FIVE CHARACTERS!

So, since I missed nearly a month of class for surgery, I feel like I have been working non-stop to catch up and keep up simultaneously. I am still so utterly behind it's disheartening, the most in Illustrated Story II. I feel as though I am finally making headway though, as I've at last finalized and fully developed my five characters, so I can begin actually writing comics about them!

Here they are (click to embiggen):

History of Type

This is an assignment on a reading about the history of type. We had to condense around 5000 years of typography and written communication into 15 steps, so I chose to do a comic instead of the standard bulleted list, albeit that would have been far easier and I may have slept more last night if I had.

H to Hammerhead Shark

For this assignment, I had to take the first letter of my last name and morph that into an object beginning with the same letter in six steps. I think this would look cool as an animation, but as it is, it's probably the most fun thing we've gotten to do in Design Systems I thus far.

Book Reports are different at Art School

BLANKETS by CRAIG THOMPSON
Lauren Rae Holtermann / Illustrated Story II / Joel Priddy / 09.13.09


Blankets is an illustrated novel written & illustrated by Craig Thompson which chronicles the writer’s two first real connections—his close friendship with his younger brother (and what he considers his failures within it) and his first love as a teenager. Though these are the primary focus of Thompson’s story, it is more a tale of a boy coming to terms with his own perceptions of identity, religion, relationships, family, love, life calling, and the subsequent contradictions that present themselves between them.

In the book, Thompson is portrayed at different ages and stages in his life: as a young boy around 8 or 10, a teenager around 17 or 18, and an adult in his twenties. However, it is not written chronologically, but rather, in more in a series of flashbacks when appropriate. For instance, when Craig goes to visit his first love, Raina, a girl he met at church camp, for two weeks at her home in Michigan, he is torn between an overwhelming physical attraction to her, and the ideals of lust, temptation, and sin instilled in him through his highly religious parents. The writer then takes us back to a time when young Craig’s busdriver finds a drawing he had done of a naked woman, and returns it to his parents. They tell him that he has a gift not to be used to do the devil’s work. In the creative mind of a child, he imagines the portrait of Jesus in his parents’ room turning away from him in shame and disappointment. This non-linear method of storytelling, I feel, is particularly effective because rather than presenting a perfect recount of his life, childhood to adulthood, we are only exposed to the parts of his childhood which he later finds important or relevant to his subsequent maturation.

The portrait of Jesus is also a significant storytelling device. In his teenage years , in Michigan, he finds the same portrait in Raina’s room, but feels Jesus is proud and approving of his half-naked, hormonal encounter with his girlfriend. The exact same portrait existing in his parents’ bedroom and Raina’s alike may be an embellishment by the author rather than a factual aspect of the story, however, that’s really irrelevant. Its storytelling purpose is clear. The portrait is a representation of Craig’s perceived adherence to Christianity, and Jesus’s image acts as a literal scale between utter blasphemy and complete faith. The fact that it is the same image suggests that Craig’s perception of religion is continuous, not dependent on his surroundings or company. However, I believe that the scene in which he and Raina are twisted around in the throngs of passion, when he sees Jesus smile upon what would be considered in Christianity to be a lustful, sinful act, is the point in which Craig’s faith is first tested and begins to morph. Having been a part of the Christian faith, questioned it, reinterpreted it, and eventually denounced it myself, I can relate to this stage in Thompson’s life. The faith is easy to follow before being exposed to the rest of the world outside of family, home life, and the church. When you have the opportunity to either resist or give in to temptation, it takes a big life-changing decision moment, because the choice to take your shirt off with your seventeen year old girlfriend or stop and sneak back into the guest room of her parents’ house isn’t simply that; it becomes a matter of fully embracing your faith or embracing the rest of what you are as a human. It’s confusing, but in Craig’s experience, he had at that moment personalized his faith. Although the sequence is without dialogue, the descriptions provided makes me think Craig has rationalized his actions… How can something that feels so right be morally wrong?

