Back for another helping of Life Drawing II!Holy crust, months without a visit! I have neglected this poor blog, it's a good thing I don't have children!

It was kind of weird to go back and look at some

of my old stuff, I'm a little embarrassed... it's so hard not to delete it. But, I also have a lot of new goods to post.

here's an update:

I'm currently working full-time at a photography studio near Green Bay. And I have a few credits left to finish on my degree, so I'm commuting 200 miles to class on wednesdays. Crazy right?! RIGHT?!

This semester I would like to incorporate some photography into my work, since I now have a studio at my disposal. But I also need to work with my hands. So expect more drawing, and model building as well. I'd like to do some costume building too.

Lately I have been thinking a lot (ok, more than usual) abou

t aging and mortality. Not in a gruesome way. I think the aging process is a beautiful thing. In fact, when I'm 90 and in a nursing home, I'm going to go around wearing sweatpants with the word "juicy" printed on the butt for the purpose of making all the other old people jealous. J/K... (not really).

I think time is relative. There are days when I have no concept of time, with

out a watch I can't tell 15 minutes from 3 hours. It's gotten a lot worse lately. Early onset dementia? Probably not.

Maybe just some bad juju for cracking old person jokes.

In all honesty, I joke about old people and death because I can't stop thinking about old people and death.

Anyway, enough babble.

Here's some recent stuff.

Here's an i.p. of the next painting.

I like to draw my paintings a few times, and then paint them from memory.

This next series is "the naked aphrodite"

She is no more, due to a tragic moving accident.

It felt good to start drawing again. Digitally drawing is fun and fast, but nothing satisfies neglected muscle memory like picking up a stick of perfectly sharpened charcoal and attacking a large sheet of blank paper. This piece was intended to be non-objective. I used the pictures I liked and weeded them down to the ones that would work well together visually. While I was drawing this I had no thoughts on it, I was completely focused on moving charcoal around the paper. The process was a very meditative experience. Afterwards it was interesting to step back, take a break, eat a sandwich, and come back to look at it with fresh eyes. Now I see something conceptual that must've been hiding in my subconscious. It carries a subject matter that touches on the life cycle, death, mortality, the aging process, misleading hope, narration, destination, mistakes, failures, and process. It's interesting that out of the 100 pictures I took, my subconscious decided upon 3 photos that spoke of a similar subject matter.

Intro and Art Lessons reading

Drawing III Spring 2010

Hi everyone, my name is Andrea Kappelman, I'm a studio major with a drawing emphasis. This is my last semester here so in this class I hope to create some work for my senior show which will be held at the end of April, the show also features fellow drawing major Kalyn Meisner, and ceramists Adam Gruetzmacher, and Sean Larson. I plan to exhibit portraiture in the show, although I'm also interested in

illustration, photography, printmaking and graphic design. Next fall I'm planning an excursion to Kathmandu, a volunteering opportunity has arisen at a women's center there where I'll be able to immerse myself in the culture which already holds a strong influence on my art. Check out the rest of this blog if you'd like to read more about me or look at some of my work.

Reading Review:

I've actually already read Art Lessons. What I love the most is that author frequently encourages the reader to travel. In the book we are instructed to, “Learn about others through reading, dialogue, and the media, but especially, find opportunities to know the world through travel. Only by getting to know another people directly can you counter pervasive ideologies of the enemy. Be voracious in your appetite for art, I would even suggest that you can be indiscriminate. Look at everything, from the art in the world’s greatest museums to street artists hawking their wares. Develop your won aesthetic sensibility by looking.”

Like many young adults facing college graduation, travel is highly appealing to me. Alien cultures hold many fascinations, and since I’ve always been a hands-on learner immersing myself in a culture would likely be the most effective way to understand it. The book gave me ideas to help back the argument with my parents, who I am hoping to persuade not only approve of letting their oldest daughter

travel, but to also (fingers crossed) help fund said adventures. “Dear Mom and Dad, I recent found out that many artists find that travel is congenial to their work. Great artists and their locations include: Monet and the Mediterranean, Robert Henri and Ireland, Betsy Damon and China, and Ann McCoy and Poland. Perhaps add to that list Andrea Kappelman and Nepal?”