schoolartsproj

[schoolartsproj]

January 3rd 2023

This isn't my drawing but it reminded me of some stuff in my journal so I thought to post it here with the story behind it. Over Christmas break my friends and I backpacked in the Davis Mountains in West Texas and stopped in Marfa on our way out. While we were walking around the small and sparse town we came upon a small garage sale in an empty lot that was packed with oddities including an old Dr. Pepper bottle filled with a mystery liquid for 50 cents. The realest fake cowboy I had ever seen was in the center of the lot in an old office chair running the sale. He asked one of my friends if he wanted to buy this used whiteboard for five bucks. The ink on the board had become permanent with time and now someone's thoughts were engraved onto it. We couldn't figure out what they were thinking or writing about and the garage sale cowboy said he had found it in a bulk pickup outside of someone's home. It looked like my handwriting and I loved the drawing of the misshapen woman on the side so I took a picture. We ended up buying a jacket and a lighter in the shape of a VW Bug.

A month after this trip, a freight-hopping friend of mine posted this same exact whiteboard at the same sale on their Instagram story which was nuts to me. I messaged them and sent them my picture of the board and they thought it was equally as nuts.

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip.

[schoolartsproj]

Early March 2023

This is a picture of a fire that was lit by someone at a punk show on a Friday night in the drainage tunnels next to Austin High School and under Mopac.

My friends and I look forward to going to these tri-weekly punk and metal concerts to watch, listen, and talk to all the offbeat, spikey, studded, people that the tunnels attract. What's even more entertaining is taking a step back from the dense and violent mosh pit that surrounds the band "Facist Peach Cobler", "HummusEater512", "Molly Ringworm", or "Heroin Babies" and watching all the extensive scenes of hazard and bizarreness evolve. It feels like being in a chaotic "Where's Waldo?" page, where you try to find an old guy covered in tattoos holding a chihuahua fitted with a spiked leather jacket, or someone getting their nose crudely pierced with a sewing needle and a cold can.

Usually, the scenes are pretty minor but this time it was a bit more major. We had been watching someone on top of the tunnels crouched and facing away from the crowd, fiddling with a pile of wood and cloth. All of a sudden a giant fireball erupted and the arsonist scurried off. The crowd's tone turned into a concerned but amused muffle and the band stuttered and fell out of rhythm for a bit but continued playing in true misfit fashion. The pierced and painted punks playing with the hellish fireball above their heads, casting long shadows in front of them looked like something out of a movie and made the metal setting ten times more metal.

Then the fireball slowly rolled forward and started to drip over the tunnel and onto the band. They frantically got out of the way and dragged their amps and gear out of the fireball's shower. Someone ran up the side of the tunnel and tried extinguishing the fire with a water bottle but it didn't do a thing. More and more people climbed up the sides of the tunnels and they all started kicking and stomping on it and it was eventually put out. Everyone cheered for the tattoed firefighters, the raucous music soon resumed, and everything was back to organized disorder.

This is a picture of a show at the Montopolis Bridge off of 183 and over the Colorado River. It's in a super neat location on this old historic bridge built in 1938 that was used to connect the Montopolis community and East Austin. It looks and feels especially awesome at night when the music bounces off the water and against the bottom of the bridge and makes the music sound really dreamy and surreal.

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Late January 2023

There is a train track that goes through Austin that moves freight and Amtrack trains through the city. It is one of my favorite parts of Austin, and I contribute it with some of my earliest memories of my parents driving me up Mopac, and them pointing out the train dividing the two flows of traffic. The train goes over LadyBird and is super cool to see from Butler Park or the bridge connecting North and South Lamar. A train runs through Austin at least four times a day, not counting Amtrack, and can take a full six minutes to see pass from the locomotive (front of the train) to the caboose. The sides of the freight cars are usually covered in graffiti from all over the United States. Sometimes you'll see some really impressive and large work that takes up a whole car and turns the train into a very fast art show.

The tracks make their way down Mopac and eventually into a neighborhood called Allandale before shooting North out of Austin and into flat, flat North Texas. On occasion, the train will stop in Allandale for some sort of maintenance check I assume, and if you're lucky enough to catch it static, you can walk along it and admire the engineering or look at all the art on each car.

