Birthday Presents

Another post that should have gone out a long time ago.
I know it doesn't sound good, but that's where I'm at. Ironically the pieces I made are meant to be motivating, but I have trouble motivating myself when it seems my efforts are overlooked or flat out ignored - in my artwork and my life.

My best friends and I didn't normally get each other birthday presents. We all mutually agreed way back that none of us made enough to get each other something we'd really want or would be useful, so we all just hang out together and drink on our birthdays.

The year I started making these I wanted to finally give them something. I still didn't make that much money, so I couldn't buy them anything super cool. I decided I would draw them something. They've each asked me to draw them some tattoo designs, but I wanted to draw them something they wouldn't be expecting.

I wanted each of the concepts to be positive overall; something that might motivate them to get up and take on the day.

A little bit of the process.

For the record, I didn't just copy the image I was drawing. The picture is made up of several different images I saw online, and I combined them in my head before putting them to paper.
The kind of energy ball Gohan is forming to attack is something I came up with without any reference. I figured it looked the part, and could be some cool, new move you haven't heard of yet.

King Gohan   18 x 24"

pencil & colored pencil

collection of Robert Hough

The round symbol in the background is a Japanese character called a kanji, and there are different ones featured on the uniforms of different characters. This particular kanji belongs to King Kai, and is also worn by Goku, Gohan's father. I used this kanji because it stands for "world king," which is more appropriate in the context of the image. The kanji on Gohan's uniform stands for "meal" or "boiled rice" - not very empowering or motivating. I could have just drawn Goku as the figure, but Gohan is Butters' favorite Super Saiyan.

The little guy at the bottom is Zeno, the Omni King. From what I've read and been told, he's the most powerful and revered being in all of the universes on Dragonball Z.
In this depiction, it's supposed to look like he's giving his power to Super Saiyan Gohan, which Gohan has acquired by wishing for it after collecting all seven Dragon Balls and bringing them to Shenron, the giant dragon.

He recently bought this shirt that I also felt was relevant. The girl, Bulma, is also from Dragon Ball Z. If you've seen it, you know she's not like how she's depicted there, and I'm pretty sure they don't have scenes like this, but she clearly represented one of the better-looking females on the show.

I decided I would leave them each a different message related to the imagery on the backs of their drawings as part of building up that motivating concept that the drawing is meant to convey.

He gave me a drawing in return. Being the one who's usually giving away the work, it means a lot to get drawings from friends and admirers.

Megin's birthday is a month after Butters'. So pretty soon I was working on her present too.

It was a challenge trying to figure out what to draw Megin that would include things she likes but could also be positive and motivating. That's not to say that she only likes dark stuff, but she'll tell you herself a fair bit of the stuff she likes is dark. I didn't want to repeat the same process of picking her favorite character from her favorite cartoon. I'm not even sure there's a cartoon she likes as much as Butters likes Dragonball Z.

I decided the piece would be transformative. Something dark that would be brightened and eased up. Megin has always liked horror films - especially the classics. Freddy Krueger is her all-time favorite horror flick killer. I decided this is where I would start from.
The idea grew and became more funny as I went along. The sick, twisted Freddy would be a harmless, pot-smoking, cat-collecting hippy getting over his past ways.

Friendly Freddy   18 x 24"

pencil & colored pencil

collection of Megin Bradford

If you're familiar with the original Nightmare on Elm Street, you might remember Johnny Depp being in it. While laying on his bed, he is sucked into it, only to shot back out and upward towards the ceiling in a gruesome, bloody display. That's what you see in the background there. I figured this could represent the darkness he is moving away from. It is literally and metaphorically behind him.

His expression isn't the friendliest, but I found the reference picture for this expression and I just pictured him hissing like a cat and holding his gloved hand up like a paw with talons.

 Following that concept, the stairs are meant to be symbolic of moving onward and upward in life. Moving towards brighter, better things.

All the cats in the picture are real cats Megin and Butters have, except two. The little black on the stairs is the back is Megin's girlfriend's cat, and the white one on Freddy's lap is supposed to be the cat-version of the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

"A húgomnak" is Hungarian for "To my sister."
I wrote it this way because Megin and I are both mostly Hungarian, and I would like to start learning and using our ancestral language more.
It would be nice if others wanted to learn and use it as well, but even if they don't, I'll continue on like I do. I'm sure they'll change their minds when I start saying things they can't understand about them.

