Anatomy and Art

“Illumine”
Just finished today.
I’ll give her a coat of gloss when I get back to Chicago.

Now that the internship is done, it’s about time to head back North to Chicago.  There was something at the end of the week here that I wanted to stick around for, so I decided to take a few days to get my things in order, and take advantage of an empty house to work on my paper for graduation.  That was the plan anyways, but last night I fell into a painting, and well, it’s really coming along.

I always think it’s neat, the progression on these things.  So in case you think that sort of thing is neat too, here are a couple of cell phone shots.  The first is an early image followed by how far it had come by around 4am this morning, when I finally went to bed already.

I’m excited.  Despite the terrible distraction from my paper, I think this is going to be a nice piece.

Feels like I’ve been spending all this time at the computer lately, but not as much time posting here.  That could just be a perception thing, but I thought I’d post another image from my animation anyways.  This is an ambient occlusion pass from my recent work.  It features the plates and screws in place for both the BSSO and osseous genioplasty procedures.

At present I am struggling with making the screws enter the bone in a reasonable manner.  They are happy to rotate all over the place, but I am having a Hell of a time getting them to simply screw in here.  The still looks nice though.  And the motion will come.

I’m actually very close to finally getting through my shot list for this animation and being able to put the finishing touches on it.  Keep your fingers crossed for me readers, I need all the luck I can get with this one.

It’s your last chance to check out the bit We Burn show in Wicker Park this weekend!

This Saturday should be amazing with a great closing party followed by the Oh Gawd It Burns after party.

Just wanted to remind everyone about the upcoming First Friday show, this Friday, featuring We Burn.  This is looking to be a great show, and my only lament is not being able to be there in person to see it all go down.  Some of my work will be though, alongside many other talented artists.  If you’re in the Chicago area, you’ve really got to check it out.

The Flat Iron Building is at 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL.  No April foolin’!

The opening will run from 6-10pm this Friday, April 1st, and there will be a party at the closing on the 16th as well.  You don’t want to miss this.

Of my own work, I am featuring six paintings this time.

Others will be showing not only paintings, but also photography, sculpture, I believe we’re even going to have a Chiditerod shopping cart in the mix.  I can’t recommend enough that you come out.

Chicago art lovers, the Flat Iron Group’s First Fridays event is featuring Chicago Burner Art, on Friday, April 1st, and on throughout the 16th when there will be a big closing reception.  Yours truly will be featuring six paintings on the walls alongside a number of other talented artists.  I do recommend that you come out and take a look.  Press release details are as follows…

An Exhibition of Art by Chicago Burners
We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art

WHAT: The closing party features an artists’ reception, live music & video, performance art, and other spontaneous creative fun. A $10 suggested donation at the door goes to BURN NFP.

WHY: Come explore, play, learn, smile, and take home a little Burning Man! We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art is a multimedia exploration of the impact the Burning Man festival has on Chicago artist-participants.

WHERE: The Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL

WHEN: The show opens as part of Flat Iron First Fridays on April 1, 2011 from 6pm – 10pm. The closing party and artists’ reception is April 16 from 6pm – 10pm.  The show runs from April 1 – 16.

HOW: Through photography, sculpture, video, works on paper, paintings, mixed media, installations, and performances, the community will get a feel for what it means to define oneself as a “burner,” and how the Burning Man principles of radical inclusion, self-expression, civic responsibility, leave no (environmental) trace, radical self-reliance, and active participation are carried over into art works and daily life in Chicago.

This show is made possible with generous support from Bold Urban Renaissance Network.

WHO: We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art is curated by Elysia Lock and will feature works by
Zac Franzoni
Phillip Solomonson
Marci Rubin
Maria Scileppi
Tim Krueger
Nichelle Lawrence
Gabriel Garcia- Fraire
Jeff Austin
Sara Egner
Michael Schiele
Pat Hilander
Sally Sachs
Elysia Lock
Chiditarod Art Carts
Monster Wheels
Richard Bennett
Ellie Sorokin
April Randall
Lera Gershevich
Leo Spektor
Alexa Razma
Sloan

Ok, my clothes are packed, and I’m about to unplug this computer and set it aside with the various hard drives and cables needed to make this journey happen.  And, just this morning I dropped off six paintings with a woman out here, Elysia Lock, who runs the We Burn: Chicago art showings.  So even though I’ll be gone, I’ll still have some work in the show.  I decided to go with the following collection for this show…

Fire Walk

Tom Tips His Hat

Swirl
(the painting that is somewhat responsible for my journey to Chicago in the first place)

Blue Man

&, Phoenix Rising

I’m excited that my work will be up and being seen even if I can’t be there myself.  I have been really wanting to paint lately, and positively swamped for time.  Speaking of which, I’d better get a move on, if I’m going to finish packing up tonight as planned.  This is officially my last Chicago post for a little while.

