Bit of a travel/photo blog this time around.


Looking up at the Buddha [link]

My initiation into Songkran (Thai "new year" and water "play" festival) this year was less than pleasant – a lot less. On reflection, it was "initiation by fire," in terms of metaphor, but "by water" in reality. I was walking through a marketplace in Sukothai – which mercifully sees a fraction of the number of foreign tourists that flood Chiangmai, where I currently live – and a kid sprayed the back of my travel companion with refreshing cold water, or what looked like it.


travel companion making a funny pose [link]

I glanced back to see the kid and hopefully receive a similar cooling douse, but instead found myself spitting out water he'd propelled directly in my face with a water gun. Given his height relative to mine the trajectory was perfect for directing a stream of water up my nose with enough force to drive it back down through the nasal passage.

Note – "squirt guns" have come a long way since I was a kid. These days they could put out a small fire. His "gun" had 4 holes, and it worked by forcing a long canister into a wider barrel. It was a kind of makeshift "super soaker" the more thrifty families use. That explains why it hurt, because you just don't squirt water up your nose with that much force.


water gun and buckets and windshield wipers [link]

I think I sputtered something like, "Not in the face," at the proud kid, knowing vaguely what if feels like to be "big game" having been shot, when I noticed him reloading his water gun. He was siphoning via a suction motion, from a cooler chest that previously had fish-for-sale in it, or maybe eels or frogs. It was cloudy, discolored water with foam at the top. Creatures had festered and maybe died in that water. It was a soup you'd never drink, and if you did odds are you'd expect to spend a lot of quality time on the toilet, and would probably have to pay the doctor a visit, and a premium.

So, I was pissed. Any kid – or anything more intelligent than, say, a snail or slug – knows aiming a jet of water in someone or something's face (something with eyes, a nose, and a mouth) is going to suck, and he definitely knows using stale fishy water is F'd up. In case there was any confusion about whether his aim was deliberate or not I saw another kid (or maybe it was the same one) shoot another foreigner in the face, close range, later in the evening, as I crossed the street to avoid getting soaked.

Songkran was originally a Buddhist holiday in which children poured water gently over their elder's shoulders as a sign of gratitude and respect. Nowadays it's more of a water war, relatively good natured among the Thai themselves, but re-interpreted by foreign visitors, such as we Americans, as a watery version of the battle of Fallujah. We western guests don't have the Buddhist background, so often think in terms of ambushes, sniping, guerilla tactics, evasive maneuvers, and an overall battle which can be won through guile, bravery, athleticism, and god being on our side. Otherwise we may think in terms of a wet T-shirt contest – for many, many foreigners Songkran revolves around titillation. Sukothai was refreshingly free of Westerners during the festival, so I got to see a more tame, traditional Thai version than I've seen in Chiangmai.


how the little bit older folk enjoy Songkran [link]

The second round of the water bout I faired a little better. I had to go to the bus station to reserve tickets for the trip home to Chiangmai, and this necessitated creeping out onto the main drag of the scheduled parade and general epicenter for water flinging concourse. In the time it took to get the tickets I was only subjected to a few cursory, gentle plashes of water, but on the way back arrived when the full mayhem was already in motion. Most of the action revolved around people in the backs of pickups trying to fling water at the people in the street or on the sidewalks, and vice versa. The pickups were outfitted with large blue vats of water, garbage cans, or even the largest outdoor fish pots. Meanwhile the sidewalks had giant water refilling stations and any and every other kind of container to hold water.


Boy at the water refilling station [link]


Refilling water buckets [link]

My friend and I had to make our way through the festivities in order to return to our lodgings, which we did by veering close to the buildings and walking behind the food and beverage stalls, and other small sectioned areas locals had erected for themselves in order to observe the goings on in relative comfort. We got drenched, but it was all basically lighthearted, and I was enjoying a more traditional Songkran.


First day of Songkran in Sukhothai [link]


Travel Companion Lani in front of a glasses shop [link]

Later we returned to observe the parade. Not as spectacular as what one would see in Bangkok or Chiangmai, but, rich with local color, and absent of the combat mentality westerners tend to bring to it, as well as any of the bar girl wet T-shirt and super short shorts spectacles.


