Scum Choir

And the December Prompt is...

It was a tie. And I'm calling the tiebreaker and going with this one. Inner Landscapes.

The tie was between this and sculpt. and selfishly I wanted to do sculpt because I really want an excuse to do another sculpture. But I've been wanting to do inner landscapes for a while.

Choir member Katrin suggested it and I think it's such a good idea.

So what is an inner landscape? 

Well I kind of like how 2023-12-02 02:33:38 +0000 UTC View Post

Bad Drawing Prompt Submissions

I feel like this prompt made people self conscious and/or confused. I confused myself with it. As I was getting the submissions together I noticed that the official name of the prompt was "Bad Drawing Contest." I did a sculpture for a drawing contest. 

I also have no way of judging the winners of the contest. It stresses me out beyond belief thinking about how to select a winner.

 So I'll let you all decide in the comments. Who won? I'm disqualified for making a sculptur...

My eyeballs came in the mail

I will explain what is going on in this picture in a future post. But I had to share these little guys.

Art Life and Lives-William Blake

William Blake is primarily known as a poet but he was equally a visual artist working in engraving and painting. He was born in 1757 and died in 1827. 

I would describe William Blake as a multi disciplinary visionary artist from the early Industrial Revolution before the term visionary artist existed. 

Alex Grey, who is a contemporary icon of visionary art defines visionary art as 

"Art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider...

2023-11-30 01:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Let's Decide the Prompt!

I'll choose the winner on Dec. 1st. Then the prompts will be do on New Years Eve! 

The Bad art submissions are due tomorrow!

Experimental steps in the evolution of the process

One thing I remembered from those existential crisis portraits and skull studies that I did earlier this month is that painting is so much easier when for me when I have references.

The problem is that I paint stuff that doesn’t exist.

The bad art prompt got me playing with clay and I realized that I can sculpt stuff that doesn’t exist. Then use it as reference to help the paintings.

So I’ve been randomly squishing clay into weird distorted looking faces an...

Intro to Drawing Bad Art-The Conscious Experience of Ink Blobs: Bulletism Demo (Sort of)

This is the (sort of) Demo that I did for the Bulletism lesson in the Intro to Drawing Bad Art Course. Even though this is part of the Intro to Drawing Bad Art Course, which is usually only available to the Tenor tier and up, I'm going to leave this one unlocked for all the tiers! 

For the ITDBAC I'm going to make a few videos about some weird, experimental, and surrealist style methods and techniques that I like to use to contrast with the cold hard fundamentals of drawing and to ...

My First Sculpture Time-Lapse and Music

This is my submission for the Bad Art Prompt, which is due in 4 days!

Submit through the link  or email to scumchoir@gmail.com

This is the first song I made playing guitar over the samples and electronic music stuff that I usually make my beats with. I really like the song. and you can stream 2023-11-27 03:52:51 +0000 UTC View Post

Bulletism- Intro to Drawing Bad Art

Forgetting the Fundamentals

When learning the cold hard fundamentals of drawing, such as perspective, value and color theory, we can forget the fun, playful spirit that made us pursue art in the first place.

So these last couple of lessons in the ITDBA course are going to be dedicated to some techniques that I’ve found useful for forgetting the cold hard fundamentals. 

These techniques can be used to get out of your own head, experiment with materials, rediscover th...

My First Ever Sculpture

My First ever sculpture! Made with sculpey and painted with acrylic paint. about 4 inches tall.

I called him "boody gollum" because he has eyes on his butt. 

Like I mentioned before I kind of sculpted this like an automatic drawing. I kept turning it around and where ever I would see a face, I would just start sculpting them. So when you look at it in person you'll see different faces depending on which angle you're looking at it.

I'm giving you guys the first opportuni...

I'm thankful for art

Here's a drawing I did when I was a kid. I keep it in a frame on my wall as a reminder of how much I love art. 

Another drawing for the new video

Ink

Colored pencil

Gel pen

On paper

Tonight’s doodle fest for a new video

Tonight I’ve been drawing this and listening to a very interesting podcast about creativity and the human mind to prepare for a new art life and lives video.

Now I’m going to play a little guitar.

First Bad Sculpture

I’ve played around with clay and ceramics a handful of times. This is the first real full length sculpture attempt.

I’m using Sculpey. I started with some basic human figure (sort of) shapes. Then just started treating it almost like an automatic drawing. Wherever I saw a suggestion of something, I just started poking it and moving it around to define it a little more.

I finished baking it this morning and I’m going to do a lot of painting on it.

I couldn’t figur...

Self Portrait: The Beast and the Void- A new video essay about working with frustration, depression and anger

This video is about how I work through certain painful blocks with my art. 

I called it "self portrait" because I end up painting a self portrait, but also because the video itself is a kind of self portrait.