I just wanted to take a moment to wish all of you reading the happiest of holidays.  May you all enjoy good health, good company, and good fortune in the year to come.

Recently I went through the process of getting prints made of a painting.  Real ones.  Good ones.  Expensive ones.  I have to say that the process has been a little bit terrifying.  For starters, let’s face it… I’m not exactly the greatest business mind out there.  But I gave this some thought as to what was reasonable to charge, how many I would make, how many I thought I could sell, and did a little research into what it would cost me.  Unfortunately, the first estimate of what it would cost me reflected less than half of the ultimate total costs I wound up spending.

At first it was a matter of having having gotten my estimates based on the image size without doing the math on what the added border for framing would be.  I’d expected there to be added cost for that, but I had underestimated how much.  Secondly I had to rescan the image.  Letting the printers scan your painting is not an inexpensive endeavor.  But in this case, I believe it was both necessary and worth it.  Between those first two points though, I wound up deciding to make fewer prints than I had originally intended.  It’s good that I didn’t make as many though, because the next blow came when I went to pick up the prints and found that their scan had picked up so much detail, that it had practically x-rayed my painting.  I didn’t catch it immediately.  At first glance, all I saw was that they had gotten the red right (no small detail, that), and that the new scan had not shown the same problem as the scan I had done previously.  I left happy.  But then as I was packaging up my first print for shipping, I saw that there were mistakes, familiar mistakes.  I kept wanting to dab a bit of paint here or there to fix them, and then I realized that I was having the exact same thought process I’d had while finishing the painting in the first place.  I was seeing mistakes brought back that I had already fixed, and I couldn’t send that to paying customers.  So I called the printers back.  I went through Gamma to do all of this.  Their tech who had done the scan for me had already left for the day, so I had to make plans to go back later that week after my finals (and yeah, taking on this process at the end of my semester, maybe not the greatest plan of action.)

I had purchased a digital copy of the scan as well, so I was able to review that as well.  I was surprised when I didn’t see the same detail from the under layer there.  But just now, just today, when I opened the image in Photoshop I did.  It’s the strangest thing, the detail is in there, but I wasn’t seeing it in the raw file.  It’s actually kind of a relief to see it now.  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how I was getting added detail from the printing process.  Anyway, despite picking up those covered brush strokes, it really is a beautiful scan.  Here is smaller version of what they got…

So I was able to go back in and discuss things with them.  It’s been a good thing, having the painting handy for all of this, not just for rescanning purposes, but also as something to bring in while talking about the desired outcome of the prints.  I’m fortunate that the buyer wanted me to hold on to it for the time being, and that I’ve been able to do all of this despite the sale.

They saw the problem, and we decided to have the prints redone with different settings.  Unfortunately, this brought my costs up considerably.  Since I hadn’t paid for giclee printing (which comes with the opportunity to approve proofs) my options were limited in terms of how to handle this.  They did make an effort to work with me though, and while I lament loosing so much of my profit margin, I am very happy with the way the 2nd set of prints came out, and the product I can now deliver to my clients.

In the end, I only wound up making six of them.  I’d initially thought about leaving the window open to further printing down the line, or making 12 all at once and just selling them off over time.  Especially considering the added costs along the way, I am happy that I only opted to create the six of them.  At present three of them have been paid for and shipped off to buyers.  One is spoken for, to be paid for and picked up in January.  And I may have a fifth buyer in the works.  All in all, this has been quite the learning experience, and something that I hope to do again and again with other works, though hopefully with less nervousness and better planning along the way.  It’s tricky though.  You don’t know if something is right or not until you see it.  You can’t know.  But I do know a little more about what to look for, and what to ask for now.  So here’s hoping that next time I can be a little less neurotic artist about things, and a little more savvy seller of my art.

I’m going to have some prints made of that last painting of mine.  I spoke with a printer today and I like this place a lot better than the last place I spoke with.  It sounds like I can get good archival inks and papers with these guys, and they’re good enough to be able to look at my digital image, but also match it using the original canvas since I still have it in my possession for the time being.  That’s good, since the digital files tend to come through a little bit on the bright side. The place I’m using is called Gamma Imaging and they seem to be really on top of their game.

I’m planning to sell prints for $100 each, plus shipping and handling.  Each will be signed and numbered.  I’m going to make this a run of twelve.  Please contact me if you are interested in buying one.  Here is fine, or you can contact me directly.