Creative Cogitation

Howdy My Fans.  Going to try giv­ing stuff away to find collectors-specifically 8x10 inch prints mat­ted to 11x14 inches.  Haven’t worked out the details yet.  Also think­ing of set­ting up stuff on FineArtAmerica.com as well.  Stay tuned.

Mean­while on of my MonOrchid Bunch (MOB) bud­dies, Kris­tine Bram­billa, took up roller derby in the guise of Raven’s Night.  This even­tu­ally leads her to start up Seven13Sk8, a roller derby proshop, in down­town Phoenix AZ.  Appar­ently the alter­na­tives are either quite a drive from the cen­ter of town, or online/mail order.  As with all such things, it is tak­ing longer than expected to get going and so she decided to throw open her doors to her fel­low MOB-sters.

I check out the space on First Fri­day last week.  It is a small­ish space, but more than enough room for 10 artists with mod­est sized pieces.  She has painted the walls black with glitter.

While I was there, I got to meet her busi­ness part­ners. One is another Roller Derby gal, Gracy Dah­mer AKA Amanda Queen, and the other is Free­dom Crump.  In addi­tion sev­eral other roller derby girls were there at the shops grand open­ing and they are a hoot.  After a few hours down­town with these lovely ladies,  I found myself turn­ing to thoughts of the upcom­ing show, binary birds, and roller derby.  The prod­uct is a dig­i­tal paint­ing, pic­tured below.

Unti­tled digia­rt­work by Jake Beck­man — Name This Paint­ing contest

You will notice there is no binary in the paint­ing yet.  That is because it is part of a Name This Paint­ing Con­test I decided to have.  The win­ner gets an 8x10 print of the paint­ing.  Since this work is dig­i­tal art, the print is con­sid­ered “Orig­i­nal Art” because the printed image is its final form, much like a photograph.

Any­way, this will be the 6th show for the MOB (we renamed our­selves the Mob, after the MonOrchid Mys­tery Gallery shut down) and this is our first gath­er­ing in 3 years.  I am very excited about the prospect.  The show will begin on Novem­ber 26th and runs through Decem­ber 10. The shop is slated to have hours, Tues­day through Sun­day and of course part of the sales of any art­work go to the shop.

So check out the Name This Paint­ing Con­test –maybe you  will win, and I hope to see you at the Mob’s reunion artshow in down­town Phoenix, AZ.

Jake
Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!
The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use this con­tent in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

While I Paint Just a Kiss

Occa­sion­ally I do a series of paint­ing in process pho­tos. To me it is enjoy­able to see how some­thing goes from an idea in my mind’s eye to con­vert­ing plain white can­vas into lay­ers of paint wrought with mean­ing. (more…)

The hol­i­days are over, but before I get back to my usual paint­ing pro­gram I want to dis­cuss this year’s Xmas Demen­tia Car­toons.  First up, “Touch My Junk.”

Touch My Junk, Xmas Demen­tia by Jake Beck­man, Santa advises Timmy the TSA employee not to touch his junk. Mean­while Rudolf gets zapped by the back scat­ter radi­a­tion machine in the background.

I don’ think I have to tell you what this car­toon is all about, but just in case you have been liv­ing in a cave, it’s about the new secu­rity mea­sures being imple­mented at US air­ports.  I haven’t trav­eled since the new reg­u­la­tions went into effect, but I can hon­estly tell you, I do not feel any more secure.  I do not think grop­ing grand­moth­ers, ladies in wheel chairs, or expos­ing the gen­eral pub­lic to more radi­a­tion will do any­thing to improve our secu­rity.  In all like­li­hood the vast major­ity of the fly­ing pub­lic vis­it­ing rel­a­tives over the hol­i­days, not to men­tion grand­moth­ers and ladies in wheel­chairs are not ter­ror­ists. There is *noth­ing* is to be gained by sub­ject­ing them and your ran­dom TSA employee to all this added unpleasantness. 

Also, I am just wait­ing for one of them new fan­gled back-scatter machines, which will not be oper­ated by some­one such as a trained med­ical radi­a­tion spe­cial­ist, to break­down and zap some­body with a haz­ardous dosage. IMHO all of this *added secu­rity* is just a Band-Aid put in place to make con­gress feel like they are doing some­thing, and make some con­trac­tor a whole lot of money. 

As for avoid­ing exces­sive grop­ing, Santa does have bet­ter deter­rent than some I think.

Mov­ing along.  The next car­toon is called “Boozuc­ci­nos”.

Boozuc­ci­nos, Xmas Demen­tia by Jake Beck­man, Santa advise the deer to drink up their Fyooz, Sparcs & 9Loco so they can fly.

