The Chase

Welp, this is the next piece in my Ninjas series, It's titled "The Chase" I think this is my favorite so far. There are acctually two versions of this one, The black one above, and the red one which I will put down here...



I used to think the Black Version was better, I fixed the red one a little, and now im not so sure, if anyone has opinons let me know.

I mentioned earlier that I would be explaining the process in a future post... Well... its not goint to be this one, maybe next time. It's too late and I'm tired and I have school in the morning.

Fight!

Ok this is a cut out I did one day while "teaching" my 9th graders. It's white contruction paper cut out and glued over black construction paper to create the image. I'll talk a little more on this later because I have to go greet my first class of the day!

Alright, school's out, but Art club is in! not too too many kids in, so im gunna let them do thier thing while I do mine.

First thing's first, a bit more on the above art work. As I said it is cut out... I really wanted to do something incredibly high contrast, and I thought a black and White ninja fighting would be cool for that, I stole the idea from an episode of Samurai Jack. Umm not much to say other than the fack that x-acto knife work is fun to do sometimes, I acctually did another one in the same cut out high contrast fashion today, this one with red and black, and I ended up putting its reverse on yellow papers, so I GUESS you can say I got two pieces of art out of one... Ill post those as soon as I get the chance to scan em.

Other art news, a few people, including Mrs. McDonald, my former mentor teacher at vogel Int have been asking how I do the "Photomation" pieces, so Ill post a step by step kinda thing in a future blog.

Non-Art News! Amber (my beautiful girlfriend for the uninformed), is finally getting her drivers liscence... how she went 21 years with out one I dont know. She passed her permit test though, and has already succeded in scaring her mom by checking text messages at a red light. "At least I wasn't sending any!" she says to me... She's adoreable. Also, she is going to be sent to grooming school soon and be liscenced as an offical groomer.. this is both good and bad. Good because she is going to be making alot of money doing something she enjoys, but bad because it means she cant go to China with me, which really sucks... More on this later.

Hmmm I cant think of much else to say right now. so Ill go check on the kids and maybe play with Photoshop and ninjas and photos or something.

-Johnny

From the Trees...

Second of the Ninja series. Again the Photo is by Shelby. Click the picture to see the full size. I need a name for this series, Im thinking of just calling it Ninja or Ninjas... anyone have any suggestions? Anyways, unlike the first one, and probably the rest of these I will do, this one was done using Macromedia Fireworks instead of Photoshop. Why would I subject myself to this? Well, you see I am going to be doing a computer project with my students here at WHS 9th, and they dont have Photoshop, they have Fireworks and I had to learn how to use it. Luckily Fireworks is alot like photoshop, but there are subtleties and differences that drive me crazy. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyways I call this one "From the Trees..." This is acctually the second version of this particular Photo, I ended up completely redoing the ninja because the original wasn't stylized enough. You used to be able to see the first version on Flickr, but I have since grown sick of my failings and deleted it, and it shall be lost forever in digital hell.

I know no one is probably reading these (yet), but if you are and you have an suggestions or critques or comments or anything feel free to leave some.

Anyways, I guess I should get back to teaching, Ive got about 30 mins left of my last class.

-Johnny

So it begins...

Seeing as I'm running late for school, my first blog here will be short. I'm doing this as a place to collect my art work and thoughts mostly. I'm trying to get my self out there a little more, so I've got my Flickr site and now this, maybe one day ill be a real artist and make my very own real website! Ill talk more about the artwork posted later...

OK now that I am at school and it's only 8:05, and I don't get students until 9:00, I now have time to elaborate.

First the artwork... It looks pixalated on my screen for some reason and it didn't look like that at home, so I'm thinking its this computer, however, if you click on it you get the real size non messed up version anyways.

This piece is called "The Leap" and its the first in a series of what I like to call "Photomation" basically I take a photograph and put a cartoony style drawing on top of it. This Photomation series is going to deal with Ninjas.. So, look forward to seeing many many photos with cartoon ninjas super imposed over them, good news for those who like what they see above, and for those that don't... well I don't really care, this is what I feel like doing right now so it is what I am going to do.

The Photo itself was taken by my friend Shelby Karns, Ill probably be stealing... erm I mean Appropriating alot of his photos for this set because the shots from china really go well with the ninja theme, however, expect to see some ninjas in Houston or Huntsville once I get my Cannon Rebel XT in the near future.

Anyways its this really cool photo of a city in China called Qingdao, and the original concept was to have the ninja flying between the buildings, but because the only copy of the photo I had was so small, by the time I had shrunk the figure down to be proportionate with the buildings alot of the detail was lots. So, I changed it up a little and decided to have him in the foreground instead. There are two other version of this... one the original concept mentioned above, and another with he figure even larger, that you can see at my Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/johnny5ive

I think that's all for now, maybe ill post more ninjas later.

In other news, here is what is going on with me. I am currently in my second placement for student teaching at the woodlands 9th grade campus. I have about 4 more weeks of this, and a PPR TEXES Test to take and ill be fully certified as a k-12 art teacher. It will be nice to be done, but at the same time I find it kind of funny that I'm doing all this work to get this little piece of paper to say I'm "highly qualified" to teach in America, and then instead of using this certificate to get a job as a teacher like every normal teacher certification candidate would, instead, I am going to be getting on a plane and going to china, where I will be teaching college kids about America for a year, while also building up a portfolio of photographs taken in china. I even blew off the spring Job fair to go on a field trip with my students to the art museum. I think I made the right choice. It was funny, while I was at one of the museums I got a phone call from one of the schools at the job fair wanting me to go visit their booth. I laughed about it latter that day.

Hmm... what else... Oh I bought season 3 of Samurai Jack the other day, which is exciting because it has the crazy haunted mansion episode on it, as well as the chicken episode, and the raver episode.

Well that's all my rambling for now, I guess ill get ready for class or something.

-Johnny