Tag Archives: Art

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Tri-Iteration (version 1)

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Is it time for some therapy for non-physical beings bound and whipped by the addictive pleasures of the flesh? Well, whatever. Apparently, art therapy is the thing critics and journalists like belittling and criticizing as of late. I sort of don’t blame them due to all the coloring books for adults that even Wal-Mart now sells. If I were more paranoid, I’d say that centralized PR firms caught on to my doodling after observing me from all the surveillance cameras around every corner for the last few years.

I would work on larger more extensive art projects, but, for whatever reason, I’ve been condemned to doodle on scraps of paper glued together into collages. I’m becoming cooler and cooler with that as the world’s years hammer away at my trembling heart. It’s cool; I needed to develop some courage. I hope I’ve gained a thread of it from a badge of courage awarded from heaven.

Anyway, I titled this piece Tri-Iteration because of the repeated lower-case i’s in the lower part of this abstract illustration. An iteration is a repeated utterance. This drawing is basically the foundation drawing for my Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) J series. Besides the i’s, included in this picture is a t and an H. I suppose you political hacks could find a hidden connection there between the letters I incorporated herein, and current events.

Maybe my unconscious mind was trying to tell me and everyone else something. I wasn’t consciously trying to intend a message. In fact, this drawing was an attempt on my part to escape my over-thinking, analytical mind. Hence, “art therapy.” It allows me to rest my left brain, and enter the playful, experimental, careless regions of my right brain. Having been credentialed as a Registered Health Information Technician lately, I have been trained to think more scientifically, quantitatively, and rationally. I’m glad the artist self within me hasn’t been completely gutted by this world.

What I note to you about this drawing with pens, pastels, diluted acrylic, and collaged pieces of paper is that I used two new agents as transformative properties in it. I used salt and rubbing alcohol to help weather and distort the colors of dust and magic marker. In previous Wrecked Tangles drawings, I had struggled to make the wrecked parts of the angles and lines mimic nature’s and time’s characteristic features of entropy, weathering, stress, and crumbling.

I first made the frame around this piece solid colors with no interference, but then I decided it needed some pocks and perforations to give it a distressed look. So I copied a selection of the pocks, points, and perforations inside the image and stretched them over to the frame. I was satisfied with that result. It can be changed to solid if you want that format. I can also make the image as a print without any pseudo-matting so that you can get it framed yourself if you so desire.


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March 17, 2016 · 6:13 am
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Binarydom (version 9)

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I went through three different names for this picture before I settled on Binarydom. First, I thought Binary Idiom because there are two commensurate pinwheels on either side of the image. I didn’t like that though because I couldn’t settle on whether if there were two idioms or just one divided in itself. Echoes of Hegel’s Unhappy Consciousness can be associated here.

Then I thought of Idiosyncratic Couple as a title, which actually sounds about right to me right now. The central theme that I’m developing here however is one of basic blocks and forces of universe building; or, world creating. The title Idiosyncratic Couple doesn’t completely work as a description for me yet here because the shapes, forms, and movements aren’t evolved to the point of human intelligence and relationships. I am sure many analysts will have fun with my interpretations so far.

I progressed therefore to the idea of calling it Manichaea. Manichaeism was actually an ancient religion founded by an Iranian prophet named Mani in ancient Persia. It’s basic narrative is that we live in a dualistic cosmology of good and evil, light and dark, and so on, resembling the Chinese Ying Yang principle. I gazed into my image and just didn’t see that blatant opposition in it however because the colors on the left and the right of the image are the same—there is no oppositional emphasis. Rather, it seems like more of a harmonious synthesis.

What you may imagine looking at here is two quadrilateral (square) molecules linked up together by ionic bonding. I know that there is no such thing as a square shaped molecule, but I like imagining it as thus in my development of generating imaginary universes. Most molecules usually are hexagonal and pentagonal in structure when studied in diagrams.

