last postttt

Adviceness: It's important to develop your idea early on and develop it as the year goes on. It's not like any of the art classes before in that you can try out what you like. AP 2D is more like applying what you already know. It's like instead of planting a tree, you're taking the tree you already have and trying to make some branches.

Favorite Piece: My favorite piece has got to be the one of hte two girls making out. It was the first piece that i tried to do in that style, and it was definetly the most succesful. I mean if my house started burning to the ground and i could only save one art piece out of all hte pieces i have, i'd choose that one. It's also my favorite because it taught me the most about style. Before the hotties, i thought of the concentration as the development of a style, and then just rendering different things in that style. But with hotties, i realized that that wasn't the case, and that I was actually learning a lot trying to do the same style and develop it.

What i Learned about myself: I learned that i'm actually just as lazy as my mom always told me i was. I also learned that i'm a really good solo paitner. Like for the last ten days before hte concentration was due, i took my art home and was able to work for like dozens of hours at a time. Usually in the art room i'm incredibly unfocused and hardly get anything done. Too bad i figured it out too late.

Favorite Activity: My favorite activity this year was defiently Jesse Reno. His style of painting probably influenced my style the most out of any of the other artists i've ever interacted with. Him and David Choe are probably my two biggest influences, and if Choe were up for teaching some classes, i'd say that we should add them to the classes schedule.

In Ten years: I'm gonna be chillin on a beach skimboarding dem waves.

"Do what you feel"

i finished all that art and i'm super psyched.
now for the rest of the year i can just work on this one project,
hopefully ill have a great idea

4/18

did some art over the weekend
i think i'm going to have to do art everyday for the next ten days straight
yeah i'm a little scared about not being able to meet the deadline for art
but at the same time i feel like doing art.
so hopefully with a ton of afterschool art seshs and like three consecutive ten hour sessions over the weekend, i'll be able to get my work done.
still, if it comes down to it i can just withdraw from the ap test
i'm pretty sure the school i'm going to doesnt even offer art credit anyways
but i'm taking away all this knowledge, and thats what counts.

4/12

i havent worked on any new stuff in awhile
its kind of a problem cuz theres like three pieces done at the end of the month
and i'm also not completely done with the pieces i do have turned in
i'm gonna be coming in a lot more after class
still, i feel good about art right now
i like the direction i'm going
except my pieces lack unification

4/2

3/16

so i'm liking the way the sharq piece is turning out
but i gotta pick up the pace
start coming in after class again
cuz the deadline for those two pieces is coming soon
and i dont wanna miss it
i'm totally prepared to do art over spring break though
compared to winter break
it's gonna be good

3/7

so i just satdown and thoguht about art for a little bit.
and what direction i want to take.
over the summer i learned a lot from this guy eduardo fernandez.
he taught me how to take big complicated landscapes and compress them into thumbnails.
but i havent done any pieces in this style because its a really simple way of going about drawing.
i'm starting to rethink that now,
and i think i can really go big with this.
hopefully it looks alright

3/1

i'm looking forward to finishing the critique tomrorow becasue it actually gives me a lot of insight on what i should be working on.
even though the art thats being critiqued isnt mine, i can see what works and what doesnt
and its really helpful
i'm also psyched to finish the watercolor shark boy cuz i think its gonna look good.
i'm probably gonna spend a lot of time on it aftershcool

concentration

my concentration's about faces and what they can do. the face is one of the most heavily relied upon things in identity, and this is kind of an experiment on how the face affects the direction and feel of a piece.

this paintings got some really strong bold elements to it in the stroke consistency of the white and the flat yellow, and then there's this kind of weak, scrawny chicken face. its definetly flat though, but i dont wanna throw down a shadow cuz thatd make it like a portrait of the chicken, as if it showed up to get its picture taken and is posing. instead i think i'm gonna have some oblong and awkward shapes coming out of the tubes in the back of its head. i'm not sure whether i want these shapes to flow like theyre expelled with force, or drift around and have a couple floating over and overlapping the face. these if theyre floating i'm gonna restrict them to near the top right quarter of the painting, if theyre being forced out the shapes will bank sharply downwards and seperate.