Lady with peacock in the Songkran parade [link]


friendly guy with goggles, and his band [link]


Lady in green and yellow on a samlor, with escourts [link]

The next day we headed out for the "Historical Park" in the old city, to take in the famous ruined temples, giant Buddha sculptures, and remains of palaces. We made sure to get out of the new city before the festivities started up again. After cycling around and exploring the sites for a few hours, we ran into a big problem we hadn't anticipated. Songkran was being celebrated on the street directly in front of the park, and there was no public transportation to get us back to the new city for hours. Rather than sit and wait we decided to navigate through the heart of the revelers and catch a tuk-tuk or songthaew. We just underestimated where and when the festivities would thin out.


Sitting Buddha, Sukhothai Historical Park [link]


Another Sitting Buddha, at almost the same angle [link]


Bas relief figures, Sukhothai [link]


Big Hand Buddha (well, that's just the perspective) [link]

For the next few hours, and covering a distance of over 5 miles, unarmed and defenseless, we trudged through a continual onslaught of being squirted, splashed on, having our faces wiped with colored paste, and having iced water poured over us. For the eyes (and the camera) it was a great way to observe the celebration in all it's vicissitudes, but because we had no choice but to keep on, it became an endurance test. We felt like we were sitting ducks for any truck that came by, and any group of people along the side of the road.


The Road [link]

Those groups were worse, because the happy celebrators would feel obligated to pour water over us and reapply powder to our faces, not knowing how far we'd walked and how many times we'd been through this already. Maybe we were amassing massive good luck through all the ablutions, but it felt all the world like walking the water gauntlet. Not one tuk-tuk, songthaew, bus, or taxi for hours. Toward the end I began to enjoy less and dread more the next incidence of getting soaked.


kids in back of pickup [link]


another group in the back of a pickup [link]


taking a breather on the long walk [link]

Finally, my friend saw a "Big C" sign far off in the distance, and we assumed this would be the equivalent of "civilization." It's a major destination, I argued, and surely there would be public transportation there. When we arrived we made straight for our respective toilets, then met up, soaked and covered with powder, to get quick nourishment at the KFC. The A/C was fierce, and so we started to get really cold and had to eat outside. Oddly, nobody had hot coffee, which I craved like mad.

After eating we discovered I was wrong and there wasn't any public transportation, so the long trek continued. Finally I saw a lone tuk-tuk driver coming up behind us and hailed him over. He was happy to take us back to the new city. Too happy! Bless him, he was in the proper high spirits appropriate to the festivities in his own homeland. We were more like wet kittens hung over a railing. In his good-naturedness he slowed the tuk-tuk wherever there were those looking for targets, and so we got subjected to yet more water pummeling. But now it wasn't baking outside anymore, and the icy water wasn't welcome at all. My friend got a bucket of ice water hurled in her face, and I had to restrain myself from flipping off the people who threw it. Yes, sometimes, even in a more traditional festival, people go too far. It's the equivalent of a festival where people slapped each other on the bum, but it turned into kicking each other in the balls with steel tipped boots. It's impossible to not know that a bucket of ice water hurled in the face is somewhere between a firm slap and a punch.

To dry. To be dry. This was my quest. To only be dry. And warm.

A few more good rewettings and the driver, who was also getting his fair share, found a back dirt road that took us to our rooms. Once I'd had a hot shower and toweled off, I relaxed and reviewed some of my pics, thinking I was actually really lucky to have inadvertently been thrust into the belly of the celebrations for a couple consecutive days, especially as I only intended to circle around the periphery.


Standing Buddha [link]

Yo, cool cats, I just set up a blog, and it's gonna' be pretty cool. Check it out: [link]

follow me on facebook: [link]

Finally got around to a more in-depth offering on this work.


Rorschach Experiment 01 [link]

I haven't done a lot of non-representational pieces, and that has something to do with me thinking they are a cop out. Typically, one doesn't have to deal with subject matter or meaning. One doesn't have to call upon one's life experience (or lack thereof) or have anything significant to say. Just flinging paint about and having happy accidents, while gradually refining one's technique (think Pollack) seems too easy. The possible lack of content may explain why grandiose spiritual magnitude was heaped on the Abstract Expressionist works of the 50s. Less is not only more, it's gargantuan. Francis Bacon once had a criticism of American abstract art, which was that, if you were only going to work with color and texture, you'd do well to use extraordinary colors and not dull, faded color. He thought some of the art in question looked like "old lace". I can recognize the brilliance of a good Pollack canvas, but, still feel for myself that non-representational art could just not require enough of me or give enough.

