The twinkle toe

Finished this drawing today.

I drew from a picture that I found somewhere in the #balletfeet tag here in tumblr, with graphite over some very toothy cold press paper that was seriously ruining my life, because this drawing is so small and I found myself getting really fucking precious with it.
I drew for the duration of the third part of Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon podcast, during which I cried by the way, which is almost four hours, then during the Welcome Oblivion album and then for maybe an hour more today. All this does not include the breaks.

I have a fascination with ballet feet, not so much ballet. Or maybe yes with ballet, I just wouldn’t go to a ballet show, I don’t think, that kind of really doesn’t appeal to me. I am fascinated by the way the feet develop with the ballet training and what they are capable of and how they become like mutant fucking monster feet. How when they curl their toes, the knuckles become so clear and it’s just like somebody clenching a fist, how long the fingers look and how fucked up they get, all knotty.
In my mind, “fucked up” and “monster” do not equate ugly or deformed. For me it’s the same as when I drool over hands that look like they DO shit, working fucked up strong hands.
The body responds when you make it do shit and what the ballet dancers can do with their feet just fucking blows my fucking shit away.
And the drawing is a man’s leg, which is all fine and dandy, but the girls going en pointe, their feet do some whole other shit. I read somewhere the boys go en pointe, too, but its scarce.
I find myself fascinated with everything, the exercises they do for strength of the toes, feet, ankles and legs, the way they prepare their pointe shoes, what they can do in the pointe shoes.

My reference picture, is this incredibly strange and hypnotizing picture of a male leg, barefoot and en pointe, with the toes curled under. I don’t know if they sprayed him with water or covered him in baby oil, but his calf is so strange. I guess the picture by default is phallic, but that medial head of the gastrocnemius makes me think of a penis. Also, that tendon that is sticking out and that cuts the entire picture almost right down the middle is mesmerizing, I think that's the Achilles Tendon, based on where it's going, but I had sure as shit never seen it go that far up the calf. I also know body parts get veiny with development and effort, but I don’t think I’d seen a veiny calf like that. Not that I can remember, anyway.
His skin is waxy looking and the grey background doesn’t help. And the hairs just make it more bizarre for me, although I have nothing against bodily hair.
So here you have both images. First my reference picture and then my drawing, which I titled "The Twinkle Toe".

Milla + Johnny

So, I drew this yesterday afternoon, whilst I listened to The Fragile, so it is about two hours of work and this does not include breaks, which were a lot.

The way that I’ve been working almost since I started at the Academy, is working 20 minutes and breaking 10 minutes. It’s based off of the Pomodoro method, although, as I understand, the breaks in the Pomodoro method are 5 minutes, but that’s not enough for me. I get fucking ridiculous amounts of work done this way.

I drew with graphite over some mystery paper that I scavenged at the Academy. It is way thick and toothy.

I used a picture of Milla Jovovich as my reference, it’s similar in the crop and composition, where the head is centered and cut at the top of the head and chin. It is ridiculously photoshopped, obviously. In this case, though, they completely changed Milla’s nose, they made it shorter, changed the tip to really straight and small. And I’m pretty sure they fucked with the ear that is in light, too, it looks like a cartoon ear.
The picture being so modified made me want to screw it up in my drawing, which I didn’t really screw up that much, but that person looks like a meth addict in comparison to the doll mask in my reference. I kind of really wanted to make hooded eyes and remark the upper and lower lids and their positions in reference to each other and placement in the face.
There is also some marking of the eye socket and cheekbone - zygomatic arch, some very slight frowning. It kinda looks like a snarl around the nose.
And I kinda wanted a more relaxed expression of the mouth, like when you stare off into space and the lips separate a bit. In my reference, she’s about to say something or in the middle of saying something. I remarked the node on the side of the lip that is in light and I tried to maintain that poutiness from Milla’s mouth, with the philtrum and sulcus under the lower lip.

Ditched the ears, because I don’t give a fuck about ears.

The end result, reminds me a freaking ton of Johnny Depp. With his tiny little mouth and pronounced cupid’s bow. There’s something in the pointy eyebrows and the stare and the sharpness of the features.

Sometime last year, I was commissioned to do a portrait of a girl and all the pictures I had as reference, which all happened to be selfies, just had nothing on her face. I don't know if there were filters, probably, but there was just nothing on her face and I was very annoyed drawing her, because there was just nothing there. It was like looking at pictures in any woman's magazine of your choice. Lately, whenever I happen to stumble upon one such magazine, it just SCREAMS at me.
Maybe it's because of all the anatomy I've learned and will continue to learn, on top of knowing that every single fucking picture is shamelessly photoshopped.
It makes me incredibly sad and depressed how many viewers and readers allow themselves to be fooled and we continue to fuel the photoshop industry by believing them and continue to buy their magazines.
I think I haven't bought that type of magazine in years and years.
And I love how they pretend to leave pores and the same pattern of skin fuzz or lines by using the clone tool (I think that's what it's called).
I want to draw and see faces with expression lines and cheekbones and wrinkles on the lips and eye sockets, frown lines, like that face has fucking BEEN THROUGH something in life, goddammit. Crying, laughing, thinking, wondering, yelling, anger, sadness and all that shit. Lately I have found myself really like the lines that are just outside the lips, I find them way sexy and I like seeing them on myself, too. And my frown, I fucking love my frown, the lines and the muscles.
Anyway, enough sucking my own dick and ranting.

Sisters

Yesterday, i started this drawing. I'm working with charcoal over a 30 x 44" stonehenge sheet. The drawing has a similar flavor to "P.O.V.". 

With the drawings that i've been making since "lipring", i've been seeking to reproduce the feeling that i had whilst making that drawing. A feeling of freedom and carelessness, no fear. No fear of "making mistakes" in the drawing, drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing over and over again.

It feels like a study, where i discover the right place of things, rather than being scared of not getting it right the first time. It's meditative and thoughtful, impulsive, instinctive, angry.

Since "lipring" i've been making self portraits where my face is deformed somehow. It's something to do with the image of myself, self image, how i'm supposed to look for those who look upon me. I don't want to care about that anymore, so with the drawigs i feel like i'm rebelling against that. 

This new drawing, with my references, i wanted there to be rolls on my body. This time, i want to deform my body.

Among other things, the drawing is still about physical violence. They're going to be a diptych, this one's the back and the other one will be the front. In my mind, i'm referring to them as the sisters.

Demon

Yesterday, I printed my third limestone lithography. I don't really know if I'm using the correct terms for things, like, I don't know what the name of a copy is. A lithography? Fucked if I know.

Either way, this last one that I printed yesterday, a total of 18 copies came out, one of them is mine, 6 are proofs and the other ones are "official" copies. That's another thing that I don't know what it's called. I know how to sign and number them, though, not completely ignorant.
Either way, I'm learning.
I really like the stone, don't know why. I think maybe, because by the time that I got to it, I became more familiar with the whole process, which is tedious as fucking shit. When this class started, we worked over aluminum plates, which made me want to rip my tits out. Trying to get that done made me realize that when I go to hell, they will have me making aluminum plate lithography.

I was really excited to print this one, I seriously fucking love the drawing. I freehanded it over the stone, where erasing is a pain in the ass, just like everything else. You can't just draw and erase like when you're working on paper.
So, I freehanded the drawing, based on a picture that I took of myself wearing a beanie that has horns/ears. Everybody said they were horns and I got a kick out of that.
Printing him was more troublesome than the previous two lithographs and I think it's because I didn't care for those as much as I care about this one. I love the shit out of this drawing and I wanted it to be perfect, I was getting all picky about the stainy shit on it, smudges, scumming. The proofs on newspaper came out pristine, but when I put in the Stonehenge, shit started to happen.
And I was amused, because, we're talking about a demon, after all, they're not known for being nice or whatever. So when I had like seven or ten copies total printed out and each time I got annoyed when another defective one came out, it was like a crowd of these incredibly sexy eyes were staring at me mockingly. Specially, with that little smile he has. It's like he's thinking "of course this copy you just did sucks, you're not really good at this at all". That little, incredibly good looking bastard.

So this drawing, I don't consider it a self-portrait, everything turned out quite different from my own face, so I don't really recognize myself in it. The nose, lip ring and split chin, maybe, but I find the face to be very masculine, so, as far as I'm concerned, it's an incredibly good looking male demon that is staring out at me. And I like that much much much more.
Unembarrassed, honest, unwavering, piercing and daring stares are good when they come from a pair of eyes like those.
If that really was me, though, it wouldn't be an ambiguous thing, like it was before. The women and self portraits that I used to draw before, were part of how I was brainwashed to think that I was supposed to be as a woman: Tempting, threatening, inviting, mysterious. Like, you look at her and she's irresistible, but she might destroy you. That ambiguity and mystery is what really calls your attention to her. Or something.
If that was me now, you could still think that shit, but what I see in those eyes and if I looked at somebody like that, there would be nothing but the ulterior motive of hurt and pain in them and how much I'm going to enjoy giving hurt and pain. The forehead, more than the eyes, are what face you, it's like a bull charging at you with all its anger.

You can see whatever you want. I like it being a male demon giving me an incredibly seductive and sexy look.

So here is a scan of the print. I printed them at 8 x 12" over Stonehenge paper.

The Endless

Today, I finished three drawings of my favorite Endless, from Neil Gaiman's the Sandman comic.
I think I only have the first compilation of Sandman comics, Preludes and Nocturnes, and I've kind of laid off comics for a really long time, because they do nothing but frustrate me with their stupid open endings and "to be continued". I know that I like the Sandman, I knew that I was going to like it, I knew that I would like it before I ever started reading it. I don't really know how to explain that I like the Sandman comic almost by default, before I opened the first comic book.
During the winter break, I catsat for friends that have most of the series. Again, I knew that I was going to like it, but I didn't know that I was going to lose my shit over it.
I became completely infatuated, and it was helpful that Morpheus reminds me of Trent, definitely. I fell in love with him and every time I went to catsit, I would read two of the compilations (the owners knew this), and it was like going to see my lover, I was going on a date. Towards the end, I noticed that they were missing the last two issues and I went on a really bad trip and just stopped spending time at their place, because it was like I'd broken up with a guy that I really liked and I didn't want to be there anymore. And there was a nostalgia and a feeling of lacking when I went again, because my insides wanted to sit down and read more, but there was no more to read. It was confusing and it made me sad.
Morpheus kept reminding me of Trent, because he's usually top lit, with the scraggly, messy hair, scrawny like Trent used to be, back in the Downward Spiral days. He is freaking adorable.
So, my first impulse was definitely to draw Morpheus and I picked a picture of Trent that has something to do with the Downward spiral, but I don't know what it is the cover of. I have it labelled as "trent insect", because that's what his eyes remind me of.
I got quite frustrated with the stories in which Morpheus doesn't show up and he's only vaguely related to them. I love how charming and polite he is. It's like I have a legit crush on this dude, I'm blinded most of the time to how proud and stubborn he is. He was the first drawing that I did.
I have very little concern about his appearance when I look at the drawing, because I know that it turned out fucking perfect. I look at him and his twin star eyes and I feel like I could dive into him and kiss him.
Neil describes his eyes as "pools of night" and "twin stars", which is so beautiful and romantic, and I wish I had a lover with such eyes and he could look at me with them.

