people have kept and open mind [hint hint] while viewing this art since July 22, 1998.

So I finally decided to sit down and build myself a little art web page. I love art; love to look at it, to learn about it, and even to create it. And that's what this page is about, my artistic creations.

NOTICE I am NOT an artist! I don't consider myself artistically talented or gifted at all. I am one of those weirdos, I guess, who say that the vision, the idea are more important than the talent and the skill. Probably because I have no skill. But the way I look at it, it's one thing to be able to sit down and re-create line-for-line something that already exists, and it's a totally different thing to create something in your mind. Anyway, whatever; I don't claim that these pieces are mentally or symbolically or emotionally significant; they lack as much imagination as they do skill, and I know that. But I still love the freedom of just sitting down and PAINTING, and not caring where the paint goes, and doing it to please no one but me, and just watching something happen. I love that. So, since I have nowhere else to stick this stuff I've done, I will make a web page just for art.

As I said, I love to look at and learn about art. My senior year in high school(which, at the time this page was created, I had just finished a month before) I took AP Art History, mainly because I had a hole in my schedule and a friend in the class. I also took humanities, for similar reasons. These two classes were AMAZING to me; I adored them. Art history focussed on each of the eras, the periods, the styles, the artists, while humanities incorporated art into philosophy, politics, music, war, and the other elements of man. I just loved it. The picture on the right is the central panel of a Late Gothic (I know, it looks more like Surrealism or something) triptych called The Garden of Delights by Heironymous Bosch. Some of my other favorite artists include Picasso, van Gogh, Brancusi, Matisse, Magritte, Munch, Monet, Manet, Cassat, Leonardo, Kirchner, Braque, Caravaggio, and so so so many more.

But now, let's move on to my own art. Remember what I said: I don't have talent (or at least not much) when it comes to artistic things, but I still love to create it. And that's okay, right? :-) Anyway, I have divided this into three categories: Tori-related art and non-Tori art. Enjoy, and please, write me with any and every and all comment(s)! These pictures load fast and are somewhat small, so go ahead, click away! They are photographs of the originals, very poor photographs, so some detail and clarity is obviously missing. Keep that in mind. I guess I'll put some marks (~!@#$%^&*) by the ones I really like so that you'll know, if you are short on time, what to be sure to take a look at. By "the ones I really like," I don't mean "the good ones." I mean the ones that I was pleased with, the ones that I kinda had fun with, whatever.

Newly Added (09/20/98) Tori-Related Art

(~!@#$%^&*)A pencil drawing of the Tori RAINN promo picture. The photo turned out greenish, but rest assured, it's black and white. :-) Anyway, I think I did all right on this one. :-)

(~!@#$%^&*)The above picture next to an abstract version of it. After I drew that RAINN picture, I drew a kind of abstract version of it, and here they are next to each other. It was really fun to do!

Tori-Related Art

A picture of Tori sitting on a couch or something, with her arm resting on the couch's arm. This is my first Tori drawing ever (well, the first that I put any effort into at all), and the arn came out way too long. It, like most of my Tori drawings, is modelled after a picture of Tori I saw in a book, magazine, whatever.

A picture of Tori that I just colored. I printed it from the Internet (it's the one where she has glittery eyes and it quotes her talking about "love thy neighbor" in Christianity) at school one day and just colored it with crayons, giving her hair and face and eyes whatever color I wanted. I just had fun, okay?!

(~!@#$%^&*)"I Can Be Cruel", a painting I did on cardboard with acryllic paints or whatever, just these paints I found in my mom's closet. It is sort of a "drawing" of Tori's song "Cruel." In black, along the right side, it says (since you probably can't read it), "I can be cruel, I don't know why. Why can't my ba.ll.oon stay up in a perfectly windy sky?", which comes from the song. The girl is viscious while, at the same time, she has a strong heart, and it's just sort of my repeated painting of confusion, of two people in one person, basically. She can be cruel, she doesn't want to, she's both people... Whatever...

A pencil drawing of the picture of Tori that popped up around the time of "Spark"'s release. She stands there with her arms twisted up together, and there's this demon, devil guy behind her. This is a very bad drawing. The face looks horrible, and the devil is just hopeless. :-)

"Tori... With Someone Else's Head". I drew this, but the face was giving me so much trouble that I just erased it and gave her a totally different, icky, non-tori face, just because I was sick of trying. It's a pencil drawing of the picture Tori's dad sent me, autographed by Tori.