The limitations of non-representational visual art have a lot to do with the mediums involved and how they are applied. If you're going to fling paint, spill it, apply it in broad knife strokes or with a squeegee… this can limit the possibilities of suggestiveness. But, if one were working in a way which could create imagery that evokes the external world, one could infuse it with the sorts of tensions, complexities, and poignancies of one's lived existence. This was the premise I had when I started this image. I wanted to create the kind of precision of a representational image – with subject, foreground, background, textures, and relationships between objects within it – without actually having anything recognizable in it. A musical approximation of this would be something like music with singing, but no lyrics, or at least no words which could be understood.

The full sized image is fairly large – 45 X 24 inches at 240 px – and there's a lot of attention to detail. Below are some close-ups:











While this is a non-representational image on the surface, I WAS working with meanings, and there is a bit of an interpretation? People will find various components of the piece suggest things to them (this probably could work as a Rorschach test if it didn't automatically say more about the creator than people's responses). Some people see a furry beast, fire, a brain, a profile, a nude… For me the focus is the swirly conglomerate in the upper left, which people have likened to a brain. I do see that as a kind of nexus of consciousness, perpetually self-defining itself and it's boundaries, entangling itself, while simultaneously existing in a field of swirling consciousness all around it.

I also see a relationship between the nugget-of-consciousness in the upper left and the undulating colorful stripes on the right, perhaps another quasi-distinct but less tangled consciousness, possibly in the process of unraveling. This had a bit to do with how one mentally separates oneself. artificially, from everything else: a process that is ultimately futile and self-defeating (where the only cure may be to let go of the illusion). Some of the colors suggest danger, such as burning. Overall it conjures an intelligence fluctuating between interior and exterior, dissolving and becoming, separation and integration, and all the while interacting with other apparent selves in a realm of flux.

Finally, a note on the process. As the title suggests, I started by just making some marks on a blank canvas within Photoshop, and then elaborating on whatever came about until I'd come up with something I thought was polished enough, held together, and was interesting.

Click on the thumb below to see a Flash animation showing 6 stages of the process.

I have a wicked sense of humor, and particularly when I'm feeling downtrodden or angry at the subpar condition of the world, it might unleash itself with a gleeful wrath. Recently I got a little fed up with the ascendancy and ubiquity of rather generic "fan art," and its success drowning out most other kinds of submissions here at DA, thus making it impossible for artists to get seen or have any hopes of selling their work. I decided to take matters into my own hands (or if not "matters" at least a drawing tablet), and lash out with funny fury at the fan art mentality, by making my own inferior brew of fan art. Over the course of a couple weeks I created 11 pieces, all deliberately horrendous in terms of anatomy, perspective, seemingly incidental unfortunate flaws, and other aesthetic barbarities. There were a few days where I was laughing so hard my stomach muscles got sore.

Here I humbly submit them for your enjoyment.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED ADMIRING THE CRAP OUT OF THEM, VOTE ON YOUR FAVORITE HERE: [link]



Pirates of the Caribbean [link]

I've never even seen this movie, but it pisses me off (sorry) because of all the goddamn, godforsaken, Pirates-fan-art I've had to slog through. I'm also a little bothered that the dude is wearing so much mascara, or whatever it is. So I really accentuated that and tried to make him look as ugly and stupid as possible. Note: Liked Johnny Depp in "Rum Diaries" (nothing against the actor, personally).

Next victim:



Naruto [link]

I don't even know who this dude is. Some blond ninja. I just got familiar with him through countless fan art renditions of him. Do generic fan art of Naruto and find yourself a demigod of art. I made this as cruelly distorted as possible. This is one sad-sack ninja! Make it ugly, and uglier, was my motto. The following are excerpts from critique/comments (hereon quotes from others will be set off in "blockqoutes" as below.):

wow! not even my dog could do this

A stunning realization of one of the most captivating animated series ever produced. Eric Kuns manages to perfectly capture the true meaning and feeling of what Naruto means to not only himself, but to millions of fans around the world. The depth presented in the character in the foreground perfectly compliments the striking motion of Naruto. The contrast between facial expressions also helps phone home the immense amount of thought and detail laid into this piece…

If Naruto is Japanese for "stinking wobbly pile of horse shit", then this is a faithful representation of the subject.

