Tag Archives: Drawing

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Binarydom (version 9)

IdiosyncraticCouple9ematted

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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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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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
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Purple Tide (version 1)

Purple Tide (version 1)

This image here is a fragment chosen from Ploidy the Diploid, which is another image in this album. As I often do when I get a chance, I pull out previous works I’ve done and see new things in them that intuitively look like they could be independent art works in themselves.

Creation has a tendency to morph and grow out of what came before, even when it seems completely unrelated. The subconscious mind is a lot less discriminative, and categorical in the sense of conscious classification systems. In fact, chief editors of newspapers and magazines know that the positioning of supposedly unrelated ads actually contribute to an article you may be reading. It actually gets digested in your subconscious mind as one interrelated kilobyte of information.

So this image here looks to me like an ocean wave under a purple and red sky. My fascination with alien planets makes me think of an ocean somewhere else in the universe. Though it is independent of earth, the properties of this imaginary place are connected and related in the sense of liquid, and high & low tides.

It’s just a very liquid picture composed of relatively basic abstract shapes, another one of my approaches to creation. That’s the thing, I really like to embroil my audience with intricacies and complexities in my art, but I try to point out the basic and simple shapes that are used to construct such elaborate labyrinths.

It’s the idea of perfection versus imperfection, and all of the intuitive visual equations that I subconsciously work out in the water of my mind.

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November 20, 2013 · 7:37 am
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The Socratic Tree (preliminary pastel)

The Socratic Tree (preliminary pastel)

As you can tell, this tree makes an appearance through some of my art work. I made a drawing of this idea back in high school when I was sixteen. I posted that drawing here on my blog two posts previous to this one.

In the meantime, I’ll share this one which I made back in 2003. It was around the time that Bush and his gang were lying about WMDs in Iraq. At that point in time I didn’t know anything about foreign policy, but I intuited that what Bush was doing with our country was terribly wrong.

This tree has some other #symbolism behind it as well, as it associates with the Greek philosopher Socrates. He is famous for questioning everyone to try to get to the essence of what others professed and boasted as authorities. This activity culminated in authorities of his time condemning him to drink hemlock as a sentence for death.

As I said, back in 2003 I knew nothing about how the mass psychology worked, and how people, for the most part, obey their authority figures without making a fuss too much.

The tree in this image looks like the hands are prone towards the heavens as if to ask ‘why’ in a symbolic gesture. Branches have also been cut from the tree to show how the activities of man limit, cut, and stunt its growth for his own vision of fitting in with the rest of society, and imposing this vision upon the beautiful trees composing our planet in nature.

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September 22, 2013 · 6:39 am
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Pastel Dust of Pollen and Lepidoptera (version 6)

Pastel Dust of Pollen and Lepidoptera (version 6)

Digital material from one of my original oil paintings, some of my mixed media pastel drawings, ball-point pen drawings, and some real butterfly wings went into the creation of this piece.

I used some of the scanned material from my Wrecked Tangles (Encircled) A series project as the background. Also, the design from Industrial Mandala was used. Again, Industrial Mandala is a digital manipulation from my original oil painting: Of Which I Am a Part.

I incorporated some text on Wikipedia’s definition of a butterfly in the background. You can make out a little bit of it, but my intention was to add some filler to the background design, and I thought a scientific description of the butterfly was fitting. Lepidoptera is the Latin term for butterfly.

The butterfly wings were actually some remains of a butterfly that one of our cats dragged in after stalking it in our backyard garden. For some reason, I hung on to the wings and put them up on a shelf. Later on, I had this idea that I should scan the wings on to the computer so as to use them for a future project.

Well, here is that future project. I’ve been wanting to explore some more of my ideas using the mandala design format. This is another result of that. I feel that I’m getting a better feel of what I want to master. Eventually, I want to start experimenting with using diagrams and drawings of parts of plants, animals, people, and machines. This image I’m sharing with you here is where I’m at for now however.

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September 9, 2013 · 7:50 am
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Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version B8

Wrecked Tangles (After the Crash) version B8

A lot of different media went into the original drawing for this image. I manipulated the image further after scanning it into the computer. It doesn’t have as many mechanical diagrams integrated into it as I’ve done with some of the previous Wrecked Tangles series.

There really isn’t a profound meaning I was consciously trying to communicate here. I just like the shapes of letters and alphabetical symbols. I like the patterns that they create, and I take note of compositions found in magazines and newspapers.

I cut out pieces from magazines in order to integrate them into the imagery characterized by my Wrecked Tangles art project. It’s really an ad hoc adventure that is open ended, and I often stumble upon new designs in the process of manipulating the collaged drawings I create from traditional materials.

Some of you whom I’ve met before have given me some of those materials, such as the old books on foreign cars and so forth. I plan on exploring more in the area of alchemical and mathematical symbols, as well as Greek characters, and, perhaps Chinese characters in future projects.

For now, please enjoy exploring the structures and nuances maintaining themselves within this image. It is intended to be displayed as a print. It is 15 inches by 24 inches, or 38 cm by 61 cm. Un-matted on archival paper, it is $200, and that includes shipping. Framed with a glass cover and matting is $400 including shipping. Please contact me by my cell phone number provided here on my art page here and leave a message.

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September 1, 2013 · 4:49 am