it’s been a while and i’ve done a lot of work since my last post… so i shall get y’all back up to date.

AP Art has been cranking 1+ art piece a week out of me, so i am currently drowning in work. only my breadth work has been photographed so that’s what i’ll post. i’m also seven pieces into my concentration, but i will post that at a later date so it can be viewed as a whole.

i also felt that i should probably post some of my images from my trip to england… over the summer… that i never posted. it’s about time, eh? i loved being in england; it was an incredible trip. we also ventured up to scotland which, if i ever become wildly rich and famous, will house my summer home. it was beautiful. even the sky was incredible. the air there is so clear, which makes everything more vibrant… it truly feels like the mountains live and breathe. i loved it! without further ado… travel pictures and art!

the art media include charcoal, photography, gaouche, colored pencil, watercolor and pen and ink.

first, my erlynmeyer flask piece… done in graphite.

second, my “cosette of the flies.” this is a piece done in chalk pastels. it actually came out vastly different than i had intended, but it now among my pieces that i am most proud of… it was named by a friend of mine, as she thought the subject reminded her of cosette from les miserables: beautiful, but dirty.

third is my yet untitled mixed media piece. this was inspired by a photo i took in bath, england over the summer… i took a fair amount of artistic license with it, making it more expressionistic, distorted and grungy. overall, i’m pleased with the results…

i’ll be updating again soon, i have some work still at school needing to be photographed… but i hope you enjoyed the little update… thanks for looking!

however, in my time avoiding the aforementioned piece, i have done two other pieces. one is a piece dove that i made last year as a shirt design for a charity walk against sex trafficking. for more information on the issue, please see here: http://www.sharedhope.org/

the design i made wasn’t chosen, though a different one i made was. either way, i am still very proud of this piece. i originally made it in photoshop and it took about 27 hours. i made the majority of it with a 3px brush. my grandparents requested a version of it to go in their beautiful home, so i had originally planned on having it printed at my mother’s photography lab… however that was going to prove costly, for something i could easily replicate myself. i did it in pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper. the second version took only about 3.5 hours to complete. the original, the piece and a detail of the tail are below.

hope dove, original, made in photoshop

hope dove, pen and ink

hope dove detail

in an effort to de-stress myself about the painting i am having time with, i decided to paint with no plan. sometimes that’s the best way to do things. i find that’s how some of my best work comes to be. i decided to do something the go with my poppy painting, but had no other thoughts but that i wanted to finger paint it… so i did! and this is what came of it. 

poppies, by alexis jae

poppies detail

so, yes. that is what i have been up to lately! thanks so much for reading!

                   lately, i have spent quite a bit of time laboring away in my art space, located in our scenic basement. i am starting a mini project of portraits of my family. as there are four of us, i want to do four 12″x12″ canvases, to be displayed in a square. as i was still trying to figure out exactly how i wanted to approach the task, i figured it best to experiment on my own face… (plus, i needed a profile picture!) and i am happy to say that i am please with the results. below is my most recent self-portrait.

self portrait, by alexisjae

                    my mom is a professional photographer, and so i am very comfortable with a camera and she has taught me quite a bit. i have a tendency to go through lulls in the frequency with which i take photos, but the summers always prove a peak. just ask any one of my friends, they will testify to my torturing them, constantly taking pictures. i will now get to the point of this story… a few days ago, i noticed some pretty little dandelions in our backyard. now, i have always been one for wildflowers… weeds, notsomuch… however, i love the big fluffy ones! they always seem very optimistic and rarely can i resist the urge to go give them a big blow and set all their little seeds sail. in some ways i will always be a small child. so, i saw them and decided since i had a few spare minutes to go and take a couple pictures. i came up with a few i quite liked. the one below proved an inspiration for a more abstract painting of mine. i intended it to be more in my typical style, however, my brush had a different vision. i kept fumbling through mistakes, continually unhappy with my work, and so i decided to go a different direction, and am quite pleased with the results. so, without further ado, the inspirationa and the product…

dandelions, by alexisjae

dandelions, by alexisjae

                 as you can see, very little of the painting is reminiscent of the picture, but you can still see where i started from and where i ended up. 

                 i am currently working on another portrait, which still has a ways to go, but i will be updating again upon its completion. thanks again for reading!