I love looking at the art because all of it comes from people from random places across the U.S. My favorite is when I find graffiti from freighthoppers. They usually have some little quote or message to go along with their tag or character that is always entertaining to read. It's really fun to imagine these modern-day "hobos" and "bums" hopping on these giant trains and sleeping on them, hiding from railyard bulls*, cruising through mountains and deserts, and living like a character in some of my favorite Kerouac books.

Ever since my grandpa first told me about his dad hopping on freight trains at age 13 and tramping to Colorado to work at a restaurant on the side of a mountain or whipping through the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas, it's been a dream of mine to freight hop somewhere West I haven't been and go on some impressive escapade that I can tell my future children and grandchildren about. Although I have been dissuaded by my mom with either an anxious and worrisome expression or an immediate "NO!" every time I mention my hollow plan, I hope to someday fulfill that dream.

*Railyard Bull- Security hired by railyard companies to look out for anyone hitching rides on the train. If they find someone they inform the workers at the next stop or railyard and they kick them off and/or call the police. In older times they were infamously known to beat up freighthoppers and be very aggressive.

(Here are a couple of examples of freighthopper vandalism I've found, which are also called monikers)

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Early April 2023

This is a piece I did based on something I drew on a math sheet sometime at the beginning of the semester. I love painting bigger pieces that look like a 3rd grader who is the best at art in his class painted them. Executed a bit crudely, the lines are far from perfect, and the whole scene is very uncomplicated. I enjoy using a small range of simple bright colors that make the piece easy to comprehend and fun to look at for the average passerby. It's also friendlier looking than most graffiti you'd see which draws more attention to it.

This style I've grown over the years is inspired by an artist, train hopper, vandal, and mosaicist, who goes by Sluto or El Sluto. He has a very childish, colorful, and extremely creative way of making art. Here is an example of his work and another piece that uses a similar style.

[schoolartsproj]

February 22nd 2023

This is a portrait I did of someone's portrait of someone I do not know. I drew it in my journal last night after writing about my day. I looked at it once and tried to draw it as similarly as possible but I tried not to try too hard because I wanted to make it look like my own. I thought I did a pretty good job and I really liked how the different colored doodles look on the side. The doodles were inspired by a German climate activist who makes really original art that I love.

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January 14th 2023

Here are two new Porch pieces covering the one I posted earlier this week from near the Greenbelt. I really like the white outlining of these two and I think the green and pink work together unexpectedly. The white outline works very well with these two colors and makes the pieces pop from the heavily painted wall better than a black outline would. I'm a big dan of pieces with simple and readable lettering like these. Although they are simple they still follow a style. Both have large bases where the accents of the letters start toward the top. I really enjoy these two.

[schoolartsproj]

January 13th 2023

A friend and I found this at the top of a sort of secret parking garage off of Speedway in Hyde Park. The garage is mostly deserted and consists of four different colored floors. As you ascend each floor you'll notice more and more graffiti until you get to the top where nearly every inch of concrete is covered in tags and art. There are lots of great art and cryptic messages that are really fun to think about the person writing. I found this face on the floor of the top level. It was the only graffiti on the floor so it stuck out. It reminded me of a face I often doodle during school.

I found this art from Chair in the same garage. I've been seeing his work around Austin a lot more lately and he's quickly become a favorite of mine. I think their name is perfect. Chair is so easy to recognize because of its simplicity and shortness. They also paint chairs around their tag which is my favorite part. It's just a few lines combined together but it's so easy to immediately know what it is. They also put the chairs in creative places like on a corner of a room or in this case inside of some sort of old hose compartment. It's a lot more fun to look at than the usual tag.

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January 12th 2023

I drew this on some scrap paper during some free time I had before an environmental science lab. I decided to draw someone moving because I never do that and I feel like I should know how. I thought I did pretty well even though I didn't finish a few limbs for fear of de-balancing the proportions of the rest of the body. Instead, I drew a block letter 'Throw!' with some little movement marks that match the movement of the figure. I once again added the number and porch and drew a little cowboy firing a revolver. His bullet ricochets off the 'Throw!' and I added a little 'Thwack!'. The style the 'Thwack!' is in is inspired by a comic book I read when I was younger called "Sgt. Rock". There were tons of dramatic lettering to go along with all the war and action in those comics. I think that was my first introduction to any sort of lettering like I do now. I also really enjoy how much empty space there is on this one. I usually try to cram as much stuff in as I can on a page but really love the emptiness of this one and how it drives focus to the figure and the 'Throw!'.

