's called posemaniacs.com and on it you can find images by poses and gender and even do fun challenges like the 30 second drawing. Another plus: these models don't have skin! So you can see exactly what the muscles are doing underneath. It might not beat drawing from a real model but the guys at this site have done a really nice job developing it to make it suitable for artists. So check it out!

Painted Self-Portrait Try #1

"Self Portrait #1"
oil on canvas panel

I've done a second one of these in color since this has been finished but I think I like this one better. Painting is hard. At least it has been for me. I might post the other one some other time if I am feeling particularly showy.

I recently joined a local Polaroid Users Group

and so I went fishing online for some fun stuff and came across the website polanoid.net. They are trying to amass the biggest online collection of polaroids. I would totally contribute if I had any but unfortunately I just missed that trend and now it's out of business. Hopefully one of the groups trying to resurrect the polaroid factories will make it work. Until then I will enjoy this online collection.

I've used Damask before. . .

I made these for a local gallery's call to artist. They had a big puzzle with different designs on each puzzle piece. I did three so I'll post the last one some time soon.

Just a simple post today.

I've been trolling around the internet this morning and I happened to type damask into my google image search. There are a whole bunch of really great Victorian-inspired designs that I think I'm going to have to experiment with. I'll keep you posted.

Belated Post

I drew this some time ago (I think December) but just recently painted it. I think I should have left it though, oh well. It's of the interior of The Cup Cafe on Congress.

Digital Ethnography

I've been doing my own research project on ethnography (the holistic study of cultures) just because I enjoy learning and I happened upon a blog entitled Digital Ethnography. It has a lot of great videos including this one:

Pretty cool, huh? Makes me want to learn how to edit video.

Just a fun little Sharpie copy

I saw this image on LoisInWonderland's photo stream on flickr and I thought I'd have a go at it.












So I came up with this:














Thes shape of things are a little different and I drew it on printed paper I found in the library but I had a good time. Sharpies remind me of high school and wearing belly button rings in my ears. Any who if you'd like to check out more of LoisinWonderland photography you can go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/loisstavsky/

On the idea of genius

Here's another TED video, this time from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. I think this video has some interesting ideas but mostly I just like the way she speaks. Happy Tuesday everyone!

Tomorrow it will rain in Bouville

I just finished reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea. It kind of tripped me out so now I'm going to make myself something nice to eat and take a nap. That's what I get for reading the last 100 pages of landmark Existential fiction in one sitting. Oh man.

There were some great lines though like "up to now I was an amateur at heart" and "nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it". I think I'll make some art pieces just so I can title them with lines from the book.

Part III Triptych

Last but not least, Othello: "Othello"
digital image

I really enjoyed this process. Which I guess I never really explained. I have about a dozen sketchbook and notebooks filled with magazine images that I like, probably close to a thousand pictures. And what I did was think about the themes in Othello that I wanted to take a closer look at and picked out all of the images that I felt depicted them in some way. Then I scanned them, and went on Photoshop and collaged as if it was real paper, rotating the canvas and stuff. I might end up painting these sometime and abstracting them even further. Could be fun. . .

Part II Triptych

Here's part two, Desdemona. You might recognize it. I flipped it and cropped it to make the banner on this page."Desdemona"
digital image

Part I Triptych

I've been playing around on photoshop lately and exploring some themes from Othello for one of my classes. The result has been a triptych each illustrating a character from the play. Here is Iago:"Iago"
digital image

I'll be posting the others soon!

I saw Watchmen

And by far my favorite part was the opening credit sequence. It's this interesting slow motion/single shot combination that gives it the right feel I think. As far as the rest of the movie goes I enjoyed and even went to see it a second time, but I understand that the people who have read the book are generally not too pleased with it. It's your basic movie/novel conundrum: you can't fit everything from the book into the movie so people get upset. Oh well. I think this movie was a fine testament to some creative minds (just look at the costumes!) Here's the link to watch the clip online:
Watchmen Opening Credits Clip

For your consideration.

This is the drawing I'm working on right now. I have to 'finish' it by class on Monday and I'm scared. I like it and I would like to keep on liking it but it's not done. SO I have to figure out what I'm going to do. I was thinking a seascape behind her and then it could be a maritime venus. At least if I screw it up now it will be archived in the internet this way.

If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Look what I can do

I'm a huge fan of finding video tutorials online. I'm kind of amazed at how much technical knowledge I can get without paying anything and without changing out of my moccasins. So on my quest to get better at bookbinding I stumbled across buchbinderbaumgartne's 5 part tutorial. It is a great find with precise measurement info and quality video, plus it's got some sweet background music. Here's the link and here's the video:




The book that I made follows. Its papers are all either furtively gathered from the University library's recycle bin or salvaged from my old school stuff. I will be selling it at my Etsy store soon.
(www.westphalia.etsy.com)

"Jane's Journal"

5 1/2" x 8" harcover journal, reused pages, headband and ribbon marker.

"Up to now I was an amatuer at heart"

"Lonely Hearts Club"
charcoal, gel medium, watercolor on 18"x 24" Sketch paper

For this drawing I was sitting in my 8am figure drawing class and while everyone was really carefully rendering the skeletons I took out some charcoal and loosened up. So even though the ribs are all kinds of crazy and the skulls are all different sizes I'm really happy with it.

Hiatus Over

I'm back with new artwork and with a new plan. I'm going to follow the lead of some great bloggers (Jen Renniger, http://www.pleasebestill.blogspot.com/, for one) and add some web content that I find particularly inspiring. Starting with:


The Work of Jonathan Harris, http://www.number27.org/

I was first introduced to his work through the TED videos, ted.com, that showcase ingenuous minds in the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design. Harris made a presentation of his latest project 'We Feel Fine', an online database of blog emotions. The program he has written automatically gathers information from blogs all over the internet and compiles them in an interface that lets you organize by categories like age, weather, location, etc. As his website mentions it is a great "exploration of human emotions". I also like the concept of 'The Whale Hunt' where he has took a picture every five minutes or so of a trip to Barrow, Alaska and then created a similar computer program framework for viewing them.

Fun things to think about for a Sunday night. I'll be back tomorrow to post some art work from my figure drawing class.