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so, MY DAME is gonna have some of her designs in a FASHION SHOW at the museum of contemporary art on oct. 4th. the theme is music and technology. her 3 designs are based on 3 eras of vinyl records – 40’s/78rpm, 50’s/33 1/3rpm, 60’s/45rpm.

here’s the 40’s design to represent the 78rpm record. modeled by GUBBA.

click the thumbs for a bigger picture

the black part of the dress is supposed to be the black vinyl of a record, with the white of the collar being the label of the record.

there will also be hats and handbags made of actual records that match each models dress!

you’ll just have to come to the show to see the rest:

yes, it’s free

when: thursday, october 4, 2007
time: 7pm-10pm (the fashion show will run twice, one at 7:30, and one at 8:30)
where: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 1100 Kettner Blvd, Downtown (attached to the santa fe train depot)

these sketches were all drawn at art night*.

first lets meet my sketchbook:

it says hello.

the most recent one (from this past sunday)

i usually draw in non-photo blue pencil but i didn’t bring any instrumentation this art night. so joeygold let me borrow a ticonderoga hb #2 (which i only had to sharpen once, and it stayed sharp all night. boy, that dixon sure makes a fine pencil)

these were drawn at past art nights (they’re all non-photo blue pencil and micron .005 pen):

*art night is a once a week gathering of like minded artists. there are 5 core art nighters as well as a rotating group of sometimers who meet every sunday night at bassam cafe. activities include; lots of shit talking about contemporary art, hour long semantic debates about the meaning of subjective, a fair amount sketchbook drawing, and of course, the drinking of coffee (chai for me since i hate coffee).

so, i thought i’d share a bit of my painting process, step by step (well, as many steps as i remembered to photograph). now, this will be a sort of stripped down version because the piece i’m chronicling here is only 3 colors, as opposed to the full color pieces i usually do. but nonetheless, it’ll give you an idea. perhaps in the next piece i’ll do a more in depth photo series. ok:

it’s summer, it’s hot, my studio space has no ac. so, first things first – i open the window, prop my “hawaiian breeze” fan up on the sill, and crank it up to 3.

it’s hot but at least i have a cool view. oh.

next, i go over to the stereo and put in a cd i burned before i left.

i don’t remember exactly what i put on it, but i think it was a lot of jimmy rushing and nat cole, as i had just recently downloaded tons of both artist the night before.

for this piece/series i bought a 4′ X 8′ piece of birch plywood at lowes and had them cut it into 6 pieces of 16″ X 48″ (left). then i rolled them all with 2 coats of gesso, sanding them after each (right). you like that action shot of me sanding?

when that’s done i’m ready to transfer my drawing onto the board with non-photo blue pencil (which is what i do all drawing with, in my sketch book or otherwise). the way i transfer is by making my drawing to a scale of 1 inch = 1 foot. so if my piece is going to be 4′ X 6′, my drawing will be 4″ X 6″. sometimes i’ll just draw it to scale if i know that i’m drawing for a specific size. but for this one i was working from an existing sketch so i scaled it with a xerox copier. i also utilize a xerox machine to make multiple copies of the same sketch so that i can do marker color tests to figure out what colors i want to go where (i do this to decide color for every piece i do)(below). with this one, i only had to worry about 1 color, red.

after i have the sketch transfered i’m ready to paint my sections of red. to get the desired color of deep red i wanted for this piece, i used mainly naphthol red mixed with crimson, and a tiny bit of black.

the way i get such crisp lines in my work is by using masking tape. i do this because i want my paintings to have a clean, graphic sort of quality. again, with this one i’m only using red so the masking process isn’t that detailed.

i use 1/4″, sometimes 1/8″ masking tape to enable me to paint perfect curves or circles. i used a ruler and a paint marker for all the outlines on this piece but for the curves of the clouds i used masking tape. i usually just free hand any small curves (like the ones that aren’t masked below) – but with large ones like this i don’t want to risk a wobbly line.

after all the outlining is done i throw a signature on it, 2 coats of some clear gloss varnish and i’m finished. i wish i would’ve taken photo’s of the framing process for these, but i forgot. there’s always next time.