Still Exploring the Kandisky Style???

This is the continuation of a series of works with two dimensional perspective, attempting to borrow elements from the Kandinsky School of painting, readjusting geometric shapes in configurations that balance themselves in the eye.

This particular one is not named yet, for I intend to complete the series before naming all paintings, in an a posteriori mode.

Many friends are telling me they see a rooster, a clock, a moon and a bridge in here. :)

YouTube Videos

For additional watercolor/photography works, please don't forget to watch my two old YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DfDSKzJwBk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmnC36khQxM

Unfortunately, I created the videos with an old software, but the collections are pretty much robust and nicely shown. I am not very proud, for the slideshows are very simplistic, because I lacked adequate technical background on how to make them look better! But at least they show a nice aspect of my work...:)

The watercolors shown here, belong to three major projects, the one is termed: "monsters and constructions", while the second one is named "the simplistic mind trilogy"; for the latter I have included two of the three pieces of the trilogy in the slideshow (the two watercolors with the sun resembling a ring in the upper part). The third project is called "the mote in mother's eye", and I have included the still life painting at the very last slide (I have also pasted this painting in the blog earlier).

As far as the photography project is concerned, I have named it "Light Captured" and it contains a total of 13 photographs, all taken before I leave Greece, and were slightly manipulated in Photoshop, in terms of contrast and mid-tones.

I hope you enjoy the accompanied music, whatsoever.

Exploring Kandinsky Through Watercolor Painting

This is the beginning of a new style of drawing through watercolors; the project is described as "exploring Kandinsky through watercolor painting". One of my initial attempts to capture geometric shapes without any profound meaning in a harmonic concept by placing them the one in close proximity to the other. As Kandinsky has been drawing in one of his later periods, exploring the effect of straight lines, curvy lines, triangles, spheres, hemispheres, rectangles and other geometric and non-geometric two-dimensional entities, to the human eye, I tried to develop my own technique in a relevant way. Obviously, mimicking this great artist, what we may see is the depiction of an alternative ego and personal signature.

This painting is not yet entitled, for I am waiting a series of them to be completed and then provide titles to all. There is a nice thought, as well, behind this series, to write a small poem for each one of the works that will describe a non-subjective point of reference, after completing the painting and simply observing it.

Dream Complex

This is a watercolor painting, completed in Toronto during winter of 2010-2011 and is termed as "dream complex". Being illustrated through dark-pale green and blue, this painting is characterized by a pessimistic cliche background, most probably oriented in a waterworld environment. I wasted lots of colors to achieve such dark and color-rich areas at the level of the horizon, since watercolor is generally less condense.

The cave depicted on the right has been described as also demonstrating and illustrating an alive entity, with the upper tunnels as "eyes" and the lower bigger tunnel entrance as "mouth". The two figures on the left seem to even be erotically intertwined or fighting for dominance to each other.

I was quite skeptical and tortured by certain things, when I drew this.

This painting has been incorporated in the series "the mote in mother's eye".

Red Pill

It's set up, of course! haha!

Shy Red

Another artwork belonging to the "red" project.

Face was sharpened with high contrast and reduction of midtones. Brightness was generally reduced and particularly enhanced only in the constrasting edges.

Yes, she is looking down... :)

Post Red

This artwork photo also belongs to the "red" project. The title is "Post Red". She is the first model, to be sharpened in blue contrast and this is the reason behind the title.

Redaholism

Another work belonging in the "red" project.

"Oh, how we laughed!"

Oh, how we laughed! at your service

at your rights, accumulated credits...

at your scars, at your skin, skinned from inside out.

Fulfilling your own agenda.

Oh, how we laughed! at your armies

at your plastic little soldiers, at your feelings...

at your carpets, at your vomit, whiskey bottles.

Empty glasses, without traces.

Oh, how we laughed! at your distance

Distant, at your calls, at your cause,

Fullfilling your cruel agenda.

Oh, how we laughed! at your children,

born at stake, never there

Oh, how we laughed! at your placenta,

your cold-blooded trophies, your agenda.

Oh, how we laughed, at your agenda.

Oh, how we laughed.

River from "The Mote in Mother's Eye"

This is one of the pretty much early works of mine, belonging to a larger series of works called "The Mote in Mother's Eye". In contrast to the series "Monsters and Constructions" which included paintings with alien objects that were well-circumscribed, this series has works that depict a surrealistic and abstract view of nature in a more free form.

Still, I always like giving a fake representation even to real concepts like mountains, cliffs and rivers, as shown here. If for example someone notices the sky, he will immediately realize that I used very strange colors that they are absent from realism-paintings that the sky is drawn. Also, it is evident sometimes that colors within the sky change very drastically, without a smooth gradient applied there, giving the impression that the sky is not real but there is a canvas behind the mountain.