I don't know, really, why in particular I decided to draw Death. She is definitely way too cool and chill for me. Neil Gaiman said that there is a cabbalah story about death that says it is such a beautiful creature and you fall in love so hard and so fast that your soul comes out of your eyes. He said he didn't want a Death who agonized over her role, or who took a grim delight in her job, or who didn't care. He wanted a Death that he would like to meet in the end. Someone who would care. Like her. In the wikipedia article, she is described as: "pleasant, down-to-earth, perky". So for my drawing, I wanted her to be warmly and intimately looking at the viewer and smiling. I wanted the smile to be a Milla sort of smile, a smile that you give a person with whom you keep a secret and only both of you know, a smile that says you trust them and you're together in whatever it is. Because of the nature of said smile, there should be some mischief in it, so hopefully there is a little of that, too.

Desire was the most difficult and elusive one. I did two bust drawings of him, before I realized that a bust drawing would break what I had going with Death and Dream, because those two are close ups of faces. So I had to look for a face and a facial expression that I felt suited Desire. I also kept confusing him with pleasure, because I guess he just comes off as hedonistic and capricious to me, and that is also why I guess I liked the idea of making a self portrait out of him.
Also, I know that Desire is neither and both male and female, but I think of him as him. He's a very beautiful boy, one of those model types, with whose beauty I cannot deal with and makes me uncomfortable. I think that's why I ended up with Milla as my reference and I also think that she would be fucking perfect to be him in a movie.
Neil's description (one of the descriptions, anyway) of Desire in the comic is as follows: "Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And there is much else that is knife-like about Desire. Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin pale as smoke and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything."
The line: "Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge", I think might have been what did it for me.
So, Desire looks down at us, with disdain and condescension, parted fleshy, pillowy, inviting lips, half closed ochre eyes, a hedonistic molasses feeling about him.

So here they are.
Death: Dream: Desire:

Automata

Today, I finished this drawing, titled "Automata". It is a strange 8 x 8" drawing, that I did with a Tombow B pencil over Fabriano paper that I mounted on canvas.
Probably one of the strangest things about her is the lack of eyebrows, or the apparent lack of eyebrows, because I purposefully cut her face off there. This is some of the work at which I concluded last semester, with my research work, it's actually part of a polyptych of sorts, because it's five drawings that hang on a board.
The drawings are all parts of the female body and the group is titled "Die Puppe" ("The Doll"), because I found myself emulating Hans Bellmer, in a way, but I'll get to that eventually. Not in this entry.
Of "Automata" as an individual drawing, while I was working on her, I wrote something down, thoughts that I had whilst I worked on her.
"Automata's eyes decidedly stare out at me
maybe demanding
maybe pleading
maybe impassive and imperturbable
maybe with curiosity
but they definitely stare
She stares out of the window of paper and canvas that I cut out for her
Her perfect and unaltered features, although still and peaceful, look to be on the verge on panic
Flawlessly graded shadows in valleys and mountains
delicate lines sculpt her in the paper
The cracks of her lips begin cutting into her face
exaggerated grooves make it seem like they're painfully dry and as though they will break and bleed at the slightest gesture
And so she keeps her entire face unwaveringly still"

