I got pretty burned out on drawing figures every day but there’s a few drawings I like.

The pixelated landscape was constructed with painted wood. The red map markers are Sanwa joysticks — the same hardware found in arcade machines in Japan.

Wood print with watercolor

Drilled many holes…

Went in after printing to paint in the ‘pixels’ for Bomberman, Megaman, and Mario.

Miniature bronze cast sword styled after low-resolution pixelated game sprites from the 80s.

Model created by super gluing beads together and then applying many layers of spray paint to round everything off and fill in the letters (I couldn’t find cube beads without letters).

Cast in bronze.

Enjoying the class more now that we have more creative freedom

In Sculpture II our first project is a wood chiseled relief sculpture. I thought it’d be neat to add light to it and my original concepts were illuminated veins in a tree — I ended up going for something with a little more character — a tree spirit similar to the ones found in some Japanese films. I’ll be building a box to house the lights and I’ll have a slightly ghosted plexi screen in front to catch the light coming through the wood — this gives it a slightly eerie feel to it. I bought some of the materials for that today and did some tests even though I’m not done with the chiseled wood.

Second print I did for class was 3 colors + black reductive. The typical method would be to cut some away, print a color, cut more away, print another color, and continue like that. The disadvantage there is that once you cut for an additional color, you can never print previous colors — so in the end you’re limited to however many prints you started with the first color and, if you mess up, you can’t go back and print more of the previous layers. A friend suggested I use a CNC machine in the sculpture lab. Luckily I had a sculpture card this semester and they obliged.

I converted the image I created in photoshop into Illustrator files (one for each color print) — the machine takes the Illustrator file and cuts it to spec.

I had a bit of trouble registering the prints because I was in a hurry, but I think it turned out alright (click here or scroll back up).

I prefer the colors of my original digital version, though.

Third print is wood black and white and I cut it manually, although with the aid of a dremel.

I just had fun with this one. It’s a giant octopus on Saturn flying a kite singing “Haters gonna hate!”

In Sculpture I, our first project was an aluminum cast. Simply creating a shapely aluminum chunk sounded boring to me so I decided to spice it up a bit. I decided to create a sort of cyberpunk set piece inspired by a computer monitor — it’s just a few super bright LEDs powered by a 9v battery. I think it turned out alright.

Our second relief print project will have 3 colors (plus black/white) and be 18 inches wide.

Here’s the image I created to be reproduced tediously in linoleum. The character and police cars were sketched in Lightwave 3D and digitally painted over with the rest of the image in photoshop.

To be honest I’m not terribly excited about doing color reduction. What happens is you cut away the white, print one color, cut away some more, print another color, and continue this until it’s done. What that means is that after you’ve cut a second time, you can never print the previous layer again. So unlike the simple black and white, the prints I do while cutting are the only prints my block can ever produce.

The alternative is to make separate blocks for different colors, but this makes registration much harder. I still haven’t really decided which approach I’ll take yet.

I’m in a beginner sculpture class and our first project will be an aluminum cast. We make the model out of styrofoam, pack sand around it to make the mold, and pour in the molten aluminum.

Here’s what I have so far. I found some interesting styrofoam and decided to utilize the shapes that were already there (while modifying it to my liking). I asked the professor if it’d be alright to add other objects to it and he gave me the go ahead, so I’m going to be experimenting with integrating a touch of new media. I don’t think it’ll be interactive, but I may use some electronics to give it a sort of cyberpunk aesthetic.

edit: Here’s an update:

I prototyped how some of the other materials will work. I also intend to add plexiglass so that it looks a bit like a monitor. If I have time, I’d like to have the blue pieces house colored LEDs and sandblast a simple design into the plexiglass.