So, This Is Another One With What I Would Consider A Reluctant Title, By Which I Mean I Was Reluctant

so, this is another one with what I would consider a reluctant title, by which I mean I was reluctant to title it, even as again, the title is very popular among unfamiliar viewers. the title in this case draws the attention of the viewer to what is actually going on, where I though the image was good enough on it's own. oh well.

"It Didn't Look Tasty"

refers to the dead and presumably previously masticated rabbit in her hand. (note to art people, there is only one really good picture of a dead rabbit on the internet, and everybody who wants to draw one is drawing it) the wolves have decided that Deer Girl needs to eat it and she is completely unsure about this whole "eating meat" idea. she is inherently half herbivore, and even as she is half human, and knows humans may eat meat, but it's cooked meat. it is a gift though, and she has to accept it.

this is the first appearance of the wolves and originally I meant them to be a wholly negitive force of ravening destruction, here demanding compliance,

seeming to say "accept our shitty gift and be in our debt so you'll do what we want you to or we'll eat you"

"heck, we'll eat you later"

but I guess I don't do unambiguous morals. the wolves are a force for what I might consider the winter people, as opposed to the summer people, (which is very much jadis vs. aslan)  but they need somebody with hands, there is somebody killing animals in the woods, there are encroachments on their territory, and they need Deer Girl to pick up the lantern and help them to fight.

in taking a bit of their gift deer girl accepts: moral gray areas, and the need to grow up stand up and do something. she loses her innocence and her life from beforehand and is thrust into a conflict on the side of what the summer people would evil. she can no longer be just an animal, she must become a full person.

as this is the Call to Adventure, I'm pretty pleased that I can look at it and say, look, it references the Chariot Card with one black and one white wolf. I wish I could say that was fully intentional. this is very much what I consider the first Real and Actual Deer Girl print because it was the first printed large in what became a consistent format. every thing else before it, is a bit embryonic.

Edit: added a picture I took when I was working on this so you can see it at the penciling stage. I take these pictures while I work on the drawing part so that I can flip them easily with the Mac's photobooth application and check how my composition will look when I am done.

so, here we have the ???? part of the wolves four point plan that ends in DINNER!

it is called "She Hoped That The Wolves Had A Plan, Aside From The Obvious One"

as I did not know what I was going to use this for when I made it, and I was so high on adrenaline and predinizone I only printed two, and I gave the other one to Kurt, here pictured as the hunter. because this print was made at the last possible second of applying to the BFA program (hence lack of attention to details and escher-girl butt and side boob anatomy problems) it is also absolutely against every bit of inspiration in my original very first Deer Girl print with her glomming on Bacchus.

but, it did actually happen. so there's that.

so, what happened was that in the middle of my predinizone treatment I was so hopped up and manic that I was just dancing late at night in the drawing studio. possibly to Lady Gaga's Alejandro. (senator I do not recall that infectious beat) and I turn around and there's Kurt. and he's just watching me. and I'm all "Hey Kurt!, whatcha doing?" and he's all "are you just dancing? and I'm like, "Yup!" and then he felt awkward and left. because while I had maintained eye contact through out our conversation, I NEVER STOPPED DANCING.

so I made this, because, again, I was hopped up on steroids.

during my BFA year I had to put it into sequence with the other images and it clicked into place that this would be a wolf's idea of an excellent distraction. I wish I had gone back and carved some wolf silhouettes into the woods, but it's too late now, and they are presumably behind him anyway.

I feel that the most successful part of this is how the body of the dude and the trees he is pushing apart frames the scene, the texture of the bark and his arm hair turned out nicely. I do think I should have made him blonde because his hair disappears into the black of the forest floor.

also could have just used a lot more care all over. if I was going to show this scene again it would be done radically different.

originally made for a print exchange. I was the only person to submit on time, but my piece was probably also the least superlo (forgive me it was an early experiment carving backwards words and after having it pointed out I cannot unsee this mistake)

everybody loves this piece until they ask what gave me the idea, so fair warning.

somebody I know on twitter is a very out of touch artist, and there was a hashtag during the super bowl that was #superbowl, so they look at this in their "trending topics" feed for the day and tweet, "I feel like I'm missing something, what the heck is this Superb Owl everyone is talking about?"

tadah.

so these are from my "Fish Phase" it's a red rockfish and a sculpin done in hardground, softground and auqatint. the thing I like the most about this is the sculpin's little spot scales, the whole thing was an experiment and it evolved over the course of the class.

I made this, and then I saw some works by Thomas Wood and I felt very in awe and quite  inadequate, but heck, he's been at it longer than I have, so it's ok.

I hate titles, but with out the title this image is pretty opaque to most people as to what the heck I'm getting at. I take full responsibility for that failing even as I consider this piece a success. like many of my works the image itself addresses valid ideas I had received in critique, they were to the effect that: there needed to be a greater depth of field in my works, that my compositions and my images needed greater complexity and that occasionally putting more emphasis on the environment over the characters would bring a greater variance in my show as a whole and thus keep tings from getting monotonous.

"They Objected On Principle To Savages Of All Kinds"

this of course refers to the grotto of mermaids, which includes our original mermaid from earlier in the sequence. where once deer girl may have been a welcome outsider here her association with the wolves and her participation in an act of semi-canibalisim, (note bloody/inky hands) has not made them happy. the one with the braid is actively repulsed and angry at the presence of the wolf who snarls in response, the others are more passive and less invested in the action.

the textures and creating the environment of a water-beaten grotto with the look of local sandstone was an excellent challenge for me, the false printing in the sky gives an impression of light but present clouds or wind, and although the waterfall looks a little "furry" I like it, the composition is as always as stilted and formulaic as kubuki theater, but with more to play around with in terms of details, (note handprint on the rock) I hope this is less obvious.

Three Wolf Moon, the second relief print I ever made. I had time to do this because dude to snow and otehr problems winter quarter was too short for Ben to assign and teach my intro to printmaking class how to make Dry Point prints. probably a good thing because I was able to go into intaglio with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions about how to attack a copper plate.

anyways, I somehow had extra time even after remaking my original fish print (because I refuse to ever do monoprints ever again, even though that would have been a good thing to re-do) and I made this.

I'll be darned if I don't still rather like it.