profession of my love.

oh my god. i just watched the new star trek and discovered chris pine. he must be the most beautiful man on the face of the earth. i need to meet him. just to meet him. oh man.

otherwise. i must agree that artists have extreme abilities to love, and i definitely am a passionate person.

if you know how to access chris pine, please inform me.

seriously.

please.

how the hell will i make money?

okay, so my visa bill seems to continuously climb regardless of my attempts to cut back on spending. given, it was christmas and i spent and easy $200 on my parents, how can i account for the other influx? i need to start making money again before i spend every last penny.

i have the option of working at hollister again after the season. i must accept this and earn some cash at least until i can find a job closer to my house, or maybe even pays better (but they pay pretty good downtown). i would love to sell some prints, which are cheap but add up. i have prints of the octopus, anastasia, the mannequin, octobird, and about 7 others i can't even think of at the moment. i organized all of them a few weeks ago. i just want to hypnotize people to buy my work since it obviously isn't selling on it's own.

maybe i could find a place to teach night classes for adults. like, every wednesday night i'd host a figure drawing class or a still life drawing class for seniors. that would be fun for me. but i think it would be a lot of work and dedication to finding models and gathering people to sign up. ugh. i'm hopeless.

i just want to be famous now and skip this hard work, but that's not how life is. i gotta keep entering competitions (which by the way, i just heard back from the elmhurst artist's guild that i did NOT win the current scholarship competition they're hosting) or applying to galleries. i need to get on my game.

Goals With My Art

For those who think art cannot support a fair living, here is a list of what i hope to accomplish.

1. Publish a children's coloring book of monsters
2. Run a gallery
3. Freelance
4. Illustrate for magazines, books, and newspapers
5. Teach a drawing class for outside artists

Every time i tell someone i am an art student, they look at me and say, "what can you do with that?" and i want to sometimes hit them because what can't i do? there are so many options for an artist to make a living, you just have to be dedicated to it. you have to want to eat, sleep, and breathe art, which i do. it is my passion, my life, my reason for being. i don't care if i don't make as much as a doctor or lawyer, i will love what i'm doing and it won't be work for me. it will be....it will be the most enjoyable part of my day knowing that i have taken on this challenge and completed a new work of art. my portfolio is my bread crumb trail, my foot prints along the path of life. each new piece pushes me farther down the road to success.

i am so happy with the life i have chosen for myself and i wish people understood that this is the only direction that would complete me.

School Stuff

so, starting january 4th i'll be back at school. i am definitely ready to be downtown again, but i must admit, i'm a bit nervous about my classes. i figure math will be a breeze, and illustration could be good (if we continue to do the same type of projects), but watercolor scares me. i was thinking about changing my major from illustration to watercolor, but i don't know anymore. i feel like my better work comes from my inks rather than paints.

perhaps i'm just scared because i want to succeed in that class specifically. i love watercolors, therefore i want to be accomplished. i haven't tried painting yet this break; i did a few acrylics but that was minor stress relief. grids have become an obsession of mine. i find them therapeutic. i think if i can finish one big painting this break i will feel very good.

i truly wanted to begin a new ink drawing: a seahorse. someone suggested i include some type of cocoon and crazy bat wings to hybridize it. that would be pretty sweet. however, there is a different sea creature i've been trying to work on for about a year now. i want to add color, but can't decide if i need more ink down first or not.

whatever i decide to do, i'm sure i'll be satisfied. i'll make enough prints so i can mess up on a handful and get different color schemes outta my system.

Updated My Website

I've been keeping my website up to date regularly, but I thought I'd announce it again.

CHECK OUT MY UPDATED SITE, PLEASE!

www.samanthadecarlo.com

here is what's featured:

This is the current featured piece entitled, Pillow. My friend Sean Daley picked it for me. I do not typically title my pieces. This second piece is called Chloe and the Octopus. It is by far my favorite piece I've done thus far as a sophomore. It began my new, more developed style. (Pillow directly followed Chloe and the Octopus.)

so i made this tripdic of myself and i have had a lot of feedback. not all of it was nice. some people, mostly girls, commented that i looked good (perhaps to be pollite), but the guys told me i look too cheap; they do not like the images. now. i do not know whether i should keep them up on my website or remove them. perhaps i need a second opinion. or a hundredth opinion.

For work (Maddock Douglas: Innovation Agency), I must create a "profitable product" that showcases my artwork. My first idea was to develop an unique line of playing cards, using hybrid animals on the face cards and redesigning the font. This idea, however, seemed unlikely to be completed by the end of august so I changed my theme: painted lamps.

