i'd rather be a praying mantis

was hanging out in my backyard and saw a praying mantis on a wind chime.
i dont know why but praying mantis' are so cool.

ikea tuesday

so there's a sub-blog from this 7x7 i wanted to start as i took note of what is happening.
1. we are too busy to worry about posting here as often as we like
2. we're sketching already at least once a week as a group

so, why not post the sketches!
and here's the link to the sketch sessions every week as i like to call: ikea tuesday.
http://ikeatuesday.blogspot.com/

i still want to keep this blog running as much as possible, and hope to get a footing soon :)
so if u got something, keep posting!

and now here's a double post! ;)

Model railin'

This here is a nugget a creeated sevral moons ago.

Grapes

I thought it's be cute, did this a little while ago.

I'd rather be...

what would you rather be doing right now, or this week?

so as we get busier with our work load, let's not stress ourselves with  a specific sketch a day. Instead, it'll be a creation a week (drawing, painting, movie, singing, photo, etc).

ikea tuesday

so i havent been posting in a while due to being busy and lazy. but we have been going to sketch, so i will post that :)
here's a sketch from ikea tuesday 8/17/2010
some dude eating chicken fingers

squirrel 2

had squirrels in my head all day yesterday.
i was imagining what the squirrel was doing to catch him unexpectedly. taking nap, sunbathing...who knows.
or enjoying a snack in front of a tree only to realize he wasnt alone.

Flying Paper

One time when I was in the 4th grade I was waiting for my parents to pick me up after school. It was getting late and all the other kids had gotten picked up already. So I decided to make a paper airplane.

I made this cool one with like 10 folds from an instructional book.

I gave it a good heave

And anxiously watched it depart into the air. It was floated nicely up into the sky, much higher and farther than I had ever anticipated.


And then it kept Rising, and rising.... and Rising...


...It must have got into some kind of thermal or something because it just kept rising and flying farther and farther. I chased after it.

I walked underneathe it, staring at it in awe of it glorious loftedness.


It kept floating all the way to the other side of the campus.

...Then Over the other side of the campus. It seemed like hours had past as the plane glided over the tops of the roofs.

Then, as gracefully as it had departed, the plane returned to the ground.

I gingerly picked up my little miracle contraption.

I was filled with an overwhelming sense of jubilation and pride when my parents finally arrived. But I never told them or anyone what had happened; I knew that it would sound like a ridiculous exaggeration. The world record for paper airplane flight is 27.6 seconds, mine had easily gone for over 2 minutes. Until recently I had never told anyone about my experience, I still feel ridiculous trying to convince people that it actually happened.

true story 2

there was a point when my dog was on a killing spree, catching squirrels and moles. I had to dispose of the bodies before they rotted. one of the body was still warm...

true stories 1

hmm, read a lil' bit on informal subdivision composition for a more dynamic and natural picture, and wanted to test out if it worked. it's design class 101 all over again :)
I created a seemingly random grid (based on the system) and dropped in random colors in the spaces and got this. looks interesting.
does the theory work? true theory?

this weeks theme: true stories

so last week was a good start. we have over 20 posts! i really enjoyed seeing so many different posts. lets keep that up.
i think we were all shy of posting, but hopefully this week we'll be more courageous and encouraged to post.
again, no pressure. i think it's just good to keep drawing/creating/encouraging. I've seen  drawings that didn't get posted by others which i thought were great, even epic.  lol

TRUE STORIES - whatever that means to you.
have fun.

PRIDE

possible next themes:
occupational hazards
zodiac
robot
underwater
greek mythology
safari
true stories
dinner time
summertime
dreams
mollusks
europe
America

Sloth - Belphegor

LUST

Self Motivation - Gregory J. M. Kasunich

I like Grace's idea of fighting sloth...

ink on index card

Fighting sloth.. arousing creativity...

A friend shared a link with me about finding my creativity again.

Creativity

The first tip: 1. Talk to a monkey. Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal.

I don't have a monkey but I do have stuffed Totoro. I think we came up with some ideas. =)

McSlotherington Von Slothberg III

There The Broken Wall - Gregory J. M. Kasunich

This is a film I made back in 2008 that plays nicely into the idea of temptation and greed. It was shot over three days on 16mm Tri-X B&W reversal film.

There the Broken Wall (Dir. Gregory Kasunich, Greg Heller, Keiji Yoshida 2008) from Gregory Kasunich on Vimeo.

Editor: Craig Thomas Quinlan

Music: Eugene Micofsky

Gluttony

too much mouse...

greed : Mammon (golden calf)

this needed a hint of color.

Avarice Angel - Gregory J. M. Kasunich

I can't draw, so I doodle.

Ink on paper.

N-V

Here's another entry...

The Beauty & The Beast [Forbidden Love] - Alberto Dose

The Department of Light & Sound is pleased to present the entries of Alberto Dose:

I will be posting Alberto's contributions each day because Albert has no computer.

Not that he needs one.

