Jo's Sketchbook Blog

Creative Influence

2010-06-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's true that younger siblings look up to you. I never known how much of an impact I have on my two younger brothers of nine and twelve years old until I exposed them to my artwork. (Don't worry, everything is rated G).

In my recent piece, I have inspired them to create their own artwork. With a little guidance and their own free will to get crazy and wild, they have created their own artwork they can proudly display as they please.

Inspired by the left over painters' tape to peel the previous piece I have made, they stuck the leftover tape on their wall in awe. As a person who loves to inspire others, especially the younger generation, I have provided my brothers a taped canvas for them to create their own neon spontaneity.

Don't mind my brother wearing my mothers' sandals. I made him use his cheap flip-flops sandals as a weight for the newspaper. :-P

After its dried and peeled off the board.

The end result. Their initials on which side of the bed they sleep on.

So, I hope this entry inspires you to inspire others. It's wonderful how something little could be something extravagant and meaningful to others.

Life

2010-05-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

An old high school friend, (thank you for requesting this!) contact me asking to make something for him and this is what I came up with. It is inspired by life. Currently, I am going through a difficult time in my life and it was a nice emotional release. Life can be very frustrating but that is how life is sometimes.

"In life, you have all these crazy things thrown at you, but underneath, you have to have some structure to get through it all." -Jo Lee

Inter-Brand Couple

2010-04-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

Here is my current addition/attempt to the makeup obsession theme. I call it "Inter-Brand Couple." This is not the finish product, but just a record of my first attempt of it. :-D

If you were a Tree...what kind of Tree would you Be?

2010-04-23T22:38:00.000-07:00

Interesting question! The Tree, Which is Me. An assignment that is a self exploration to who I am and envisioning what kind of tree I would be and translating that into art. Here is a rough sketch I created on Adobe Photoshop Elements.

A bit odd that a single tree is surrounded by fire? Isn't it odd that the leaves are as green as ever and nothing is on fire? No singe of the tree leaves? Or perhaps is the tree meeting its destiny to be consumed with fire...or not?

The tree is surrounded by fire, but instead of killing the tree as nature would intend it to, it feeds of the flames and extreme heat of the fire and it grows. The fire fuels its growth.

Interesting that I did not just have the concept in the tree in a nice meadow or quiet forest :-P

Don't Piss off Mother Nature

2010-04-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

Allergy season is here and my back yard is filled with weeds and across from my house my neighbor has those white dandelions sprouting from their lawns and backyard. On top of that the drastic warm to cold weather is not helpful as it is an onset of my hives breakout. Fun.

I have these oil pastels and I remember buying them during my freshman year of college but never actually learning how to use them. Thank goodness for YouTube as I search through videos of how to properly utilize these fine colored oil pastels. And so, I present an inspired by nature oil pastel drawing entitled, "Don't Piss of Mother Nature."

This is my depiction of what mother nature would look like. Enjoy!

Know Thyself before You Get to Know Others

2010-04-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

.....I have been lacking the creativity for creating this graduate portfolio...I am sure it's because I am absolutely confused. I know it's about me, but how do I make it about my artwork and less of who I am? Solution: I can't. I don't know anybody else better than myself.

So I want to get into Art Therapy and the more I learn about it the more I am fascinated by it and didn't understand why I didn't find such thing until so late in my undergraduate career. Anyways, art therapy is about understanding yourself to understand someone else and to help them cope with life, just as you do yourself. And what better way to cope than with the arts!! (That includes everything that you can think of that is a form of expression.) So here are some of my expressive artwork that I did randomly and a self portrait I did my senior year of college.

^^A lesson taught by Don Jones.

This piece is actually inspired by VickiLovesClothes on YouTube!! :-D Thanks Vicki! For this piece I have been obsessing with this kind of format of yellow spikes and blue background and different colored circles. I don't know why, but I have been since 4th grade and created a similar painting of my own...(I wish I would have kept that painting) but now I am determine to replicate this as many as times as possible in different ways. It's kind of like buying makeup, once you buy that one kind of lipgloss or blush or lipstick, you need to have more.

Next pieces are just randoms, all inspired by nail art tools (airbrush and nail art brushes).