I henceforth concluded in titling this piece Binarydom. It’s a kingdom of two molecular worlds bound together in harmony as they travel over the nascent inchoate urges towards clearer definition observed in the background. I drew this drawing with gel and ball-point pens first on blank white paper. I already had some pasted together paper media for future projects, which I scanned into the computer to use for this project.

I made a template of Binarydom with just the white surrounding, excluding the colors and forms, and combined that with the background of pasted together paper media. I feel I merged it all together with a certain degree of success by my standards. I altered the coloring for some of the pisciforms so that their bodies are now a cerulean blue, instead of silver. I originally made their bodies with a silver gel pen. The silver didn’t show up as well as I liked, so I adjusted them to a blue hue.

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February 5, 2016 · 8:19 am
May 9, 2015 · 3:38 am

Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) H1

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The archaic character you don’t recognize off to the lower right of this image is a character from the Glagolitic alphabet, which represents L in the English language. In my recent fascination with language and math characters from around the world, I have been drawing a few of them that catch my eye. Drawing a character from any alphabet puts its shape into my memory so I can redraw it anew in the future without having to look at it again for reference. In a sense, drawing, painting, and even writing helps me to commit anything to memory; it’s like a mapping process that helps to work out the kinks.

I drew several other letters, numbers, and punctuation marks from the English language to give you a sense of stability as a speaker of this language. While it is not my intention to alienate those of you who speak other languages, I must limit myself mostly to the usage of English when I draw a word in order to be able to explain what my intentions are for using that word in a particular art piece, as I am monolingual.

This image is basically the foundation drawing for Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) H series. I find the letter H to identify the group it’s in to be quite fitting for it due to the fact that it looks like you are witnessing a three dimensionally imagined black-hole.

What it reminds me of is those explanations astrophysicists sometimes show to describe how a black-hole might look if it were three dimensional. They will place a heavy metal ball on to the surface of a bed, thereby depressing the part of the bed that the ball is placed on. These kinds of explanations of the curvature of space and time with respect to super-heavy objects–like black-holes–are, I feel, the best because they give a simple visual representation that anyone can understand.

I’ve been fascinated by surfaces, mediums, settings, contexts, and textures for a long time now. I’ve pretty much concluded that anything can be a tool or medium to use for artistic purposes. I wanted to reproduce a visualization I had of an information vortex, and express it in a Wrecked Tangles themed style. I have described to you before how you can imagine quilts being landscapes. Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) H1 is another fulfillment for a variation on that theme.

I’m often amused by how the surface of beds can be used to explain the fabric of space and time, and their fabrics can also be used as surfaces to paint or draw on… that is, if they are prepared properly for that purpose. I find this all amusing because the bed is symbolic of sleep, dreaming, and pleasure. It is a doorway, if you will, for which your imagination can roam through its wildest dreams.

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After the Crash (version E1)

After the Crash (version E1)

The original drawing, for which almost all of which you see here, did not have the letter E in it. At first I thought that this would be the D series to my After the Crash, Wrecked Tangles, art project. But lo and behold! I logged on to Facebook and found that I’d already created a D series.

This indicates that I’ve put this project off for too long. I haven’t forgot about it though. I’ve been dreaming of completing it before the end of 2015, for which a projected crash in the dollar’s value is estimated by some economists.

So in order to give you the idea that this series is associated with the character E as a value, I decided to embed a digital E on top of the scanned drawing. I attempted to naturalize it as best I could after flipping it around to a backwards representation.

My letter! A lot can be said just about a mere letter! It also is the letter that starts my first name. Art of eVan is capitalized in this piece signifying a waypoint of completion. I feel this work is important in some way, as I’ve reached a degree of mastery with this style that has increased satisfaction.

I’d been bored and even repulsed by some previous series in this art project, as I started to standardize the process of drawing the originals. The process of standardization is common to many artists who fall into a niche with their work. So in order to reduce some of this repetitiveness, I started focusing on the colors I drew in each square or shape. There are a lot more subtleties that can be added to each corner that help to convolute some of the sterility and transform it into a detailed richness which can be explored upon multiple viewings.