because my concentration is so invested in identity, i think its important that i use different styles in every piece. so the next thing i work on is gonna be a charcoal drawing with 3 or 4 shades and there will be lot of movement

2/15

its presidents day and i'm doing art at my hosue
and its nice cuz i never do art outside of the art room.
i've been thinking about my concentration and i think i want to use charcoal and watercolor
i dont know how the two mediums/styles interact though so i gotta test the waters
i want to go with something more realistic and observational
and i want there to be a body intsead of just a head
hopefully my masks finished drying in the ceramics room and i can fire it and use it.

2/8

this next concentration piece is hopefullly gonna be good.
i can kinda see what its gonna look like in my head,
but i dont know if i'm really comfortable with it
cuz i feel like its trying to hard.

but i'm gonna jesse reno style it
not in the way it looks, but how i go about it
and try and focus on the process
cuz i feel like mask is going to shape what this will eventually be
thats something i'm learning about my concentration
the face has to fit

ive been doinga lot of painting lately
and i realized with my last piece that i havent been doing much in line weights
shading
and other basic drawing techniques
and i think i need to add them to the paintings that i've done
cuz i'm not yet happy with the way two of them have turned out
especially because one of them is heavily influenced by this artist
i dont wanna be like a font
in that im writing my own stuff down
but i'm using someones template to do it

what i'm really focused on right now is just finding and developing my own style

1/24

this whole just work thing for art is actually turning out rpetty good. i mean its not like im churning out million dollar pieces or anything, but i'm actualy really happy with what i'm doing. like the last piece i did took me about a day. theres some things that i wish i could redo, and i'll probably add more, but all in all i like it. i think it helps to actually make big changes every single day. it gives me a sense of accomplishment, and whenever i used to overthink something and then it didnt work out, it hurt. but now its like, "i'll get around this, no problem." its great. and becasue i'm doing so many more things, im learning a lot more. like just from the last piece i learned that some mistakes can turn out really good, but also that even though i'm trying to just do a lot of art, that doesnt mean i should be messy.

i'm looking forward to critiques now cuz i feel like theyll actually be really helpful.

art got real exciting all of a sudden. and hopefully this doesnt just fizzle and die

1/18 pt2 breadth comes first though

1/18

so i thoguht about it and realized that i've been going about this whole art thing the wrong way. i've kinda just been sitting around, waiting for something to inspire me and an idea to take me. but thats obviously not working because i've started like 5 pieces and havent finished any. what i need to start doing now is actually think about my art and how i want it to look. usually how it works is i have an idea, apply it, and then see how it looked. now i'm gonna try and think of my end product a little more. it's like the difference between starting the car and just driving til you find someplace, or figuring out where you wanna go before you start the engine. I also think i need to just make myself work sometimes, even if it doesnt turn out amazing, i'll still learn from it. right now i'm working on a handful of pieces and none of them are done. hopefully soon i'll have like twenty things finished. and maybe i wont like 15 of them. but there will be those 5 that i will. i really hope i actually can motivate myself to do this.
so yeah, my names travis tang, and youll be seeing me doing a lot more art.

1/11/110

i got so much art to do and i'm actually looking forward to it. i'm kind of excited to see how a couple of them turn out. I dont plan on being an artist or doing that much art after high school, so this is kind of like my sport. After this seasons done, i might never play again homies. Thats why i'm hoping that i figure these pieces out and i make something i can be really proud of.
too bad i'm sick out of my mind right now though, or else i'd probably be working on art. i'm tryign this new thing zucol, and i feel like its working. But it could all be up in my head and i'm not really sure.
it sucks though. i got home at 12:30 cuz of early release, and then i came home, and slept til around 4. i'm going in for another round right now though, so wish me luck.