Kent State do the splits

Lately I've been putting together the artwork and layouts for the next three Kent State releases. Can't wait to see them all pressed and put together!

Just a few sketches

in collage form.

the last three quick photo-assemblages will likely be used for the next three Kent State EPs.

listen up!

Vend Send Mend

Vend Send Mend is a project started by two of my former classmates, Craig Bowers and Jee-Shaun Wang.  It is a fundraiser for disaster relief in Japan, and over 60 artists contributed work to be auctioned off for the cause.  Here was my piece for the event, I decided to an experimental collage piece:

Hieronymus Bosch figurine not included.

Flappy New Year!

One year closer to the Apocalypse. Can't wait!

So far I've had a pretty productive break. I finally started and finished the portrait of my grandparents that I'd been promising them I'd do for a while.

...I tried.  I shaved a couple years off 'em.

Then I decided I'd do a couple little pieces for fun. These are going to be hanging up in Patterson Perk on Eastern Avenue, along with some framed collages, the Wanderin' mind, some wacky wall sculpture I'm finishing now, and more!

Kit Gloves. Collage and acrylic on two 6" wood panels.

And for good measure, here's a peek at my thesis as of the end of fall semester.

Next semester I'll be making four more box constructions, and then documenting all of the pieces and putting them into a hand-bound book.

Thanks to Janna Morton for taking pictures, I was so sleep deprived on the last day of class that I forgot my camera!

Egor the Brave, page 5

This is my last box construction of the semester. While I definitely had a good time... I'll be glad to have a month-long break from whittlin' little horses and the smell of wood glue.

I might try to add another layer in front of the trees on the left to add a little more depth, and put a few more highlights around the house frame shape at the top.

I also tried using a new technique that I found here to put text on wood panels that will accompany the box constructions.  So far I've made five, one for each of the boxes I've made so far.

And to close, as always: 

better, updated photos of everything will be posted when I complete this project in May!

Egor, Page 2

Ongoing work on my thesis, illustrating Egor the Brave, a Russian folktale.

This is page two, where Egor and his three sisters are being captured by the evil tsar and his army.

Better photos of all of these will be up at the end of the year!

Page one of "Egor the Brave"

In the seventh year, in the eighth millennium,

In the reign of Tsar Feodor,

Sofiia the Wise gave birth to three daughters,

And the fourth was a son, Egor the Brave:

His legs were in pure silver up to the knees,

His arms in red gold to the elbows.

Details:

Senior Thesis

So midterms are quickly approaching, and I have yet to blog about Senior Thesis! I've been working on making box constructions that will be used as illustrations for a Russian folk tale: Egor the Brave.

My hope is that these will be readable as illustrations, but also interestingly esoteric and strong enough to stand alone as individual artworks.

This is my messy studio. I get lots of splinters, and occasionally glue in my hair.

The first two boxes I've completed are actually the third and fourth pages of the story. They both occupy the same construction, though for the final presentation (which will be in book format) they will most likely be seen as separate pages, like so:

Page Three, Egor's torture and imprisonment scene.

Some details:

Page Four, Sofiia the Wise appears as an apparition, setting Egor free.

And some details:

If only blogger didn't make all my photos look extra washed out. 

Oh well, more on Egor soon!

Charm City Art Space Exhibition

This post belongs in August, so I pre-dated it.  A couple weeks ago, I hung up some work at the Charm City Art Space. 

I just got a new digital camera, so I snuck into the Art Space to take a few pictures of my little wall.

Some of the items on display I've already made posts about, like the R2D2 illustration and the Heartless 7inch artwork

(though here it is shown in its original, non-digitally altered colorway).

Below are my last two Star Wars drawings.

The above piece is something I made while I was thinking about ideas for thesis (I'll be making box assemblages about Russian Folklore). 

It's not quite finished.

At the bottom right of my display, I had a small selection of my promotional matchbooks. They were all gone after the first week! I dropped a few more off when I took this photo:

Classes started this week (I'm typing this on September 2nd!) and my Shakespeare and African Art Forms classes have already gone well. I'm excited to get started on my Thesis work... Senior year. Oof.

Turkey Mountain Panthermouth

A dump-post of a couple of older collage pages from one of my sketchbooks.

    

These pages AND MORE can be found in my zine, HAM SAMWICH (which is much more well organized than these random images). I still have a nice little stack of zines sitting in my room.  If you would like one, please let me know! (egmaatman@gmail.com)

Star Wars and Hardcores

Hello again, I've been quite busy lately.  Here is a tentative (I say "tentative" because it hasn't received the official "OK" from the band yet) cover for a 7inch EP by the band Heartless from Pittsburgh. They play some super heavy hardcore, and I was definitely excited to work with them, especially when they told me I could just do whatever I wanted.

I'd been looking to put some collage into my work portfolio, as I've been playing with it as a sketching method for a while now. A punk/hardcore EP seemed like the perfect avenue to break that out. We'll see what the band thinks (an updated version may soon follow.)

This summer I've been working at school almost every weekday.  Recently I was given the task of doing several illustrations for a training book for next year's RA staff.  The theme is Star Wars!  For the sake of ending on some words of wisdom (and for the sake of saving some updates for later in the week,) I'll just post one of the little spot illustrations, to be placed creatively somewhere among the text: