what's new

Here is what I have been working at this week.

I added more design on page 2-3


On page 4-5, I completely redone these pages. I think they turned out way better than the previous ones.

Here are some new pages that I have worked on.




Anyway, I have five more pages left to do for this section of my book...so soon this section will be done.

artist book update

Gurriella Graffiti Artist-Banksy

Artist: Banksy
Date viewed: February 13, 2008

I found out about this Graffiti Artist while I was surfing on the web. It turns out he's a pretty well know gurriella graffiti artist in the UK. With rumored celebrity patronage such as Brad and Angelina buying his work. They said nobody really know who he is because all of his work were done anonymously. They are some spectulation on wikipedia of who he might be, but I have not found any other sources. His work is direct to the point. One that caught my eye was his work where Queen Elizabeth II was having intimate contact with another woman. Though I started to think...if she was a lesbian...so what's wrong with that? Is he being homosexual paranoid, or is he trying to say something else? Have we gotten better the way we treat people that we might consider different from us? That will be a long discussion. Another image that caught my eyes was of a little girl bleeding and standing in the middle of a battle zone. What stricking was that the media takes pictures and footages of her, instead of helping her. I thought that image was pretty strong also. For the most part the images are in black and white, colors are sometimes use to emphasize what he is trying to convey to the audience.

He's murals are very popular. People actually take pictures of them, to sell them to make money. I like that his murals are in places that you would least expect art to be seen, like on the side of a building, next to a trash can, on windows,lockers, etc...I also noticed that he often uses a little girl on his work. Sort of taking the innocense of this little girl. Mice are also another images that reappers a lot in his work. I wonder if the rat is his alter ego.

Jungle Book

Art event 1
Location: Don Powell Theatre
Date: Feb 8, 2008
A new adaptation by Margaret Larlham

I took my little girl, Alicia, along with me to see this theatre show at SDSU last Friday. It was the opening of this new adaptation of Rudyards Kipling's Jungle Book. As we sat on our sit, there was a woman looking for a small person. She held a poster and walked around the room. What a way to set the audience for what about to come. When the curtain opened I was somewhat disappointed to see just a projection of an area of San Diego Zoo. The idea of the show was that, instead of the Jungle, the site was changed to the Zoo. When all the visitors are gone, that's when the Zoo really comes alive. What differs this more to the original is that a girl is playing the little boy (man's cub) part. Furthermore, my disappointment did not last for very long, as a spot light focused on what looked like a bird behind the screen, giving it some kind of special effect. The screen was then lifted, and our eyes feasted on a beautiful scenic design. At mid center stage a tree house, right stage a cave, on the foreground ropes hung around the sides. What more to say was that the costumes were also beautiful, every last detail was well though out. As far as the acting was concern, I had favorites, the goofy raccoon, her master the tiger, the leader of the wolves pack, and the bumble bee. If I were to change something on this production, it would probably some of the lighting. There were times where I felt some of the lights could have been turned off, like when the wolves took the little girl on left stage, and for awhile they stayed there. The lights that was lighting up the tree house could have been cancelled, to further focus on the actors on the left. I was also expecting the crew to take a bow at the end, but I waited for a little a bit, and they did not come out. We then decided to leave. Overall, I would recommend people to see this show. It was fun, and creative. There were mostly adults in the audience, but I strongly believe kids would love this show. It is so much better than those shows that they see at Disneyland.

class exercise

*image taken from the web

Oliver Herring

I don't really know about this piece. Spitting paint out in the air, that was unexpected. What can I say about that. I felt sorry for the guys, one of the guy with the red dye on his face look like he just came out the battlefield. This reminded me of some of the pictures that you see from war photojournalist, only this ones are not real. Nobody really got hurt. I don't know what to feel about the work. I did notice the blue eyes on one of the guys against his green face. I wonder what was his intention behind his work.

Abedini Reza and Saed Meshka

Saed Meshka


Abedini Reza



These artist are worth looking at. It's great to see graphic designers' work across the globe. Too bad we can't read what there saying, but the calligraphy are beautiful. I love the use of negative space, and I like that image with the bird just on the side of it. They look simple and interesting at the same time. Reza's use of text and images are effective. I like the man with texts coming out of his shirt. It's really catchy. I also like the use of color, his background pretty much is one color, while the images he uses make up for the color that is needed. I really wish I can understand these two man's work better. If only I can read the calligraphy. Thankfully one of the girl in our class was able to translate for us a little bit. I also checked Reza's website, and if anyone is interested there is a little bit more information on his site about his work.
Reza's website

Arturo Hererra

Experimental, very experimental. Love the abstraction of the images created by leaving the film in a glass of water. He also mentioned putting them in a cup of coffee...I'm trying to cut down on coffee, maybe I'll pass on that idea. I might end up drinking the coffee instead. Anyhow yeah, I thought the images were like collages, but only in an abstract way. No, I don't think you can do that with digital camera, he used a regular film. I remember when I took photography in high school we had to develop our film in the darkroom. Dipped them in some kind of chemical, can't remember what, then dipped then in water. That room had a strong smell, but it was fun. Our teacher had us experimenting with all kinds of stuff, like using paint after the pictures have been developed, or leaving them in water with bleach to get some kind of effect.

Tom Scott

I like the idea of finding some images on the sand at a beach. Saw bunch of trees, and I especially like it when there is something along with the sand like a stone, seaweed, etc...I wonder if those were set on there, or if he actually found them like that. It's like finding something on the clouds, only it's the sand on the beach. I wonder how he came up with that idea. I remember there was a student who took pictures of shadow before, that was cool. Hmmm what other things can you take pictures of with the similar idea?

Sarah Moon

I did not really like the audio on this piece, I thought it was rather too fast. I found myself trying to catch up with what she was saying. What I did like was that some of the shot were taken one after another, this gave them a sense of movement. I also like when she was talking about the little girl, and how beautiful her blue eyes were, and it started to close up on her eyes. Yes I thought she did have pretty eyes even without seeing the color because the photograph was in sepia.

The transistion was also different, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Maybe yeah
sometimes it feels like they were a stack of pictures being shown one after another. Other times I felt a little bit dizzy during the transitions. One thing I noticed the pictures were going as fast as her narration.

Artist's Book

Well I have started to think about what I wanted to do with the artist book assignment.
I know it is about a book of transformation...about maybe personal journal both the physical and the untangiable. Well I was thinking more about how can I represent something that is not tangiable...that is what I feel inside.

Digital work using Illustrator

I have just been practicing using Adobe Illustrator. Here is a sample of what I have worked on. Maybe I can use this along the way in my project. We'll see...anyway here is what I worked on. I made it into gif format using Photoshop.