Modified Storage Space

I finished this painting maybe a month ago, it was part of some research work I was doing for what I thought would be my thesis.
Sometime last year I "awoke" from a lifetime of being a brainwashed woman. Before I got to New York, I was in a relationship of sorts with a guy that liked slapping and hair pulling in bed, which is fine, but I'm not into that shit and he kept doing it, even though I asked him not to and, for whatever reason that I just haven't figured out, I didn't defend myself when he would do it again and didn't say anything again.
He wouldn't do it every time we had sex, but I didn't know wether he'd do it or not.
I think part of not defending myself might have been fear of what would happen if I did defend myself, after all, it is said over and over again, that no matter what, men are always stronger than women. So is there even really a point to even try to defend myself?
So, I'm just blaming it on brainwashing.
There are many other things that I didn't like about having sex with this guy, he hardly ever kissed me and, when he did kiss me, I wasn't a fan of the way he kissed me either; there was hardly ever foreplay, so when he got his boner, he'd just put some spit on my cunt and penetrate me. And it was painful.
I have what I think is pretty good pain tolerance, I obviously have no gauge with which to measure, nobody does, but I like to think that I tolerate pain well enough. Pain usually makes me really angry, but whenever there was pain during sex, I felt like I was obligated to just take it. So I did the great majority of the time, with this dude and whatever other dude.
I had this image of myself that I thought I was supposed to be as a female, an idea that I thought I liked, a "temptress", "seductress", "always willing", impassive and insatiable witch.
And upon reading a book called "El Cuerpo en Venta" by Juan Carlos Pérez Gauli, all my shit was put in the fucking blender.
The book talks about the relationship between art and advertising and how the female body has been used in both throughout history. It also talks about how women and nature are put in relationship to each other, because they are both things that are mysterious to men and have so to be dominated by man. Or some shit like that, the book depressed the living fuck out me.
I don't remember everything, but it obligated me to reconsider a lot of things about myself that I thought to be true. So this dude that liked slapping and hair pulling and the things in the book, just put this idea in me and that shit snowballed and I wanted to make images that dealt with how I've been treated and how I'm still treated by men and others. I don't know who "others" are, but it's definitely not just the men. And it's also not all men. The whole sexism issue is something that affects everyone, but the research work was meant to help me convey how it feels for me. I can't speak for anyone else, now can I?
So, anyway.
I mean, I was aware of feminism and sexism, but I just didn't know how deep it went. To look at another human and see an object is all kinds of fucked up, it's absurd, but that's exactly what happens.
I read somewhere a comment full of hate about how women are seen as nothing but a hole in which men put their dicks. And I saw an illustration once, of a woman with a bull's head and she had the dotted lines of cuts of cow meat.
Why do we have to treat each other this way?
So, I made a painting of a vulva, titled "Storage Space" and this painting that you see here, titled "Modified Storage Space".
As usual, the work becomes more, sort of, as I work on it. And this painting started out with only the two cuts on the side of her mouth, as if somebody wanted to make her mouth open farther. I'm not sure if that would work, but clearly whoever is torturing her doesn't care.
Afterwards, it became that she had more scars on top of the scars of the cuts on the side of her mouth, her skin is also surprisingly good at healing, so her abuser kept hurting her.
Also, when I first started it, her lips were pretty relaxed, it could have been any mouth, party open, the person is distracted or something. But as I painted her more, she started looking like she's just about to grimace in pain or like she's just about to start crying again.
After a while of telling other people what I was working on, it kept feeling more and more like I was victimizing myself and trying to get pity from somebody, so I laid off all that shit and the work changed. So, I'll post about that some other time, but this is a little painting that I really like and I enjoyed painting it. I find it an incredibly beautiful image and I love the Dioxazine Purple with which I painted her and how the purple coming from the sides of her neck look like they're going to engulf her and the entire image and maybe that's why she's so afraid.

Plague

Today, I finished this self portrait titled "Plague".
As usual, I don't really know where the image came from, but at the same time, they kind of "form" themselves as I make them, which is cool. I think sometimes that the work I make is kind of isolated panels from comics and I imagine the story as I advance in the piece, which is cool.
Sometimes they acquire a very deep meaning to me and they become really personal or they're personal from the beginning.
So anyway.
Towards the end of this painting, I really liked how she kind of became this creature that seems to be making an incredible effort to get rid of whatever she is vomiting. People that have seen it are reminded of Neptune or some kind of sea creature, I imagine it's because of the blue.
To me, she's not necessarily good or evil, she is doing a lot of effort to vomit this substance out of her body. The painting moves a little bit, it sounds like a rumble, it looks kind of like a tornado. She makes the retching sound, I can kind of feel the mussles coming out of my own throat. I feel what I feel the few times that I've puked in my life: my torso curving against my will, my abdomen contracting, my throat hurts.

The piece is done over wood panel, I drew first, then glued a bunch of mussles, then put on some blue acrylic paint, then some clear gesso, then painted with prussian blue and payne's grey.

Drawing from death

In this entry, I will use the word "beautiful" a lot and generally ramble a ton.
Last semester, I had class with Michael Grimaldi for the first time and I also had class with Dan Thompson where he would do a lecture in the first part of the class, using pictures from actual dissections.
Several people squirmed and mumbled during Dan's lectures and it made me very annoyed and sad, and it also made me think about stuff.
I didn't understand what was so disgusting about the human body and being able to see it beyond the skin, if anything, it became even more beautiful. I thought about how poorly we are taught about death and it made me wish we were taught differently about it, it doesn't have to be a sad, horrible thing. It made me think how beautiful nature is in life and in death.
So I gushed about these thoughts and things I couldn't keep to myself to Dan and Michael and, one time after class, Michael was talking about this Advanced Artistic Anatomy that he does in Philadelphia, where him and the class study and draw from cadavers and I asked him to please let me know when he did it again. And he did.
He sent an email with information about the class, about how the smell of formaldehyde can be a bit much sometimes, but you get used to it, and how you get used to the sounds and the bodies themselves and how I got the email, because I showed interest and some maturity to be in the class.

The experience is and isn't what I'd expected.
The class is every Friday for the fall semester, I love that it's just another class for me, I just happen to not be taking it from my school. Fridays are entirely invested in this study.
I didn't expect myself to react so sensitively. The smell of formaldehyde is the least of my issues.
The first body that we saw was an old woman that was lying face down and her body was pretty mangled, her back had been cut open and her trapezius and rhomboid muscles had been cut already. I think also her latissimus dorsi had been cut and a section of her vertebras had been cut to reveal the spinal chord (I actually saw how they did this in another cadaver yesterday).
I wasn't particularly surprised with this one, because it didn't look like a person. It looked like some kind of mannequin, it looks very fake, like what they would use in a horror/gore movie and the muscles reminded me of meat and beef jerky. Maybe a strange moment was then I saw the back of her head, her scalp and hair, that reminded me that she was a person.

The next cadaver we saw was this beautiful, slender and tall man, he had very little body fat, his skin looked lik leather, it wasn't discolored, his muscles were tight and clean. He was face down and they turned him over and I saw his face and, suddenly, this dude looked like a person and I felt pretty bad. I think if I'd have looked at his face long enough, I would have cried. While we were looking at him and talking about him, sometimes kind of wanted to hold his hand, it was strange. Still is, because there is a curious feeling of fondness towards him, I've drawn his hands several times now.

