I lied

I'm not doing a space painting. Sorry.

I watched The Maltese Falcon, and was so inspired again by film noir that I had only one option: this painting, called the interrogator. Here we have my shitty sketches and some beginning work. I want to keep this one pretty monotone, although I might put either warms in the background or even cooler cools. The jury is still out on that one. Enjoy.

Excuses

Ever since moving back I've been working eight hours a day, then crashing. This is ridiculously frustrating for me, as all I really want to do is begin like three paintings to cap off my school year or at least get mailings and whatnot done. As it stands, all I have are five minute scribbles and mixed up subjects. Should I paint the English meeting an African tribe? Another period piece. Oi. Should I do another cowboy piece? Maybe, but I want more original ideas. I think I've finally settled on doing a mars piece. I'll have sketches and all that jazz up soon. Have you met space marine Blake Joseph Kuck? Introductions will begin soon, for sure.

Cell Phone
There once was a man named Ben
Who turned off his phone and then
With no one to call
And no text at all
Was never heard from again.

Rant time:
There will be no flying cars in the future. Flying personal transport will never happen. Face it. Let us review the facts:
It takes years of training and specific physical specifications to learn to fly
Even now with so little air traffic, comparatively, planes still collide
There's no such thing as stop signs in the air
Oh yeah, and people are really bad at driving on a two-dimensional plane. Give them three dimensions and its like cutting your vegetables with a machine gun: make a stupid mistake and you no longer just get nicked. Plus, cutting vegetables with a machine gun is dumb in the first place, you really trust yourself on the highway of the future?

I am sorry I had to burst that bubble, really I am. But it's a stupid dream. A wonderful, stupid-ass dream. I loved you, Fifth Element.

I'm alumni now. Oh.

Today I graduated cum laude from Columbus College of Art and Design. BFA of Illustration, Minor in writing. Today I join the ranks of CCAD Illustration Alumni, and those are some big shoes to fill. Even all of my RA responsibilities are over and done with. When I move out tomorrow, all ties to college will be severed(for now of course, I'll stay in touch)!

It is certainly a wierd feeling, like sitting on the front car on a roller coaster at the top of the first hill. For four years I rode to this crest, and now I have to keep it together for the plunge. It's scary and exhilerating up here, but I have never been more ready.

The teaching I have gotten here at CCAD, and the experiences, and people I came across have made me the professional I am today. Success, I'll send you a text once I get on the road, I'll be at your house pretty soon.

DONEDONEDONE

Well I am done. I got seven A's and one B+. Talk about finishing strong! Now I am going to go party(responsibly). See you on the flip side!

Closer yet.

I am posting just to prove to myself and others that I am alive. Three paintings more now... times like these breed great poetry. When you have time to write it. I don't. Yet. But I got this:

See you at the end of the homework apacolypse

I have two days of class left. That is forty-eight hours to top off four years and eighty-thousand dollars worth of learning. I have six paintings still to finish. At least my tenior here at CCAD is ending with a bang...

Directions

The Illustration seniors put together a great show last Wednesday, which only a few select employers decided to witness. This made alot of people angry, mainly because they were required to go, and subsequently ignored or worse in some (not many) cases, belittled. My admittedly sarcastic write up is below.

Today we are holding a meeting, dreamt up and run by Shannon Moore, Angie Andrews, and John Olsen. The items on the dockett being: How can we either change directions for the better or build a separate illustration function? What helpful critiques can be made to build the illustration department in terms of curriculum and faculty and facility? What can the seniors do to make the experience of the under classmen meet all the expectations that we found lacking?

I am very excited that Directions happened this way, because it lit the metaphorical fire under the illustration seniors' asses. Now that we're hoppin' mad, hopefully we can channel this into a positive and lasting change for the school and for our community.


Here is, by the by, what I experienced at Directions:

I hate being sick. I hear swine flu is really terrible to have. I try to avoid getting sick, don’t you? But sometimes, social events get people together, and some of those people may have swine flu. It is very difficult to avoid getting sick when greeting a lot of people. I am the perfect picture of health today, thank you for asking. Where were we? Ah, yes. Directions:

Where to begin? I did not have the highest hopes for Directions. I tempered my excitement with soft, cooing words of acceptance: there will be no jobs, they aren’t there for you David, or even, at least you will be able to shake professional hands.

And that is where I was wrong. Not only did I shake a grand total of four hands (one of which I forced upon my viewer—he didn’t seem to want to look in my eyes), but I hardly spoke. I wasn’t sheepish, and I have excellent public relation skills. The fact of the matter is that no one wanted to give us a chance, and many of their reactions to our area where verging on rude.

Quick glances, avoiding our eyes, looking straight ahead and ignoring the fact that there were living, breathing people with four years of work sitting on the tables in front of them was the order of the day. At least I was not in danger of getting swine flu.

Like I said, I wasn’t looking for a job. I didn’t plan on walking out of there with a pay stub and employee benefits. But I wanted a chance to show my work, or at the very least some experience presenting myself as an artist. There was no chance given to any of the illustrators there to do anything but stand in one place for four hours (which we did with aplomb). There were many reasons for this.

One, they put the students all the employers wanted to see in the front of the gallery, allowing the flow of professionals into the illustration area to be all but staunched. Two, they labeled us. We as illustrators can design every bit as well as the ad-graph people. Illustrators know the programs, know the mediums, and know how to connect to audiences. But because we were labeled illustration no employers expected us to have experience in design. Directions should be a free for all. All majors, every table, no labels. It makes the experience longer for the employers to find a suitable fit, but by labeling certain students as something that they don't want, it limits the potential of other majors to fit into their needs. I know quite a few of my friends in illustration who have a separate and excellent advertising portfolio who were never once glanced at. This was an offense.

Personally, I can say this: I was happy to have all my artwork out. My website is done, I am branded, and I am feeling more professional than ever now that my portfolio is finished. I loved setting up my booth and being able to see the work of my peers. I loved that I could grab business cards from all of my friends. But Directions was a colossal waste of my time. It was four hours of standing in place watching people pass us awkwardly. Four hours I could have spent on the last of my homework. Four hours I could have spent online doing tons more for myself than Directions ever did. Either this has to change, or illustrators should not be forced to do it. Maybe they should be told to avoid it. Avoid it like the swine flu.

Notes upon shopping

I was in Walmart the other day. And Target on another occasion. When I looked at their graphic tees, I realized that there were probably a grand total of five shirts from their collections that did not have skulls in the design. Some cultures openly embrace death and the rituals associated with it. Ours has made it a selling point.

It doesn't end with Hot Topic either. Television: Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Six Feet Under. Movies: goes without saying, really, any zombie movie, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Virgin Suicides, any horror movie with sharp objects and teenagers, Hostel, Saw, you get it.

Instead of the Dia de Los Muertos, we have Dead: The Movie (based on the book), with promotional tie-in t-shirt and shoes of the dead, which had a short television spin-off follow-up of the dead, and topped off with a smattering of straight to DVD Dead sequels.

On a side note: I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the first time in ten years last night. Number one: Roger is the most annoying cartoon character ever. Number two: the ending with the bad guy and the cartoon eyes and the saw blade and fake face and stuff? Holy crap, it was just as scary as I remember it.