Cody Goodin - The artistic and spiritual journey of Cody Goodin

Happy Thursday to you all out there in cyberland. I hope you are doing well and are finding some fun and creative things to do with yourselves. I have been immersed in a photography class in the later half of the summer. It has been fun and very challenging thus far. But, well worth the time and effort. One thing I like about these classes is I am challenged to think and find new ways of looking at the world around me. As a budding photographer/artist I am still trying to find my voice or vision so to speak. It is in moments of sheer exhaustion that I realize some nice little insights. Since I started down this rabbit hole of photography, I have been in a big rush. To where you might ask? Well, it is one of those strange things I seem to get myself into. In the back of my mind I hear this voice saying,"Hurry up and develop your style. You need to get noticed and start that career of yours". So, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make everything count as if my artistic ca...

Happy weekend and Saturday to everyone out there who ventures a visit to my blog. Hope you are doing well. This post is dedicated to this weeks photography class assignment of soft focus images. I decided to show just two this time around. Because they really speak to me in a few interesting ways. Both of these images were taken with a piece of hosiery or gauze placed over the lens. This creates a soft focus right in camera. The camera had to be manually focused as the auto focus would focus on the texture of the gauze which I did not want. This first image is one I took of a doll sleeping in a chair. I place her and the chair on my bed because it offered the biggest ground. I love how ghostly she looks in the image. I am very much attracted to the idea of capturing images of ghost or apparitions. There is something so ethereal about that. Once I got the shot I then proceeded to convert the image to black and white. I thought the process was quite successful. In the second im...

As I posted in the last installment, here is the cat girl character in a full pose. You can see the little dress I designed and made for her. I think it suits her. I love these little sleeping characters. My attempt at redoing the faces on both dolls is a bit crude by most artists who do this sort of thing. But, I like them nonetheless. This is a picture above of the sleeping princess character. You can see I used a dress originally made for a Barbie doll and just altered it to fit the monster high body. I am still not sure if I am going to redo the dress totally or make a new  one from scratch. I like the contrast of the pink to her greenish skin tones. Here are a few shots of the dolls I have changed the hair up a bit. The first is bee girls new do and he new antennae. I used a black sheep skin wool for the hair and wire and glass beads to create the antennae. She looks like a wild child and ready for some action.  This is puma boys new hair. I like this...

My first attempts at redoing the faces of little monster high dolls just so happens to be for some sleeping characters. Yes, it might be a cop out from making eyes. But, really I need two sleeping characters. When I saw these little beauties unfinished, they seemed so serene and thought immediately of some sleeping characters. The blond is definitely going to be a princess of some sort. Not sure yet. The other is going to be her friend, they were bewitched and have fallen asleep in the forest. Can't you just see my little Jasper and his lion Ruff coming upon them in the forest on one of their adventures? I sure can and what interesting things would happen? The first image is of the little cat like friend. I gave her really deep red hair and a tiny little black nose. I will post some better pics of the full body later. Her dress was hand made by me but, you can't really see it here. Blondie is the one who will play the part of the princess. I don't have names for e...

I decided to play around with some lighting fun tonight. So, I got out one of the dolls I have in my collection and posed her on my computer station. I have a nice direct light from an LED desk lamp that shines down upon my desk. So, I posed Cyndy Lou on a jar of Golden brand Pumice gel to give her something to sit on. The above image was processed into black and white after uploading it to Adobe Lightroom. Once I cropped and tweaked I sent the picture to On One Perfect B&W to create the image you see here. I love playing with available light as it challenges me to work with what I have on hand. My little pocket Nikon did a pretty good job. For me it's all about the feel of the image and I tend to be very intuitive when I do shoot a picture. Sure I pay attention to the exposure and such. But, I like the unexpected results. Sometimes it's great and sometimes it's a bust. Also, the type of camera is not as important as being free to just let go and have fun. I have l...

It is funny how the tiniest of things can change your perspective on life. For a few years now, I have been on this quest to find myself or should I say find out what I am here on this planet to do. Sure, some of you might think this is an obvious question to answer. But, for someone like me who has through a very complicated life I have lived, learned to question everything even my own soul. My heart or soul whatever you want to call that inner voice kept calling out for me to listen to it. Many times it would act out almost like an angry child. But, finally a few years back I decided to stop and take the time to try and listen. It was really hard at first.Because I had spent so much of my time focusing on the outer world that I could barely hear that inner voice once I decided to try. We spent many long hours meditating, chanting, praying, affirming and making art in the name of self healing together. A long and exhausting process that would have untold benefits. What was surprisin...

Hello my fellow blog explorers and art seekers. I hope your week has been going well. As we head into another holiday weekend I wanted to post a little update. I have been on vacation for over a week now and have made a little bit of progress in the studio. Not as much as I would have liked but, at least it's a start. Above is a picture of the black back drop and staging table I have put together to do most of the photo shoots on. This is what I will build a majority of the sets on. The only time I will not is if the set requires a larger surface. The table is an old paper cutter table that was abandoned in the halls of the Essex oh so many years ago. It has served as our snack table during shows and as a table for classes. Handy little thing I guess you can say. I have placed two 16 x 20 inch hardboard panels on top of the table and a piece of 20 x 30 inch black foam core on that. The black foam core is going to serve as the floor of the bedroom I am going to create for Jaspe...