Sleep Paralysis Painting

I realized that I never put up a high quality version of this Sleep Paralysis painting I made back in college online.

It was rejected many times over. Maybe I should go back and throw a street background in that piece...

Cowboy's Nightmare Acrylic on Watercolor Paper 20 x 37 in. 2010

I rolled it up and forgot about it, it's currently being flattened out by a bunch of heavy books...that's a start right?

In The Visual

Queens College has a pretty kick ass looking art building.

When I first started going to Queens College, I wandered a lot around campus. A lot of the campus holds pretty ugly crappy looking 1970s-80s modernist buildings that I cannot stand to look at. When I
"discovered" Klapper Hall, I immediately walked inside to find out what this beautiful building was for. I found out that it was the college's Art Department building. I took a stroll in and out of classrooms to see what kind of work was being produced by the students. Eventually, I wandered into a gallery space. It was a legit space. High ceilings, white walls, and wooden floors, what more can a man want? The gallery space was used to exhibit student work. A sort of envy came over me. FIT never had any proper viewing space for their student's work. How is it that a normal Joe Schmoe college have a gallery space, and an art school not have any space available for their students?

I made it a point to find out how I can get my work to be hung on those Queens College gallery walls. I learned about a show that was going happen in October. The submission date was sometime in late September. I gave it a try,  I went out bought frames, made mattes myself, and even tried making a new piece for the show itself.

Unfortunately, the new piece didn't get in. Guess it didn't look as finished as the other ones. At least I can take it back home and work on it some more.

 

Here's how they all looked framed

The opening reception is on October 5th from 5:30pm-7:30pm at Paul Klapper Hall.

I'll probably check it out early on, but won't be able to stay since I'm seeing a Portishead concert later that night.

Can't wait to hear this song live:

 

Wow Wee! Ride Me Sally, Ride!

Well hello again everyone. During this past semester there were some assignments that I really enjoyed working on. Unfortunately, some assignments were treated and created to make my teachers happy. The good stuff I wanted to make wasn't really produced this year. One interesting project dealt with sleep paralysis. For those of you who don't know what sleep paralysis is:

"...a common condition characterized by transient partial or total paralysis of skeletal muscles and areflexia that occurs upon awakening from sleep or less often while falling asleep. Stimuli such as touch or sound may terminate the episode, which usually has a duration of seconds to minutes. This condition may occur in normal subjects or be associated with narcolepsy, cataplexy, and hypnagogic hallucinations."

Thank you, Wikipedia, for clearing that up.

The following images are the original sketches for the project:

The first sketch was drawn straight out of my head with no reference to help me out with anatomy of the nude woman and horse head. Although there are some mistakes with the anatomy, there is an energy to the piece...something that got lost when I began using reference for the female body as seen in the second image.

Sleep Paralysis Rough Sketch by Alex Ariza 2008

Drawing depicting sleep paralysis featuring a nude woman with a horse head riding a sleeping man in cowgirl position.

Sleep Paralysis More Refined Sketch - Alex Ariza 2008

I had put a lot of time into the final since this was the first assignment of the year, and I wanted to leave a good impression with my professor. It came out decent looking, but, as I said before, it lacks a certain energy I was going for. Also, it lacks any real depth or concept behind it. All I came up with was a guy having a dream about banging some hot chick and it just so happens to have turned into horse headed lady. Big whoop.

Sleep Paralysis Acrylic Paint on Watercolor Paper 8.5 x 22 in. 2008