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Envelopes

Posted: July 21st, 2009 | Author: ariel | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment »

Summer is the only time of the year when I actually send hand-written letters. With so many people leaving town for the season, the volume of inbound and outbound text messages and emails inevitably swells like high tide and I find myself growing tired of turning to various screens for human contact. Envelope art is something I started doing to break the monotony of communication, and perhaps inspire others to pass on the favor.

tree of life
Above is a detail of an envelope sent to my boyfriend Ben in the summer of 2008, when he was living near Redmond, WA for an internship. Completely covering an envelope with a design became my preferred aesthetic, although for a time I continued to use envelopes rather than sketch pads or scratch paper, resulting in a lot of random stuff like this next one lying around. It’s based on a design from a lintel at the ancient Mayan site of Yaxchilan, where some pretty bonkers stuff is going on.

vision serpent
I’ll continue to post more of these as they’re completed; I’m also doing some work on a portfolio, which I’ll link to when finished, so keep an eye out for that in the upcoming weeks.  This last illustration was inspired by a line from a beloved childhood movie, The Secret Garden.

secret garden


Ritual

Posted: July 13th, 2009 | Author: ariel | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Comments Off

zebraGreetings, Internet. My name is Ariel, and once upon a time I was crazy about drawing zebras. Since I’m still in the process of organizing an up-to-date art portfolio, I thought I’d go ahead and share a slightly older project, but I couldn’t resist including one of these guys in my first post.

One of the neatest art projects I’ve stumbled across this year has been Passages for Lost Clouds, a daily series of small and simple line drawings by Ken Wong (sadly no longer updated). I’ve always liked the idea of completing one small-scale creative endeavor each day, so back in January I started my own daily drawing project in a 3″ x 4″ notepad. Every day (or very nearly so), I would either represent an observation or record a personal secret using only my notepad and a fine-tip Sharpie. I often feel too pressed for time to start big projects, which results in a lot of  ideas going to waste. So I hoped this would help me view art as a more habitual process, knowing that no matter how busy I was, I could always spare two minutes of my day to create something personal.

It ended up being a rather short-lived project, lasting roughly a month before I lost steam. But I would very much enjoy resurrecting the idea on a larger scale, perhaps with a series of digital sketches. For right now, here’s a selection of the mini ink drawings from January 2009.

never stop

love type

bled through

downright judgmental

forget sadness