This car­toon is also about some­thing that was in the news late in 2010.  Sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers of alco­holic bev­er­ages incor­po­rated large doses of caf­feine and other stimulants, like guarana,  in them too.  Accord­ing to Wikipedia, Four bev­er­ages appeared 2005. After sev­eral inci­dents involv­ing alco­hol poi­son­ing among col­lege stu­dents (shocker-college stu­dents drink too much alco­hol?) sev­eral states began inves­ti­gat­ing the pro­duc­ers of these bev­er­ages for mis­lead­ing mar­ket­ing — some­thing about the caf­feine mask­ing the effects of the intoxication. Um.. Duh.

 I guess we do not count caf­feinated mix­ers that have been around a lot longer-Jaeger bomber anyone?

Any­way, sev­eral pro­duc­ers refor­mu­lated their drinks, e.g. Anheuser-Busch over­hauled Tilt and Miller­Coors changed Sparks in response to the attor­ney gen­er­als’ atten­tion. How­ever sev­eral man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tin­ued busi­ness as usual, lead­ing to out­right bans of cer­tain bev­er­ages in many states and on many uni­ver­sity campuses. 

On Novem­ber 17, 2010 the FDA stepped in and sent a let­ter to the mak­ers of Joose, Max, Four Loko, Core High Grav­ity HG, Core High Grav­ity HG Orange, Lemon Lime Core Spiked and Moon­shot; the FDA con­tends the caf­feine added to their malt bev­er­ages is an “unsafe food addi­tive”, and con­sti­tutes a pub­lic health con­cern. If the man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tinue to pro­duce their prod­ucts in the cur­rent form, they could be sub­ject to fur­ther action includ­ing seizure of these prod­ucts. Wow.

Again I am of the opin­ion this ban doesn’t really *do* any­thing to improve pub­lic health.  You can still pick up a can of Kro­nik, Red Bull or Mon­ster, or an “energy” shot such as Fixx or Red­line, mix it with a lit­tle vodka, Mike’s hard Lemon­ade, Zima or Smirnoff Ice and see all the sparks you want to inside your head while get­ting trashed. 

But still… fly­ing high could be a the­ory of rein­deer flight, hence the Xmas Demen­tia Car­toon.  Hope you enjoyed them. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

In the midst of the Binary Birds series I was con­tacted out of the blue by an artist out of  Florida.  She com­mented on my paint­ing Mother Night, which made me think about it some.  Since I am in the midst of my 100 Paint­ings projects I do not turn down any ideas that feed the muse.  So I revis­ited Mother Night this week­end while I was fin­ish­ing hoot­suite.

Both paint­ings had me in the night mode.  I am noc­tur­nal.  I love the night, the stars, the moon, and the gen­eral qui­etude.  I am mar­ried to a morn­ing per­son, so from about 8 PM to when­ever I decide to rest, I get a big block of unin­ter­rupted time; such a thing is pre­cious to all artists-it allows you to get deep into your zone.

Mother Night’s Embrace, by Jake Beck­man. An abstract dragon unfurls its starry wings, embrac­ing the moon. The neg­a­tive space of the night sky forms the watch­ful eye of Mother Night.

I have been work­ing in a square for­mat for the last cou­ple of paint­ings.  The NYC art show is com­ing up and the max­i­mum dimen­sions of the works allowed are 25 x 25 inches, or other vari­ant, so long as they do not occupy more than 50 x 25 inches.  25 x 25 is an odd size, but 24-inch square can­vases are easy enough to come by. I don’t usu­ally work in  a square for­mat; I pre­fer rec­tan­gu­lar can­vases which lend them­selves bet­ter to apply­ing the golden sec­tion. So I embarked on a new ver­sion of Mother Night work­ing in this alien square for­mat.  After cre­at­ing sev­eral sketches using my Wacom tablet in Pho­to­shop, the image of the dragon cre­at­ing neg­a­tive space in the sky sug­ges­tive of an eye started to emerge.  Once I had that idea, every­thing sort of fell into place.

I think it is a such a cool idea I may have to explore it fur­ther. I love the images of the night, the moon and stars.  I also have an affin­ity for drag­ons and other fly­ing crit­ters as well.  And the idea of using neg­a­tive space in this way also intrigues me some.

Mother Night’s Embrace clearly has noth­ing to do with the Binary Birds, but belongs to another series Abstract Con­cepts, so I have gone off the reser­va­tion for this one paint­ing, and I hope you like it.

If you would like to pur­chase Mother Night’s Embrace, please see its page on my web­site; you can pur­chase it using Pay­pal.  Thanks for stop­ping by.

If you are in the New York City area between Sep­tem­ber 16 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010 — you can see Mother Night’s Embrace and a work from the Binary Birds series, hoot­suite, at the Broad­way Gallery, 473 Broad­way in SOHO.  The Gallery is open Mon-Fri 10 AM-6 PM. The artists’ recep­tion is from 3–6 PM Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 25, 2010.  Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you there. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Ever since I started doing PopCult paint­ings I have wanted to do some­thing inspired by Andy Warhol.  But I have never been one to just copy some­thing.  The germ of the idea behind Social Net­work­ing! came to me as soon as I started doing the Binary Birds, but it did not erupt as a full blown con­cept until this weekend.