They called him Bruce [link]

Of course I know who Bruce is, and I'm rather a fan of his high-speed Kung Fu. The subject of the fan art isn't a problem here. I had fun exaggerating the scratches and blood one sees in his most famous portraits. There is also a joke about the semblance of his hair cut to that of Spock, or vice versa, depending on how you look at it.

Bruce and Spock all rolled into one, kickass, spaghetti sauce drippin' package. I wasn't aware, though, that his left leg suffered from malnutrition, that his left bicep was actually a 70 year old scrotum, and his right hand was attached to his arm the wrong way round.

Jimi Hendrix [link]

Hendrix was an incredible musician, so I'm not having a go at him per se, but rather at the myriad of rather racist depictions/caricatures of him that keep cropping up. Hasn't anyone realized that grotesquely exaggerating his lips plays into the tradition of "black face" and classic racist depictions of blacks? Man did I butcher that guitar. It looks like some sort of "floaty" for wading in the pool. Despite my best/worst efforts, this one has some merit and the music bellowing out of the neck of the guitar captures some of the quality of his out-of-bounds solos. The camel shadow is purely incidental.

Oooooh, it's a guitar! Sorry, I thought it was a wobbly, pink, pizza topping spewing, rainbow coloured squiggly shit generator. Oh, that's an afro! Sorry, I thought someone had dropped some steel wool into a bucket of purple dye. Also, it's well known that Hendrix was left handed, it's not so well known that he played using a pile of dog shit wearing a pink thimble as a substitute for his right hand. It's safe to say I'll never look at Jimi in the same way again.

Spiderman [link]

Spidey is often drawn in these really exaggerated foreshortened poses, usually with extended hands shooting webbing, and the unfortunate necessity of artists to render his crotch area. You know, I really had to work at butchering the anatomy here. I had to draw and redraw the muscles to get them just wrong. Finally I started inventing muscles and allocating blobs of meat where there aren't any, and putting them on the wrong sides of his joints (i.e., twin bulbous biceps below the elbow). His right leg was intended to flop away like the tail of a kite, and the incidental placement of his left foot is really deliberately unfortunate because it looks like a big Spidey priapus. Note that this piece has gotten several reviews, including serious ones and ones that are hilariously vicious. Below are a few excerpts of the critiques it's received:

You have been getting everything wrong because you are starting in an area which requires extensive knowledge to get right - muscles.

It looks like he has butts sticking out of his armpits. I don't even recognize any feet. All I see is a floppy tail and a red penis.  

There are no redeeming qualities from this artwork, there is nothing to teach or learn. The only thing that should be learned that trash like this should be burned and forgotten…  

The muscle structure is completely blobberific, it looks like a gumball truck which collided with a used prophylactic stuffed full of walnuts, and finally came to rest in a heap of oversized potatoes…
… this really makes an impression, in the same way that a lump of dog shit leaves an impression on a goatskin rug.

Arnold Schwarzenegger [link]

I'm kinda' OK with Arnoldo, mostly because of the those Terminator movies. He did once really piss me off because of a very persuasive speech endorsing Bush, in which he repeatedly hammered away with, "If you (insert perfectly reasonable sounding characteristic here): you are a Republican!" Anyway, a great opportunity for me to butcher more muscles, put a thumb on backwards, and give him a little, teenie, tiny hand in addition to one as big as his head.

I am so confused... does he only have one pec? Are you sure you aren't cross-eyed? Is this abstract?

dud ur wrk is ttly awsme, sry did i say awsme i mean shit.

The Little Mermaid [link]

Never seen the Disney version, but have seen plenty of  "Ariels" on DA. Among other clever innovations in making her a ugly as possible, I made the fish scales going the wrong way and continuing on up past her waste to cover her whole body, and her nostrils are innovatively on the outside of her nose (prompting one of my critics to describe it as a two-eyed trouser snake). I believe the crab may be doing something inappropriate to Ariel with one of his pincer claws. Can you blame him? Er, yeah, probably.

Hey, Eric, are you sure you haven't lost your mind?!

Her eyes are like diseased coral adrift in misshapen pools of seawater, which have been flooded with raw sewage. And BTW is that a nose, a two eyed trouser snake, or a salt shaker with double vision? Either way, it's an abomination.

