Asja Boroš

Keeping myself busy

DIY, illustration, work in progress 3 Responses »

Jan 262012

girl with lots of hair

As I thought of writing this post I said to myself there must be another way to start it than saying I’ve been very busy. It doesn’t sound original or fun but it’s true! I’ve been very busy working on various projects, some of which I’m not yet allowed to share and a personal art project that still makes sense only in my head and will have to wait awhile until it reveals itself to the world.

However, I did manage to steal a little time to work on simple creative ideas. I’ve been doodling on glossy 200gms photo paper, using colorful, sparkly rollers and expressing my ~~caffeine addiction~~ love for coffee.

I got some cheap coffee mugs at a local store and I’d love to draw something on them as soon as I buy paint for ceramics. Now I’m just using them as props.

i love coffee02

i love coffee 01

i love coffee

For some reason I can’t remember right now I thought it would be fun to make a watermelon necklace. I really love watermelons and pink/red/green color combo so why not? But, to be honest my every attempt to make jewelry only reaffirms my decision to stick to illustration because I kinda suck at crafting and lack patience to work on tiny details. I made this by cutting a round cork coaster in half, painting a watermelon on it, then making two tiny holes and putting soft wire through them. I’m using it a as decoration/some sort of mobile right now and will look for actual watermelon themed jewelry on etsy one day

watermelon necklace

I had more fun painting bears on cork coasters than making a watermelon “necklace”:

bear coasters

As January is coming to an ending I’m still keeping my motto for 2012. in mind and keeping myself motivated , creative and , yes ,very busy. I can’t wait until I can share results of more exciting projects with you!

everyday is a holiday

Over the weekend

illustration 5 Responses »

Jan 232012

baking is sexy

Over the weekend I finished these two doodles of food, food doodles, foodles? Anyway, I made them just for fun.
According to this cupcake, baking is very sexy. And this toast is very smart. He’s into important intellectual matters, philosophy and knowing every flag of the world. He’s kinda cute as well, don’t you think?

smart toast

Bears and Maksi

illustration, personal 9 Responses »

Jan 182012

bears collage Bears were drawn last year.

Latest issue of Maksi magazine (that features my work) came in mail yesterday.

maksi
maksi

All is well in Asja-land.

Redecorating frenzy and other things that kept me busy

DIY, personal, photos 7 Responses »

Jan 142012

So far 2012. has been very good to me. I spent December 2011. mostly planning, setting goals and writing so seeing my plans turning into reality so fast feels great! I’ve been very busy last couple of weeks enjoying new work opportunities, setting foundations for personal art project and redecorating my apartment.
I didn’t actually plan to redecorate my place, it happened quite spontaneously. On Monday I had a little incident involving spilled ink and pinkish wall which propelled me into some sort of redecorating frenzy and resulted with repainting walls (and some pieces of furniture) bright white, painting flowers on closets, cleaning like a mad person and rearranging art pieces.

redecorating01
As I mentioned before, on Monday night I spilled some ink on orange/pinkish wall in my computer nook and naively wanted to wash it out with water making an ever bigger stain. You know how it goes, the more you try to clean it the bigger the stain so I thought well, I might just remove all the paint and repaint the wall.

Removing the paint was pretty tedious and messy but, I believe, totally worth it because white suits my little corner so much better and makes it lot brighter.I also rearranged art pieces and put them above my desk, I have quite an Alkaline collection, 6 original pieces by Alkaline Samurai, photo print by Isidora and two of my own pieces.

redecorating02

Also, I repainted my little cabinet white and painted some pink flowers on it, now I call it sakura cabinet hehe.

redecorating03

Recently I made a little drawing of a bear on a round piece of wood so I thought it would be appropriate to display it as well.

redecorating bear drawing

Once I refreshed my computer corner I moved on to the living room and repainted my old wooden wall white. The whole room seems bigger, much brighter and more pleasant to be in.

redecorating04

I have a big, really old closet in my living room that I plan on kicking out very soon so I thought it would be fun to paint on it before it gets moved out. Years ago, on one part of the closet my Mom applied some flowery decoupage that I never liked so I decided to remove it. And I learned a valuable lesson, decoupage is ~~hard and messy~~ impossible to remove but also nothing that 4 coats of white paint and strategically painted blue flowers can’t cover up.

redecorating05

The rest of the closet got some new, blue flowers as well.

redecorating06

After that I painted my kitchen cabinets white as well and did A LOT of cleaning and I’m still in the process of cleaning and rearranging stuff just at a slower pace (it’s weekend after all).