Social Net­work­ing! by Jake Beck­man. Four brightly-colored canaries socially net­work form their own squares. The ASCII Binary back­ground reads, “Social Networking!.”

Call to action: Buy Social Net­work­ing.  Mama needs new canvases. 

I looked over some of Andy Warhol’s work, let­ting the vibe flow through me, ana­lyz­ing it in an abstract way. The iconic Andy Warhol image was the Marylin Mon­roe rep­e­ti­tion, there­fore I opted to embrace some part of this con­cept and do a four square Binary Birds paint­ing.  Andy Warhol appears to have loved the color red (so do I), so I decided there would be  a lot of red in the paint­ing. Finally I adopted the out­ra­geous color vari­a­tion that appeared in those images.  Ini­tially I enter­tained the notion of repeat­ing my own icon, the canary, in the boxes, but there the my anal­ogy and Andy’s anal­ogy parted ways.

My tweet­ies rep­re­sent ordi­nary peo­ple, not famous peo­ple who would be rec­og­niz­able at a glance.  My canaries had to be indi­vid­u­als. I departed from absolute repetition.

From there the con­cept moved into the sketch phase.  Warn­ing, some quasi-technical stuff ahead.

 Hav­ing already com­pleted many Binary Birds paint­ings with canaries, I just rounded up 4 of my favorite canary sketches, which had been scanned and saved to my com­puter.  I required an angel-winged fly­ing one of course.  I liked the one where the bird is hang­ing off a ver­ti­cal wall.  For what­ever rea­son I like the one I call the “side­ways singer,” as it looks like an Egypt­ian glyph to me.  Finally I set­tled on a perched canary with a long flow­ing tail for the fourth bird-I kind of like the idea of hav­ing its tail invade the next square.

I moved these into a new Pho­to­shop doc­u­ment and began mess­ing around with the col­ors. If you have sev­eral ele­ments you need to play around with Pho­to­shop is great for that.  Its also superb for color lay­out as well, which is pri­mar­ily how I used it in this instance.  At first I thought I would have four solid boxes, but that turned out to be bor­ing.  I recalled Andy Warhol did a rep­e­ti­tion with a panda bear toy that had lit­tle frames around the image so I tried that.  So the frames are shades of red: Pink, Brick Red and Cad­mium Red.  I opted for red, light blue, yel­low and light green as the col­ors for my vari­a­tions.  The canary in a given square picks up the color of the back­ground in the square counter-clockwise from it, and the eyes, feet and beak pick up the color of the square kitty-corner to it.  I don’t know how Andy Picked is color vari­a­tions, but the idea of using a pat­tern appealed to me-I like to cre­ate pat­terns, it is just the way my brain is wired. In my mind all four images are linked in a closed loop with one another via color.

Mov­ing on to the binary…

The phrase “Social Net­work­ing” has 17 char­ac­ters and 17 is a prime num­ber.  There is no way to break it down into any­thing other than one and sev­en­teen.  I wanted an edge to edge binary pat­tern in the back­ground.  It occurred to me if I added punc­tu­a­tion I would have 18 char­ac­ters times 8 bits per ASCII binary char­ac­ter, or 144 char­ac­ters, which  would form a per­fect 12 x12 square of ones and zeros.  Social Net­work­ing became Social Net­work­ing!

This paint­ing is part of the 100 Paint­ings thing, but I am drop­ping 100 Days part as it was no where near a real­is­tic goal.  Today is Day 52 and I have com­pleted 18 paint­ings.  I accept that life hap­pens and it has been hap­pen­ing to me a lot lately.  At my cur­rent rate of pro­duc­tion it is going to take at least 300 days to do 100 paint­ings.  That’s not to say I can’t crank out a paint­ing a day, I just do not seem to have the time to.  Also one thing I did not fac­tor in is all the post pro­duc­tion work that has to hap­pen.  This week­end I spent an entire day pho­tograph­ing, resiz­ing, label­ing and upload­ing 7 newly fin­ished works.  This morn­ing I have spend the entire time on just one piece.  This exer­cise is teach­ing me a great deal about how much time a sin­gle small­ish paint­ing really takes-for me it is a min­i­mum of three days: Sketch day, paint day, post-production day.  Of course that does NOT take into account any time spent on mar­ket­ing the thing.  Thank good­ness I quit using oil, I’d never fin­ish any­thing.

So those are the real life artist thoughts behind Social Net­work­ing! If you would like more infor­ma­tion about the paint­ing or per­haps would like to buy it, see its page on my web­site.  Thanks for stop­ping by. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.