ok. the print's done.

so there it is. it's called "emulate & immolate". durr ehyruuurr.,masdfasdlkf.
it's ok. i'm just glad i actually completed something while living here. it was bugging me like crazy, not having finished anything at all. got an edition of 19 out of it. guess it's just nice to have a new image to kick around. even if it's ugly as sin. saw twin tigers/octopus project/voxtrot on saturday. not bad, not bad. so now i have ten days to  make three unique drawings from scratch. hooty hoo. my stomach hurts, maybe i'm nervous

layer number "n" complete.
t minus infinity to project completion

 that tail gradation is so ugly. never mind the little sliver that's a little bit lower than the others. just the actual ratio of pigment gradation, did not work. so yeah the good portion naturally gets completely covered. awesome. i'm awesome. and so smart. not painfully ignorant. this guy. two thumbs. anyways, i'll just adjust some extra noise lines to throw on top of it to distract. cuz you know, i won't have enough distracting line work when all is said and done. alsdkdsfjl;asdk;lksda;askff;lk;lkdasflkasdf. just gonna call it a night.

I haven't really worked physically on printing my little print in probably around two or so weeks. i've just been twiddling my thumbs more or less, trying to avoid nervous breakdowns. tonight i've made considerable progress in completely re-hauling the image, taking it in more of a lateral direction (both metaphorically and literally). but essentially i gave into a few of my old conventions of cartoonish hands and shapes, etc. anyways. here's a progression.
  
so that was the earliest draft of the image. then after long internal debate became this

for better or for worse, i had at least made the decision that was it. then i got part way through, and thought, hmm.
well shit. looking at it right now, it's not as bad as i remembered- anyways, it's evolved into this

then i rotated it which made (to me) a pretty big impact.


i haven't really set the two versions (new v. old) side by side and evaluated, but to me this makes a little more visual sense. that is, i appreciate the use of shape and the filling of space more. it kind of captured a bit more of my panic than the previous one. the repetition was nice familiarity as well. the panorama captures something i completely overlooked which was that natural horizontal bend. obviously the little birdy in the middle needs a good working over (a single line detail exposure to cover up it's lacking of- well, detail) then i need to stick a few other things in it to give it that final umph.
ultimately this thing has broken probably ever record of prints i've done so far. it easily has taken the longest to both plan and execute, which is hilarious considering it's probably the smallest in dimension. it's also hilarious because i'm pretty sure it's the ugliest. there are a countless number of sketches that preceded it. jesus. whatever title i come up with there should be implied one of like "every trick in the book" because god damn i've tried just about near every one i know. i just need to get this stupid print out of my system. just get it over with and move on to something else. anyways, i think the actual title will be "turn around goddamnit". that's all. i promise to take progress shots and get myself back to talking about all this technical crap. peasant deams.

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howdy, you might not know me, but i'm the guy who was supposed to be regularly updating this thing. so yeah, it's been a while. despite what it may seem like, i've actually been productive. not nearly as much as say a year ago, but productive nonetheless. so the previous statement about printing in my room. nah, they cleaned out the garage like the next day, and i was like "oh." and i started printing. so i'm maybe like a third of the way through the print, and i'm trying to deal with my imagery. i've spent the week basically working on the baby bird in the middle (which inevitably gets covered up anyways) and i think i might have made the contrast a little too high. essentially i flattened it by getting too dark too fast. it was going really well, then i got too confident, and kinda screwed it. i suppose fortunately it is going to be obscured, and in truth it's a very obvious abstraction of the literal image (even the actual image is a little difficult to discern) so i'm not exactly upset. i have decided though that i'm going to trace an lined exposure over it (not really a tracing of what should actually be there, though i guess i could, but really i was thinking like doing some light white finger drawings over it which might look interesting. i am upset with what is to follow for the rest of the image though. i've decided that i'm going to rework the rest of the imagery mid-print (a first for me). that's a pain, but it'll be worth it. i've acquired maybe some better compositional ideas over the past few hours. hopefully it'll resolve how passive i am about the current state of affairs. um. i haven't done too  much on the personal end. time ebbs and flows just the way it always has. i did go to see frightened rabbit and co. at mohawk last thursday. it was just swell. i had a good time. i've discovered that i have trouble these days with social situations. that neck/head shaky thing is happening more frequently and it's getting me a little worried. i don't really recall that happening that often. people are starting to getting a little concerned about me. or maybe that's just me. people keep reminding me that i can on occasion seem attractive. that's hard to deal with. oh a guy contacted me about a piece from a show like a year ago (and wants to purchase the thing). that's kinda cool i guess.