When Thompson takes us back into his adolescence and teenage years, there is a big gap between age 10 and age 17. Raina brings up this discrepancy, to which Craig explains that the relationship with his younger brother had disintegrated around the time that they got their own beds. This also brings up the title of the book: Blankets. The title is obviously a metaphor. Blankets as a symbol, are an easy interpretation: a symbol of comfort and familiarity, but not necessarily of consistent happiness. In Thompson’s autobiographical tale, he jumps between different phases in his life, but each seems to be defined by blankets, or moreso, by the people he shares a blanket with. This recurring symbol changes meaning, corresponding to Craig’s age, maturity, and priorities. As a young child, blankets are sails on the ship of his bed of which he and his younger brother Phil are captains. Blankets are also the joined warmth of brotherhood in the cold winter months when his poor family cannot afford the comfort of heating in their drafty shared bedroom. However, when he gets older, blankets are the binding connection between he and his first love, Raina. And through their relationship, the blanket symbolizes their love, personified in the handmade quilt that Raina meticulously cuts and sews for Craig. In his twenties, the blanket is a representation of memories destroyed. The room that was once a roraring ocean, navigated by Craig and Phil as small boys has been stripped of blankets, and Raina’s quilt, a symbol of innocent love has been stuffed into a garbage bag, hidden away in a closet to be forgotten. When Raina and her blanket are retired, Craig fills the void with a reinvigorated relationship with Phil, although blankets are not now the center of their connection. Blankets, in their absence, seems to serve as a symbol of his maturation. In his twenties, when Craig is lastly portrayed, the comfort of faith and shared beds are not evident. He has grown out of their need, finding solace as we all do post-romantic fancy and childhood magic… in the small moments of life, in the “holidays as a ritual with meaning, and the seasons as an increment of measurement.”

Illustration 3: Silhouettes

[ click to embiggen ]

For this project, I had to take silhouettes of objects and turn them into something else. The first is a wrapped candy turned into a little girl, second is the wave from Hokusai's Great Wave print turned into a Chinese dragon, and the third is a butterfly turned into a two-headed calf.

Illustration 3: Six Topics

Learning to teach students to learn to teach to...

I know a lot of college students in Memphis. Having grown up here, I know a good 300 or so just from high school, plus everyone I've met at MCA, and through Rozelle Artists Guild. They all have a very broad range of majors, from American History to Philosophy & Religion, to Printmaking. It's really cool to have that broad range of studies available to you and the chance to hone in on one of them so seriously for a few years, but everytime I hear someone spout off a major that isn't law or medicine, I immediately have to ask, "...Soooooo, what are you going to do with that?", to which almost all reply, "I don't really know, probably teach."

I'm in no way against the proliferation of knowledge. Contrary to that cliche high school argument "when am I EVER going to need to know this?", I really do think it's important to learn the basic principals of physics, geometry, American history, the selected works of E. E. Cummings or whatever else you're forced to do in those four years, even if you literally never use a calculator or read a poem again. It's about training your mind to think in different dimensions, and it's about exposing yourself to a shitstorm of different things with the hope that, by the time you turn eighteen, you will have found at least one thing that interests you enough to continue your education.

That scope will linearly lead to a declared major in college, a degree in it, and if all goes well, some career that employs it. But aside from the few lucky exceptions like those guys that preserve really old documents at museums or the old, sage men with PhDs and smoking jackets who write weighty books, what can you really do with a degree in history? What career is there for history freaks? What, other than teaching?

It does seem a bit off that there are so many kids today going to school for things that there is no secondary use for. I am all for education, and lifelong education is not an idea I'm unfound of whatsoever, but isn't the root purpose of education the preparation for real world application? In this age, I find that more art students, as hard as it will be for them to find good jobs, have a bigger advantage when it comes to venturing out of the teaching possibility post-grad. We're all just learning some specific sect of knowledge to pass down to the next generations, in hopes they might find it interesting too, so that they'll have something to declare as a major in college, so when they get out, they can teach kids the same thing.