Another deliberate misconception applied in this painting is the disorientation of the theoretical light source. If someone notices the small cliffs on both sides of the river, the lighter brown on the left side of the mountain, as well as, the lighter sky colors on the left side of the painting, he/she could easily tell that the sun is probably on the left side of the paintingthrowing light over these objects from a big angle (around 60-70 degrees). However, the beams of light seem to have obtained a totally different direction, as well as being hidden behind smog, as shown in the upper right corner of the sky.

The work is entitled "river" and is the first of this series.

Snow - My new comic strips!

This is my new comic series entitled "Snow". "Snow" deals with the disturbed human mentality, the daily routine that leads to isolation and loneliness, the depression, the futility of participating in the happiness of single moments and finally the disrespect to novel innovations and ideas that bring our civilization back to darker eras. The characters of this series are: a) an oldy rusty TV thrown in the snow, but still in power, b) a fat bird and c) snowy the snowman; they all represent a pessimistic and distorted perspective of the real meaning of life's surprises. Although surreal to a certain extent, "snow" deals with the realistic feelings and pains that we receive from stimuli of our network and environments.

I am giving below 2 out of the 15 strips I created.

The Search at the End of Light

This frottage drawing with pencil alone is entitled "the search at the end of light". In my context, it represents the quest of man to find what is after death.

Although it is mostly like a mountain landscape, several interpretations pointed out a possible illustration of the nervous system along with the neuron synapses. Many people see the deer creature within the circular window formed in the front landscape.

Red District

One of my major attempts in photography; the project is called "red". When I finish this, I will probably create a quick slideshow you tube video.

God sent an angel to bring love, down to Earth

This frottage work with pencil only is entitled as "God sent an angel to bring love, down to Earth", represents one of the numerous attempts to make use of sets of coins, compact discs and pencils under a soft piece of A4 paper!

This is my truth, what's yours?

A totally abstract work. It was one of the first paintings, in which I avoided creating a gradient in soil or sky. Compared to others, it can be noticed that there is no such thing as exterior or interior landscape, but only geometric abstract objects or subjects.

People throughout, have interpreted the title of this work by the "man" on the top left corner being the surrealistic perspective of pinnocchio (whose nose is long due to the lies).

Another interesting interpretation is that the white-board, represents someone's life and all the experiences are written thereon, surviving in the test of time... All surrounding objects and subjects represent the daily experiences that contribute to our motives and actions.

They are both interesting interpretations.

First Attempts in Poetry

THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

It was one of these days
in search to come...
to come closer to God,
a God that playfully ignored my future.
Afoot, throwing dices.
All over the place,
dicing my future.

In nights to come...
to search my God
me and my diced future.

THE SIMULACRA

Simulacra;
they were standing in the room
a room of true silence
a silence that annoyed my thoughts
thoughts that lived a short life
their life was made of wax
this wax was made by bees
these bees brought back the spring
a spring that lasted seconds
seconds passed before she closed her eyes
the eyes I fell in love with.

Mouse - Digital Spraying

This work has been accomplished in Microsoft Office "draw" and belongs to a series of works, appointed with the name "digital spraying". Actually, the reason for naming this series that way, is that only the tool "spray" was used to draw these pictures. All the lines are free style, no prefixed shapes have been used to complete the drawing.

The name of this drawing is "mouse".

It took no longer than 2-3 hours to draw it as well as some cups of hot black coffee, sitting against a window at my room, in a cold Greek night, along with some potentially-forgotten memories of my pre-Toronto life.

Bereaucracy

This is another work belonging to the series "Monsters and Constructions".

I came up with this idea, while waiting in an endless queue of people, as a student to receive some confirmation documents in a public agency in Greece.

In terms of technique, this was my first work in which I tried to create a sky gradient using three different colors instead of one conventional one (like blue or yellow sky as before). In this attempt, one can notice several mistakes on the painting, but it eventually got accepted by me (and others later on)!

After all, when it comes to mistakes, we are confident that they belong to us!

Rational Discrimination

One of my early works, also belonging to the "Monsters and Constructions" series.

I initially named this painting "Three Random Encounters and Two Random Birds", but I decided to eventually name it "Rational Discrimination".

This was a small attempt to create a sunset gradient for the sky.

Our House

One of my very early works called "Our House", being included in my first painting series named "Monsters and Constructions". At that point (and even now) I was greatly influenced by surreal artist Yves Tanguy, so I put myself into painting what was described as "alien creations and objects randomly placed in distinct and deserted landscapes". These objects seemed to have no meaning or hidden message, but came as an automatic schematic representation of thoughts and emotions of the given time.

To date, many people have been trying to match the title of this work with what they actually see... and they came up with the conclusion that this gargantuan white structure represents actually our very first house; our common house; the one that brought us to this planet; to this earth. This is a very very touching point of view for this work, indeed. Thank you for this colorful and meaningful interpretation to all of you!

I am astoundingly fond of such interpretations!