Last weekend I felt like doing something fun yet simple so I played a bit with white watercolor and blue, lined paper getting subtle and understated drawings.

blue and white

Before that I experimented with dying plain, white paper with coffee and spices to get interesting textures to scan and use as textures for layers in PS. I found my old high school biology homework and though I might scan it as well to get some “objects” to use as PS layers as well.

making textures

I also made some simple notebooks to fill with photo ideas, I’ve been writing and sketching so much I already have 4 little notebooks overflowing with ideas!

precious ideas notebook

I rediscover how fun it is to paint on brown paper!

it's raining ideas

Other great things happened as well in first 2 weeks of new year. I got great news, my partner in ~~crime~~ art and all things awesome is coming to visit in early February and we’re planning to have amazing time together as always. I started looking for props for my soon-to-happen photo shoots and scouted some very inspiring locations. I went to much needed shopping for clothes as I realized my sartorial choices could be described by this. I started working on a wonderful commission and even though I’ve been seriously sleep deprived I’m having a blast! I have a feeling 2012. will be the BEST YEAR EVER!

How did your year start?

Things I wish I knew 10 years ago

musings, personal No Responses »

Jan 122012

I’ve been very, very busy in lately (in best possible way!!) so to break silence on this blog, I decided to re-post one of my older posts from tumblr. I will soon be back with new stuff.

***

Things I wish I knew 10 years ago a.k.a. twenties suck

Recently I had an honest conversation with a few friends (all of us are in late twenties/early thirties) about how our twenties turned out pretty disappointing and generally sucked and no one warned us about it.

Everyone warns you about adolescence. They tell you it will be awful, they tell you your body, mind and emotions will go on a crazy roll-coaster ride and that life might chew you and spit you out and leave you angsty, confused and sad. They warn you not to make bad decisions, they give you tons of (usually unwanted) advice and assure you that whatever you feel as a teenager eventually it will pass.

But nobody tells you (at least nobody told me) that turning twenty would not magically turn you into a wise adult, that you won’t magically find out who you are and what you want to do with your life. And, that even though society will expect you to act like a responsible, wise adult you won’t be ready for it because you won’t really know where to fit in within that society.
You also won’t feel any less insecure or confused as you did as a teen, you will just feel more awkward admitting it because you’re supposed to be “confident and responsible”. And there is always that friend/cousin/neighbor who’s your age and seems so confident and successful and getting that amazing degree and already having a career and committed relationship etc that makes you feel incompetent and even a bit ashamed that you haven’t even started doing any of that in your life.

From what I’ve learned twenties are a period of finding out who you are and where your place in world is. It a time of soul-searching and self-discovery and experimenting and learning, making mistakes and going through identity crisis and making up you own rules on what success is. And all of that is usually hard work and a struggle which nobody warns you about.

I think this transition and period of self-discovery was particularly hard for my generation because most of us couldn’t bite into “finish college/get a steady,corporate job/ get married/get a loan/make babies” scheme. Most of us have seen our parents go through horrible middle-age crisis due to making wrong decisions in their twenties (getting married too young, being stuck at job they hate, being too stressed, getting ill etc) and we didn’t want to repeat their mistakes.

But, at the same time we haven’t seen many alternative choices especially career wise. I mean, you can make a choice not to get married or have children until you’re totally ready but you still have to get a job and pay the bills.
As one of my friends said “it’s hard enough not to know what you want to do with your life, but finding out and not being able to see how can you possibly manifest your deepest dreams and visions it’s even more frustrating”.

