October Favorites

1. Loup Blaster

She's my new favorite animator. I saw her music video for Clap! Clap!'s song "Playfulness," and then I saw it ten more times. Her work is colorful, playful (yes), and wholly unique. She's also a VJ and a refugee activist in Calais, France. And she's like, maybe two years older than me. 

Here's her tumblr. Here's the music video I'm currently obsessed with:

Clap! Clap! - '(P) Playfulness' Official Video (Black Acre) from BBBlaster on Vimeo.

2. John Singer Sargeant's Painting Techniques

This semester I'm taking an oil portrait painting class. I took one painting class over the summer—my very first (unless you count high school)—and I quite enjoyed it, though we used acrylic. 

The class was extremely, extremely difficult at first. I consider myself more or less proficient in observational drawing, thanks to my rigorous first year at MCAD, but observational painting is an entirely different matter. And portraiture, in particular, is so tenuously formed that a single brash swipe could undo hours of careful work and planning.

My teacher was mostly incompetent, if I'm to be honest, and I didn't really learn much from her in the first few weeks. You know, the stagnant I'm-terrible-at-art-and-will-never-be-better-ever phase that all nascent artists go through. But the John Singer Sargeant article helped, even if it was filtered through a secondary voice. So if you're interested in oil painting, read it, yo. 

3. Crimson Peak, directed by Guillermo del Toro

It was a fantastic film. Go watch it, if you're into pulpy, campy, terrifying, visually rich gothic romance-type stuff. Like Edgar Allen Poe mixed with

But honestly, I was mostly into it for the clothes.

Ahhhhhh the hand belt!!

So epic. So evil.

Here's an article with interviews of some of the film's costume designers.

My friend brought an entire fucking miniature cake to the theater, because it was her birthday earlier in the week, and she just pulled some metal forks out of her bag and we just ate it, right then and there. The cake ended up in my lap and I accidentally had probably 60% of it. I also stole a slushie.

4. Angel Olson

Cold weather is nigh, and with grey skies and bitter winds comes sadcore. Welcome to my new favorite sadcore artist. (I don't think she's literally sadcore but my friend called her sadcore when I showed her to him and it was funny because it's too true!!)

5. HarvardX Neuroscience: Poetry of Perception

I am obsessed with this series from HarvardX Neuroscience, particularly the animation by CalArts student Brian Smee. I love neuroscience, and I love animation, and now that I have seen an institution elegantly combine the two subjects into a beautiful, sensual, and educational creative piece of art, my life's purpose has been vicariously fulfilled.

I've watched this video maybe ten times, because it's beautiful and I'm very inspired by it.

Part 5/8: Poetry of Perception from HarvardX Neuroscience on Vimeo.

6. Oliver Sacks

I knew Oliver Sacks was a very prominent figure in both the neuroscience and the pop science/culture communities, and I knew a bit about him, though I'd never read any of his books. When I heard he passed away, I decided that I'd better educate myself and see why this man and his approach to science/medicine/life was so celebrated. I found free PDFs of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and Musicophilia—I've been reading the first on my laptop in class, and the second on my phone on the bus. I started an internship at the end of last month, so I spend quite a bit of time on the bus now.

Like many great writers, including DFW and Nabokov, his work is easy to read and easy to understand, but you feel smarter and richer for just being exposed to both the plethora of information and analysis he provides as well as the brilliance in his syntactical simplicity. I am about halfway through both books and have found them entertaining and delightful to read. And it doesn't hurt that in my head I imagine Oliver Sacks' lilting British voice narrating throughout.

If you're interested in having the PDFs, feel free to email me or something. Or just dig around—you'll find them.

7. J.C. Leyendecker

My screenwriting teacher gave a lecture at school about American illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whom I'd never heard of until then. He was a classically trained illustrator known for his famous Arrow Collar Man advertisements and Saturday Evening Post covers. For decades he was the preeminent American illustrator and led a lavish, quintessentially "roaring twenties" lifestyle, but he eventually fell out of favor towards the end of his life. He also lived with his favorite male model, and it's speculated that they were lovers. Obviously.

His work is famous for its homoerotic undertones. I can't imagine why.

and also for the confusing gazes. ALWAYS the GAZE

What beautiful male specimen. His work feels fresh an entire century later, and I'm inspired by his level of craftsmanship. I also don't know anything about the history of illustration, so he was interesting to learn about. 

random recent work, finished and unfinished

I cannot seem to cultivate any interest in digital painting. Two things I love most about fine art are its tactility and its accidents—sensations entirely absent in digital painting. When using digital tools to create art, I feel there are too many degrees of separation—my hand to my pen to my tablet to my computer to my other hand on the command-Z keys—to feel a deeper sense of connection and thus personal creation. So I get bored.