They both really seemed to like them a lot despite how long it took for me to hand them over, which is good. They were also pretty quick to get them framed right away which I appreciate immensely.

These two have stuck by me through recent years when others have left, moved on, or stopped speaking to me. A lot of it has been fun, but the years also included a lot of struggle. It's during those times of struggle and hardship that you find out who is really there for you, and I just want them to know how much it means to me that they're still there. They have my back, and I have theirs.

My Kingdom of SoHo

Soho (sometimes capitalized as SoHo) is a neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, which is downtown in New York. I had the pleasure of walking around a lot of area on my recent trip there. It isn't a very large space compared to the city as a whole, but there's a lot in it.

Since the late 20th century the area has been making a strong comeback from a low point it reached after the 19th century concluded and the center of the city continued to move uptown. Even before that time, the dramatic change in the character and nature of the neighborhood drove out a lot of the middle class. By the 1880s and 90s Soho had lost 25% of its population. This reduced the price of property as lumber and textile companies, trade smiths, manufacturers, companies commercially selling dry-goods, and publishers moved in. After World War II ended in 1945, a lot of manufacturing and textile companies moved back down South. This left a lot of empty industrial buildings. Some of the buildings were repurposed as warehouses and printing plants; others were torn down to make way for parking lots and repair garages. By the 1950s it was known as Hell's Hundred Acres because of the little factories and sweatshops people were packed into to work, as well as the industrial wasteland-look it had taken on over the years.
The district didn't start to make a comeback until the 1960s when artists started to move into the area. Buildings with tall ceilings, a lot of windows, and lofts above them made for the perfect studio spaces. The new influx of people coming in brought back other businesses. Artists and other creative people in the area made it a go-to destination. This interest in the area on a larger-than-local scale brought in chain stores and larger companies with more money to invest in the district.

Today Soho is a very interesting and nice place to visit. There are hotels, stone-paved side streets, studios, galleries, coffee shops, book stores, chain stores from national and international companies, and boutique shops with all different kinds of stuff. There's also some murals, some graffiti, and some great architecture.

This was my first time visiting Soho, but I had known for some time hearing from different sources that it was an area with a lot of artists and interesting places to visit. Being called an artist, it was pretty coincidental that it went with my last name, so I always like to joke around and say it's my kingdom or that it was named after my family. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the area actually gets its name from an acronym because the area is South of Houston St. What I didn't mention is that a similarly artistic and eclectic section of London's West End shares the same name is also what gave rise to the use of the name in New York. I plan on visiting that Soho too someday.

FOUR and someone else wrote their name in the dust on the windows on the top floor.

Soho boasts one of the largest collections of cast-iron architecture in New York. So much so that most of the area is included in what is now the preserved Cast-Iron Historic District, as designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Today it's considered one of the country's national historic landmarks. The Cast-Iron District consists of 26 blocks with about 500 buildings between them. As the name suggests, these buildings have architectural elements in which cast-iron plays an important role. The style and means of building were popular during the Industrial Revolution when cast-iron was cheap and steel had yet to be invented. The most apparent cast-iron features are the facades and fire escapes on the front and backs of the buildings, but a lot of the main framework in the buildings is cast-iron as well. Neo-classical and Romanesque architecture influenced the more decorative side of the buildings' design.

One day it won't be a joke, and I really will have business in the area. The next time I come back I'm bringing finished work, sketchbooks, some painting stuff, and expansion plans. Business will be the name of the game.

Among my future goals is becoming a Soho House member. Soho House is a global social club for people in the creative industries. Their membership is incredibly private. New members are put up for membership by current members to be approved by a board of members higher up. You can also apply to be a member. To maintain "the right balance of people," members are often purged from the group. I've seen a lot of talented people, so I'd be lying to myself if I thought I deserved to be a member before some of these other people. At least at this point in time. However, anyone who knows me knows that even though I hit some setbacks and my work isn't were it could be, nothing comes before my artwork in my life. Not to mention most of my last name's out front, on their other locations, on the website, and the business cards. It seems like it would be really fitting, like it was meant to be.

photo credit: Soho House New York's Twitter (@sohohousenyc) 

Why do people join the club? To connect and meet with other creative individuals in various art and media-related fields in a public, but still personal, setting. The Soho House in New York is a private hotel. It has halls for events, rooms to lounge, work, meet, and sleep in, a restaurant, several bars, a spa, a screening room, and a rooftop patio that includes a pool and another bar. Soho House's other locations also include bars, clubs, and venues.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A really cool door and doorway.

