Commissions/Studies

In addition to doing small studies, this break has been a good opportunity to catch up on some commissions. Recently, my studio mate Brandon Belote decided to merge spaces together in the studio we share with other artists. This has tuned out to be good artistically and financially as it saves both of us money and we've been both spending more time in the studio. Today I worked on a couple commissions and a small study.

This small study of my friend Blair was done in my sketchbook. Before I proceeded to ruin this drawing by using ink washes, I was very happy with the inked line work. It didn't help that the paper in my sketchbook isn't the best of quality. I might expand this into a bigger ink drawing later on.

After warming up with this study, I moved on to some commissions. The following commission was completed tonight: ( note to self, I need to get a good scanner instead of using my crappy phone camera).

In general, I'm pretty happy how this turned out. I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to achieving that fine line between " not too lose or too tight". Still have lots to improve on but I'm showing progress. One thing that has had a tremendous impact is working on paper again. My last few ink drawings have been on gessoed board. Since working in my sketchbook,  it's apparent that working on paper is what I should have been doing all along ( Duh!) After completing one more commission I think I'm going to attempt a larger project to finish up the year/winter break. Until then, Happy New Year.

Another Ink Study/I Hate Pro White!

I've been trying to stay busy this week so I decided to do another ink drawing in my sketchbook (apologies for the crappy cellphone pic):

 I kinda had Tony Harris in mind when I was drawing this with an emphasis on line work. I thought about only inking the line work but I really need to work on spotting blacks. All was going well until I messed up around the shadow under the nose. I tried using pro white but I always make the mistake of trying to water it down which always ends up looking worse. Never had great luck with pro white so I'm not sure why I decided to use it. At this point I just started spotting blacks more instinctively and ended up with this: 

Though it's a far cry to say this is good, I kinda liked how this turned out. I added some ink wash as well which is something I normally don't do. I think I'll add some ink wash in my next study since it was kinda refreshing.

All in all, I think I've been good on the productive end on my break so far. I was going to wait to do a few more studies and do a larger blog update but I figure I might as well do small one's since god only knows how often I'll update this as soon as school starts up again. Well off to the next one.

 

preparation

I've noticed in the past that when my winter break hits, I feel this momentary rush to work on my own art outside of school. The problem with this though is that I tend to put this expectation on myself to turn out a bunch of work which is honestly not a whole lot of time. I end up rushing into work and I rarely ever like the results. This time I've decided to do small studies and sketches to help flesh out ideas more thorough. I've sketched out a few ideas this week that could end up either being paintings or large scale ink drawings. Just today I completed this small study in my sketchbook.

I normally hate self portraits but I found this one kinda interesting. I ended up inking this one as well.

 In retrospect, I think the drawing looked better. I might do a similar portrait of someone else since I do like the concept Ive been developing in the last year or so. I'd like to continue to do more small studies such as this and possibly try to start a larger project before the the next semester starts. Well, I'm off to the 100 Grand Show. Hopefully I'll feel inspired afterward.

Ugh!

Since I'm preparing to publish my new website, I thought this would be a good time to update my poor neglected blog. The semester is wrapping up so it gives me some time to reflect on the semester. For a variety of reasons, this has been a very frustrating semester on an artistic level. It started off pretty good that culminated is this painting:

    This was a small painting that did as a commission for my old friends back In Jackson. I consider this one of my best paintings I have completed so far. Everything kinda went downhill from there.
    One of my goals this semester was to really push myself creatively. Take myself out of my comfort zone so to speak. Despite completing this goal, It really didn't leave me with much work to put in my portfolio. Experimenting with skin tones proved to be rather difficult for me as they became either too muddy or too chalky. Still not quite sure how I'm going to approach it in future paintings but I'm starting to develop a better color sense.
    I also began to do life painting which I had never done up until that point. It took some getting used to but I started to see some results by the end the semester. Here are some of the better ones taken with my crappy cellphone camera:

Despite what I consider many failures this semester, I did learn a lot of what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Because of this, I think I set myself up pretty nicely for my next semester. As soon as break starts, I'll probably do some small color studies to see what happens and hopefully complete my website I previously mentioned. Hopefully this we be the first in series of consistent blog updates....we'll see.

