Flower Show

Was at the Flower Show Convention yesterday and snapped some shots for reference and inspiration.  There were beautiful decorative headdress' that have totally inspired me.  I'll probably be drawing plumage coronas and crowns for head soon..here's what I saw:

 

  

  

  

 

 

  

I really like the little forms of the non-flowering plants.  I think they're mainly in the cacti family?

  

  

  

  

  

 

Exquisite Corpse

Sphinx Fox and our goth artist friend Kimberlee Traub a while back got together and drew up some exquisite corpse drawings.  We later elaborated on them which of course is a breach of conduct for the Surrealists who let the thing be what it was...we just couldn't help but work back into ours.  We did three, each of us worked on one until they all came back around to us, each of us having touched them twice.  Below is the first one I scanned.


For those who don't know the history or what an Exquisite Corpse is:

An Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist term for a collaborative drawing done with three or more people where a sheet of paper is folded three or more times each person getting a section of the folded paper to draw on, never knowing what the other has drawn before them until everyone has contributed.


to expound  http://www.lmstudio.com/corpse_history.htm :

The Exquisite Corpse and The Surrealists
		One of the basic tenants of Surrealism was the notion that creativity /genius could be a shared experience. Through such exercises in collaborative imagination such methods as the Game of the Analogical Portrait, the Truth Game, the When and If Game, and the game of Exquisite Corpse (cadavres exquis) became tools for exploration. André Breton spoke of these games as "…the most fabulous source of unfindable images…". Breton's notion that images derived from disassociation were the important aspect of such exercises. He [Breton] defined surrealism as the spontaneous exploitation of 'pure psychic automatism', allowing the production of an abundance of unexpected images. The scandalous periodical, La Révolution surréaliste, was founded in December of 1924. In it was the proclamation, "Surrealism is not a new or easier means of expression, nor is it a metaphysic of poetry; it is a means toward the total liberation of the mind and of everything that resembles it…". Developed in 1925, the Exquisite Corpse was designed for group participation and relied on the chance encounter as a disruption of rationality and a product of the shared, oceanic unconscious in which the Surrealists believed.

(Like I said before this has been re-worked after the initial E.C. happened.  Others tend to be more raw.  Less unified.)

Try one with friends.

Yearbook

I was flipping through my high school yearbook yesterday and came across my class photo.

Silent Lucidity

It happened!  I became lucid in my dream!  (for those of you who this is a regular occurring phenomenon for, bare with me or simply leave this post.  It's about to get 'yawn'.)

Backstory:

For the past few months, since reading a book about Astral Projection by Oliver Fox I've been getting more and more into studying my dream states.  First I was trying to astral project following some of the things Mr. Fox was doing to induce the necessary trance, but was getting a little scared by the insecurities I felt.  I figured I wasn't ready for that yet.
So I took a step away from trying to consciously leave my body and moved my focus to more comfortable, familiar ground; dreaming.

I've always kept a dream journal where I'd record what I could remember about the dreams I'd have, but sometimes I'd get lazy and fall back asleep or just not write them down because I'd feel they weren't interesting enough or whatever.  But more recently, since paying more attention to my unconscious I've found the rewards have been nearly exhilarating.

Recently I've been reading a book by Stephen LaBerge, who has written several books on Lucid Dreaming, wherein he recommends some exercises to do during the waking hours to familiarize yourself with yourself and your surrounding environments.  It's odd how little conscious thought we have to give ourselves in order to simply exist in our day to day lives.  A lot of the time is run on auto pilot during the day; think about it.
One of the exercises I've found to be most rewarding and fulfilling is to stop to take in what is going on in me and around me.  What I'm seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, really sensing these things and then moving to concentrating on breathe; holding it and letting go.  It really helps put one in contact with the present moment.  Try it as much as you can remember to.

Another exercise is to ask yourself whether or not you are dreaming during any part of the day.  If you are not then imagine if you were.  What would be different?  What would you like to do if you were?  Look at something with writing on it or your watch.  Look at the words or numbers and try to move them with your thought.  Look away from them and then look at them again.  If you're dreaming you'll be able to move them.

This is how I realized I was dreaming in my dream yesterday morning.  But before I tell you about that I want to emphasis the benefit of practicing these exercises daily.  Of course there has to be some kind of desire or enthusiasm to want to study yourself consciously in this way, so you can then better differentiate between yourself in the dream state and waking.