The above outlines some of the challenge I consciously set out to grapple with in the beginning of the Wrecked Tangles art project. And that was to find as many different representations of the basic shape of the square, the rectangle, as well as the circle. The triangle is used in many works as well, but the primary shape I challenged myself with was the rectangle.

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March 24, 2014 · 7:30 am
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The Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera and Pollination (version 5)

The Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera and Pollination (version 5)

Version six of this image was posted back in September. In that post, I explained that it truly is a hybridized mixed media project. Bits and pieces of creation, whether if by the hand of nature, or by the hand of eVan, were gathered together and integrated on to an electronic canvas.

One thing that I didn’t describe to you, however, is that bulb-like flower with a blue stem on the right side of the picture. It’s actually from a diagram depicting the Bio-Savart law. This law is basically an equation describing the magnetic field generated by an electric current. An electric current, its proximity, length, direction and magnitude are related to a magnetic field in the equation used to compute the Bio-Savart law.

Explaining math to you wasn’t the intent of this project however. Even the title of this series is quite long and requires some attention. I thought of shortening the title to Pastel Dust of Lepidoptera, but I already posted a previous version (version 6) with the long title, so I decided to roll with what I originally started with in the title.

Dust can be found on butterflies, moths, and on the ends of stamens of flowers, and the colors of these naturally occurring dust-like substances are often a pleasurable sight to witness. Colorfully compacted dust is also used in oil pastels for artists to create art works.

I used a piece from my Wrecked Tangles (Encircled) series for the background of this work, which involved the usage of oil pastels. Dust is symbolic of time, as in the sand that is used in hour glasses, or, the sand that resides on beaches which seem to continue on forever into the horizon.

Dust is also symbolic of taking many small steps in order to complete a project. When you finally complete a detailed and lengthy project, you can relax at the end of your constructed beach and enjoy the beach-scape built by your own efforts.

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December 28, 2013 · 4:06 am
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A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

A Synthesis of Matter and Mind (version 12)

I posted version 14 of this series back in October 2013 as you may remember. I’d created this version before version 14 obviously, but I decided back then to post version fourteen instead of version 12.

This particular version has more of a holiday feel to it, and it seems to express some characteristics of gold. Sometimes the drawings I make in pen or pencil end up looking like they have characteristics of gold when I manipulate them digitally.

While the original drawing is completely different in color scheme, the structure is the same. The original drawing actually only has one of the four smaller circles surrounding the main circular design in the middle.

When I started manipulating the original image on the computer, I wanted to explore and experiment with how it might look if I copied and pasted the smaller circular designs provided in the original drawing.

These series look like they could be sort of religious, like they might be architectural designs for Byzantine churches from the early Christian empire, but I wasn’t really trying to emphasize a religious message with this image. I just want people to enjoy looking at the mandelic designs I sometimes make.

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December 16, 2013 · 7:41 am
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Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version D1

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While I had the time, I thought I’d begin the D series for this near-future oriented retrospective on the current state of humanity. I already uploaded the first image for the C series, and I plan on making a variety of variations and sub-series within it, as well as the same for the D series.

The star shape in the upper left corner of the picture is actually a piece of cardboard in a star-shape. I pasted it to a rectangular piece of cardboard for a base. Of course I primed everything, and then I sanded down some of the rough spots. I had to do that because I’d also pasted some paper tissues to the surface in order to give the plane some more texture to work with when I added all the other media on top of it.

As you can see, I pasted pieces of cut-outs from magazines, as well as from print-outs, on to the surface. These features have a sort of window-like character to them. If the picture were animated, it would look like there are many different activities going on behind a foreground of pastel and marker media.

With this work, I was able to successfully integrate some more three dimensional qualities, as the simple house-like shapes over off to the right of the picture make it look like the viewer is looking down at a neighborhood.

I drew in some keyboard characters on the picture because I really like the shapes of letters and characters. So many things that are commonly used for utilitarian purposes attract my attention. I feel like they have other aesthetic qualities to them that people most often ignore. Not only that, but utilitarian tools and objects can be combined into seemingly nonsensical combinations and aggregations.