Taking a Break to Ink

My current painting I'm currently working on is moving along but I decided to take a break for a few days. Though I will continue to paint, ink drawings is still something I wish to pursue. Before I even started the aforementioned painting, I inked this drawing.

I tried a couple different methods while inking this and consequently, this didn't turn out quite as satisfying as I had hoped. The good thing that came out of this is that I tried to narrow down the type of methods I use to to ink a drawing. I've never enjoyed rendering all too well so inking is something I enjoy very much. I did a second one soon after.

  

I was slightly happier with this one. The detail in the dress was not working so I followed the "Frank Miller" motto of "if it's giving you trouble, cover it in black". The following drawing was done a couple days ago.

I liked how this turned out and even attempted to to color this in photoshop today. The fact that I'm showing you the ink drawing should tell you how that went, though it was my first attempt at digital coloring so I will be trying again in the future. On that note, I will probably resume my painting next time I hit the studio so hopefully my next post will include that.

The Benefits of Working

It's been nearly a month since the end of the semester and started working full time again and I'm already starting to feel exhausted. As previously stated, I feel very fortunate and grateful to have a job, but since I switched to working first shift, my body clock hasn't exactly "synched" up so to speak. This has resulted in a lack of sleep most nights. As a consequence, I haven't been able to make it to the studio this week at all to work on my current painting. To be quite honest, the current update of my blog is basically me trying to feel like I accomplished something today (well I woke up about an hour ago so technically I didn't get anything done yesterday). Hopefully, when I eventually wake up tomorrow( today?) I'll manage to get down to the studio. It's obvious that I need to develop some new habit in my schedule.

While at work today, My manager had inquired me about doing some labels for some beer he is currently brewing. He gave me a very broad outline in what he was looking for and I decided I'm going to take a crack at it. If i get a chance, I think i might try to go digital with it. I've been looking for an excuse to go down to Kendall and try out their new touch screen tablets so this might be a good exercise to experiment with that. It's been a while since I've used illustrator so I don't imagine this will come natural but I need to start somewhere.

I'll leave this with another excerpt of my essay "Perspectives of motivation" (please ignore the incited sources, I'm very terrible that).


What is art? Such a broad question about an undefined thing has invoked multiple theories and responses and always will. Illustration along with work considered "abstract" are commonly argued as being defined as "art". In it's most simplified form, illustration has been associated with works that are generally created with an intended purpose or direction such as articles or stories etc… Fine art on the other hand has been associated with aesthetics or concepts and is often synonymous with gallery work. However, in more recent years, the dividing line between fine art and illustration has begun to blur as successful illustrates have gone on to have successful fine art careers and vice versa. Despite the cross over appeal, there are still many similarities between the two from the start. Stylistically, illustrators and fine artists have shared many qualities in their work as fine artist are commonly drawing influence from illustrators and vice versa. Documented in the online blog Illustration Art, David Apatoff has written extensively about the technical similarities shared by illustrators and fine artists such as Bernie Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline (Apatoff 06).

Perspectives of Motivation

Judging from my last entry, it's been quite a while since I've updated this. One of my goals this last semester in school was to start a blog. I guess my next one will be to update this on a consistent basis. Besides the obvious "too busy" to update routine, I didn't have any new work to show until recently. Hopefully my next post will include some of my new paintings I've been working on. I spent most of the last semester oil painting and I don't see this changing anytime soon, though I have been making an effort to continue my ink drawings simultaneously.

Overall, I believe this semester has been a success.  I'm beginning to have a better idea in what I accomplish with my art and I've noticed a a notable improvement overall. A number of things attributed to this such as my job at cafe Leonardo that is conveniently located at the school and a concentrated effort to do all my work at school. I spent longer periods of time at school but it enabled me to relax quite comfortably at home.

