Sunday, November 01, 2009
Rainy Halloween
Halloween in Manhattan and New York in general is a interesting experience. Nearly everyone on the street is costumes and people brag with their costume creations. Unfortunately we had heavy rainfall this year, and me and Becky had to flee into a Diner and had food there. Afterwards I took some pics of costumes. I, myself, was dressed up as Private Dick. I started to watch old detective movies and came into the mood.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
School Trip and Zombie bashing
Dear friends – I am well and safe in New York, I don’t write a soften because I don’t realize how fast time passes by. Let me sum up the most important things that happened over the past days. Our class did a day trip to the “Norman Rockwell” museum in Stockbridge – Rockwell was a very popular American illustrator and painter from the 1920s-1950s. His paintings are considered as the visualization of the “American dream”, the “American” him or herself, but he also showed some “downsides” and saw the humorous side of life. I enjoyed the trip a lot and I really loved the paintings. Below our class in Stockbridge.
In general, I love the “History of American Illustration” lectures – I learn about illustrators I have never heard about before and I enjoy their styles and the topics they visualize very much. Let me mention some of my favorite so far: William Dana Gibson, Aubrey Beardsley, Winsor Mc Cay, John Held Junior, Howard Pyle, Jessie Willcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth, Thomas Nast and many more.
In life drawing, the exercises are not easy, they are very challenging which I appreciate. I am still not able to use what I learn for my own purpose, but I am still patient and I am sure I will profit.
On Sunday, I had my first game with my all girls RPG group – we just founded it, and had an absolutely fantastic game. The five of us, Mary, Melissa (the game master), Michelle and Lena decided to play “RISUS” an indie roleplaying game system that has six pages of rules. The characters don’t work with attributes and skills, but with “clichés” – for example, my character is a German who immigrated to the US and has the clichés “Private Eye” (includes shooting people, intimidating, wearing a slazy trench coat and attracting femme-fatales), “Alien Parasite” (super healing and dimensional portal opening), and, within others, my favorite: “Saving people in last second (in slo-motion) while screaming Nooooo!”. We put diced in those clichés and roll them when it seems appropriate. Melissa put an awesome game together: Levar from the 80s show “Reading Rainbows” – a show were children is taught how super cool reading is – reads the “Necronomicon” to the children and thereby makes them soulless zombies. We saved the day, but some children had to die or were mutilated. Let me point out that my character was always against actually killing them! But some people always have to behead little zombie-girls (point my finger at Michelles character ;-) ). Below a photo (from left to right: Melissa, Lena, Mary who thinks "If I can't see you, you cant see me" would be a great power and Michelle) from our group after harvesting on the chocolate fun-due! Please notice the TV in the background! ITS A MONSTER!
Of course I couldn’t resist drawing the groups characters – from left to right Sonja (who can make things explode), Leopold (prive eye and dimensional traveler), Zeek the Geek (who can travel trough wires) and Patricia (can see the souls of things and has a samurai sword).
In general, I love the “History of American Illustration” lectures – I learn about illustrators I have never heard about before and I enjoy their styles and the topics they visualize very much. Let me mention some of my favorite so far: William Dana Gibson, Aubrey Beardsley, Winsor Mc Cay, John Held Junior, Howard Pyle, Jessie Willcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth, Thomas Nast and many more.
In life drawing, the exercises are not easy, they are very challenging which I appreciate. I am still not able to use what I learn for my own purpose, but I am still patient and I am sure I will profit.
On Sunday, I had my first game with my all girls RPG group – we just founded it, and had an absolutely fantastic game. The five of us, Mary, Melissa (the game master), Michelle and Lena decided to play “RISUS” an indie roleplaying game system that has six pages of rules. The characters don’t work with attributes and skills, but with “clichés” – for example, my character is a German who immigrated to the US and has the clichés “Private Eye” (includes shooting people, intimidating, wearing a slazy trench coat and attracting femme-fatales), “Alien Parasite” (super healing and dimensional portal opening), and, within others, my favorite: “Saving people in last second (in slo-motion) while screaming Nooooo!”. We put diced in those clichés and roll them when it seems appropriate. Melissa put an awesome game together: Levar from the 80s show “Reading Rainbows” – a show were children is taught how super cool reading is – reads the “Necronomicon” to the children and thereby makes them soulless zombies. We saved the day, but some children had to die or were mutilated. Let me point out that my character was always against actually killing them! But some people always have to behead little zombie-girls (point my finger at Michelles character ;-) ). Below a photo (from left to right: Melissa, Lena, Mary who thinks "If I can't see you, you cant see me" would be a great power and Michelle) from our group after harvesting on the chocolate fun-due! Please notice the TV in the background! ITS A MONSTER!
Of course I couldn’t resist drawing the groups characters – from left to right Sonja (who can make things explode), Leopold (prive eye and dimensional traveler), Zeek the Geek (who can travel trough wires) and Patricia (can see the souls of things and has a samurai sword).
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Update! Tunnels!
