Street Art Beehive!

Here's a mini weekend update, hurray! So about a couple days ago I went around downtown and grabbed a bunch of the band/apartment/new album out posters. Then I screenprinted on them, and last night, I returned them to the wild. I printed a beehive with bees on one of the big poster kiosks, and I scattered smaller posters printed with bees on them around the rest of town. It made sense to me, with the kiosks being kind of a cluster of information while little lone pieces of information were floating around town solo. So here we go:

Here's the big kiosk with the beehive:



And the cooler, "at night" shot:



I probably put up around 20 "just a bee or two" posters, so I didn't want to put pictures of ALL of them up here, but here's a sample:







Sorry, Rita:

Figure Drawings and Tape Cover

Hello again! Before I start this post I wanted to say thanks to everyone who's been commenting...it's really nice to get feedback and to know people are reading. You guys rock!

That said, I thought I'd try to classy this blog up after Monday's toilet paper post with art that's a little more "traditional." Here are some figure drawings I've done recently; these took anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes and were drawn from life. I feel as though figure drawing is one area I need to improve upon...that said, getting up the motivation to work on it is like pulling teeth.

This model kept falling asleep...not so good when all I was drawing was her face, haha!







This poor woman never got a proper face:

Changing gears, my chum Alex, who runs DIY tape label Foxpop, asked me to do line art for a tape cover for musician Little Fyodor. I was asked to draw him riding on a bomb...this was super fun to draw. Looks like a lot of Tank Girl influence snuck in there.

Look out for more street art adventures and prints this week!

Toilet Paper as Street Art, Paper Pulp Painting, and Wrist Cuffs from Ties!

Hello everyone! It's quite dreary in Georgia today, which makes it the perfect time to lie around, read comic books, and update my trusty blag.

I've always been a huge fan of street art and graffiti, so I was pretty excited when I received my current screen printing project: find objects outside, in public places, etc., bring them back to the studio, print something on them, and put them back where I found them. So here is the first in a series of probably 4 things that I have rescued, modified, and returned to its natural habitat. Today's street art treat is my very own hand-printed toilet paper. It has long been my dream to be so repulsively rich that I can hire somebody just to fold all of my toilet paper into intricate origami, but, assuming that probably won't happen, I went with the next best thing and printed origami instructions on a whole roll of toilet paper. The idea is that you follow the instructions on one sheet and fold the actual origami with the sheet below it to make your very own origami cat face. Here's the roll of paper, waiting in a public bathroom for somebody to use it:

(yes, there is even a cat taking a swim in the toilet there.)

A closeup of the instructions (unfortunately, my favorite part, in which the participant is implored to "use" their new creation, got cut off):

The result of folding one of the sheets:

Truly, I am a classy sort. Look out for more modified objects throughout the week! In other news, here is a paper pulp painting I tried out recently. All the pigment is added by squirting dyed paper pulp directly onto a freshly formed sheet of paper (the thin black lines are made of thread.) For a medium that seems pretty difficult to control, I had a lot of fun with this...it was like kindergarten all over again. I wanted this to look a bit like a grimy poster you'd find in a venue somewhere...



And one more thing before I enjoy the rest of the rainy day: here are some wristcuffs I made a long time ago but have just gotten around to uploading. They're made from the ends of neckties and buttons that I found in a lot of random places:



So long!

Gang's All Here: An Accordion Book

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I finally got around to photographing this little accordion book that I made. Each page has a face and each face flips up to show a skull underneath:

















So there you have it. Gang's all here!

Stencilled Screen Prints and Handmade Paper

In my last post I mentioned that the "Freaks Rise Up" print was my second try at screen printing...well, here are my firsts. I had to cut out 5 stencils and arrange them in 4 different designs. Considering the constraints of the assignment, I'm pretty happy with these results, but I am a little peeved at how much white space there is:

I've also been making some handmade paper recently, my favorite of which has been this Japanese-style paper made of bark, which had to be boiled, cleaned, and beaten until it was ready to be used for pulp. The sheets then get stuck on a window to dry:







And here's a batch I made of green fabric and my roommate's old blue t-shirt:

Freaks Rise Up Print

Hello everyone! Well, it's been far too long, but I finally got ahold of a way to upload pictures again after a bit of a drought there. Last night I finished a screenprint edition called "Freaks Rise Up!" I guess I'm ok with how this one turned out...there are some registration issues and places where the printing is uneven, though. I figured this is my second try, so there are bound to be some mess-ups, right? Anyway, here it is:



I'll get some pictures of my first screenprints later today. For now though, here's a sneak preview of the dragon I'm putting on my dorm room wall. Lovingly named Hypno-Dragon, the lights of his eyes are already functional:



More soon!

Electrobug: A Robotic Bug Made From a Toothbrush

Hello everyone! I think it's time to break my long silence...having a full time job this summer means not being able to devote nearly enough time to making things, I'm afraid, and this blog has suffered for it. But never fear, I go back to school soon, and will surely have lots more when I get back. For now, I've got a little robotic bug that I made today (it's a pretty easy project if you're looking for something to do in one day or less.)
Before I begin, I should say that I took the electronics behind this little guy from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories' Bristlebot instructions. The gist behind it is that if you take a vibrating pager motor and a battery, and attach them to the top of a toothbrush head, the vibrations will cause the toothbrush to move forward. It's a great project for people who aren't really technologically inclined but still love the idea of building a little robot for themselves. As for me, I just like the idea of having robot pests, especially self-sustaining ones (which is why the next time I do a project like this, I'd like to try working with solar panelling.) The cockroach-like movements of the little bristlebots appealed to me, so I built a paper bug around mine to give him a little more personality. So here he is!


When you open his little paper wings, you can see the battery and little red wire that connects to the motor.


And here's a view of the bottom, so you can see how his "feet" look (pardon my painty hand):

And of course, how could I post pictures without a video? So here he is in motion; now if only the video could get the detail that the pictures can!



P.S. If you haven't forgotten about the sneak-preview of the doll that I posted last time, don't worry! I haven't abandoned that project, I've just been busy with other things. He'll be on here soon!