A lot of my Wrecked Tangles ideas look like they are what a visual trip through a subconscious mind and its digestive activity after consuming data and information surrounding it in various environments. Much of our culture is pure advertisement, and commercialism, so I’m giving some visual perspective on what your subconscious mind does in breaking apart and assimilating everything into something manageable to yourself.

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November 29, 2013 · 8:24 am
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After the Crash (version C1)

After the Crash (version C1)

I’ve been working on finishing up this piece for the last couple of days. A previous phase of this mixed media creation is actually a part of Future Bell-Tops, a digital media piece that’s in the Traditional and Electronic Hybrid album.

I didn’t know what the heck to do with this recently unfinished piece. It had just been hanging around collecting dust for like almost a year now. I was undecided as to what category of creation I’ve already standardized for some of my creative outlets, i.e., the Micro-Chimerisms, the Paranormal Portrait Project, or the Wrecked Tangles project.

It was much closer to the Wrecked Tangles ideas, so I decided to make it the next series for the After the Crash continuation of the Wrecked Tangles project.

I realize all this weaving through the paths of my imagination and creativity can be confusing, but I actually find it fascinating and fun to explore. I hope you can share my excitement.

This piece has nails, a mesh of poultry wire, auto mechanic rags, wood, a small computer card, pastel, acrylic paint, oil paint, and cut-outs of print outs and pictures from old books incorporated into it. It truly is a work of mixed media. And on top of that, this piece has now been hybridized since it’s now scanned for usage in digital manipulations.

I don’t have any specific meanings, or ideas tied to this image. It’s more of just an expression to everyone of how different, and seemingly unrelated materials can be combined into works of art, allowing all the atomic particles and molecules composing it to express themselves through an unexpected artistic venture.

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November 23, 2013 · 9:10 am
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The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

The Feather-Swept Sky (version 5)

I made this image back in June, 2013. It started out with using magic marker on paper. There was some bleed through from some rubbing alcohol I applied to drawings on previous pages. I incorporated the designs into the stains.

What you see here is a digital manipulation of the original drawing. It’s basically the drawing times four. I use mirroring techniques to accomplish what you see here, as well as in other images.

I realized that the process that I take in many of my creations is the process of unfoldment. Unfoldment is different than development in the sense that unfolding is organic, and flower like, whereas development is more machine like, and each machine developed can’t develop more without a designer making a new model.

Unfoldment is a process that takes place from within a living organism or being. So growth, life, and will come from within a living being, not a “lifeless” machine.

I titled this piece The Feather Swept Sky. I imagined all the feathers of birds sweeping the skies of earth and magically sweeping away all the pollution. This image reminds me of some Native American art and jewelry. It also reminds me of ancient Egyptian art work and jewelry.

I suppose it’s a religious and mystical image bringing us all back a reminder of ancient religions, tribes, and civilizations. It’s the wisdom from our past, and the magical beliefs people had. Especially the belief of respecting and honoring the earth as a living, breathing being, not a dead rock to be used up by the never-ending greed of one percent moguls.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:38 am
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Yellow Tide (version 1)

Yellow Tide (version 1)

It looks like a lot of people liked Purple Tide, the last image I uploaded here last night. Well, this is Yellow Tide. It’s actually the predecessor to Purple Tide. It’s the same design, but the colors are inverted.

To be sure, this is part of a drawing I created with mixed media on paper, including magic marker and rubbing alcohol. Thinking of rubbing alcohol gives one a cool feeling, as this is how it feels when you rub it on your skin.

I used to live in southern California, and would visit the beaches there on the West coast every once in a while. The colors in Yellow tide remind me some of the memories I have of going to New Port, Dana Point, San Clemente, or Laguna.

Yet, this image is abstract enough to merely suggest a beach scene. In fact, if you get a totally different impression, then, by all means, let yourself explore that line of thought into your own imagination, and use this image as a doorway to help you get there.

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November 21, 2013 · 4:32 am