Printmaking... my struggles

Here are some prints I finally brought myself to take pictures of! So there are 2 types of prints here. There are my wood block prints (mickey and Marty2010) which I have much more trouble with than the monotypes (portrait of me and of Jakub). I'm a fairly good painter and thus the monotypes come out pretty nice because its pretty much the same thing. You take a sheet of mylar that you then paint on with relief ink and then print on a paper, so you literally get 1 impression and possibly a ghost print (a very faint version of the original).

NEW Solar Car Posters

Ok so the meeting is over and the designs were approved! except the colors needed to be more consistent with the rest of our look. so I've made a few changes. Here they are after most of the big changes have been made. I still need to touch some things up and add a paragraph in the Infinium Poster, but thats about it!

Solar Car Poster

I literally just started and finished this poster tonight... it's 3am... and am actually quite happy with it. I've joined the Business sector of the University of Michigan's Solar Car Team. I'm doing as much graphic design for them as I can muster up out of my busy schedule. They are going to be showing at the Auto Show in January and need many posters done about the car and the races and the team. My poster is on the 2 most important races the team is a part of each year: The American Solar Challenge and the World Solar Challenge. They've won first in the American 6 times! and 3rd in the World 4 times... thats awesome. I'm excited to be a part of it.

So, I've literally just sent it in to be evaluated and I'll hear back from everyone in the meeting tomorrow. I'll let you know if it gets the final print out ASAP. The only reason it wouldn't is because the aesthetic maybe too inconsistent with the rest of the posters. I never got to see what anyone else was doing and I don't even know if anyone WAS doing anything else...

Teapot Designs

So I'm making some teapots in my ceramics class, as a final project. These first 3 photos are of the smaller pot of the 2 that I'm making. They both have the same general shape but will have different handle placements (handles not shown in picture). Also, the small teapot can actually hold 2 different kinds of tea, because it has 2 compartments and 2 spouts. That idea was brought up by a friend who was thinking of ideas for his own pot but I really liked the idea and used it for mine!

I'm pretty excited about them. Right now they're still drying and I have to come with ideas for glazing them, I'm pretty sure I want to keep it pretty simple, maybe even just white. Here are some teapots by other artists, that I really enjoy and what made me want to do a pot:

Poster Designs For Los Ren

So my close guy friends have recently started a band called Los Renaissance Men. It's hard to explain the genre but I wanna saaay electronic/jazz/experimental? I like it. Anyways they've had a few smalls shows and I've done the posters for all of them so far. They kind of let me go where ever I want with it, so you'll notice the graphics actually dont have much to do with the name but more with the idea of the band and its music.

Here's a link to their myspace if anyone's curious.

The poster in the middle wasn't actually ever used because one of my friends (not in the band) said it looked a little too much like male genitalia. reallyyy??? I didn't think so... but I don't know what everyone else thinks. Oh well!

New Member to my Gadgets Family

Recently did a drawing for a friend at Ohio State. Say what you will, but he's not half bad.

I made this drawing using my new Wacom Bamboo tablet! WOOO. My brother just bought this tablet for me and I must say it is EXTREMELY worth it's fairly cheap price of $99. Actually I really would say it's a steal. I have the Pen and Touch edition and it's quickly becoming my favorite tool.

I owe a HUGE THANK YOU to my brother :)

NEW BLOG PURPOSE

Soooo, Slow Jams will now feature any type of work I'm currently working on. Contrary to what this blog was used for before, which was to post new time-based work I was producing in my Tools Materials and Processes III class sophomore year, I will now be showing work in any medium and any class or, more generally, any project that I happen to be working on and would like to share.

I will show works in progress that I am excited about or even perhaps am struggling with so as to put it out in the open and to become more socially aware of my work and myself. This way I hope to feel more comfortable with the idea of people seeing my work and hopefully become more aware of its impact on a more social setting. ALSOOO this will get me in the habit of documenting my work in progress which is an extremely important part of showing an artists work and part of an artists portfolio! and something I've been too lazy to do in the past.

So to clarify, this isn't my portfolio in ANY shape or form, it's more of a tool in my art making process that is open for outsiders to get involved only if they wish.

So, my main purpose for blog now is not to have people read and comment on my work, but develope new habits for myself and experiment with a new tool in the process of making new work. But in case anyone does feel inclined to then I definitely want them to be able to speak their mind.

So, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OF MY WORK.

thanks,

mart