Marilyn Monroe [link]

Not particularly a fan of Marilyn either, though I'm interested in the tragedy revolving around her personal life towards its premature end, which kind of makes me think of this piece:

She's beautiful, sure, whatever. I don't care. In lieu of me describing this image, other than saying the Picasso influence should be fairly obvious to the art-history-literate, I'll leave it to my critics.

Holy shit! Her right nostril has migrated to her cheek!

Yep, looks like her for sure, maybe two months after she died.

Sonic and Amy [link]

These game figures are enormously popular (not mine, but the originals), but I couldn't care less about them. I just went about inventing new ways to get everything wrong, nimbly taking cues from children's art and Picasso. You can see things like the socks from two distinct angles: the top of one sock will be as if looking down into it, and the other will be as if looking at the side. Appendages and features are moved and rearranged drastically (Amy's nose is definitely on the side of her mouth and not above it!), and the hands are rendered as if I didn't know what hands or fingers were and just used them as design elements. I also cleverly put the joined eyes in front of the character's muzzles instead of behind them. In the end this became almost a beautiful abstract composition.

cocaine is a hell of a drug

Drugs.

Zomg....I dont mean to be a dick,but it looks like they just got raped up the but...

Superman [link]

I used some of the same techniques I developed on Arnold, Spiderman, and Marilyn to transform Superman into a grotesque mutation and mockery of him. Note that the placement of the airplane and cloud make Superman impossibly large.

Why am I attracted to this

Superman by EricKuns is yet another classic rendering of a great superhero. Sure, the anatomy isn't perfect, I mean unless you call a bunch of grapes fighting to escape a giant blue condom "perfection". The anatomy is spot off, and those hands! Wow. Just wow. I love the red corrugated iron sticking out the back of his neck, too.

The thumb is especially beautiful.

this is craptacular how is super man is bigger than than the plane?i think you may need glasses.

Oh my God!! This is so realistic. I especially like the true-to-life depiction of his clenched fist and his 32948729387-pack abs.

Your process worked so well! It really does look like a real fist. Plus the scale of the airplane is amazing. It looks huge.

Some groups understandably didn't want him to join the ranks of their super heroes

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REJECTED BY:
  

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Gollum [link]

The last in the series. This one was quite difficult because he's already a monstrosity, so it was challenging to keep it recognizably him while further mutating him, while also making it look like a plausibly serious work. Please notice the Escher-esque perspectival mishap with his left hand, that is both behind and in front of his left leg. It might escape the casual viewer at first, but he could get the ring past his wrist and up over his elbow it's so big. Below are excerpts from comments. Nobody made a critique yet.

Looks he traded his foot with an elephant and let his hair grow.

More like a sunburnt ostrich

YTF are his nostrils on the outside of his nose? And exactly why have you made his right foot look like a malformed parsnip?

Not to mention the completely misaligned eyes on the foul beast!

I thought that was where he was clawing his way through the snotwork platform, and his fingers left impressions in the snot. My bad.

My Gollum was rejected by a half dozen groups which had sense enough to realize he was a joke, I think, though some of them let in just the kind of trite, commonplace fan art that this piece satirizes. Here are the groups that bounced it so far:

REJECTED BY:

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If this cruel injustice upsets you, you can venge yourself by faving the living shit out of my funny fan art and helping propel it up from the bottom ranks of deviations to the next lowest rung. That'll show 'em! Actually, can't really blame groups for bouncing deliberately bad art, and 19 groups accepted it, including this shit:

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Vote on which is my best Fan Art deviation in this slick poll: [link]

Finally, if you prefer serious art, that isn't fan art, or booby art, or cosply, or other DA-popular-fare, you can visit or join my contemporary fine art group here:

Some of these works might seem a bit surprising in a fine art context, but I found them compelling for reasons I'd like to share. Other's I just wann' talk about. The following are my impressions/interpretations and may not reflect the artists' true intentions (in which case I hope they will forgive me).



"spo," by dancretul [link]

To some this might be a pleasing photo of a mother and daughter, but the composition, color scheme (the use of orange and the sort of aquatint coloring effects) make it exceedingly elegant. The back of the chair takes up a full third of the photo, and its ergonometric curves give the whole image a chic 60s European look (somehow reminiscent of vintage Jaguars or of the Concord) whichI find very appealing.