It's a cycle I really don't have an opinion on. I'm for it, if anything. I'll always be supportive of an educated populace. I'd rather a world of teachers who are also students than a world of people that never found any reason to go to college themselves. Even with the stress, lack of sleep, doubt of a future career, and insurmountable debt incurred, I think it's worth the trouble.

Tibetan Monks visit Memphis

The monks of the Loseling Monastery are in Memphis for the week. Wednesday night, they had their opening ceremony where they sang, chanted, and played these badass instruments I've never seen before. There is a shrine to The Dalai Lama set up in the main gallery at Memphis College of Art, and a few feet away, a table on which the monks are carefully constructing a sand painting of a mandala. They are working 10AM-6PM Thursday, September 03-Saturday September 05 2009. The closing ceremony is on Sunday at 1PM. Also, Sunday, September 06 at 7PM, the monks are performing at the Shell in Overton Park.


[click to visit flickr set of the monks]

Illustration 3: 100 Circles

Our first assignment in Illo3 was to draw 100 circles and make them into individual drawings. I only did 53. I think these three are my favorites:




...And here are the rest. As always, click to enlarge.

Illustrated Story: Comic 01

This is my first character of the semester, Benny. She's a morbidly obese waitress in a truckstop diner off Exit 42 in Arkansas. All of her thinner (yet uglier) sisters got married off and never finished high school, but she never found a mate, so she graduated and now works at the Eat-N-Go and reads books at home. She's secretly very intelligent but ashamed of it because she doesn't think men like that. She wears sweet ass cateye glasses she stole from her grandmother's house when she died but has never worn them in front of anyone. She was raised traditional Southern Baptist but is beginning to question the role and validity of religion through her evening reading. She's like a dainty, thin woman trapped in a huge bulging body--small hands and feet, delicate features, very pretty in the face, very graceful, eats like a bird, it's almost as if she's accidentally fat.


[ click to embiggen ]


& here's the first comic of the semester. I'm not sure how clear it is, but not bad for a few hours of work, methinks.


[ click to embiggen ]

Bad Design

So, by force, I'm taking Design Systems I this semester. Over the weekend, we're supposed to find some examples of bad design to think about. I'm not required to bring anything into class but I thought I'd post a blog of the few examples I thought of off the top of my head tonight.

1) Sunkist's logo redesign.

I don't know what was wrong with the old logo. I realize companies like to redesign their identity from time to time to reinvent their public image or increase attention in advertising, but I liked the old logo. It was simple and summery; it said orange soda to me. The new logo says jam band. And it's hideous.

2. Comcast's website.

This is the worst designed website I have ever seen. I absolutely loathe it. Things are not organized into an easily navigable order. You literally have to hunt through several pages to find the section you need. Even the FAQs are disorganized. I can see they're attempting to go for some 1950's schemed theme, but I hate it. The banners aren't even saved at a decent resolution! I hate the site more than I hate the company.

3. Baskin Robbins' redesigned logo.

Okay, to be fair, I actually kind of like this logo, just because it combines the name of the company and the 31 for the 31 flavors BR offers. I also really like when logos have a full name version, and a smaller image. I just.. don't like this odd, angular approach to the letters. It's supposed to be all funky and fun, but I think it usually comes off kindof amateur or tacky.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but those are the few I saw today on my trek downtown.

I HAVE FINALLY ACQUIRED INDESIGN.
...which means that I can finally open & edit my trading cards. And I just spent a good two hours converting these to web-friendly jpegs (not to mention the 30 minutes spent searching for a free Bauhaus font download. I don't remember it being so difficult the first few times I downloaded it at school...)
ANYWAY. Here's a sneak preview:

and the rest of them can be viewed here:
laurenrae.carbonmade.com
(Which is my spiffy new gallery birthday present. Thanks Dad!)

That is all.

Art Dump

So Valentines Day has come & gone, and I got a manicure, pedicure, massage, steak dinner, bottle of table wine, and awesome Sci-Fi movie out of it all. What a darling boy I have, eh? All of my brilliant birthday gift ideas for Shea fell miserably through, so I ended up drawing him a caricature, like he had been whining at me to do. The angle of his head throws off the upwardly curled lip, so the smile I intended to balance out his wide eyes kindof disappeared... Or maybe I just think that, and it looks fine, and I should shut up so you think it looks good too...