Other frustrating thing was being put under a lot of pressure by older generations who in their twenties already had steady jobs, families and all kinds of commitments and couldn’t understand why we were so reluctant to go down that path right away. It seems that age limits and milestones have moved up to ten years and the process of growing up and maturing is much longer than it was 20-30 years ago.

I wish I knew all this ten years ago so I wouldn’t be so hard on myself and I wouldn’t feel like a failure in situations when I was actually doing great and I would give myself more credit for all of my achievements.
I also wish me and my friends were able to be completely honest to each other few years ago as we are today instead of pretending and going through the process of growing up and self-discovery alone out of fear of being judged by other but I guess, that was all the part of the lesson.

Now, I’m not saying that if you’re nineteen next ten years of your life will be terrible or that that all of my peers had nightmarish twenties, I’ve just came to realize that I had put much more work and energy into self development during that period than I thought I would and it sucked not knowing it was a perfectly normal and natural process of growing up for most of my generation.

Why I still love printed books (and choose to publish them)

musings, publishing 11 Responses »

Jan 072012

*little notebook I made for writing ideas for photos*

In a world when bookstores are being closed on a daily basis, when publishing business is being restructured, when we are convinced that digital books are the future of publishing the idea that inspires me thew most is to create and self-publish a printed book. With a beginning of this year I started working on a series of photos with printed book as an outcome of the project.

Why is that so? Here are some of my reasons:

In a world of everything becoming digital and when there are so many pieces of art existing only in virtual reality printed books seem to have bigger value than ever. Printed book is a tangible, real object you can hold in your hands, feel, touch, smell. You can experience it with all your senses.

Do you ever wonder, with technology developing and changing so fast what will happen to digital files of your photos or paintings in 50 years? How about your website or a blog? Film, if stored in right conditions can last over hundred years, what will happen with .jpegs in 100+ years? I shoot digital and I color my drawings digitally so final products of my work are digital files. I love all the possibilities digital art and internet provide but I still feel a need to convert (no pun intended ) my work into something of more lasting value such is printed book which can, if handled properly, last for decades. Now, you might say it’s not really important what happens with artworks or photos in future, all we have is now, but what is created today will be a cultural heritage left to future generations, it will provide them insight into our way of life and thinking.

It seems that today everything is being converted into digital medium and it’s being easily accessed through internet and need for possessing material, tangible prints, works of art, photographs or books is declining. Having access to a lot of information, art and knowledge instantly via www is great without a doubt but I still love owning and sharing something tangible, something you can experience directly, with all your senses , such as book, or a sculpture or a painting. Besides, digital files and virtual information are so easily manipulated, censored and can be erased instantly, and if you want to censor and destroy books you still need to burn them

My other reasons why I intend to self-publish photo-book are of purely personal nature. I feel much more inspired when working on a big, complex project (and putting together a book certainly is one) than just working on one image at the time. Being involved in something demanding makes me more focused and I like challenge of creating images that can stand on their own but also need to be a part of a bigger project. But why not just make a series of photos that can be, let’s say, exhibited in a gallery, why a book? Well, because I’m working on a series of self-portraits and portraits that tell personal, intimate stories and I believe that the best way to experience such images is through a medium of a book, a more intimate way than just looking at prints hanging in a gallery space.

***

How about you? Do you value and enjoy printed books? And if you’re an artist what’s your favorite, ideal way of displaying/sharing your works to public?

New Year’s resolution

musings, personal 8 Responses »

Jan 052012

This year my only resolution is to spend as little time as possible online and as little as time possible in front of computer screen in general.