"Venus of the Sprawl," by Jabbarwock [link]

This might seem like typical "bad boy" art at first, merely being irreverent and lashing out. However, I believe the artist shows compassion for Minnie Mouse, and his description is telling. He states: "given consciousness, would these icons choose to remain what they are?" Here we have a Disney character, horribly despondent at her own creation/existence – something like a Frankenstein's monster – crying oversized cartoon crocodile tears while butchering herself. She has the mouth of a slobbering hound, and sumptuously ideal breasts. In all the mixed effect is attraction/repulsion, comedy/ridicule, sadness/pathos, empathy/projection, and a general "dichotomous" feel, to use the artist's word. Overall I find this image quite sad.

[Note: I was inspired by this piece and the idea of sudden incarnation in a previously unconscious thing – such as a cartoon character – to knock out the light, humorous image below (not really fine art though):






"127," by ViestursLinks [link]

There may be no mystery why I included this photo. As I commented on the artist's deviation, "I really love this photo. The lighting and composition are great, and the incidental details like the reflections on her glasses, the pattern on her dress, the other patterns in combination with wrinkles on her laundry, and the diagonal line patterns behind her make it really phenomenal. Also the stark black and white contrast is emotional." Despite the plebeian subject matter, this photo is "classic" in it's composition, and I marvel at its brilliance like I'd admire an opponent's winning strategy while playing chess.




"Two suns in the sunset," by Asiulus [link]

What first struck me about this piece was the boldly exaggerated horizontal composition, which alone is enough to carry the image. Not only is the geometry exquisite, who could resist the vivid splash of red blood-paint erupting from the woman on the right's face and drifting or being sucked into the yellow space behind her? Only after looking at this image for a couple of minutes was I rewarded with the realization that both the women are the same person from two angles, and the one in the foreground has something like a black orb resting/hovering above her loosely clasped hands. In fact I don't know exactly how to interpret this image, and the artist's title and description are sufficiently poetic and enigmatic to elude my grasp. What I do know is that it's beautiful, complex, and inspiring with its originality of concept and execution.

I've already included a second  intriguing illustration by her in the gallery:






"Romance..Walks on the Beach...," by *MichelleLynn725 [link]

How about this one? The curlers in her hair, the dangling cigarette, the concentrated slight scowl, and the vintage photographic quality of a Polaroid (I don't know if it is or isn't) make this image seem a lot older than it probably is, and exude character to the point of caricature. One has the sense of a very real person at a specific time and place, which in turn gives it an air of quintessential timelessness. What makes this piece even more striking is that it's a self portrait, which also brings to light the way in which the artist decided to depict herself. The artist has succeeded in immortalizing herself here. Once you've seen this photo, I doubt you'll forget it, or her.

Not a one-snap-wonder, you can see another of her many poignant self-images here:






"Dear _______," by *DeerlyDeparted [link]

Don't be fooled by the pastel colors, delicate drawing style, or young-looking girl with white hair and a fringe! This is NOT another frilly feminine fantasy offering. At first I was attracted to the use of two images one above the other, the thinly vertical proportions of the image as a whole, and design elements such as the stylized smoke/vapor emanating from her mouth. Then I read the description: " Look, I'm really glad you found god, but don't you come preaching, you're the reason I stopped believing. (you were around more when you were still using)." The encounter encapsulated in those two sentences is so suggestive I had to look up at the image again to see how this was reflected in the drawing itself. Then I noticed two of the outstretched hand's fingers had been recently cut off, and even more shocking are the missing strips of skin from the woman's arms which the hand presumably reaches toward. This image contains a rich story of probable addiction, recovery, proselytizing, and the tension and history between two individuals. It's beautiful, but stings and aches and hurts. There's more pain than pretty here.

I have an additional, rather peculiar piece by her as well:






"Venom," by LEQUARK [link]

This is probably the single piece that, on the surface of it, least belongs in the gallery, because it so resembles fashion photography, and I could easily imagine it getting a DD. So why did I include it. 1) = It's flipping gorgeous. 2) = It was submitted around six months ago and only has 23 favs. When I saw it I hesitated, then threw out my preconceptions and just had to acknowledge the sheer beauty, such as in the texture of the long strands of hair, and its honey/wheat color. The asymmetrical hand positioning, interlocking fingers, and the oversized turquoise ring accentuate the underlying bone structure of the hands, when hands in such an image could otherwise be inconsequential. The gradient in the background and color match the model's eyes, and her seeming unblinking stare give credence to the title: Venom. If  this image IS fashion, it is an example of an instance where the art transcends the genre, and in my opinion elevates itself out of the realm of craft and into that of fine art.