[schoolartsproj]

January 11th 2023

This is a picture of my desk. I've been drawing on my desk ever since I got it which was in 2020 I think. The left bottom corner has tons of layers because that's where I draw the most. It reminds me of the Austin High tunnels where pieces are constantly being buffed and drawn over which is what is going on on my desk. There are drawings from people I'm not friends with anymore and really good friends who draw on it every time they come over. It's crammed with memories and I love how it's constantly changing. It's a fun challenge to make myself draw over something I really like, and sometimes I hate what I end up drawing and wish I hadn't but that also happens in real life in other forms and it's something I have to learn to accept.

[schoolartsproj]

December 1st 2022

This is two pages from one of my smaller journals that's about the size of my hand which I think is like 10 inches long. That might be wrong. The greened-out area is a small entry and the green card is a notecard I had drawn on during Liberal Arts. I wrote down what I was listening to at the time which was one of my favorite songs by "Aphex Twin" called "Polynomial-C". It gets me in a funky drawing trance. I forgot what the dark outline of the person was inspired by but that's my favorite thing on the two pages.

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September 17th 2021

This was an entry in my "thought journal" that I thought was super original when I made it and I thought everything I wrote in it was genius but now that I look at it again the entries seem a bit silly but I still love to see what I was thinking and writing at the time. Usually, when I run out of things to write and I have space on the page I'll try to draw something I usually wouldn't. I decided to try blind "contour" as you see labeled but I wasn't trying to draw myself or anything in my vicinity at the time, instead, I just closed my eyes and drew some wonky faces.

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November 2021

This was a sticker I uncovered recently. I had ordered 500 USPS labels to draw on because they are free and you get a ton. I remember filling most of them up with this character I was drawing at the time. The overlay of green and red is really appealing to me and I loved the medium I used. I remember using watercolor crayons that were super silky and extremely satisfying to draw with.

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October 12th 2022

Here is a whiteboard I found in the Astronomy and Physics building at UT. Almost every Wednesday a few friends and I go to the roof of the Astronomy and Physics building to use their walk-in telescope to look at whatever planet, galaxy, nebula, star, comet, or anything of that sort is in the night sky at the time. It's very fun and you get an excellent view of the city from the top. On our way out we came across this whiteboard full of lines, shapes, and equations we couldn't understand. It looked like the plans for some aircraft. I thought it was neat how something so complex and beyond our understanding was just sitting outside a dorm room.

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August 8th 2022

A friend buffing a wall to paint over again in the Austin High tunnels. The tunnels are a series of short drainage tunnels used for punk shows and as result are teeming with wonderful graffiti including an occasional piece from the infamous Buscar. My friends and I love this spot because there's constantly new art from known writers in Austin. It's also a great spot to get inspiration and meet interesting people including a displaced man named Jean who loves to watch us paint and gives very very harsh but constructive criticism.

[schoolartsproj]

"Porch Person" on a wall near one of the many entrances to the Greenbelt. I really liked how big this was compared to everything else on the wall. The bright red combined with the size and the use of a wide spray cap makes "Porch Person" really overtake everything else on the wall. I think if the C was filled in more and the bottom half continued to curve inwards it would be perfect!

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January 1st 2022

I found this sticker on a utility pole from a powerline at one of my favorite trails in Austin called Powerline Trail on the Greenbelt. There are about eight poles that line the trail. Each one would take at least two people holding hands to wrap around them. They are all covered in stickers, tags, and graffiti. Most of it is pretty bad and sloppy but I like that. I found this sticker that I absolutely loved and had to take a picture of. I love the Risk guy's nose and the Reward man's striped pants and wrapped hands. The sticker is still holding on the last time I checked which was sometime during the winter break of 2022-2023. I'm a huge fan of people slapping stickers around the city.

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November 10th 2022

On a page from a packet with directions on how to play out our mock trial, I drew these two people with a number and porch and in block letters beside them. Both of these people I found in a video someone had made about their journal. I liked them so much that I drew my own version of them. I like how gritty they look and I think the way I drew "4th Porch" and "8th Porch" works really well with the way the old man and the girl look. I remember not having a good day but after finishing these it was a bit better.