Now that the semester is over, I've been working in my own studio with a group of talented individuals that are steps ahead of me, but I'm trying to catch up. It's been a little difficult getting in since I'm working full time again but that something I really can't do anything about and I'm grateful that I at least have a job.

I'll conclude this post with the beginning paragraph of a recent paper I wrote that sums up my current putlook on art. I'll be posting the remainder of this paper in future posts. The paper is entitled "Perspectives of Motivation".

Choosing a career can be difficult. This mass understatement is a dilemma that most, if not all students face in their lifetime. This particular decision is being presented to us before we even graduate high school. I experienced this same situation and eventually arrived at "art" as my career. Making this decision seemed natural since it was my original intent growing up. Unfortunately, this decision led to  a question I found rather more difficult, do i major in illustration or fine art. This was a question that plagued my mind for nearly 3 years ( my girlfriend can attest to this). Even after deciding to major in illustration, the weight of my decision was constantly on my mind until recently. What led to this constant pressure placed on myself was regarding my intentions with "art". Did I want to take a political stance? Did I want to explore different philosophical outlooks on life? Did I want to explore the personal journey of the human experience? Did I want explore all of these things? A few months ago, I finally answered this question, my intention for art is to have fun. Though the statement is simple and short, to me this is the essential motivator that has led me to explore art. I hardly think I'm the only one to explore my early beginnings in art and coming to this conclusion. Unfortunately, we as artists function in an industry that demands "filling in the blanks" so to speak. We are encouraged to explore and question the aesthetic nature of art, but it appears that this comes at the expense of the simple nature of enjoying ourselves while doing it. To be clear, I have no problem with the aforementioned motivations listed previously. I myself try to explore these things in my own art, but am doing so because I have something to say, or because I'm part of an industry that demands it? In the end, these questions and debates over illustration, fine art or art in general are irrelevant in comparison to to our own motivations and desires. We need to focus inward instead of outward.

Early Concepts

I've been meaning to post my current work that is taking up most of my time but all my completed projects have not been returned to me and I didn't get a chance to scan them yet. On that note I thought I would post one of my photographs from last year.

  

This photo was the first of a sequential series that I had mentioned in some of my previous posts. This photo was meant to establish the character sequentially. This happens to be one of my favorites because of it's composition. For the longest time ( even now to a certain degree) I always felt like a simple composition is automatically a boring composition. There had been countless times when I had abandoned a composition because of the lack of complexity. For this project I had sketched out the whole series to help save time. This particular one had gone through a number of revisions before resulting in it's current form. I decided on focusing on the most identifiable aspect of the figure (an obvious observation in retrospect). I wanted the figure to retain a sense of mystery so I ended up cropping out the eyes. I feel like I accomplished my initial intent with this. The simple composition is what makes this photo work in my opinion. This photo helped establish the mood of the project. 

after this photo I decided to conceal some portion of the figures face throughout the rest of the series and which was further complemented by the high contrast graininess. In the end I was extremely happy with the final series. I'll post more of the series in  later posts. 

In an unrelated note, as of yesterday I will be getting a studio next month. I'll be getting it with some friends from school and I'm equal parts excited and intimidated. Honestly, I'm still unsure if I should get a studio at this point of my so called career ( if i can even call it that). Not to mention the artists I'll be sharing it with are extremely talented. Finding time to get to school to paint ( my house doesn't have a proper area to paint) during the late hours have proved to be a problem and having this studio is a pretty good solution. I suppose I'll just have to step up my work to prove to them and most of all myself that I deserve to be there.

New Beginnings

For the longest time, most of my art consisted of mostly academic work (still life's, figure drawing, design studies....). I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to take my art. I've had many different interests and ideas but I wasn't quite sure which direction to take. I feel like I started to discover this when I took a film photography class last winter.  This was probably the earliest time I really developed various concepts and themes. Flash forward to last semester. It was during this last semester that I took my first illustration class. During this semester I tried a lot of different techniques and methods which took me out of my comfort zone. The medium that started to "click" with me was ink. A lot of trial and error but I enjoyed it. By the time our final project rolled around, we were allowed to do whatever we wanted for the most part so long as it related to what we intended to pursue in our field. At that point, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to pursue and I'm still not sure for that matter. Without getting into too much detail, I developed some ideas I had for a graphic novel that I may or may not ever make. The idea had begun with my photography and culminated in this piece.