In the process of recording and thinking about the dreams it becomes apparent that there are certain 'signposts' or dream signs in the dream that simply couldn't happen in waking reality, like talking with someone you know is dead or eating dinner with someone who has no skin.  These are your dreams throwing you a bone.   Every dream has them.  Its been a hindsight game of catchup figuring out where they are and trying to remember to be on the lookout for them while in a dream.

ie. This morning Michael Stipe of R.E.M.!! walked into the house where I was and looked at the tv screen then as I was leaving turned into John Malkovich (I recently watched Being John Malkovich movie thinking how much like the lucid dream state it was), total dreamsign. 

About the lucid dream:

So in this electric moment of lucidity, which was short before I woke up, I was being followed.  I knew this so I started descending stairs that forked; one going left, the other right.  They reminded me of the steep stairwell at the Vatican at Rome that takes you to the top Chapel there. (If you haven't been there imagine tight, steep stairs of stone, or don't, no matter)  These were graffiti marked and had lots of stickers on them with a handrail.  I noticed the one of the directions of the stairs was really dark so I thought, 'well if I want to go exploring the unconscious part of myself let's go this way'.  Around that time I looked at my watch and the numbers didn't jive right with me.  I think the hands began to move backwards, which jolted me into realizing I was Dreaming!  At this point the person who was following me was now at the mezzanine looking down at me pointing a gun.  I thought I'd hover up to him and knock the gun out of his hand but I woke up.

Here I think either my emotions took over, losing my critical factor to stay in the dream waking me up, or my intention wasn't good enough and I would have died in my dream, my unconscious waking me up thinking it's not a good idea to die in a dream.
Despite this very brief moment of being 'there' awake in the dream, it was/is enough for me to feel even more enthused about keeping this practice to see where this goes.

Maybe more on this later?

teething

"They're just so cute at that age."

In the Studio

I feel compelled, obliged, to recommend the latest Terry Gilliam film, 'Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus'.
Enter the Imaginarium
If you crave the strange or hunger for the unusual in film like I do, then there is little possibility that you will come out of this film feeling like you did not get the full family dinner plate of fantastical.  Terry's talent for visual assault is heightened to a new level in this picture I feel, with the script lending to some of the most, 'in there' dreamy imagery I can remember seeing in a long while.  Really, it's kind of like walking into someones lucid dream projected onto a large screen.


In more pertinent news, thought I'd show you a couple pieces I have going in the studio right now:

This one is cropped from the larger piece.  It keeps changing; right now I think it's going to be about a group of fictional, inter-dimensional adepts gathered together in a throne room...?

This started from a cut-off of another piece.  I walked into the studio and saw this discarded piece of paper with scribbled lines on it from a previous drawing and began drawing into what the markings suggested to me.  Right now it seems to consist of imaginary sea creatures and totem birds clustered in the foreground with a distant background suggesting impending doom (not shown in this picture).

Blue Moon Drawing Book

Here are some pages I was working on during December and into the beginning of January.  I was trying to just use black ink but slipped and started adding color towards the end.  Rarely do I consciously attempt to impose parameters on my drawing mediums, this was a challenge in that category but I've really enjoyed working within the limitation.  I found it helped me focus more on the imagery and process.  I'm planning on making some more developed pieces based off these doodles...:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birds For Arms Music Posters

Sphinx Fox made these flyers for our musician friend Stephen Buono and his band, Birds For Arms.  I think everyone in that band is super talented and you should give 'em a listen at this show.  Come out and support your local musicians early next year.

Freak and Zoid

Know these guys?

If not, keep how you are.  They're nothing but stress.

soupcooler

Just finished this poster for my friend Jim's band 'SoupCooler'.  He's been working on this music by himself for the past few years and more recently has been teaching it to other musicians to play live.  I'm looking forward to this one.

www.myspace.com/soupcooler

Purple November Rain Drawing Book

For the month of November I was carrying around a grouping of small (about 4x6 closed) bi-fold pages to keep thoughts and sketches in.  I went ahead and scanned the pages before binding them all together to make it easier; usually yields a flatter, better scan that way.  I'll probably bind this one with my standard coptic binding, just haven't decided on how I want to do the covering yet.  I'm thinking something in purple since its been my color of choice for the moment.  Hope you enjoy these playful little pages:

poster

I drew up this poster for my friend Stephen's band, 'Birds For Arms'.  The other bands are loaded with great musicians as well.  If you like adventure and daring with your music then you'll probably like it.