For a while after the first class and during the first class, I got to thinking about bunch of stuff. I wonder, still, if we are sick to want to study out own bodies from fellow deceased humans? I wonder if it dehumanizes us, if it makes us feel less empathy about ourselves? Or am I really aware that that is a corpse and that it's going to be me one of these days?
I feel so alive, that it's difficult for me to think that I'm going to die some day.
Are the bodies we are studying the same as objects now? What makes a body not an object is the life that is in it, so if there is no such life in it anymore, is it really just a mound of meat now?
I know that I am meat and bone and guts, because I'm aware that that is what is inside my flesh, I know that is what other fellow animals are.
It is so strange to me to visualize the two opposite sides of the spectrum meeting, the living and the dead interacting.
I know that different animals deal with their dead in their own way, some don't give a shit, some others take them back to where they live and then eat them or whatever the fuck. God knows us humans have a slew of ways to deal with our dead, I guess studying ourselves in this way, is one of the ways to do it.

What I did expect, and continue to expect, is the absolute fascination that I feel whenever I see the bodies. I'd never seen tendons, I'm not counting this kind of stuff from the meat and animals we eat although it's the same shit, I'd never observed muscle fiber, I'd never listened to what knocking on a naked rib cage would sound like. I'd never listened to a chisel sinking into vertebra, I'd never pulled on the tendons on the forearm. It's all so specific that I think, even without having seen or listened to these things, I'd have known what it was. And pulling on the tendons of the forearm, although dry and rigid, the slight response of the fingers reverts them back to alive and human.
The muscle underneath the skin, the wires and ropes that tightly bind our bodies together over bone, it is all such a beautiful construction. One of the first things I remember thinking how delicate and pristine it was, was the illiocostalis and longissimus muscles that ride the middle of the back, along the sides of the spine, up to the neck and head. Tiny and fragile looking tendons branch out to hold on to other muscle and do whatever movement they do.
The anterior ribcage, with the sternum, looks like a facehugger, kind of, with each of the ribs slightly changing angle as they go down, like spider's legs.
I wonder, seeing the design in nature and seeing the design in our bodies, I wonder why everything that humans build is only straight lines? There are no straight lines in nature, but curves, like in our bodies and in nature, are definitely better design and more resistant.
Bones are far from straight, there are slight curves that makes them better for taking weight, because if they were straight, they would break under the pressure.
Tendons and muscle make me think of the ropes on a sailboat, you pull on them to make the sail taught and firm. Likewise, tendons and muscle pull on each other and on bones to cause firmness and movement.
Everything about the design of the human body makes sense, although it seems arbitrary, everything makes sense and is useful and doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. This makes me even more sad when I see how much we hate on our bodies, with all the magazines and people that like to talk down on the human body, looking for ways to make it "look better" rather than doing things to take care of our vessel.

At first, when I drew, I had no idea what to do. There is so much information, there's so much stringy shit, so much tissue everywhere, muscle fibers that have been torn, that I didn't and still don't for the most part know what to do, but I am learning and I expect myself to learn much more.
Yesterday, I experimented a little bit with chalk and it was helpful to draw with a big section of chalk to kind of explore the form of a muscle. So, in these pictures you can see my ID card and the drawing book on which I'll draw throughout the entire semester some of the first drawings I did in the class and the last colored one is with chalk. Also, the three drawings of hands are of that same guy that impressed me so much, because he still looks like a person.

Testa

Today I'm going to leave alone this drawing that I started, based on a sculpture by Christian Zucconi. I saw the image originally posted in Facebook by Hi-Fructose magazine.
I saw it and I fell in love.
I was/am very drawn to the facial expression, the mouth hanging open, like when you come out of the dentist and have been injected with anesthesia. His eyes seem to be swollen, he looks uncomfortable, he looks sideways. One of the sides of his mouth continues onto his cheek and jaw. And I also find his zygomatic bones to be incredibly beautiful.
I find the whole thing, beautiful, really, I would love to see it in person. His nose is also very strong looking, but it has this uneven crack going down the middle of it.
This series of Zucconi's work is meant to explore the fragility of the human body and its ability to heal over and over again. To convey that, he sculpts, then he destroys the sculpture and then he puts it back together, with the mended parts showing obviously. And the end result is hypnotizing.
Here is the sculpture that I'm referencing in my drawing and another one that I really like, that I would like to draw at some point, also.

And this is my drawing. I don't think my intention was to copy the sculpture, I don't remember with what intention I started drawing the sculpture, really, but I love how it's turned out. Sometimes, it seems like my drawing is kind of smiling, even though he doesn't mean to, because he is definitely not comfortable, either, whatever is happening to him. I worked with a Zebra ballpoint pen over Strathmore paper.

Albino Witch

I think I might have mentioned before that I'm a fan of overhead lighting, or maybe it was in a video. I think it was in a video that I talked about how I liked that kind of lighting.

I have, however, an issue when it comes to drawing overhead lighting, because I like smooth degradation of shadows, it's hard for me to just draw from my head. The parts which should be really strong and crude puddles of shadow, like the eye sockets, under the nose and under the zygomatic arches, I haven't been able to bring myself to mark them enough. The time that I think I've been most successful at it, is when I drew the Ice Cream Heads, I had specific reference pictures for those and even then, it was still difficult to do what I had to do.
I like overhead lighting, because it really marks the valleys and mountains of the face. More frontal lighting seems to just flatten out features and it really is the kind of lighting that is seen for advertising or illustration or really graphic shit.
Stronger lighting is used, apparently, when "dark" things want to be conveyed.
I love being able to see the eyes covered by the brow bone, the nasolabial fold marking a path from the nose to the sides of the lips, the diagonal from the zygomatic arches to the top lip, the nose hovering farthest out from the face. It's a thing of beauty. Features are feared and so are wrinkles and anything, I think, that really marks a human face.