It's very personal and subjective. 

It's more of a video essay. I put a lot into the sound design and shot design. There is a little "how to" stuff in there. 

But I was mostly trying to capture what it feels when I'm frustrated with my art/feeling d...

Skull Study 2-Timelapse with Music

I got a new guitar recently and this is the first riff I wrote on it. I want to start incorporating it more into my beats. It also just feels relaxing to play it. 

The colors I used on this painting were: Hookers Green, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue, Manganese Blue, Titanium White, Cadmium Red Medium, Yellow Ochre, Transparent Red Iron Oxide, and Green Gold

Skull Study 2/ Bad art tip

A few people have expressed their being stuck with the “bad art” thing. I think I have a straight forward solution. Take a medium, or technique or style of art you’ve always wanted to try. And just try it. Your first attempt will probably be bad. And there’s your submission!

That is what the spirit of this thing is. It’s better to make bad art than no art at all.

Skull Timelapse

I'll probably do more still life's of this skull from different angles and start selling them as studies. 

The music for this one is just me Strumming my guitar in a weird tuning. 

I had a kind of freak out about a painting recently. I made like a 20 minute video about it that you'll see soon. But one of the upsides of the freak out was that I started playing guitar to get my mind off painting. 

Skull still life

I bought this skull for myself for my 30th birthday. I keep it on my desk as a reference but I’ve never done a straight up still life painting of it.

I have a new longer video coming soon that I’m very excited and kind of nervous to show you.

I also am working on an art life and lives video and an intro to drawing bad art lesson!

Portrait painting of my friend Jazmin-Timelapse

Here's the finished painting. I made her take a bunch of selfies in very specific lighting haha. She obliged. 

I've noticed that with these portraits especially, they look way different in pictures than they do in real life. There's just so much reflection that the photos pick up. I edited this one in photoshop a little to make it look a little more accurate. but it sill doesn't look like...

Self Portrait

This felt really good.

Here's the reference I used. I was really focused on getting interesting lighting on my face.

In the painting, and in my art in general, I'm really focused on being patient.

Here's what it looked like along the way.

2023-11-13 01:16:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Student art

Some art my young students made for an upcoming art competition. These are 5-8 year olds. 

2023-11-11 21:20:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Surrealism in the Wild- Gouache Sketch

I saw this weird mannequin head on a stake among the trees in a parking lot. I took a bunch of pictures and painted it in gouache. Here's a video of that process. I also talk about keeping a sketchbook, drawing, experimenting with colors and using "acryligouache" for the first time, and my thoughts about why I painted this at all.

I hope you like this video, I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

I really love the song I did for this one but I'm not putting it on the secret Ch...

Basic Ass Portrait: Lessons about Painting From Playing Guitar

This is an Art Life Update about the recent art slump I slipped into. How I attempted to crawl out of the slump by painting a simple portrait. How that backfired. And How I eventually learned what the problem was through playing guitar. (please forgive the bad resolution of these images, these are screenshots from video I took of the process)

I'm going to make a video about an art crisis I had this week. That video will feature this painting. But, basically, I was worki...

Gouache sketch

About a year ago I saw this mannequin head on a stake in a parking lot surrounded by trees.

I found those pictures back in June or July and did a painting of it.

Now in my current art slump as I’m scavenging for stuff to make videos with, I found that footage of me doing this painting.

So I’m editing this 6 month old video of a year old picture. It’s kind of a little hidden gem! I’m trying to post it this weekend!

2023-11-09 02:32:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Drawing from bed

Today I bent over to pick up my cat’s water bowl and I got this sharp shooting pain in my lower back and it’s been hurting all day.

Luckily I was able to just lay down for most of the day and do some work from bed.

Choir member Katrin inspired me to add some line work to this watercolor.

Some bad art

Here’s some watercolor sketches I did recently. If you can call them that. These were to force myself to paint when I really didn’t want to. In a way they’re automatic paintings where I just mindlessly picked up the paint with the brush and put it down on the paper a bunch of times.

Sometimes this trick works sometimes it doesn’t. But if you don’t want to paint, just starting can sometimes lead you somewhere worth going. Sometimes starting is half the battle.

Even when...

Watercolor sketches

I did these two at the gallery last night while I was sitting there trying to sell some art

Painting session chaos

Just not feeling it lately. Worked pretty hard on the underpainting of this guy. Then ended up just picking up the pallet, smearing it all over the canvas, spraying water on it with a spray bottle, scratching it with the back of my brush, throwing a tube of paint at it, and other things.

Tried to paint something else afterwards. Didn’t work out.

Trying to put the positive “creativity will come” spin on it but I’m just honestly not feeling that way.

Little watercolor sketch

I was hanging out at the Hive last night for the downtown LA artwalk and ended up just painting this.