(~!@#$%^&*)"She's Been Everybody Else's Girl". This is a painting in the same fashion as "I Can Be Cruel." It's a mixture of songs, including "Girl," "Spark," and "Playboy Mommy." Again, it's one girl being thousands of different people, being everything to everyone. She's petting a kitty in one hand, smashing one beneath her high heels in a another. She is dressed like a slut but wearing Goldilocks hair in pink bows (but don't ignore the Ani DiFranco green crew cut on top!). She's holding her smoking cigarette and her pretty red balloon in the same hand. Song lyrics are written all around her, and you may not be able to read them, so they say "She's been everybody else's girl. Maybe one day she'll be her own." ; "In my platforms I hit the floor" (by her shoes) ; "Don't judge me so harsh little girl." ; and "Are you sure where my spark is?" (in small writing, near her heart, in the middle of everything, right there among all the everythings, any of which COULD [or, more likely, could not be] her spark.)

(~!@#$%^&*)An impressionistic 'painting' of Tori. This was a project for my humanities class, and I really got into it!! I loved this! I cut color patches, splotches, pieces from magazines and things to put together in a 'painting' of Tori. It's a color study, putting warm colors in the midst of colds, making bright colorful shadows, all that stuff. No using a piece of a picture of a lip for her lips, no hair for hair, etc. It looks better without the glare and without the vandalism put on it by the photography. :-)

(~!@#$%^&*)Two different pictures of a pen drawing I did of Tori late late one night. I just sat there and drew it in like 15 minutes in pen (no pencil sketch at first). I think it turned out pretty good. Believe me, you can't see any ANY of the detail in these photographs, but they give an idea... :-)

(~!@#$%^&*)An impressionistic/expressionistic painting of an outdoor Tori concert, in front of a row of trees and a this-kind-of-thing-never-happens sunset. The scene onstage is SUPPOSED to get confused and blended with the background.

Non-Tori Art
Commercial Art

In my senior year of high school, I took a commercial art class, mainly just for fun. Because of my lack of 'talent' and our different ideas about what is important in art, the teacher and I didn't get along, but I still did some of the 'best' work I've ever done in that class; I tried harder than I ever have. Here is some of the stuff I made in there.

Prismacolor apple, one of our assignments in color. We had to study an apple and color it. This apple includes the colors violet, brown, red, orange, yellow, blue, and white, although the color doesn't show up very well in this photograph.

(~!@#$%^&*)The BF Shirt!, a silk screen shirt of the BF Brigade. Jessica drew the pictures and I did the lettering and silk screening. All the BFs have one, each a different color.

(~!@#$%^&*)A pen and ink of the Schröder House in Utrecht.

Another prismacolor, this time of a candle.

Exploding boxes, an exercise in perspective.

(~!@#$%^&*)A pen and ink exercise where I copied, in the second column, what was drawn in the first. Mine aren't copied very exactly, but I like the results.

A pencil drawing of a typewriter, my first assignment in the class.

This is one of only a few in the "backpack art" series. :-) Sometime at the beginning of the school year, I decided my backpack needed some ears, so I cut out big ears with earrings and the whole works and sewed them on. They were a hit, and they began my plan of a weekly thing, to create a new piece of backpack art over the weekend and come to school on Monday with a new look for the backpack. I didn't take a picture of the ears, and the only one I did take a picture of was this angel, which I decided wouldn't make any appearances in school, so I took it apart after I took this picture. The backpack art idea, due to lack of time, didn't last long.

(~!@#$%^&*)Pink babies. I didn't do these; some of my friends decorated my room (to the extreme) in pink (pink crepe paper, pink food, pink paper, pink confetti, and these pink babies) one weekend while I was gone. These are two of the six or seven babies they made. Aren't they cute?! :-)

(~!@#$%^&*)Vincent van Gogh in frame. My friend Geoff did this drawing of one of van Gogh's self-portraits (I wish you could see it better in the photograph; it is very good!), and I took it home and framed it in an impressionistic-like frame, the first thing I really painted.

Well, that's it... :-) More may or may not be added. What did you think?

See Tori concert, meet Tori, help RAINN!!! Best Buy is offering this really great promotional deal: you can bid for premium Tori concert tickets in a variety of cities (only a few are currently available, but more will be added). The money goes to RAINN, and winning bidders get not only the amazing seats, they also get to meet Tori before or after the show!!!!! Check this one out!!!!

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