So, this drawing, which I've titled "Albino Witch", is meant to be top lit. It's understood that it's some kind of subtle overhead lighting, like she is coming out of some shadows. Her eyebrows and hair are meant to be platinum, like somebody with albinism and, in my mind, her eyes are an almost white light blue. The way that Goldie Hawn's eyes looked in "Death Becomes Her" towards the end of the movie.
The witch looks beyond us, she seems fascinated by what she has her eyes on, her lips are slightly separated.

are correct.

Oral Fixation

The definition of Oral Fixation is hazy, in my personal opinion. Before I started looking for what it might mean, I sort of had a definition for it, or an idea of what it meant in my mind: it meant like there is some sort of focus around the oral cavity, an unintended gravitation towards it. Lately, I've been a bit more curious about why I center my attention around certain things, I think it might be because I'm in art school and I want to be able to talk about my work in a way that makes sense, I want to be able to articulate. Or maybe I just want to be able to verbalize things for myself. I've been wary of looking too much into things, because I feel like it's precisely that mystery that gives them soul. Maybe it was also an excuse to not look a bit harder.
Fucked if I know.

All on its own, though, I have been finding it easier to talk about my work, maybe it's from listening to so many other people talk about their work and being assigned readings about art.

So this oral fixation issue.
I think my favorite part of the face are the eyes, but when I draw faces, I find myself giving a lot of attention to the lips, as well. I like the lips looking like meat, which is what they are. Tissue that appears to be swollen and engorged with blood, fluffy, somehow rigid and soft at the same time, like a beach ball. Tissue that is not very resistant against sharp edges, but just tough enough to hold all the other tissue inside and so thin still that you can see through to all the red and muscle that is under it.
When I draw faces, I try as much as I can to leave the face for last, the eyes and the lips, but by the time that I've managed to work on most of the background, the eyes and lips are almost done, because I can't seem to help myself.
The line where the upper and lower lips meet, with upturned corners, it branches out into little cracks that are on the lips themselves, little wrinkles of expression, where the tissue folds. The lips slightly separated, they make a shy diversely shaped horizontal opening, right smack in the middle of them, suddenly, there is an orifice and a point of entry.
The lips so expressive and expressionless, depending on what you're looking at, and also completely puzzling. The parts of the lips, the two separate pillows in the bottom, separated by a generally decisive groove in the center. A discreet point in varying sizes at the top that then spreads out, like wings.

Through our lips, we ingest, we nurture our body, we taste our surroundings, communicate, we take in and we put out things from the world into our vessel and viceversa.

I'm almost sure I posted something relating to oral fixation earlier in the year or when I started school, but I can't seem to find the post. I haven't been diagnosed with Oral Fixation, nor do I entirely grasp what it is, even though I've looked it up more than once and read a little from different sources. The definition seems vague, at best.
This is the definition, according to dictionary.com: "noun a desire to have or put something in one's mouth, as in infants; a condition requiring stimulation of the mouth."
Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: Oral Stage

Now, the definition might be murky, because it was Freud trying to make sense of things from zero. He also thought that all our problems were rooted in masturbation and lived in an incredibly sexist era, which probably doesn't help very much, but as an idea to play with, I guess it's alright. Somewhere to start.
The human psyche is so complex, that I don't think one explanation would fit every case, either way.

My personal conclusion that I might have an oral fixation is simply because a lot of my anxieties and frustrations are manifested through my mouth: There's emotional and anxious eating, I play a lot with my mouth, I used to bite the insides of my mouth a lot, before that I bit my lower lip a ton. Now that I got a labret, I bite on that a lot, I used to play with my lower lip with my hands, just fiddling with it and now that I have the labret, I do that still.
I've resorted to chewing gum, instead of biting the insides of my mouth and whenever I feel "hungry", although I know I'm not and apparently I can chew gum endlessly. I do prefer that, than tearing at my insides with my teeth.
I also love chewing on crunchy shit, the deafening noise and having to press with my jaw, grounding down with my molars is an awesome thing.

So, I think an exploration of sorts of the probable fixation is that I've been wanting to draw mouths only and this one was finished recently. It's titled "Oral Self Portrait", and it is my mouth, with a crevice that allows my teeth to be seen and a labret piercing with horseshoe jewelry. I drew with a 3B pencil over Strathmore illustration board, I used an artist trading card, so it's 2.5 x 3.5" and with her owner, by now, I hope.

C7

I started my second semester at the New York Academy of Art two weeks ago and this drawing started in my first Figure Drawing 2 class with Michael Grimaldi.

Michael is very focused in design and composition, so we were supposed to do a lot of little thumbnails and play with cropping and value. As I've done before, i started doing what i'm not supposed to be doing, because i really liked our model's pose and drew a big profile, which is what you see in the picture and then decided to see how accurately i could get a skull in her and it just started looking so cool that i got rid of all the thimbnails and she's become what you see in the picture.

I have the intention of finishing the drawing, similar to "Máscara de Carne", although not anatomically incorrect.

I've titled her "C7", because that's how far down i'm going in the skeleton. I've used HB and 2B pencils over Starthmore 400 series drawing paper, i have a pretty big crush on her.