ok, so this is gonna be a bit long. i have been working- i've been on something new. but it's going depressingly slow.  i'd like to make a screenprint (for sure), a fairly large edition size, and pretty large in scale and scope. so naturally that requires a pretty great deal of forethought. what that means is that it requires a huge amount of sketches and false starts. because- when i make images- i make them in a rather particular way. instead of say, having the immediate image in mind, and literally making the imagery directly to the point of completion, i begin with a vague direction or interpretation. i then overproduce, maybe to the tune of four or five times the needed amount of material, and through combination and processes of elimination, i whittle down all of the information to arrive at an image that i consider to be ok. it's tough because again, i don't really start with a definitive image- that's a hard thing to replicate. i suppose the irony is that when i do have a definitive image in mind, i tend to nail it so articulately that it makes me quite dubious of my methods. the ropey text thing for twisted spurs comes to mind. anyways, this next thing will resemble the previous project except in actual printed edition form. what that means is that i need to effectively find a way to print color images from photographic source. since this

is going to be part of the background. i've really really been getting into collage. i've found that it's really been solving a lot of issues that i've been encountering. specifically addressing color. but, yeah, so that little feathered friend is gonna need to be printed, so i think the only way i could accomplish that is to rely on color half tones, and printing in cmyk. the big problem is that the image might look too blurry if i do that. the only other solution that i can think of is to literally do it reductively with screen filler. it would take forever, but it might be worth it to get all of the detail. the only downside of that is that- well it won't really look photographic anymore. it simultaneously loses and gains qualities. i can tell that that's going to be the great debate on this thing. i feel like i'm back at the "easy excess" print. hitting my head against a wall. and after (just now) reading through some halftone suggestions specifically for screenprinting. it looks tough. but that's not bad, because it gave me some good ideas on approach, i might not necessarily have to rely on a "dot" or ellipse kind of pattern we tend to associate with the process. i might be able to do something a little more accurate, or sharp. i might even be able to get more of the grays in the b/w imagery. blafdsfk ablkahdf
here's the first sketch that started this lonesome trail

i rapidly ditched that effort since it didn't seem like it was really going anywhere, but i stole some of that premise and reapplied it to a different criteria, resulting in this

i continued that thread to make this

i like the way that's turning out. it essentially gets thrown into the composition like so.

looks pretty similar to the last project, no? specifically that gray splotch, what with the cast shadow. it's all still very speculative, but that's the most interesting vein that i've discovered. unless i serendipitously stumble upon a better idea, i'll use it. but, whatever.;sdafjlkasdjflka. i'll digress for a moment to say that i'm pretty unhappy at the moment. this isn't working. that is, this overall course of my life. i want more, and i want to feel whole to some extent. or, rather i can't just keep living in shitty houses, working shitty jobs and exhausting myself to where any thread of creativity in me just gets ground to a fine powder. i'd like to use this year as a time to redirect myself to a higher trajectory. i need to think more positively than ever before, because it really feels like at this age, i'm treading on the knife's edge of mediocrity. one false step, and i just become another middle-aged nobody. (though i actually am, but you know, i need deeper inexplicably spiritual-like motivating forces etc. asldfalskfhealkehfasdkf, because it really feels like the world has just kind of slipped out from under my feet, it's hard to feel connected to anything when you've sort of resigned to the notion of having your heart broken once is the quota for a lifetime)
i'd like to start correspondences with texas artists that i admire, and post interviews/conversations with them on here. that'd be fun. sunday, i am pledging to go to houston. i've put it off for too long, and i owe it to myself to find inspiration- in something- anything. good night