Saturday, February 20, 2010

Recovering from Olympic Fever/ Saturday Art

Sorry I've been away from my blog for a couple of weeks here... I've been suffering from Olympic fever, and have been rabidly following Johnny Weir's great performances (oh, the politics of judged sports! He was robbed....)
Anywho, now that I'm back, it is time for a contest!! The details will be later in this post :-)

Also, starting with this, I'm only going to be posting one art piece. On a rare occasion I may put up more than one, but I've got to be a bit more measured in posting the art, or I might run out!


This piece is an interesting one for several reasons. First, it is a collaborative piece. Naoshi (an artist from Japan) did her work first, and then Martin Ontiveros (a Portland Artist) finished with his painting of the monster. Second, while Martin's part is painted, all the rest of the piece-- the cake-head girl, the background-- is done in colored sand. YEP! Colored sand. It is an old Japanese technique called Suna-e, and if you go to Naoshi's website, she has drawn out a tutorial on how it is done. It makes it seem easy, but really, all those perfect little lines...hard!!!
I love that the piece, being made of sand, is so sparkly that you kind of want to eat it. And I am amazed that Martin could paint his monster so perfectly over the sand, and somehow keep it sparkly too.
Each time I look at the poor cake-headed girl being tickled under the chin by that colorful monster, It seems like the middle of a children's book to me. Kind of like the spot where Red Riding Hood realizes that the wolf is in grandma's clothes.
It is a dangerous scene, where she just might be eaten!

So now, on to the contest!
CONTEST RULES:
1. contest begins now and ends 8AM Pacific, next Saturday.
2. to enter, you have to add a comment on this post.
3. adding a comment on this post= 1 entry
4. being or becoming one of my followers= 2 more entries
5. mentioning and posting a link to this contest on your blog= 3 more entries
6.getting someone else to comment that they followed your link here= 4 more entries for you, 2 more for them

After the contest is closed, I will use the Randomizer thingy online, pick a winner, and post it by 9AM!

Good Luck to all!

6 comments:

Southpaw said...

Okay I’ve got to be honest. That one freaks me out. (Though I really like the way the monster is done.)

Stephanie Thornton said...

I agree with Southpaw- this one is definitely freaky!

ann foxlee said...

That's why I love this one! Like if Dali wrote a children's book, this would be a scene :-P

yokohamamama said...

Somehow it's between Dali, and Where the Wild Things Are...
(He was totally robbed--his technical elements were higher than Lambiel *and* Chan. So he got knocked down in--what--interpretation? And Choreography? Right--the places where the scores aren't justified in any way... and I say that in spite of the fact that Takahashi is my other favorite skater:))

ann foxlee said...

(yes, he should have at least gotten 4th, and in light of Plushenko's ridiculous sour grapes, I say they strip him of the silver, give it to Takahashi, and give Johnny the bronze!!) (Yah!!)

Christine Danek said...

This is an interesting piece. It does remind me of Dali --if he wrote a children's book. Cool!