I am very fond of this new direction, and I feel that I can achieve this in a few weeks once I produce my lamp "skeleton" (wooden posts nailed together to establish a rectangular-shaped box with an open bottom and top, a light bulb positioned in the center) and the rice paper on which I will print my drawings.

My design is simple: underwater themed since I personally love the creatures of the deep. I think I will draw octopi, starfish, sea horses, coral, and seashells. I intend on using either watercolors or sharpies to color in the design. The final product will resemble the dimly lit asian rice paper lamps.

Tell me, does this sound interesting? Or will this be a waste of time?

1. Purple buildings at night with golden lamp: taken my junior year of high school downtown chicago. I played around with hue/saturation and lighting techniques.

2. Reflection in water: taken at a forest preserve in Elmhurst. I played with hue/saturation and cropping.

3. The wheel: taken

at the same forsest

preserve. I barely

touched the picture.

I got really lucky with

the lighting that

day.

4. The pipe: taken at the same forest preserve and just saturated.

Artwork

1. The nude figure is ink (sharpie), watercolor, and gold leaf. Women's figure is so curvy and tends to be more fleshy, rather than muscular, so it never get too busy (especially if I dress her up). It's sold to a dear friend who requested a nude painting.

2. Photography is a love of mine, even though I have yet to take a course in it. Nature, textures and still lives really excite me; people...eh, not so much. I can never find a good enough model, and when I do try to use people, they never do what I want. So, I stick to things that DON'T move.

3. The photograph of the window was taken in my friend's dormroom at Eastern Illinois. I just so happened to be browsing through my pictures in the dark while everyone was asleep and set my camera to take pictures instead of view. The lens was pointing directly at the window and I saw it on my screen. I snapped it.

4. The charcoal portrait of one of my favorite models at school. He has such great expressions and is willing to be placed in any pose we, as students, give him. This is also my favorite drawing from my life drawing class. I turned this piece in as my final and, I am proud to say I received an A for the term!

5. Octobird is a combination of sharpie markers and prismacolor markers (I used the colorless blender). I first drew these images on separate sheets of ink paper (the two birds on one, and the octopus on the other) and photocopied them together onto cotton based paper. I then colored them in (about 8 hours) and then completed the background (2 hours). Birds and octopi happen to be my favorite animals to draw, so I just had to combine them!

Artist: Jeff Koons

This post is about art, despite its appearance of a pornographic rant.

One year ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago displayed the glorious work of Jeff Koons. Now, if you are not familiar with this particular artist, I will try to explain his work the best I can: FLIPPING FANTASTIC. Not only are his photorealistic pieces beyond unfathomable, but his attitude radiates from everything he creates. His "sass," as I refer to it, gives me giggles (Michael Jackson and Bubbles, anyone?). His paintings are not only complex, but so "mish-moshed" that it takes at least a full minute to figure out what the hell is actually in front of you. And his titles? Do not even get me started on those. Absurd. really.

Anyway, after I viewed his paintings in the first room (and being thoroughly impressed, might I add) I migrated to the next. Little did I know I would get a face-full of cleanly waxed vagina (and anal regions) and penis, penis, penis. This stuff was triple X! He actually had a piece depicting his own personal man-parts inserting into the model's vagina! (Thankfully he knew her. It was his ex-wife.) Now, I discuss this on a number of different levels: 1. How the hell does he get away with this? 2. Why am I so fascinated? and 3. How the hell does he get away with this?! Where is this fine line between tasteful artistic nudes and flat-out HARD CORE PORN? Is there a line? I'm really not sure.

Now, I am not saying that these pieces changed my mind about Jeffery, here. I still get the same sense of inferiority when I stand 2 feet away from his canvas, but I just want to know why he needed that "HOLY FUCK" factor (pardon my French) when he already achieved it with his paintings.

You must see for yourself.

http://www.jeffkoons.com/site/index.html

Will People Read Me?

Being as though I draw and NOT write, nor have I ever written, I fear this blog will make an ass of me rather than deepen my pool of artistic surveyors. Therefore, I must rely on my dry, sarcastic humor to gain interest and acceptance by you. You, the poor reader who must be cringing at my lack of literary knowledge. I apologize.

Instead of boring you till no end, I will get on with my promise of artistic enlightenment and whatnot.

Shall I begin with blatantly inserting my website? I think I shall...

www.samanthadecarlo.com