Sickness SUCKS!

I apologize for those of you who were expecting to see some new art/sketches. Dan most likely has H1N1, and I may be coming down with something. I'm hoping not though...

I'll try to get back to posting soon!

Birthday Tea Monkey!

I made myself a Tea Monkey for a mini interview at Loop Clothing in Waterloo! I'm hoping to do some freelance illustration for Loop Clothing because their merchandise has (in my mind) the same vibes as my illustration.

I wish the picture size was just a bit bigger than this but whatev. I'll decide on colors a little later today, but for now the black plate is done.

This has been a good little break from all the Art Deco stuff!

I'm getting sick of saying Deco.

So I watched this video on youtube about Art Deco and apparently there were different periods in Art Deco.

ZigZag Deco 1925-1929: Everything had this zigzagy, geometric look to it.

Streamline Moderne 1930-1939: Everything looked like it was going fast. This is what Dan and I are interested in... nice to know the real name of this period.

These are different types found in a few areas:

Tropical Deco: Used a lot in Miami Florida, everything looks colorful, Deco Style.

New York Deco: Focusing mainly on the skyscrapers. Using the ziggurat pattern creates the illusion of space, tallness, and sleekness.

Hollywood Deco: Apparently the deco you see a lot of today. Bold dramatic lines. Mainly what hollywood was using to create their sets back in the 20's-late 50's.

There's probably more than just this.

Let's explore!

Last week I had a roaring urge to go urban exploring.

I never knew Barra Castle existed until my friend pointed some pictures of it on Facebook. I read a little about it and discovered it was built in the 1930's, there was also this huge story that it has been neglected for quite some time. Some guy bought the place for $780,000 spent another $250,000 replacing the roof, then was kicked out because the fire/electrical inspectors sought it was too dangerous and was in really bad condition... which to my mind makes no sense because the guy was trying to FIX that problem. I mean come on let the guy finish at least!!

Anyway, what I was more interested in was finding some more Art Deco motifs. We took a lot of pictures, but came out with not much relating to Art Deco, even though the place was built in the 1930's. I'll post the ones I liked best, including the ones that came close if not on the dot for Art Deco. For those of you who are not caught up with the earlier blogs, I'm needing as many Art Deco motifs as I can get in aid of a video game that Dan is currently programming. These motifs will be used for creating some spaceship/fighter designs.

Here are some pictures (some taken by my friend and some taken by moi):

Neat little light cover.

One of the many many many bathrooms.

Yeah, don't know if that's black mould but stayed away anyway.

My favorite room, mostly because I could breathe

Not a big fan of the brick wall paper.

More decorations I really liked.

Wowee.

I liked these decorations on the fireplaces.

Creepiest part of the visit.

Some more boarder details.

I did not want to go down there, but guess what, we did.

Nothing like a hot steaming bath to end all your worries. Add wood to enhance the experience.

The top of that metal thing was the only motive I liked enough to add to my collection.

Amazing hallway, too tight for my liking!

A better example of one of the many fireplaces.

The glass designs caught my attention in this photo, I've seen glass like this in Deco books.

This is a good example of the water damage we found... what a stinky mess.

This is the facade of the building cracking off, believed to be one of the

issues the inspectors had.

You can't see it too well in this photo, the motifs in the boarder of this doorway.

Concrete pillar SMASHED!

Old style mailboxes, probably from the original design.

Bad example but the fireplaces in this house were the closest things I could find to Deco.

Cherub on the point of this arched doorway.

Nice lion face on the outside of the building.

I hope you enjoyed the photos...

I'll be back with some artwork that combines the deco with the fighters/spaceships.

See ya!

Deck the halls with Deco artists Fa la la la la la la la lahh!!

I've been looking more in depth with all this Deco stuff, and have found a few favorite Deco artists so far.

