I had a whole bunch of fun. This show had far and away the best crowd at any art show I have been involved in. It was more of a club/low level industry crowd which I have since decided is way more fun than the typical art show crowds. They are prettier, friendlier and generally have a much better appreciation for art. Or at least they are more cool about it. That’s not to say that art show crowds don’t appreciate art (because that’s not true at all) but I think at art shows, since everybody is into art or makes art, they always talk like they want to show that off. I don’t know how many times I get some goon step up to me at an art gallery with his arms folded and start grilling me all business-like about my work like it’s a fucking job interview or something. I hate that.
The babe-watch was very solid. Most were cool too. At least they were cool to me because I’m such a bad ass painter, right? Yeah…… anyways, I think in general I did a pretty good job at talking to people which is very hit and miss for me. I don’t think my networking skills were very good by anybody else’s standards, but I definitely think I’m improving in that regard. The audience was pretty soft here though, so I’m not sure if it’s something I should get too proud of myself about.
Of course since I’m Terry Kim, none of friends or anybody I invited showed up. It kind of bugged me, but I don‘t think I‘m going to dwell on it too much. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’m just not very well liked (and on top of that I straight up suck at inviting people to things) and while that’s pretty unfortunate, I don’t have the time to do anything about it. It would be nice though for somebody to see me when I do well though. My track record for having witnesses at triumphant moments is terrible. I can see why my friends would think I suck.
I think the reception of my work was pretty solid. I got a lot props and a lot of people came to me and said that my work was the best which is always nice to hear. It’s hard for me to say how hard I pwned since I don’t know how well the other artists did. Nobody I invited showed up, so that’s a big negative. On the positive side: I got a lot of people telling me I was the best, I got a lot cards, and people wanted to talk to me all night. Taking into account the fact that I don’t know how the other artists did, on a scale of 1 to 10 I think my pwnage was about a 7.
PWN LEVEL: 7
This was a very early painting I did. I think it was my fourth painting. It was never my intent to be a realistic painter, but I always prescribed to the school of thought that every painter, no matter what style he/she eventually did, should have a solid foundation in realism. On the previous three or so paintings my skill at shading and color selection felt really…….. I don’t know. Erratic? Or inconsistant maybe is a better word. During some moments I felt I could get the shading looking the way I wanted and sometimes the ability would just leave me unexpectedly which was very, very frustrating. I decided to do this painting as sort of homework assignment to get down shading.
I took the image from like GQ or something. I selected it primarily because I thought it would be a challenge. It wasn’t. Whatever problems I was experiencing with shading in the past I guess worked itself out because I basically blew through it with very little trouble. I got pretty bored of painting it after a week or so which is why I never finished it. This began a streak of about four paintings that I left unfinished (I don’t know if it’s by coincidence or not, but these four paintings all have kind of a noir feel going for them.) Of those four this is the only painting that I didn’t destroy. Even though I never really had much of a desire to finish it, since it was so close to being done I felt it would be a shame to destroy it.
During my last show I showed a picture of this piece to a girl I met named Annie and she liked it and said that it looked good unfinished and that I should leave it as is and consider it done. It seemed like a good idea so I decided to fold it into my alphabet series.