Also, as of late, I have to say I'm still pretty excited by all the ideas I get these days for projects. The ideas I have are always stupid, or silly, or basically, not intended for a canvas or gallery, in the most blunt, stereotypical terms. It's as if finally taking a studio class that allows & even encourages silliness, stories, caricatures, and black ink has given me license to utilize them all again. Although I felt at the time that I was doing the right thing by challenging myself to draw naturalistically, I was bored to tears. It's really picturesque to think I came to art school to grow out of my comic book style of drawing, and have 4 semesters in, fallen right back into it, full-steam.

Anyway, I quite smoking this week, so I'm doing a cope piece. I'm attempting to personify individual cigarette brands into demons. I just finished the first last night, though I think I might be redoing him completely...



That's all, folks!

Art School Professors are just High School Egos with Wrinkles.

The professors, and teachers in high school, summer art programs, theatrical training, etc., that I have held in the highest esteem, have always been very well-rounded teachers. For example, I think Howard Paine is a great teacher, but it has to do with the fact that although he is specially skilled in Graphic Design, he dabbles in a bit of every medium. I feel that has endowed him with a bit more openmindedness, so that he can appreciate the skill and labor that goes into both a design and a painting, and can appreciate aspects of both, even those that overlap that perhaps only one who has labored over both a canvas and a computer screen can dilineate. I have seen him attending exhibitions of video animation and sculpture, and perhaps this variation is not the most valuable quality, because the man is laid back in general. It seems that even though he can carefully giggle at a prod at another student, he has not succumb to the gossipping, stressful air of his peers. For that I respect him.

Adrian Duran, who I also respect highly, both as a educator and a human being, is similar. True, he is well-versed in Titian and Po-Mo equally, but he exercises his right to opinion. He does not praise everything he teaches, and perhaps more importantly, is not simply versed in textbook art, but hip hop of all things. And even though I heard criticism of his attempts at photography by Photo Majors, he does at least seem to care enough to try it himself; to search for that appreciation through experience. But alas, he too is young, bright, and too intelligent to be swept away in a fit of egomaniacy.

However, my qualms lie with the older--the much older--professors. Those who were trained in the sixties, yet seem to have completely forgotten that sense of finding yourself, finding a place in society, and stirring the pot once in a while. While Prillaman was never one to critique a painting show, he was the best metalsmith I had ever met, and was open to any endeavor you wished to take on, wholeheartedly.

I suppose in my ethical opinion, the professor for an introductory painting class should never have the right to come to the conclusion that a student has no heart for painting after 13 classes of mandatory still lifes, and should furthermore never attempt to give them advice on how to live their life directly following. I may sound like a bitter middle school girl at this point, but every event of yesterday boiled into my blood that art teachers are just walking egos. All artists are. Every piece is a self-portrait, every artist looking in the mirror with a hard-on. I have not met one self-doubting painter in all my life. To think you have such wonderous wisdom and talent that you should be coaching others is masturbating into a classroom of completely unsuspecting, poor, innocent art students.

I have such a problem with this particular teacher because I feel he has wedged himself into Painting I, yet is itching to critique New American Paintings, and instead buries the urges in alcohol, tearing down illustrators, and submersing himself in a warm pool of ass-kissers. And why? I do believe they stem from a complete snobbery, a total lack of appreciation for any innovation of separate mediums. He has latched on to a single medium, and a solitary visual concept, and repeated it, without movement, for fifty years. He doesn't loathe drawing, he has forgotten that is what spawned his precious paintings. He loves your work if it is in oil, heavily layered, with specific horizon lines and luminosity because it reminds him of himself. It's much too late to do a damned thing to change his mind, so I recommend to his students, beware, and don't listen too carefully. Kiss ass and get your A, or experiment how you wish, and let the GPA suffer.