François Pompon - Known for his stylized animals. This guy's ability to work in extreme simplicity is stunning. My favorite piece of his has to be the Polar Bear. I really like the Hippo too! They're almost like the designer toys everyone is going crazy over today.

Pierre le Faguays - I'm not familiar enough with him to know what he's really known for, but his Faun and Nymph statue really caught my attention, very geometric stance. The wavy hair on the nymph is another Deco motif I added to my collection.

Paul Philippe - I would Imagine he's well known for his human figurines. "Dancer with Turban" was my favorite, but unfortunately couldn't find it on the net. So, here's another of his...

Gustave Miklos - I really enjoyed looking at some of GM's work for it's beauty, simplicity, and mostly, it's strange forms.

All of these guys are sculptors, so I guess that means I like the sculpture part of Art Deco, I'm going to dive further into all this and explore more forms. There's still two dimensional and architecture to explore. My goal is not to study the artists themselves, but get a really good feel for this style so I can start creating my own stuff. I've already started sketching my own artwork in this style...

more on that tomorrow!!

Ravi Shankar in Toronto

Last night I went to a beautiful concert with my parents as a 23rd birthday gift. Ravi Shankar with his daughter Anouksha Shankar at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The Concert was sold out (no surprise there). This concert was also part of the grand opening of the Royal Conservatory's expansion. It was cleverly expanded on the actual side of a building so that the original building was inside of the newer building, most likely to preserve it. I thought the walkway to the hall was neat too because there were artifacts dating back to about 200 BC displayed in glass cases. One was a tuning box of a cello with a scroll shaped like a lions head, another was a tiny flute made of wood from the Medieval times, there were beautiful figurines of Han Dynasty Musicians made of some type of clay.

The setup of the Shankar Concert was like no other concert I've been to. Each musician was of course barefoot seated upon a large box. Each seat had a glowing red, yellow, orange indian carpet laying flat. The carpet glowed even more in the spotlight. Anouksha was out first with the other musicians (correct me if I'm wrong), Two Tanburists [Tambura], One Tablist [Tabala], and a wooden flute player (if you listen to Ravi Shankar's music you'd know what this sounds like) <3 (,:

There's nothing else to say about the music other than HYPNOTIC. Especially when later they had sandalwood incense burning. It really seemed to connect everyone in a way. First thing Ravi said when he sat down, his water and Sitar given to him was, "Welcome to Montreal!"
We were in Toronto.

In Ravi's Part of the concert, they switched the wooden flute player to a Pakhawaj player and had a DRUMMING BATTLE between him and the Tablist. It was pretty wicked. Anouksha was hitting only four notes on her sitar while the two drummers were battling with speed and laughing.

I'm glad I had a chance to see the two Shankars in concert, Ravi is 89 now and he's still playing the Sitar like he always has. I don't think this will ever happen again in my life, so I'm super thankful for going!! Best Birthday gift EVAR!

Crude Yet Useful Beginning

I have a small collection of art deco motifs cast in my notebook. Most of these drawings are so crude that it's really going to be me and only me that understands what their purpose was.

Art Deco is very broad as a style. What Dan and I are most interested in are the more powerful looking shapes from the 1920's and 30's. It was interesting to see that the 1980's and 90's tried to replicate the Deco theme, but [from what I saw in my book] it all ended up looking like sh**. It looked as though they were close, but they were always off somehow. I wonder if there's some Golden Mean stuff happening in the 30's that made it look so damn attractive. Don't worry too much about reading the notes I wrote with the drawings... it's mostly just me thinking and commenting to myself.

So there's obviously not much shown, but it gives you an idea of what I was looking for in the Deco books. Down below I have more sketches, mostly just me trying to get a "feel" of how to draw spaceships. In the nicer sketch you can see a futuristic looking ship that I think was my favorite one out of the bunch.

I don't have any distinct style yet, these drawings are purely me just having fun, trying to figure out how the heck do you go about drawing a spaceship concept??? There's going to be a lot more where these came from, but this should all lead me to drawing something with more personality. Thanks for reading! More drawing to come tomorrow!!

