surface design

Final Year Begins

Summer has come to an end and it's less than a week until I'm back into the swing of things for my last year of my MFA program. I have mixed feelings of anxiety, stress, and excitement about the upcoming academic year. By June 2017, I will finally be done with school most likely forever or at least for a while. Not sure what my plans are going to be after graduation at the moment. I'll look for post-secondary teaching jobs or possibly apply for artist residencies abroad. But for now I'll be mostly focusing on the year ahead, which means making a concrete body of work for my thesis exhibition and writing my thesis paper.

Check out some of the most recent MFA projects I've been working on. 

Summer MFA Studio Progress

Although I am home in BC for the summer and trying to have as much of a "summer break" as possible, I am still expected to continue working on my MFA studio work and thesis. This is a look into the work I have been creating over the summer. 

First I began by creating source images based on three themes or areas of focus. In my last blog I shared images of the first theme "Leaves/Nature". The other two themes I've been working on are "Ocean Life" and "The Human Body". 

Below are the drawings/paintings I created from referencing a documentary film on ocean life.  

Below are drawings/paintings I created by referencing my Human Anatomy textbook from University. 

With these source images I finally began to work back into Photoshop to create digitally produced works of art.

Below I will show the source images first and then the resulting digital artworks that have been formed from the initial image. 

Tulip Tree Leaf

Puffer Fish

Leg Muscles and Bones

Deltoid Muscles

Fish (no reference)

Coleus Leaf

Abstract (No theme)

It's been an interesting experiment trying to incorporate more specific reference images into my source drawings. There are aspects that I find pleasantly surprising, but mostly I find myself falling back to my comfort zone of abstraction. When I create abstract works its seems less straining and forced. I feel that my best works are those that flow naturally from within and are created based off an intuitive process, which I find is a much more relaxing and easing approach.