I don’t know if it’s only me but I got increasingly tired of “the internet”. Few years ago I could spend hours surfing and looking for inspiration and actually finding it. Now I feel like being suffocated by amount of information and visual stimulation online. There’s never been so many “inspiration” sites yet I never felt less inspired by what I’m finding on the web (there are few exceptions, as they usually are, of course). Why is that so? Maybe because, even with sooooo much information out there, the same pictures are being reblogged on tumblr over and over, the same trends are being promoted on fashion sites and blogs over and over, the same ideas are circulating on the web and, at least to me it has become very challenging to find something new, unique and refreshing.

And, to be honest, this overdose on information is getting to me. I find it harder to focus on my own work and harder to develop my own ideas because my subconscious mind is cluttered with images and ideas picked up online and it’s constantly analyzing my work and comparing it to others. It’s not fun anymore. I realized if I want to create more genuine work I need to de-clutter both my mind and bookmarks, start looking for inspiration within me and not in virtual world.I already stopped following bunch of sites and blogs and decided to only follow those blogs I truly enjoy (don’t worry I won’t stop visiting YOUR blog ) and it feels great.

I also decided to spend more time connecting with my friends, nature, city I live in and to generally preserve and spend my energy and attention more wisely and to expose myself to different kind of ideas and information, maybe of more “serious” kind.

Spending obviously too much time online made me start asking unpopular, uncool questions like: why is so important to be liked (either on facebook or in general)? why is important to have followers or fans or whatever? why it feels like everything is being created into a brand? are we all being brainwashed with so many useless distractions and information into not taking action? etc etc

Recently I quit pinterest, because, quite frankly it made me ask questions like do we need another wave of feminism right now? Why? Well, because every time I would scroll down the front page that supposedly features the most popular pins I would see the same pins over and over again, things like “lose 5 lbs of fat in a week”, generic and boring fashion combinations, advice for cleaning, inspiration posters that sound like worn out cliches etc and it made me think are these really paramount interests of women today? Losing weight, not being bloated, making hedgehog out of a watermelon, braiding your hair and dying chalkboard paint over everything ? I hope not. Don’t get me wrong I really have nothing against homemaking, crafting, making yourself pretty or staying motivated with whatever words motivate you. I have nothing against pinterest itself, it actually helped me

Being on pinterest reminded me that I really don’t care about flattening my abs, Kate’s wedding dress, or cooking 1000 different meals in a crock pot (whatever that is) and even though I do like to cook and take care of my body I forgot to nurture my other more intellectual interests. And it made me ask myself: Why am I looking at this when I’m actually more interested in world economy and political situation and reading books and making art and hundreds of different things? How did I become so distracted? How did I allow myself to become so distracted?

You see, it’s not really pinterest or internet’s fault. Over the years, little by little, I’ve become less critical and selective when it comes to online contents I’ve came across. I allowed myself to get distracted with superficial, light contents because it was easier than making effort to look for more quality articles, images etc. My subconscious mind soaked in all irrelevant, silly info I was served on www and suddenly I’ve become accepting of many things I used to consider shallow, irrelevant, boring. There’s nothing wrong with light, superficial, amusing contents, there’s nothing wrong with having fun or being entertained but not at the expense of forgetting things that truly matter to you. And it kinda happened to me. I (almost) forgot that being open, positive, tolerant and accepting is important but so is having analytical, critical mind. It’s important to make effort to expose yourself to quality writing, images, art, music, to ask serious questions…

So, I’ll correct my New Year’s resolution and say:

This year I will make conscious effort to feed my mind and soul with ideas and images that truly inspire me, help me learn and grow and empower me.

*and yeah I’ll try to spend less time online .

Happy New Year!!

illustration 7 Responses »

Dec 312011

Sretna Nova godina! Happy New Year! May it be best ever!

May your life be filled with joy, happiness and love and may all of problems and tension drift away!

Have a great time tonight, woodland critters already started to party hehe.