Getting a feel

I've never been into drawing spaceships and other mechanical objects, so creating the concepts for the game will be a challenge for me. Usually when I have no clue which way to go as far as concepts and sketching goes, I'd get a feel of how to draw this stuff from other artists work and build off that. I guess you can call it research... or stealing. In the end, I want to be able to know how these spaceships move just from looking at the drawings... just like a character.

I dropped by the library yesterday to find some books that'll be of help for the concepts. The list consisted of : Guns, Art Deco, Trains a History, various illustration books, painting techniques, drawing textures. I even had a look at some children's "How to Draw" spaceships book, some of those books can be a great way to get some initial ideas. Last night I started the process of compiling some motifs in one of the Art Deco books I grabbed.

As far as the net goes: Some artwork on Deviant Art in the spaceship/fighter/robots section has given me some new outlooks. Drawn is one of the default places I visit for instant inspiration. If you (the reader) knows of any place that would be useful to visit for spaceships or even just to get inspired, please let me know!

Some initial concepts will be up tomorrow (Thursday)... I'm off to keep drawing!

A dream I wanted to see end

Dan and I have been watching this show called Metalocalypse, the back of our DVD explains it like this: "Metalocalypse is the chillingly brilliant and terrifyingly [not] real story of Extreme Metal band Dethklok: the biggest entertainment act in the universe. Perhaps one of the most disgusting and disturbing pieces of art in the 21st century...that suggests moral redemption is not unlike our Nordic gods that we once prayed to, a myth." Basically about this spoiled metal band and their adventures.

I just woke up from a dream that had that same style of art, but there was me, Catwoman, Fantastic Mr Fox and this douchebag that thought he knew everything. We were in this ice cave all wondering how this man built the temple walls of this ice fort. The douchebag guy started just building them trying to show us that that was how they were built, but whilst he was being a douche, Fantastic Mr Fox pulled down this invisible wall from the ceiling, clearly that's how they were built. The douchbag guy got really upset and wanted to fight Fantastic Mr Fox, but we heard some noise like chains spinning really fast. Cat woman told us all to shut up, she looked around and swords/spikes/chain gears started popping out of the invisible walls around us. Cat woman Shouted, "Stay away from the walls!". Meanwhile outside the temple Nathan Explosion atop a fat pony in his Thunderhorse outfit was ready to charge into the temple dispite the swords/spikes/chain gears popping out of the walls. He was shouting/singing something like his band song called "Go into the Water" instead of "Go Into the Water" he was shouting "slain by swords", like he wanted to be torn apart by spikes and swords. He galloped into the temple atop his fat pony...

and my alarm went off.

That was the dream I wanted to see end.

Space Combat Sim

My boyfriend is currently in his 4th and last year at Conestoga College for software engineering. The BIG project of the year is called the "system's project", where teams of students had to choose a project to sell or market in some fashion. Dan chose to create a videogame on his own which in the end will be released on the X-Box 360. My job is to do conceptual work for this game (to learn more about the programming end look at Dan's blog at dandandandandev.blogspot.com) I'm a little fuzzy on where to start with these concepts. After watching Batman the Animated Series Dan had the idea to take a peek at some art deco related artwork. We were both taken aback when we saw how powerful some of the background art looked in that style and had a hunch that maybe that's what we should try. Even though art deco is a very unique idea, I think I'm just going to start the apesh** way and have way too much fun with the first few concepts. Stay tuned for thoughts and concepts!

New site almost up!

www.heatherrussell.net is going to be active tonight. It's a collection of my portfolio work from the three years of graphic design I had at Conestoga College. There are still a few things to be programmed, but for now there's enough for it to be online. Take a peek a little later on!

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to the Slime Cat Blog. This blog is not only meant to keep tabs on the work I do but also to share life's strange things. This kitty loves to feast on comments so please be generous!