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