Insanity...jeez

I really can't take it anymore. Studying day in day out. It's maddening and I think I've gone a little loopy myself! I'm up to HERE with it (action: leveling hand at forehead). There's so much riding on the exam tomorrow but my motivation not to mention my productivity has cracked.

Here's a preview of the portrait I've been working on for like since... ...er ...since I last mentioned I was working on something. It looks like I've done so little and that's 'cos I have done so little and it's far, far from going to be finished. Maybe you could take a swipe at who it is but good luck there 'cos I totally failed with the proportioning. Fat-face syndrome seeping into my drawing. Hope it doesn't become a thing.

wip-nh

I always thought that unfinished work was very intriguing even sometimes more perfect than seeing finished work (though not in this case I have to admit). Seeing how the layers were put together from the initial sketch marks to the toning that animates life. I really want to see how the completed turns out.

Back to try-na-focus =(

Oooh look a BEAR!

Still snooping on smh. What have we here? Ta da! A polar bear made from a solid block of ice. All the things that pop into my head: ephemeral art; artist Andy Goldsworthy; the environment; ...animal sculpture so Jeff Koons' Puppy.

And since it's a bear:

Spike: "A bear! You made a bear!"
Buffy: "I didn't mean to!"
Spike: "Undo it! Undo it!"

Sculptor Mark Coreth rides his life size ice polar bear in Circular Quay in central Sydney. Photo: Reuters

House on the Flight of Birds

Just to do a bit of reminiscing... like the good, old days of arch studying. Saw this on Sydney Morning Herald and well - wow.

House on the Flight of Birds by architect Bernado Rodrigues

 

It looks like the stuff done in google sketchup back in first year semester one. All the wacky, crazy, abstract forms and the highly discretionary use of colour. I almost miss those days - but I don't. They were days of hell I say, but some of the designs were fun to do. And like all experiences, things get better nearing the end. 

Sonic!

Heh! Ah Sonic. The good old days.

I thought this flipbook was really awesome when I saw this clip. Props to the creator. The old vintage style of motion pictures kinda brings back the feeling of naive belief of magic and wonder experienced when you're a kid (well, it does for me anyway) and everyone remembers Sonic the Hedgehog!

Loopy - loop

I thought a bit about my comment on House of Stairs II about the whole "repetitive loop" but that seems to be a reoccurring theme in most of Escher's works. Like in Reptiles, Ascending and Descending, Drawing Hands, Metamorphosis III...and so many more -but just to name a few of my favourites. I do however believe the loop works better in these works than in House of Stairs II. The 'story' shall I call it works better because it's on small scale. Whereas the grandeur in House of Stairs II was, in my opinion, too ambitious and destroys the delicacy of a simple concept of a continuous cycle. In saying so, I much prefer House of Stairs I than II. The continuous loop was presented in the play on perspectives in a nice 'bite size' for the viewer without the need for the additional over the top replica in scroll. Proves the point that sometimes less is better than more.

Reptiles, 1943, MC Escher, lithograph.

Ascending and Descending, 1960, MC Escher, lithograph.

Drawing Hands, 1948, MC Escher, lithograph.

House of Stairs II

I knew there was a House of Stairs but I didn't know there was a House of Stairs II!! MC Escher was just such an obsessive guy wasn't he?

This work would have been so much more amazing if it weren't a repetitive loop. Not that it isn't an insane lithograph. It's incredible! Look at it, he uses a single source of light for the multiple dimensional planes stitched together in one drawing. ...but still the repetitive loop.

House of Stairs II, 1951,  M.C. Escher, lithograph.

You know I actually thought the little critters were cute back in the twelfth grade but now...yugh. Still extraordinary though.

Wish fulfillment

Your wish is my command ...but too bad for you this ain't real buster!

Sigmund Freud theorized that some dreams that we had were in the form of wish fulfillment. Our subconscious - our personal genie - would resolve our internal conflicts by granting our deep desires, realising them while we were asleep. Some in crude form where the manifested content (what we saw in the dream) equated to the latent content (the meaning of the dream) without the encrypting process in between which he termed dream work causing the manifested content to be symbolic of the latent content but totally quirky and weird-ed-out. These dreams are mainly infantile but as we approach adulthood our subconscious develops a preferred taste for the cryptic.

Freud describes thirst at night being comforted by a dream of drinking just to get us to keep sleeping (gosh our subconscious is devious!). And dreaming about already being wake, too (are you sure are subconscious ain't evil, leading us on to an eternal sleep - it's the witch and we're Sleeping Beauty!). But the point is if you really and truly were hoping for something...

"An idea merely existing  in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of accomplishment." (Freud, Dream Psychology)

Moving onto cryptic dreams the realisation of the wish is still there, just that our subconscious works in such a witty and fascinating way it is able to extraordinarily condense so many elements of our conscious and unconscious knowings into the production of our wish. Ergo the metaphors and similes and double sided meanings - the fun stuff of rhymes and riddles.

I want to come to the part of  'combined people,' though this is probably sliding on a tangent to the topic of granting wishes, but this is interesting and a bit grotesque.

"I can build up a person by borrowing one feature from one person and one from another..." 

So I'm thinking we can imagine up extraordinary mythological creates like griffins, Pegasus, centaurs... or we can start creating zombies! We are Frankenstein or some talented plastic surgeon.

Then we can start piecing together environments from what we know and go all Inception on things.

This is far as I want to go for now on dreams but I might continue on some other strings to it when I come to them. So for now I bid you adieu.