Like Flame

So, today I finished a cute little painting, I think she's about 4 x 4 inches.
I got the wood at the beginning of last semester, I don't remember if it was from Blick or Utrecht, although it doesn't matter, because they're one and the same now. Maybe it was Soho Art materials or Pearl.
I got the thing for free, and I loved it right away. The finish on the wood is so perfectly smooth, I touched it a little when I got it, but not too much, 'cuz I don't know if the friction of my skin could ruin it or something.
I knew I wanted to do some drawing on it, something beautiful. Like a week ago, I got the balls to do it and she turned up.
The Alizarin Orange color that I used on her, was also for free, I got it as a sample along with Viridian and a blue color. It's really expensive material, apparently, they're Williamsburg.
So, I wanted to use the Alizarin Orange and I did.
As I worked on her, she kept looking to me like made out of fire and I went with that and she really reminded me of a poem that I stumbled upon in the black hole that is tumblr, that sometimes is not so bad.
The poem is this one:
"She twists like a flame.
Her back, a sierra of bone,
her hips, a sandstone canyon.
And I can believe her gaze,
born from a thousand years dreaming
and as dew-cool as moonlight,
is only for me."
—Eliot Khalil Wilson


I remember the line being "she twists like flame", which I like more than that one, so she's titled "Like Flame". And here she is:


I have also launched (sort of) a website, I'm going to add "Like Flame" to it in a bit, I'm slowly adding things to it and I'm posting it discreetly, here it is: gabrielahandal.com, because I have a lot of imagination.
And I've also put up an Etsy shop, which is also called Gabriela Handal Arte, because I have a lot of imagination.

Studio seven

The day before yesterday, i hugn in my studio the finished works that are framed and ready for hanging and imwill continue to put that kind of work on this wall. Like my own gallery wall <3

It is so hard for me to believe that i am already in the second half of my first year of school.

I've been putting my studio together these passed couple of days, now that the school building reopened and we don't have class yet, i think this is the least visible wall in this second picture, so i decided to put things that are in progress, papers or mediums that i want to use and things that aren't framed in a proper frame, like "implied".

I've also been working on a persinal websitea nd the address is www.gabrielahandal.com because i have a lot of imagination. I will keep you posted.

Thank you for reading and sticking with me this far.

Obtuse

Today, I finished this Cast Drawing with Roberto Osti assignment. I drew the ear using a method called sight-size which was a pain in the ass, I seriously teared up, because I was so frustrated and angry at some point when I was starting out the drawing.
You're meant to put your paper right close to your cast, which is your reference and step back like six or seven feet and measure, so you walk back and forth, measuring and putting reference points in your paper, until you feel like you have enough reference points to just connect the dots and start working more and more detail into the drawing. You can work as much detail as you want into the drawing, except you have to keep walking back and for over and over again. It's an arduous process, to say the least, but it's a really good observational exercise. It's good to find relationships, points that converge on a single horizontal or vertical line.
I've thought of doing it maybe one more time, just to polish that observational ability, but I don't know if I want to subject myself to that again.
I decided after the third session of work, I think, to just take a fucking picture and take the thing to my studio and work from there, because I was up to my balls of walking back and forth. So, when I started putting on shadows and the ear was basically all drawn, I stopped walking back and forth.
So, my tools were a blending stump, a kneading eraser, an HB pencil and I drew over Canson paper. Whilst I was taking measurements, I was using a knitting needle, and I should have had a plumb line, but fuck that noise. I had enough with the knitting needle.
So here is the final result, I really like it, I'm going to frame it and put it up in my etsy shop, which is called Gabriela Handal Arte, because I have a lot of imagination.

Top Lit

Yesterday, I finished my final for Figure Drawing Intensive with Dan Thompson, here at the New York Academy of Art. The assignment was to choose one of the techniques that we used during the semester and make our final with that, the theme was completely our choice.
So, since I'd never done any of the techniques that we used before (I'd kind of done gesture drawing before, but never the way I did at Dan's class), I had a lot to choose from. Because I'm a big fan of overhead lighting and just really heavy lighting and heavy shadows, I chose the wipeout technique. For this technique, Dan instructed us to buy Canson's Mis Teintes paper and to tone it with charcoal, so this is what I chose.
I chose an orange and a grey colored paper, it's kind of what I saw in my mind's eye, I saw the same image on both papers, both off center, top lit. Self-portraits with my beanie. I've been drawing self portraits on the train, I've done several already, where I'm sitting on the train and I see my reflection on the glass across from me and it's top lit and I just love what I see.
Here is an example:

So for Dan's final, I kind of wanted the self-portraits to make it out of the art journal and become a kind of more finished and polished piece. When I was talking to Dan about it, he told me that I could play with how much of the eyes I wanted to reveal and he also suggested me not to use white for the highlights and lightest lights, he suggested to use something within the color range of the paper. So for the orange one, the lightest color is yellow and ochre and for the grey one, there's just different tones of grey, some blue and a teeny tiny bit of purple.
After a while, I decided (with the constructive criticism of a couple of colleagues and classmates) to treat both of them just slightly different; and so, with the orange one, I decided to go with the whole thing of revealing only part of the eyes and revealed part of the eyelids and with the grey one I played a bit more fantastically with it and drew in a bit of the irises and the pupil. The orange one feels super colorful, the background and the face, I used oranges, yellows and browns. The grey one, I think actually has more color, but doesn't feel colorful at all.
Both of them, I think are cool in the sense that there is that capacity of discovering those details of the eyelids and irises if you look long enough.
Since I've been here in New York, there has been a surprising influx of self-portraits. I generally don't think or care enough to dig deep into why I do certain things, sometimes a "meaning" just happens to come along whilst I'm making the piece and if it does, that's cool, I go with it.
I definitely have found it interesting how I'm suddenly making and wanting to make a bunch of self portraits, although that's definitely not all I'm doing. I haven't read much into the psychology of the self-portrait, maybe I will at some point, but I think that maybe (specifically with the ones in the subway), I'm kind of trying to SEE myself HERE in New York and in this school, just because it doesn't feel real. It feels like a dream or a twilight zone or a parallel dimension. I KNOW that I'm here, I just can't seem to believe it, so the self-portraits in the subway, I think are kind of a way of making myself believe that I am here in this completely foreign and new environment, that I really am living in New York, that I really did move to New York, that I really am studying at the New York Academy of Art.