This particular piece is significant to me for a couple reasons. First, this is something that I truly made that says something about me as an artist. It continues the conceptual nature of my photography and pushes it even further. Secondly, there is a noticeable improvement in my abilities in ink. There are a few things that could be improved (the balloons) but for the most part I'm happy how the figure and telephone pole turned out. 

The more straightforward concept is the idea of opportunities and despite how close they appear, they always manage to slip away. There are other things going on that are signifigant to me but I try to keep things open to interpretation for the viewer.

This was the first of hopefully three that I have made so far and have the intention of creating one more to make a series of 4. All my previous illustration projects culminated in this. Hopefully this work will help culminate into something greater.

-steven shik

Overshadowed by luck

Like many people, art was something I did as long as I could remember. I even dreamed of being a comic artist at one point which looking back is quite fitting considering where my interests have gone. Unfortunately, I never went out of my way to learn the fundamentals of art ( line weight, composition, perspective etc..). Hell, I didn't even know they really existed until a few years ago. Because of this, I constantly experience this nagging feeling of playing catch up with other people. I had given up art during High School but on a whim, I took an art class just for fun at my community college a few years back. Long story short, art gave me direction that I was clearly lacking at that point. The art class I took emphasized creativity and experimentation. At the time, this was very liberating and kind of eased my way back into art. The flip side to this is that the fundamental elements were de-emphasized in the process. This clearly shows in a lot of my earlier work. The best of piece of work that came out of this period was this.....

 
Despite the work I had created in the following years, this particular piece is what most people reacted to most strongly. At first it was nice having something that people enjoyed but now its become quite burdensome. It is nice to have positive reactions to my work but I have completed much stronger pieces since then. A couple months ago, my girlfriend and I took a closer look to this piece and came to the the conclusion to why people react so strongly to this piece....

I got lucky!



Upon closer examination, there were things going on in this piece that I didn't even realize. The multiple layers gave it a sense of depth, the use of text, the bold graphic of the girl, the use of red were just a few things that helped this piece stand out. None of these things were intentional because quite frankly, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I tired replicating similar pieces with style with no real success as a result. On the other hand, I do feel this piece did contain a certain amount of spontaneity that is lacking from my current work which I think mainly had to do with the mixed media aspect. I decided soon after I completed this piece to strictly concentrate on the fundamental elements of art. Three years later, I finally feel like I reached a point where I can successfully explore mixed media more thoroughly. Whether this results in good art is another story.

First post

I think the title says it all. This will be my first real attempt at maintaining a blog (that crappy Myspace one doesn't count). This blog will focus on the development of my art as continue my studies in pursuing a degree and career in art. I've been holding off on starting a blog mainly for the fact that I really didn't have any work to really show off as my own. What I mean by this was that most of my work contained in my portfolio was strictly academic work(still-life s, life drawings, color studies etc..). These things display my technique (or lack thereof) but don't really say much about me personally. I told myself that I would start a blog when I finally got to a point where I was turning out work that truly represented me as an artist. A couple of weeks ago I feel like I reached this point when I was given free reign on my final illustration project last semester. Because of the freedom, I created two pieces based on a graphic novel which I may or may not make(I'll post the actual pieces in the next post). Another more obvious reason was that I never felt my work work was worth showing off. To some degree I still feel like this is true but honestly this feeling will never go away. By not showing my work, I'm missing out on an opportunity to receive feedback from a variety of sources and track my progress as well. Starting now, I'm going to attempt to update this blog as much as possible. Both good and bad (probably a lot of that actually) but the feedback I receive will only make me a better artist in the long run. so here's to the first of hopefully many posts in future. To end my first post, here's a photo from a series I did in my photography class last year. It seems rather fitting in a way.

Steven