VOTE FOR MY DESIGNS!

PLEASE vote for my Tshirt designs! Shane and Shane ( a Contemporary Christian Music duo) have accepted my designs into their contest for YOU TO VOTE ON! There's cash and prizes up for grabs here, and not to mention the awesome fact that if I win, my design will be featured on their merchandise! So please vote for:

©2010 Justin Branch

DESIGN #1 here: http://getfaveur.com/shane-n-shane/

OR

©2010 Justin Branch

DESIGN #2 here: http://getfaveur.com/shane-abstract/

*Click on the little heart to 'show me love' and cast your vote!

(as of right now design #1 has the most votes. you can only vote for each design once, and I need over 150 to clearly win..as of right now. however, with YOUR help i'd love to get over 200 votes for one of the designs!!!! show me some love and thanks sooo much everyone!)

WINTER GAMES!

I'm really enjoying watching the 2010 Olympic games. Go team USA!

© 2010 Justin Branch

Broken Bells

I think the sound of the new musical group Broken Bells is great. It combines the talents of Danger Mouse and James Mercer from The Shins. It's warm, oldie goldie, pop infected, atmospheric, and inviting poetry. Please check it out here:

http://www.brokenbells.com/home.html

Also, the art created for the album and site are done well also. I love the color pallet and shapes. It's so great when my two greatest passions, art and music, hold hands and harmonize.

image found on google image search

A Lot of Wind and A Little Humor

Just some sketches and fun.

© 2010 Justin Branch

Variable Topics - Assignment #2

This assignment was a response to an excerpt from an essay by a wonderful artist, Squeak Carnwath wherein she talks about the desire to create and how life brings plenty of inspiration.

1/26/2010

I can relate with Squeak and her desire to create. It has always been in me as well. To translate an idea, emotion, or mood into something tangible, or to reconstruct it. However, I think somewhere down the road I lost the ability, or the awareness of the fact that I can create without rules or limits. That's the point of being an artist in many senses. Imagination and creativity. It started out that way, bringing to life non-existing things, or really using my eye to look and translate what I saw using my own language. But then it became about others styles and ideas. Instead of embracing my own creations, and artistic identity I became immersed with becoming like my favorites. Now, all, most, or some artist may go through this. But for me it has been a long, detrimental trek that has been hard to shake. Until recently.

I'm learning to be inspired but now not feeling as compelled to compare myself to others; to let go and draw that line, form that shape, and change it until it suits me. Mistakes are OK. I remember my father use to doodle, it's probably what encouraged art in me, but he had such a unique, feathery/unsure style of sketching that one could recognize as his. He was void of formal training or the temptation to copy or imitate. This was his vision. I treasure that now. The case is the same with my fiancee. She's studying to become an Elementary Ed. teacher, and one of her courses was teaching art. Her work was her own, she hated it, but it was remarkable to me. She was creating in a place, with a sense, that seems fairly foreign to me now. No doubt I'll find my style (again), and no doubt my life inspirations will find their way into it.

Variable Topics - Assignment #1

The assignment was a simple quote and our response to it:

"Art, when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside extra thing."

- Robert Henri

The Art Spirit

Art is not for me. Art is not for you. It's for us both. When we come to realize that it can be found or stirred up in any one of us, then we realize it's the doing of things, the invention, the creation, the exploration of thoughts, hopes, dreams, and ideas. However, it extends past just doing, but doing it well. With thought, care, and precision. Be it scrutinizing and following rules, or shattering everything formal we hold true.

Art is not beyond us. It is created by us. Our hands, voices, bodies, and tools create it. Therefore we are entitled to an opinion of it. Art "is" us in a sense. Not beyond us.

I think that sometimes art scares people into thinking it is bigger or better than we the creators. Or we look at artists with such high regard that they somehow transcend into something greater than we are. No, they are just as lost, scared, happy, dorky, and nervous as the rest of us. The difference is they cope with colors, line, pencils, pens, paints, canvases, brushes, stone, metal, voice, body, and technology.

Cough Cough.

So I've been under the weather now for a few days: hurting neck, head, chest, coughing, stopped up...you know. I spent an ENTIRE day in bed on Sunday, nice, but very unproductive. This was a little digital sketch (which I do as often as actual sketchbook sketches) to chronicle how I feel/felt.

So It Begins

Well this little blog is starting because of an assignment. However, I feel it will be continued, and at some point not seem like an assignment at all, rather a...well...blog. The objective for this blog initially, will be to post responses to writing assignments in class (Variable Topics in Drawing). Also to house sketches, ideas, and any other bits and pieces of my 'art creating' process. So please, feel free to roam and look and comment and follow. There are many more posts to come.