One of the things I would like to do as soon as my other, older work is finally completed. It's nice to see advertising done in a more traditional manner again.

Street art starring Jonathan Banks.

More than half of the galleries I went to were closed. Sunday was not the best day to pick for gallery-hopping.

Thankfully I found a few decent ones that were open. I didn't take pictures in the galleries. Usually they don't let you, and in some of the galleries the work wasn't worth photographing. I wasn't there to be inspired visually anyway. I'm always open to inspiration of course, but that wasn't my main reason for wanting to go in. I already have a lot of ideas for artwork, and I'm in the process of getting better with what I know as well as expanding the different mediums and styles I use. It's the business end of the art world that I know very little about.
I mostly wanted to know things like how much the artists were charging for different work made in different sizes in different mediums, or how the consistency of how much they sold affected the price of their work.

You should go see the work for yourself anyway. There's a big difference between seeing a photograph  and seeing the work in person.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A very cool place filled with lots of objects resembling different sea life like coral, sea cumbers, and anemones. I'm still not sure what they are. They're like sculptures and light fixtures combined. There's some other diverse and unrelated stuff in there too that's pretty cool.

The Drawing Center is an interesting gallery and studio space to visit.

Artwork by Louise Despont (Instagram @louisedespont), on what looked like connected accounting sheets from a lot of years ago.

There were more than these two. These were just my favorites. The more rounded of the shapes  remind me of sacred geometry, which is the use of geometric shapes and proportions in a more aesthetic and symbolic sense rather than a practical or mathematical sense.

Free form texture and depth made with line variance. The same technique builds up the images seen in block prints, etchings, and some lithographs.

These were sort of interesting if your'e into Dadaist and more Modernist work. I wasn't holding back though, I had to crack a joke about that completely black page in the middle on the bottom row. I have no idea what compelled you to hang that up, because nobody's seeing anything in it but a black rectangle. Even the one on the far right in that same row is an unreadable ink smudge. There's no point to typography if you can't read or even see any of the type. You might as well hang up plain sheets of black construction paper. I'm not about making fun of people's work, but I will call you out if you don't even try or really go in the opposite direction and try to take concepts into literal nothingness and irrelevance. I'm just being honest. I don't hold anyone to a standard I don't already hold myself to, and I don't expect anything less from anyone else. Free free to send your harshest critiques my way.

Graphic design: fonts, logos, and graphics.

I'm all about that sassy ass.

They had a really old binder with different fonts.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A gallery dedicated entirely to horses, and not just any horses.

From their website: "SDD's mission is to promote Soho, NY as a premier destination for world-renowned design and to preserve Soho's unique history as a global center for creativity." Done and done. Soho Life for life. Of course, it could use some work from the Soho himself.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether something's a commissioned mural, street art, or graffiti. They're all pretty great regardless of what kind of artist did the work or who gave permission.

NoMo SoHo is another upscale hotel with additional features.

They don't have exclusive membership though, so I was able to go inside and check it out.

They have a really nice bar setup.

Their sunroom dining space.

To be more specific, the stone-paved streets are Belgian blocks, which are often confused with cobblestones. The blocks have a cobbled appearance, but are smoother, flatter, and more uniform in in their rectangular shape.

Posting bills anyway.

Soho Thai

Murals between Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown.

Wear and tear and still there.

Sohotel

A selfie with Soho behind me.

The tall buildings in the far back make up the Financial District. A little bit of the low area in front of them is Tribeca. Soho is in front of that, but above the diagonal bar coming downward toward my neck.

If you lean back far enough, 5th and 7th Ave form an "A" with Washington Square Park crossing the two. Soho is right in the middle making up the top triangle of the "A" just past the park and the university next to it.

Looking over the kingdom.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

I'll be back soon, Soho, and we'll make some great things happen.

And that's Soho for you.