Krampus 2011

Last year I learned about Krampus from a friend who lives in Austria. I decided to turn it into a lesson plan in which I tell my students the Krampus myth and have them draw a picture of Krampus sight unseen. Last year's pictures were so fun that I decided to do it again. Enjoy:

If someone told me this thing would take me and eat me if I wasn't good you bet I'd be on my best behavior at all times.

That kid is so scared he's peeing his pants.

I love Krampus's "Bag O' Kids"

And finally, my favorite. Apparently if you're bad a very confused body-builder will kidnap you and take you to his lair.

Let It Snow

Just For Fun

Chuck Close

Since I haven't made any amazing art lately I thought I'd highlight an artist I really admire, Chuck Close.

Chuck Close has an interesting perception disorder called Prosopagnosia, also known as "face blindness" in which the ability to recognize faces and make sense of them is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects isn't affected. Chuck Close has a fairly severe form of the disorder in which he can't differentiate one face from another at all. People with this disorder learn to tell people apart by the sound of their voices or the way they walk or some other detail that many other people may not pay much attention to. Chuck Close began making photo realistic paintings of people's faces as a way to make sense of them.

He didn't just make paintings, he made enormous paintings. Pretty impressive.

In 1988 Close had a seizure that left him paralyzed from the neck down. In response, he devised a new way to continue his work of painting faces. He now paints faces in a grid format. His finished paintings look a lot like pixelated computer images.

Want to know where you sit on the face blindness scale? Take this test:

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php

Recent Sketchbook Entries

Still life done with my Drawing 1 class.

5 drawings of my hand drawn in continuous line.

A continuous line drawing of Aven.

Inspired by "Tree of Life" by Klimt

An illustration of Angels and Airwaves song lyrics.

Street Art

Aven enjoying some street art in Park City last weekend:

Mr. Brainwash

I happened to see an episode of "A Day in the Life" by Morgan Spurlock on Hulu a couple days ago. The person featured was an LA based artist, Thierry Guetta, who is known as Mr. Brainwash. He is known as a street artist but has also had gallery shows. I Googled him and apparently there is a controversy about whether he is a genuine artist or some kind of real-life caricature created by the controversial street artists Banksy and Shepard Fairey. There are dozens of articles about the controversy and I have found it pretty interesting. Here is an excerpt from the L.A. Times about the supposed artist:

The details of Guetta's unlikely biography are broadly supported by a review of public records, which trace his life in Los Angeles from his arrival as a teenager in the early 1980s. They are also consistent with the accounts of friends, former business associates and employees over those years.

Of course, it is impossible to prove whether his latest incarnation, Mr. Brainwash, is sincere. The film suggests that Guetta's artistic alter ego is largely a creation of Banksy, a notion Guetta doesn't refute.

"Banksy captured me becoming an artist," the paint-splattered Guetta said, surrounded by the stacks of art books and pop-culture clutter from which his work is derived — or ripped off, depending on your view. "In the end, I became his biggest work of art."

Whether he is a real guy or a guy portraying a character as part of another artist's agenda I think that the work attributed to him is pretty fascinating and fun.