Hello friends,
welcome to another short sum-up of things that I have been doing; First of all, I had visitors from Austria for 10 days, Eva and Mira from Vienna. They were pretty good at doing stuff on their own and it was nice to talk Austrian for a while.
Below you see Eva, me, Mira and becky at the “Atlantic Ave Tunnel tour” New Yorks first subway tunnel which was sealed off (and fake-demolished, a corruption affair) at the turn of the 18th century and then re-detected by Bob Diamond in the 70ies. Of course, my fotos are shitty in this dark enviroment.
My new drawing table and light box arrived two weeks ago….I should use it more.
Especially exciting was the lecture by Peter de Seve, lead character designer of all Iceage characters. I got an original drawing too.
Below, you see Lisa and Joel whom which I played a three-times session of Call of Cthulhu (gmed by Osc) – can you believe, our characters survived INNSMOUTH by just TALKING???!!!
Below foto is by my fellow student Aera – it shows us and Melanie Reim, getting trough every single sketchbook of the class.
I have to admit, im not really drawing a lot next to life drawing session and homework. It seems that my system and brain is shocked by the new stuff Im learning and right now, I dont make any good drawings....its just a phase...ITS JUST A PHASE, RIGHT!!!!???
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Various things
This time a random report, because various little things are happening – for example, today Obama is in New York to have negotiation with people such as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. So I suppose Manhattan will be locked down.
In school, everything is quite stressful on different levels. It is not that they demand incredible much from us, it is mainly that I am not used being in the system of education again – and postgraduate is something else then undergraduate: Nobody whines, nobody complains, people really WANT to be there and try their best. Also, I am in a constant state of learning right now – about drawing techniques, about historical aspects of illustration, about my thesis project. It’s all quite confusing.
I enjoy having a big library so close by, I just walk 10 minutes and I can work my way through Brooklyn Central library – they do have a lot of books on drawing, illustration and comics. Nice!
Impressions from the last weeks:
Below you see some of my fellow students - I organized a drawing party, because we have to draw hand and feet - we decided to do it together and model for each other.
Becky is intimitated by the evil looking fortuneteller at the Society of Illustrators.
Vanessas garden is a beautiful little work of art with spontanious erruptions of dinner parties.
10 minutes from where I live is the Brooklyn Central libary (the building behind the pillar).
Look, its Guy Delisle! A Canadian comic artist who made "Pjöngjang".
The lady in red is Melanie Reim, our drawing teacher and head of the programm. Here we look at her drawing books.
There is a comic shop right around my corner! "Bergen street comics", a neat litle place.
Comic pordium at the Brooklyn Bookfair!
In school, everything is quite stressful on different levels. It is not that they demand incredible much from us, it is mainly that I am not used being in the system of education again – and postgraduate is something else then undergraduate: Nobody whines, nobody complains, people really WANT to be there and try their best. Also, I am in a constant state of learning right now – about drawing techniques, about historical aspects of illustration, about my thesis project. It’s all quite confusing.
I enjoy having a big library so close by, I just walk 10 minutes and I can work my way through Brooklyn Central library – they do have a lot of books on drawing, illustration and comics. Nice!
Impressions from the last weeks:
Below you see some of my fellow students - I organized a drawing party, because we have to draw hand and feet - we decided to do it together and model for each other.
Becky is intimitated by the evil looking fortuneteller at the Society of Illustrators.
Vanessas garden is a beautiful little work of art with spontanious erruptions of dinner parties.
10 minutes from where I live is the Brooklyn Central libary (the building behind the pillar).
Look, its Guy Delisle! A Canadian comic artist who made "Pjöngjang".
The lady in red is Melanie Reim, our drawing teacher and head of the programm. Here we look at her drawing books.
There is a comic shop right around my corner! "Bergen street comics", a neat litle place.
Comic pordium at the Brooklyn Bookfair!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
My art at Gallerie Remixx
Four pictures from my „Absolutely Free“ exhibition work will be presented at Galerie Remixx from 28th sept. – 13th of octobre – about the gallery (in German): Die "Galerie über den Dächern von Graz" beherbergt Bilder, Skulpturen und Grafiken der klassischen Moderne sowie Werke der transnationalen Avantgarde. Das Angebot an Ausstellungsstücken reicht von internationaler Fotokunst, über wertvolle Bücher und seltene Ausstellungskataloge, bis hin zu Avantgarde-Kunstzeitschriften und Fotobänden. Vier mal im Jahr werden in der galerie remixx Werke von jungen, meist steirischen KünstlerInnen ausgestellt, deren Kunst fasziniert.
Feel free to come by, I wish I could be there to see it.
Feel free to come by, I wish I could be there to see it.
Friday, September 11, 2009
RPG character for Call of Cthulhu
Frank Brown, originally Emil Wagner, was born in Vienna/Austria in 1904. Raised in a wealthy family, he was able to develop his artistic talents. His mental contact to the spirit world enabled him to produce extraordinary paintings, which found great response in the occult societies of Austria and Germany. After the death of his father he emmigrated to the US for unknown reasons. His exact whereabouts are unknown to his remaining family.
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