3 ideas for working through a creative blockage

musings 2 Responses »

Dec 282011

day164wip

De-clutter your mind

For visual artists is sometimes more important to feel their work than to think it, to experience it through emotions or senses rather than mentally. I’ve noticed that a seed of most of my creative blockages lies in thinking too much about my work instead of simply letting go and allowing myself to feel it and express myself. Sometimes my mind is so cluttered with thoughts and ideas that it prevents me from doing anything practical. At times I get so paralyzed with never ending inner dialogue about what I should and shouldn’t do that causes creative blockages. So, in order to get myself moving and creating again, first I need to de-clutter my mind. The most efficient way to do it is writing. Start with just writing down your thoughts as they come, in stream-of-consciousness manner. After 3-5 pages your mind clears up and meaningless ramblings turn into clear, concise ideas you can implement. Or you simply feel like you have nothing to say anymore, spontaneously stop writing and go on doing other things.
Other very efficient way to de-clutter your mind is physical exercise, especially running but anything that speeds up your heart rate will do. Going on long walks or spending a lot of time in nature is very helpful as well.

Make really bad art intentionally

If a fear of failure, or pressure of having to make only excellent work is preventing you from creating art then make a pact with yourself to produce really bad art for a while. Deliberately produce only horrible, crappy, cliche type of work. Because when you do it on purpose, well, then it can’t be failure It will help you to relax and it will take off the pressure of having to create something really awesome away. Also, you might end up surprised how your intentionally bad art turned out to be really good.

Become more receptive

Creative process seems to be an interesting combination of taking action and passively accepting inspiration. To create a piece of art it is necessary to take practical action (take a brush and paint, press the shutter button, sit down and draw whole afternoon etc) but it is also very important to open up to inspiration/creative energy and accept whatever result it may produce. So, instead of forcing yourself to create something exactly as you’ve imagined it might be useful to become more receptive and flexible and accept whatever inspiration may bring.

Randomness

musings, personal 6 Responses »

Dec 272011

last spring

As I enjoyed reading both Deb’s and Beth Retro’s blog post on random facts about themselves I thought it would be fun to write one about myself.

So, here are random bits about yours truly, in no particular order:

I simply cannot understand why modern society is so obsessed with being young (and looking young at any price). I mean youth-hood has it’s perks but from what I’ve learned growing up and growing older and wiser and having more experience is even better. There’s no way I would ever be teenager or re-live my early twenties again! The older I get, the more I learn about myself the more confident, focused and balanced I am and I really love it.

I love setting goals. The one thing I love more than setting goals is achieving them.

I don’t vote. Never voted in my entire life. I don’t believe in electoral system, I think politicians are simply marionettes of corporate interests. I’m not religious. I wasn’t brought up that way and I never felt need to become a part of any religion. I’m aware that both politics and religion are pretty sensitive stuff, so I keep them away from my blog even though I’m pretty opinionated about both topics.

I’m a typical Libra. Or maybe not. Can’t really decide

I think that the sexiest thing on a man is his mind. I love intelligent, slightly unconventional, creative men with sense of humor.

There are two major trends in art/design I would love to see go away. First, Super Mario pop-art ( and any ironic Super Mario designs, t-shirts, jewelry, cupcakes etc…) Second, exploitation of that carry on and keep calm poster. Haven’t that idea been used and abused too many times by now? I would like to design a “carry on and stop exploiting carry on poster ideas already” hehe.

Ever since I was fifteen I wrote journals in English. I can’t really remember why I started writing in English, probably because I wanted to get better at it. I always enjoyed learning foreign languages mostly because it never felt like studying but having fun. One of my few regrets in life is not taking lessons in French when I had an opportunity, but, hey , it’s never too late, right?

I always keep a notebook (or several notebooks) near me so I can write down ideas, to-do lists or anything else that comes to mind. I usually fill up to four notebooks a month with ideas and random thoughts.

I’m pretty obsessed with anything art/creativity related. About 90% of my time and energy is in some way devoted to things art related. And that’s not an exaggeration, I even dream about drawing and taking pictures.

I prefer cold over warm weather, I really dislike heat and sweating and humidity in Summer. I wish it snowed this Winter.

Fellow bloggers, feel like sharing a bit of randomness about yourself? I’d love to read

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