Nevertheless I admire the results of digital painting (others' paintings) and have been trying to learn how to do it, since it's obviously a valuable skill. But I never finish anything.

These two were done for Reddit. I think they're OK drawings, but I have zero interest in continuing them. And they will never be submitted to Reddit. (Why do I even make art based on Reddit prompts? I hate almost all the art on that website. It's trite and cliche. [But this is not to say I think I'm technically better—maybe, in fact, I feel such disdain because I am worse.])

I've also been doing some gouache paintings in my free (i.e. designated productive procrastination) time, because painting is fun and easy with gouache. So far I have four paintings, one of which is in progress. I only have two scanned in, though.

referenced from a photo my roommate took in Yellowstone over the summer

referenced from a photo I took while being bored and alone on the bus

 I didn't get a chance to go to figure drawing last week, and this week I only attended the two hour Monday night session. I usually go on Sundays for four hours. I regret not going on Sunday—I really only liked one drawing I did this week. Anyway, toned paper is fun.

my mother's take on contemporary canadian politics

Copypasta on OKCupid

Literally an entire year ago (October 2014), my friend, who was visiting at the time, and I decided to make a fake OkCupid profile. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. I decided to make a fake OkCupid profile for myself, because I wanted to do the quizzes and stuff, and I recruited my friend for help in trolling, because that's what I like to do in my free time.

It was fun, and we got a few messages and had a few laughs, but we mostly left the profile abandoned in the following months. Recently, however, I revisited the profile, and to my surprise I actually had quite a few messages.

But first, let's look at the profile, which is a work of art in and of itself:

It me. Also, I made this when I was 19, but I just screenshot (screenshotted?) this today.

I went on a walk this weekend to see all the pretty trees turn different colors. I also saw an old film based on a Tennessee Williams play.

"Alive, all alive, as the new ripe blue berry made its burst through the branch, the hands hovered and swooped to attack, and hovered and swooped to attack, they were diving down on blue berries, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing their undersides open, and rending and mutilating their flesh..."


Squish from Marcie LaCerte on Vimeo.

DO YOU FEEL OKAY?

Collaborative group zine. I hope they don't mind my posting this here.

a portrait i did on reddit

because i am the procrastination kween

two portraits

If the Angel Moroni held a gun to my head and told me to paint a decent portrait in oil lest the golden plates be forever hidden away in the ground, I would take the gun from his hands and do the deed myself. Because I can't. Paint. Oil. Portraits. I don't think I can paint ANYTHING in oil, actually. 

Anyway. I've been feeling quite dejected about this and wondered if perhaps I was just shit at portraits in general. But I was determined to prove myself wrong. So here are two random portrait doodles of classmates that I did on a tablet:

Not terrible, right?? Goddammit. I need to learn how to use oil paint properly because I SUCK right now.

Grandmas

My first real attempt at character design. We had to design two characters in conflict—we're still working on the animation for it.

So here it is! Two grandmas.

Muriel and Patty

Monday night sad figures

I was busy this Sunday so I could only go to the two-hour Monday night life drawing co-op. And I was late for THAT, too,  so I really only got in an hour and a half of drawing. But suffering is essential.

I'm sorry. I can't write right now. My roommate is currently speaking into the phone at 100 words per second, and it's hard to think. Here are some (not so) pretty pictures:

These are all out of order because computers are sadistic automatons. All the images were made in less than 15 minutes. I just don't have the attention span for longer poses anymore. I just don't.

Yes this was a man. Yes he had wide hips. My roommate was like, "Is that a woman?" and I was like, "No, you fool. This is a well-endowed healthy young man." This was the second oil pastel I did. Also the second I've ever done in my life.

This started off as a blind contour but then even I got too lazy for that. So now it's just....a normal drawing.

He did the same pose like three times. Most of the male models are kind of bad.

I tried my hand at oil pastel portraiture. Turned out pretty bad, if I do say so myself.

This was the first oil pastel I did! My roommate doesn't like it but I actually think it's better than the others. I love colors.

I BOUGHT A CHINA MARKER THIS WEEK!! It's amazing! I cannot imagine how I lived my life without it. This is a study of a figure drawing I made a few weeks ago, just to get a feel for the tool. It's very lovely.

As I said before, I came in late, so I missed all the gestures and stuff. I think this was actually made in three minutes, perhaps five, but I'm not sure. It was the first of the night which is why it's all wobbly, but I kind of like it. The objects fall towards us in a Cezanne-esque way.

And finally, this is a doodle of the girl who supervises the figure drawing co-ops. She's super cute and nice and this isn't the first drawing I've done of her. Fear me.

a little experiment with my roommate

I'm living with a new roommate this year. Here's a story: