So, This Is Deer Girl Drinking From A Stream, She's Probably Going To Get Giardia Like That, But This

so, this is deer girl drinking from a stream, she's probably going to get giardia like that, but this is a fantasy universe and the bit where she makes tea requires a teapot and the standard Mrs. Beaver's Sewing Machine Problem starts all over again.

not that a lot of where this is happening isn't basically Narnia. because it is, but it's interregnum Narnia, (between human kingdoms) or at least narnia with a lot more grey zones than the books had, and laid over a local landscape, not an english one. but the archetype of the primeval forest where animals and trees talk is a really old archetype so I don't feel bad stealing it.

I just want to say those are really good legs, I'm still happy with them. I try my best to make deer girl look like her feet actually take her weight, which can be a problem when drawing any digitade bi-pedal creature. the human foot is plantigrade for a reason.

also that ear, man I love the little details, a lot of this is bad, but it has the seeds of better stuff within it.

so, I made exactly two of these. they were printed and carved in a flurry of last minute effort when I was putting together my BFA portfolio. I figured if there was one thing my portfolio needed (aside from more block prints to fill it out) it was a prayer.

I gave one of the prints to the European art history professor Carol Jansen, I think she liked it.

to give credit where credit is due, Christine took the block off my hands when I was in the drawing stage (when I was nearly done with the drawing stage I might add) and re-drew it for me. I gratefully carved her work and it is my carving and my printing but this piece was definitely a collaboration, I would have been lost otherwise.

obviously it is a copy of The Praying Hands byAlbrecht Dürer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duerer-Prayer.jpg

Brianna's Got Her Gun. Stone Lithography for Ben Moreau's lithography class 2011 at WWU.

Goddamn I hate lithography. I have no patience for a medium that precludes sketching and re-working, which you may find amusing as I am happily hacking away at another block of irrepareable linoleum. but by the time I'm carving a block I know about exactly what I want the lines on it to do and where the spot-darks and highlights are going to dance with the white-space-that-release the-pressure-of-dark and the false printing that makes the whites human again.

I'm not sure if I can explain putting whites in to release pressure, but the idea that that was why I was doing it already, came out of learning about PNW native art which uses that principle to keep things from getting too heavy. not sure how else I can explain it with out looking like a person pointing at pictures tacked to my wall and linked by string.

anyway, this iconic-as-all-hell image was originally, and best, as a photograph my uncle took of my cousin in her prom dress. this image was apparently helpful in my entrance into the BFA program because Garth liked it. but, man I hate lithography.

hate it.

this slide show is about my progress putting together my fish drawing. these photos were taken over time as I worked to make the tedium of a million little textures more interesting.

alright, so this one is another one that was originally made, and still exists slightly out of sequence. I'm kind of ok with that because I just really like it. this feeling I wanted to evoke was one of finding people who like you, like having you around, and want you to have a bowl of soup and feel better.

I worked out later when putting these things in sequence and while working out images for my BFA year that the black wolf would have either taken her here to meet the trees, or on their way to where the black wolf is leading her they met the Trees. so that's where this fits into antler-chronology.

the branch as antler is a pervasive image when I go to look for other deer girl images other people have made. it makes sense, usually antlers are only for male deer. but for my own symbolic purposes I think of it like: previously she was wandering around unbalanced due to the loss of one antler, now it is replaced by something wholly new. the budding leaves an eventual flowers that are also taking over her other antler. again, this may possibly be a terrible idea. but as it is at the top of her head it can be considered a capacity for a higher oneness, not just between animal and human, but animal, human and plant.

well, that's the hippie BS angle anyway.

notes on making this image: the trees are mostly modeled after my friend Sam and his best friend Stephanie, they are super cool and Sam really does pat me on the head sometimes when I am upset and it does really help. leaf hair would not have been possible without the help of the painkillers I was on at the time, like many things in printmaking it was monotonous and exacting but all the more rewarding for that.

this is still one of my favorites of the big prints.

so begins the uploading of the pictures I take with the computer's camera of the art I make.

this is from a request heard from a few of you, no wait, all of you. a unanimous grandma wish to see more of my art. well there you go.

it is playing as a slideshow. if you want to stop it so you can look at a particular picture look at the bottom right of the picture-window. it has a little three button control pad. click once on in the middle that looks like a pause button (looks like this: ||  ) to stop the slide show, click it again so it looks like a triangle to make it go again.

the other buttons select forward and back.

I know this sounds like I'm being too explanatory, you are all on the internet, you are all grownups, I just want you guys to know how to use this blog so you can see the cool stuff I'm posting for you.