So here are the drawings:




In other news, I have obtained a domain and I'm working on the website itself, I'm just gonna go with linking it to tumblr. The website address is just going to be gabrielahandal.com, 'cuz I have a lot of imagination.
Either way, don't forget about my Facebook page, which by the way, I got a regular handle for: www.facebook.com/artegabrielahandal, easier to share!
Thank you for reading!

Shadows

I've been drawing self portraits on the train on the way back home, I draw what I see across from me in the reflection, since it's blurry and I have light above my head, this is what comes out and I seriously like what it looks like!
I also draw sometimes people that I see. My roommate and classmate Max Perkins is super good at that and I feel more confident drawing in general and I kind of feel influence and inspiration coming from seeing him do it.
The very first one was done with a bic pen and all the other ones are with a zebra pen.



I currently find myself studying in the New York Academy of Art, I'm going for a drawing major with concentration in anatomy. I'm on the fourth floor of the building, studio number seven. Do not hesitate to let me know if you want to buy something or set up a studio visit! Write to me: gabrielahandalarte@gmail.com
And also, don't forget my Facebook page, which you should like and share with your friends: Gabriela Handal Arte

The Glutton

Today, I finished the first project for my History and Theory of Composition class, which was a psychological and/or allegorical self-portrait as one of the seven deadly sins. In the instructions, the word "one" is in caps lock.
And I say/write that, because I'm aware that there is a sexual element in the painting that I decided to do. My issue is that, almost as soon as I'd read the instructions in the syllabus, I got this exact image in my head.
My self portrait, was me eating into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with stacks of them in front of me, waiting for me to bite into them, with my other hand grabbing one of my boobs, closed eyes and a generally pleasurable facial expression.
I think this entry is going to help me kind of organize the way that I want to verbally support my painting when the moment comes for that, on Monday.
Hunger is very prevalent in my life, I am always forseeing or looking forward to the next time that I'm going to eat, thinking about what I'm going to eat and how delicious it's going to be. I'm done with the last meal of the day and the rest of the time, before I go to bed, I think about what I'm going to eat for breakfast and how delicious it's going to be. Lately, and for a while now, I've become anxious in a way that I want to eat although I'm not hungry.
And so, I'm done eating, but I'd be quite happy if I could just be eating all the time.
The aspect of Lust that I wanted to get into the painting also has to do with ingesting, as when I'm physically attracted to somebody, I am much more interested in kissing them than anything else. I want to absorb them through my mouth and ingest them, I don't know much more than that, it's not a cannibal thing, I don't want to ACTUALLY eat them, but somehow have all of them in my mouth. Something like that.
I chose to do it in acrylic paint over paper, although I'm a drawing mayor and our teacher said it was ok for us to draw it. Everything is very specific for me, the colors, the gesture, there's actually other shit that I picture in the background: a pink wall with tiny little details in purple, like little pictures with their respective purple frames, a mirror of sorts with a purple frame. But I had no time or patience for that.br> The acrylics are quite unforgiving, but I actually really like the strokes being visible, there is that expressionist feel to the painting and I like it. I also like how cartoony she turned out, how the head and hands are super big.

I don't know what it's titled, the term "gluttonous lust" comes to mind sometimes, but I find that extremely boring, so I just refer to it as "the glutton" or "gluttony", none of them are the title, though. Either way, here is one my first assignments, or projects, as the teacher refers to these paintings that we'll have to do throughout the semester with her.

I find myself in the New York Academy of Art, I'm on the fourth floor, Studio number seven. If you'd like to set up a studio visit, do not hesitate to let me know. Write to me: gabrielahandalarte@gmail.com
You can and should also write to me there if you're interested in buying some of my work, 'cuz it's for sale and stuff.

And also, don't forget my facebook page, which you should like and share with your friends: Gabriela Handal Arte

Hermes and his legs

Today, i had cast drawing, my teacher's name is Roberto Osti. We drew with charcoal and white chalk over tone paper.

The purpose of today's work was to use the tone of the paper for the midtones and to incorporate that with the highlights and the shadows, shadow mass and light mass.

Although i really like how this looks, it is incorrectly done, because i haven't grasped how to use the tone of the paper for the midtones. My teacher demonstrated a little bit with the sphere that you see there on my paper and on Hermes' hat, but i still kind of haven't grasped that. I'll see if i can make it work for the assignment, in which we have to choose another cast and work on it in the same way.

I find Hermes' pose to be beautiful, i like the sculpture entirely, his body, his face, the fabrics and the stump of tree upon which he sits. I set up some almost overhead lighting, because overhead lighting is awesome.

So this is my monday morning class, this is what i was able to do in just under three hours of class.