Colliding Galaxies

Pictures of colliding galaxies taken by the Hubble Telescope. I find these inspiring both visually and conceptually, in their beauty and the reminding of just how minuscule I am in this universe:
SciAM Article

Female Face Studies

Yeah so I decided my new goal for the next couple of months is to hone my skills at drawing the female face which means doing study after study after study after study. Direct photo reference:

First one I struggled hard core with the makeup and my colors were very dirty. Second was a little better but the skin far too rough. Third and fourth I feel I got to the proper intensity and fixed a lot of problems so I decided to do a no reference version to solidify what I had learned:
Left is purely no reference. Right is a revision after sitting on it for a bit and comparing it to my references (mostly just punched up some more dark tones)

Even More Whitman...

Art activities kind of getting put off a bit while working on my senior paper this month:

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and
pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of
me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the
greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its
throat,
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

Walt Whitman - "Song of Myself" (Part 28)

More Whitman

Still trucking into Walt Whitman's epically long poem "Song of Myself":

" This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments
with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of
hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the
side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."

-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" Section 19

Need to go down to Kinko's to see if getting prints of my larger digital works is worth the cost but I haven't gotten around to it. Senior show is looming as well as FWMoA members show...

Inspiration Resolution

I really enjoy reading Nathan Abel's art blog (http://nathanabels.blogspot.com/) because he manages to post profusely about his inspirations and you can really see how they relate to his own work which is endlessly interesting. So, I'm going to start trying to do that more often myself.

I stumbled upon and begun reading Walt Whitman's 52 section poem: "Song of Myself". It contains a lot of transcendentalism as well as inspiring bits and pieces all relating to his own feeling of his place in this universe and his body's oneness with nature. Although there are many lines each and every one of them are immensely powerful. I've read up to part 12 and will continue to try to do at least 10 each day. Here's a bit of my favorite (2):

"Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,"

-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Toledo/Detroit Road Trip

Took a much needed road trip to Toledo and Detroit over spring break with my pops. On the first day, we stopped at Toledo's Museum of Art that had an amazing collection for being free. After leaving there spent hours going back and forth along the Maumee taking in it's and the city's incredible beauty. I highly recommend visiting sometime. I spent some time getting some great photography such as:

Every shot was better than any I had ever taken before.

Stayed in a hotel that night then headed up to detroit which had a larger and much more impressive collection than Toledo but was costed 8 bucks to get in. I got to take many photos of the exhibit and will post up particularly inspiring works when I get a chance. Right now I'm working on digitally altering all these stock photos I took in Toledo into some hopefully impressive new works.

When I get back to school on monday I'm going to jump into my "senior project". It's going to be pretty massive and will take the rest of the semester. I'll keep you guys updated.