-alexisjae

as previously stated, i have found a love in portraits… people are by far my favorite subject, so i thought i would post some of my work and how its evolved for you… and just some other general school assignments too.

this is my first large painted portrait. it was how i really defined my style. it was the first time i ever painted in black and white and its become a favorite method of mine since. perhaps its from my roots in drawing, but i love the simplicity of it, how you can almost carve away at the surface of the painting… letting the form take shape, not by painting the form, but rather its shadows… i did this one when i was fourteen.

a painting of my friend, amber

since then i have continued with portraiture and experimenting with both black and white, but the effect of color…

these two paintings i did this week…

a portrait of my friend, kali

a portrait of my friend becca

that’s what i have done portrait-wise recently… now on to other works? i think so.

i have been fortunate enough to go to a small school with an incredible art program. this year i did an independent study under the supervision of the same teacher that i have had for the last three years, and who i will again be studying under next year for ap art. throughout my classes with her, we have copied the masters in an effort to learn their style of painting. to follow their brushstrokes, examine the process and repeat it. i have done everyone from degas and renoir to kunstler and o’keefe. this year my course was all painting. these were some of my pieces that i did and then the original works…

this was a mort kunstler piece that i labored and toiled over for ages. its titled “the last meeting”… the amount of detail in this painting is mindblowing. i think i put about 27 hours into this painting. the first image is the original and the second is my replica.

the last meeting, by mort kunstler

the last meeting, by me

this painting is georgia o’keefe’s “jack in the pulpit.” i got to chose which of her paintings i wanted to paint and this one i found so inspiring. it was so incredibly fluid, yet solid, with a strong presence. it was a great visual balance between masculine and feminine. when i painted it, it was the first time i had ever worked with oils. again, hers is first, mine is second.

jack in the pulpit, by georgia o'keefe

jack in the pulpit, by me

and of course, some more original work, though these are still school assignments. the first is a still life watercolor. i have never been too friendly with watercolors. i’m a bit too much of a control freak, i’ll admit. i love chaos, but it needs to be organized chaos. consequently, i have always loved the flexibility of acrylics and they still stand as my favorite medium. however, this was probably the first watercolor i would deem a true success. they were perfectly suited to the glass and myriad of colors that they were casting on each other. 

still life, watercolor

and finally, my last piece for today. our assignment was to do an original piece in the style of van gogh. i have always been a bit of hippy, the blood truly runs through my veins… and nature is something i find captivating. i love fields and flowers and big blue skies… so what could be better than a field of flowers with a big blue sky? and so thats what i did. i drew out my composition, piecing together parts of about three different pictures and then painted from there… and this is what i got.

field of poppies, by me

i believe that that is all for today. thanks again for reading. i hope you enjoyed your stay.

 i don’t mean to say that at a young age i was self-aware enough to think that i was lost in a big world, to question who i was, what my purpose was… i was always a thinker, but it took awhile for me to become philosophical. by “finding myself” i mean in respect to the art world. art has such an incredible history, from its primitive roots in distant caves to its perfected and refined stages of the renaissance to its shocking developments of abstraction and expressionism, art has morphed in its definition. but now, in the 21st century, in a time where art is the most diverse and exciting it has ever been… how does one find themself in this crazy world? how does one define themself? what is there to do that has not been done? monet was rebellious, pollock was a revolutionary, warhol was innovative… yet, can art still be new? can one person really affect the art world that way anymore? 

around age fourteen, i finally found myself in regards to art… i developed a style… i found a passion within a passion: portraits. i love the human form, but especially the face. the face holds such copious amounts of information. a slight twinge of a muscle conveys a completely different emotion. our faces are our most definitive features, what separate us the most. through my portraits i try to do one thing: portray an accurate representation of my subject… but not only through technical accuracy, but through expression, emotion and imagination… my goal is to allow the viewers to not see my art, but see the soul of the subject… 

and so, this blog is a representation of me as i grow through my craft… its a representation of the people that i paint, often those i hold dear… and its a place for me to express who i am and what i hope to be… i hope you enjoy your stay…

my first painting: age seven