To be continued…

You could say I created this group out of frustration, because a group for "contemporary art" simply doesn't exist on DA. Why not? And why is "fine art" so marginalized here? There must be tens of thousands of art majors out there cranking out the "fine art," but mostly we see those that do "fan art" instead. And the professionals – those who made it in the fine art world – they appear to be elsewhere.

And yet DA has such a great interface for displaying art and communicating with other artists, it's really a shame if artists who do "fine art" have become sidelined by more popular art forms. I have a theory that some artists might get frustrated with the scant attention their best pieces receive, when a rather generic drawing of a wolf or big cat will get hundreds of favs. Stuff that's syrupy schmaltz will be awarded Daily Deviations, while ambitious works with serious content won't even quality for consideration. Sorry, your best paintings are, well, just not conventional enough, but that emoticon is the bomb!

Partly I don't mind the democratic nature of DA at all. If most people are more interested in cosplay, fan art, light erotica, fantasy, and other pop stuff, than let them enjoy it and support it. But it does seem a shame that a lot of really serious art just slips through the cracks within minutes of submission, and unless the artist really gets out there and promotes it will quietly be buried under hundreds of thousands of subsequent submissions, never to be seen again.

So, because there wasn't a safe haven for "fine art," where it wouldn't automatically be trounced by mediocre fan art, playful cosplay, or light erotica, I finally decided to make one.

And here are some of the first submissions (including one obligatory one by yours truly):


Look at the color on this beauty, by abcartattack [link] This was all done with stencil, and no computers.


This digital painting by Aelur [link] is quite unusual and original. Just look at the two women's faces for a moment.


This piece by Metalromantic [link] is a little unsettling and unusual, while also having a strong personal, emotional flavor.


stomachlinedinlace [link] also does provocative, and challenging personal work.



mr-squirrel [link] has done a traditional style fine art oil painting here, but something I've never quite seen before.



Skirill [link] asserted that this wasn't intentionally about stilling the mind, but it captures it so well. He has a lot of similar macabre surrealist pieces.



While in general I'm not accepting photography (well, not the fashionable sort of still life water drop type of stuff) I can't resist gorgeous photos such as this one, featuring an old man and his dogs in Cuba, by oscarsnapshotter [link]

Lastly, here's one by me:



This is probably my least appreciated new work. It's a montage taken completely from photos I took while living in a small city in China. There's no stock art. It's not a fantasy manipulation. I can see this is beautiful and compelling, and some others can, but most groups have bounced this like a rubber turd. Ah well, one of the privileges of having my own "fine art" group is I can accept my own vastly rejected "fine art." If you don't like it, try just looking at the way the lantern is gently floating away. You have to give fine art a chance.

Hope you'll visit the group, join up, and submit your fine art. I'll NEVER let in any schlock, kitsch, schmaltz or drivel, so you don't need to worry about your inbox getting full of crap from me.

Eric

This started out just as an idea. I thought if I put my digital camera on the floor facing up, it would be stable to take a picture of me, but I'd be looking down. I could easily set the distance by setting the focus on the ground, and then keeping my head about the same distance above the ground when I put the camera back down. Just for fun I reached my hand down as if I were going to pick up the camera. It worked. That's why I look a bit odd and my shirt is riding up on my neck and gravity is pulling my face forward a bit… Uh, usually I have a neck!

Then, I'd been taking pictures all day in the small city I live in, in China, and had been thinking of things to do with the photos, and some painterly things I could do to make up for the fact that my camera is crap and the inherent quality of the images is not good enough (some of my very best photos get rejected by photo groups because the fine detail isn't crisp enough…). So, I started trying one such experiment, and it came together rather quickly. Refining it was a nightmare of about 5-6 hours once I'd hammered out the basics, but I still finished it in a few days.

I don't do self-portraits often at all, and there aren't a lot of photos of my in the world. That this piece became a self portrait is a kind of a lucky coincident.

[And I wanted to try to put a full-sized image into a journal entry.]

'case y'all wanna' comment on it: [link]