Below, this piece is called "Ninja Stars Chaos" because my younger brother (9 years old) said they look like ninja stars. :-D

Finally a self portrait I did in college....know thy self!

By the way, in the original photo I took for this painting, I had to put Vaseline in my hair....it was such a wonderful experience washing it out!!! **that was sarcasm there.

Makeup Withdrawl Series

2010-03-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

So I have decided to create a series for my own therapy of feeling the need to buy makeup and other accessories. And the sad thing is, I don't even wear a lot of makeup on a daily basis. I just like having something new to gawk at. Here are some earlier works of mine that inspired me to do this series, all charcoal drawings on 18" x 24" paper.

"Lean on Me"

"Alone at Last"

"The Gathering"

"Lonely Kabuki"

Week 1: Nail Art is NOT as easy as it looks...

2010-03-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

This week is my attempt to familiarize myself with nail tools and the general nail art techniques.
As eager as I may be to start my portfolio, as with any new medium, an artist may be discouraged to continue on to work harder and understand its concepts and techniques.

I found that with nail lacquer, or nail polish, it is most difficult to use when you do not know what you want to design. Everything can either be messy or everything dries up and not allowing you to manipulate the polish as you want to.
So using acrylic paints, (less fumes to smell and something more familiar than 5 different bottles of color nail polish), I find myself at home with the medium.

However, I quickly realized that using nail art brushes is more difficult that it appears. What was even more difficult was using acrylic nails as my canvas was extremely difficult! I had a lot of difficulties maneuvering the nail brush over the contour of the acrylic nail. (Thus, my sloppy and not so neat designs, lol. These were actually my best out of 15.)

So, back to square one, paper and paint.

This I found more useful and easier to use, however, I was stopped again. Nail art is about picking a basic design and manipulating that design in 10 different ways (10 fingernail designs). I found it difficult to create only one. Sigh.
But for the time being, I explored the different strokes and dottings to make myself comfortable with holding the nail art brushes.

Here are the basic nail art brushes I used. Not your everyday oil painting brushes.

The lesson I have learned this week: have a lot of patience and not to be discouraged with something is not going the way I planned.

But why starting out with nail art designs using nail art brushes? Why not start using oil paints and drawing out the designs themselves???

Nail art designs to me are spontaneous. My observations during a nail salon visit allowed me to know that the key to successful nail art designs is creativity, speed and craftsmanship. All which I have not obtained. Creativity because the client wants nails to be unique and represent individuality. Speed because, well, its a nail salon, who wants to be in a nail salon all day for nail designs? And finally craftsmanship, an easy concept, nobody wants poor nail art designs.

So, further on I will practice!

Getting Down to Business!!

2010-03-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

After a much needed break from finally obtaining my Bachelor of Arts Degree, (I graduated in Dec 2009) I am back and ready to prepare for my application process for graduate school for Art Therapy. (Although some may say 3 months is a bit extreme for a break, but after 16 years of schooling and only some summers and a month of winter break off during college, I would say that is reasonable for me to sit and relax and let my brain cool off from intense labor of stuffing knowledge and ideas into my brain and trying trying to output it through my hands.)

So let's get cracking! What am I trying to do now? Well, prepare for my portfolio of course! I think my portfolio will be the most challenging for me to accomplish. Most people think it's the personal statement that is the challenging part, but I'm pretty sure after following the simple guidelines of what to write, a personal statement is easy compared to trying to create images to represent statements and words.

FYI: I am extremely nervous about this portfolio process as I feel it being detrimental to my mental health. I feel it being part of my self-esteem. Crappy portfolio? Crappy-feeling Jo.

Mental Objective: To learn that art is not perfect, it is a process. A process that I have not been exercising a lot due to the fact that I hold back because I fear of being rejected in the art community...but I have to remind myself it is better to be rejected than to not be acknowledged :-D And I have to remind myself that any artwork I create, better stir some emotions, otherwise, it is a complete fail. (Then I must think, "why did it fail?")

Objective of portfolio: To answer the question, "how do I make Nail-Art an art form that is recognized by the general public and not only by the nail cosmetic industry." And to explore that question, I will be creating different forms and visual statements to accomplish that objective. Yup.