The Hippie Project - Take II

Hiya folks!

Top of the Sunday to ya's.. I have been extra busy this week with school work, for next week is an important week, well, you may not know but all us so-called 'Lukio' kids here in Finland are extremely aware of - the test-week. This is what all the Finnish kids in upper-secondary school dread every few months or so. Essentially it is seven days of brain wrecking tests, just tests. It is not fun I guarantee you. Anyways, enough about my school issues. I managed to fit a few hours of art in during this weekend and I used all those precious hours for my Native American Project. I am happy to say it is not a blue sky with two clouds anymore! I do have to admit, I've only used about 2-3 hours on the project this week, so everything is still pretty much a rough idea and I think it will change quite a bit by next week's post.

So this is were I was left off last Sunday.

A pretty little blue sky with a few clouds here and there bringing the mood up, now of course I wished I would've made the whites darker and more wide spread because I used more space for my graffiti part than what I had estimated but hey, it's fixable. I will just have to doctor it up a bit with the spray again in the end and it will turn out just fine. Hopefully. I forgot to take pictures from when I sketched the whole picture on, but basically I just use a neon yellow marker for that part, as you can see in the picture below with the eagle.

Aaand this is what I started with this morning. As you can see, I had just gotten started with the graffiti and the totem pole is poorly done. A lot has got to be done! I got sick of the totem pole yesterday and today I just wanted to do something else so I started coloring in the letters REZ.

 
 
I got this great idea a few days ago to make the letters as they were planks of wood which, don't mind me saying, looks pretty good against the blue sky and gives a cool texture to the whole canvas. I figured that the whole shebang can't be one big plank of wood so I thought what better hippie/hipster color than burgundy. Tacky, I know! What can I do, it does fit into the color scheme. After coloring in the letters and giving them the wood texture, I started thinking about the shadows and I still cannot think about a good color to fit the theme. Black would work but it is just too boring and I feel like I have over-used it for awhile now.

 Concerning the totem pole, I have this doubt in my mind that it will not blend with the letters and I have to figure out a way to buddy them up. I might add in some clouds to sort of haze them together, maybe that will do the job. I just love the wings on totem poles, and I wanted to give mine a bit of a hippie twist on it, hence the squares and patterns. The original version had a simple triangle on it, I just felt like it would not do it for me this time. After working on the totem pole for about two evenings, I felt like I had personalized it too much, and it didn't feel so real anymore so I had to go back to the picture and get more influence out of it. I didn't change the wings but everything else had a minor makeover. The pictures below don't have such great lighting because it's getting dark so my apologies. I had to naturalize the totem pole a bit after looking at the original picture and I do believe it is blending in better now, especially looking at the pictures now. Could be the lighting though, I am not quite sure yet.

Alright, enough about totems. Here we go, the REZ. Sorry about the lighting again in the pictures, November evenings are a bitch... But yes, I really do like the texture in this piece. The colors really seem to blend in, I haven't tried the mix before and this one just came with instinct. I barely even knew I had a burgundy-colored marker. Oops. The only thing missing is the cloud action I wanted in the background, but I shall fix it later. This piece is great in that I could let my hippie character out and I didn't have to listen to Matlock, 2Pac or Outkast to get into the graffiti-mood, which I usually have to. Not saying it's a bad thing or anything, just a nice change.

Here's a bit more on the texture, can you feeeeel the softness?! Oh right, the shadows. I'm still wondering about that one. Ideally, I will have a nice little light bulb moment which will give me just the right answer I was waiting for. We'll see...





Aaand, this is where I am now. I am seriously dreading on starting the eagle, drawing birds was never my strongest quality. However, I have got to start someday - leaving it like this will just drive me crazy sooner or later. I really did I would have this piece finished by now, don't blame me blame IB. Next week I may not be able to post anything because I have tests all week so it could very well that the next time I'll be here it's going to be.... THE FIRST OF DECEMBER! Which is also when you can officially start listening to Christmas music and start your shopping sprees in jolly spirits.

That is all for now, the T is signing off.