End of the Semester!

So, I made it through a whole semester somehow. I've gotta say, my teacher for the Photoshop class was pretty useless overall, which is kind of a bummer considering how much money I'm paying...but I suppose these things happen. My Analysis of Form teacher on the other hand, PHENOMENAL! I really wish I could take classes in a live setting from her and on campus, but it's pretty much out of the question at this point in time financially. I've made some serious leaps in my figurative abilities which I'm really psyched about. I'm hoping to use what I've learned in a more proactive way in the 14 Hymns for the Heathens series I'm planning. With any luck and persistence on my part I'll be able to break into the Gallery scene...and hopefully dealers will like my work and I'll become a sought after artist. Every artist's dream I suppose.

Anyway, I'm gonna post up all of the charcoal drawings I did for Analysis of Form for your viewing pleasure.

-PAK

Photoshop is beyond me at this point...

Alright, so I don't know how to use Photoshop and I just got CS4. Luckily, one of the classes I'm taking soon is about how to use Photoshop and be able to take better pictures of my work. So...apologies that the pictures suck, they'll get better as I learn. That one that looks like apocalyptic wallpaper isn't actually purple at all...it's blue where you see purple...I dunno...I'll figure it out eventually.

Some of these are unfinished, but I figued I would post them anyway for now.
Enjoy I guess.

-PAK

Lookey Lookey!!

How cool am I?

I'm following my own blog that not one person reads and therefore not one person comments on...

Wait until I start commenting on my own posts.

I wonder if psychiatry is ready for this sort of narcissistic and self-indulgent form of schizophrenia?

-PAK

Ugghhh...

So I've been checking out a ton of different artists. Everyone I can, from the classics up to the unknowns. It's been interesting because sometimes I'll look at something and think, "Damn...that's wicked cool." And I'll get real excited for the upcoming school year. Other times it's more like, "Shit...I'm never gonna measure up." And I enter a state of depressed frustration.

I try not to let it get me down because I know I'm still unschooled, but my lack of skill really hinders my growth. I often feel stuck in this rut of abstract design because I still lack the figurative training.

Now don't get me wrong...plenty of great works of art lack a clear sense of figure or form, but realistically I feel like a sell out or a hack when I paint these limp, 2 dimensional forms. Hell, I feel like a friggin fraud when I make abstracts. Not to say I don't feel good about some, but on the whole it's as though I'm kidding myself.

I recently contributed 4 of my earlier paintings to a benefit fund raiser for a couple friends of mine whose apartment burned out a couple days before Christmas. It was just a raffle, but the people who put tickets in and won the paintings seemed pretty satisfied. Of course, they were all to some extent friends of mine that up until that point didn't know I painted. So, were they in fact surprised and therefore felt the need to show exhuberance toward my endeavors? Or were they genuinely into the paintings themselves as autonomous works of art?

I dunno...

Just gotta ride out the depressive fits of self-deprication and continue working. School starts February 1st.

-PAK