-DLS

Glut

Here's my entry....gluttony

ENVY

Lust / Curiosity - Gregory J. M. Kasunich

I came across this quote by Thomas Hobbes, "curiosity is the lust of the mind", and it made me think of how sometimes what we don't know/see can be so much more desirable than what we know/see plainly. I wanted to play on the idea of lust as a type of intense longing without satiation on both a cranial and intellectual level.

Just playing with three basic colors, manipulating text & brushes, and asymmetric composition.

Despair - Literally...

paper doll

I wanted to post this on greg's post, but didn't know how to post an img.
this was originally from a doodle at today's pro meeting.

after reading greg's short story, i see scissors and paper dolls when i see greg.

Gluttony : Beelzebub (Lord of the Flies)

Great to see the post from people. love the variety. Marty, you inspired me to hand draw my word for today. 
It's a very different approach compared to my last one, but i got this idea and wanted to run with it. I'll have to change one or the other to make all the sins fit in a series.
can't wait to see what you guys come up with next.

WRATH----->

It Doesn't Rain Indoors - Gregory J. M. Kasunich

A short piece of fiction playing on the idea of tristitia (sorrow/despair). The need for literal or figurative self destruction inspired by intense, and sometimes self inflicted, despair.

It Doesn't Rain Indoors - By Gregory J. M. Kasunich

The paper dolls lay massacred across the barren apartment floor.

Murdered.

Dismembered.

Dead.

All of them, silent, still, deceased.

The world was better for it.

A pair of dull scissors jutted angularly from the coffee table, the murder weapon left out in the open; a purloined letter of evidence hidden in plain sight. The culprit; splayed out, belly up and naked on the disintegrating sofa.

Her body, motionless; stagnate, beautiful.

Only the cigarette, balancing between her slender fingers and spitting fumes into the empty space produced any semblance of movement across the murder scene. Overhead, the lingering plumes, drifting from the red ember that tipped her black cigarette, accumulated into a wispy storm cloud, and grew ever more ominous with each exhale.

Turning her head and simultaneously extinguishing the smoldering filter, which threatened to singe her already bronzed flesh, on the bare coffee table; she surveyed her work, the aftermath of her torrid slicing spree that ended only minutes earlier.

The chips and sheds.

The ink and paper.

The shards and scraps.

She smiled at the sight and lit another cigarette from her quickly diminishing pack. Again, she exhaled and fortified the cumulous clove clouds above. She needed a storm, a torrential downpour from the sagging, stained ceiling. She needed a biblical flood of thought, of light, or static. Of water or fire, to wash her one-room studio clean.

Soon. Too soon, the detectives would be here marking miniscule calk outlines on her oak wood floor. They would come with sharp eyes, pens at the ready, firing questions through bare body like linguistic bullets.

Cameras would be aimed at the pulpy carnage.

At the empty open fridge.

At her.

Snap.

Click.

Whrrrrr.

She stood, slowly, waking from her momentary mental/physical paralysis placing her feet evenly on the floor, taking effort not to disturb the paper flesh of a hundred tiny, self made and subsequently self destroyed, effigies.

She checked the locks her door, the chain, the deadbolt. Perhaps to buy her some time before the authorities snap her into cold cuffs and rattle off her rights. By that point there would be no time, no chance to clarify, to explain how no one was hurt in the incident. The pieces that lay before them were nothing more than fragments of her former self, snipped to bits for the betterment of all.

Nevertheless she exhaled again and prayed that the blue nimbus above would burst and purge the apartment of any incriminating evidence leaving her personally and lawfully exonerated of her transgressions. Not against society, but against herself.

In front of the fridge, the only appliance offering relief from the warmth, she paused, the wafts of Freon frosted air grazing her golden brown skin, running over her face, dripping down her lips to her stomach to her thighs and feet.

Exhale.

The summer heat had preceded the season’s arrival, as it was only May, but she knew the temperature was less than culpable for the first-degree extermination. The subtle chill slowed her thoughts, if for a moment, and like the static thunder growing above, she realized her motivation.

Inhale.

Hold.

Puff.

Perhaps had the choices made for her, to her, maybe had they been different, such extreme measures could have been avoided. But no, the repugnant rapids were hers to weather from birth; and even that decision might have been taken from her. Regardless, her father both gave and took all too much of her twenty-two years ago and despite her mother’s unyielding search for an antidote, the inevitable inebriation would eventually wear off.

The only solution was to kill herself a million times over, and then a million more, until all that remained was nothing like it was.

The clouds circled sending miniature bolts of lighting streaking through the apartment. She shivered and knew it was any moment now. Making her way back to the sofa she sat and pulled the thin blanket across her naked body.

She exhaled and snuffed the last of her cigarettes, the lingering pillar of blue smoke adding just enough to crack the clouds apart.

Despair -Tristitia

I was really inspired by an aerial ribbon class I took this weekend. The instructor's poses were so fluid and expressive and each position gave a different feeling.

envy - leviathan

So my first sketch is on envy. I discovered that each sin is related to a demon.

"In 1589, Peter Binsfeld paired each of the deadly sins with a demon, who tempted people by means of the associated sin. According to Binsfeld's classification of demons, the pairings are as follows" - wikipedia

and envy is a leviathan.

that's a yacht with people falling out of it.

Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.