end of 2011

at an uneven number. I've left the 'party' and my cat is in my lap. But there are some things that should happen in 2012, especially before summer.

I should start a series. Comic, blog, tumblr, whatever, I should serialize something. College cooking, perhaps. Political cartoons. Anything.

I should be able to drive on highways.

That is all. I'll say that it's an okay 2012 attempt.

video games

I have found Railroad Tycoon II, and I have installed it on the ancient XP in the basement. THe good news is that the basement is where the exercise equipment is. The bad news is that television is horrible and I shouldn't watch it. Even history channel feels like a horrible joke, exploiting mental illnesses and having ghost shows.

I've also been playing Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on a borrowed DS, until I find out what's wrong with mine and try to fix it.

I also must clean the Christmas-present mess from my room. I received a lot of things that secured my place in the kitchen, and I'm not ungrateful.

Some crazy part of me really likes going to bed at 12:34am. It just feels correct in an odd way. I've been sleeping something like 9 or 10 hours every night, amazing. I am remembering my strange dreams more and more.

15 more would just be pointless

I have finished my Christmas-shopping. Gift-giving is pretty exciting, but I always don't know if what I get is okay. I think, this year, I did well.

The more I am out of the house, the less I eat. I also don't snack nearly as much as I remember I did. The other day I even got to use the stationary bike for a while, which was nice. It feels great to get moving.

After two nights of air-mattress sleeping, I've decided to go back to my bed.

I'm not quite sure where I am right now, but I don't yearn to be home. There are people I like to see, but I'd rather be at school, even though I don't know people there as well as I know my friends back home.

sleep in

I got to sleep in!
If by sleeping in you mean that I got to wake up at 630am, wake my roommate up, and wake up every hour after that from a nightmare made of anxieties from normal life. I'll try again after.

Today is an easy, cleaning type of day. The floor has been vacuumed, mopped, and swifter-swept. The dishes are done (more or less). And the pudding is in the freezer ^__^.

I'd like to eat animal cracker sandwiches with frozen pudding middles to celebrate the end of the semester. (Such a dry floor resident.)

I think I've done it.

One of the biggest things for next semester is tackling this procrastination.
I believe this will start with a better dish-washing routine.

Right now, my turntable for 3D modeling is rendering. It's rendering very quickly, actually. I may have done something wrong. I learned how to render animations 3 hours ago. I'll post the turntable when I'm done. Tomorrow, maybe. And I want to post my animation, even though I'm not proud of it. I should be, but I'm not.

Just keep playing that calm music and breathe and it'll be over soon.

a long, abusive day

This is a post that shall serve me later in life.
Today was my first set of real finals. Or, more aptly, almost-finals. Today I showed work, almost complete, not complete enough.
Today I saw what I should have done two or three weekends ago.

I almost choked up with the pressure and the futility, but then I just became... It's a fight. You fight until the very end not to choke, not to twitch or fidget or jitter, and you laugh at whatever small joke you can, but you know that the judgement in the room is a blanket over the community that we try to create as people of the same major.

and then my half-finished animation was shown.
It's like reading aloud a rough draft of an essay in front of a class, not just handing it in.


and in the end I just mentally moved on to the next impossible challenge, an art history exam.

and in two days I have everything due.

and could I ever be friends with these people? I see them. I see their biting remarks and weaknesses, they all have different ticks and problems and unresolved issues. We all come out in the art (even though we hide it). It feels as if all of the niches have been filled in these social groups/cliques around me.

It isn't futile. It's just difficult. And I always feel that I can work harder, but lately I've been reaching the 'Screw it' point. It's at night, when you just have no will to move on. My most recent one was at 530am, after some sleep, when I thought to myself, I will not be able to finish this animation even if I worked very hard right now for four hours. And I went back to sleep for an hour.

What have I learned this semester? I've learned beginnings, and they are always the hardest part.
Later, I'm sure, I'll have my lists of things to do next semester.

Still going for more posts

Light-box working in my room. I planned to take a nap last night, and didn't get out of bed till 630 this morning. Ugh.

Less than 100 sheets of blank paper, and I have something like 20 seconds of animation to do in a weekend. At least the hole-puncher is free on monday.

In the meantime, I have work in every other class. So I'll get that done.

(no subject)

That project received a less-than-10-minute critique.

: (

Chrysanthemum

My fingers are permanently dirty. My feet are probably worse. My nails have grown long enough that I've noticed them. I'm pretty sure that my hair is clean and I remember that I've showered about once a day for the last 3 or 4 days. I feel very lucky that someone bought me dinner yesterday, it was my first real piece of meat in a week.

I have one more flower after this. I will do it tonight, probably out of a cone because I'm decently lazy at this point.

I think, if I am able to arrange my piece successfully, it will look nice.

Chrysanthemums. Personally a favorite. Some of the petals actually do fall into each other, and it looks very computerized, but I'm quite fond of these. I specifically changed my pink light to light orange. Chrysanthemums that look pink are a little sickening.

Snowdrops and Workflows

Snowdrop flowers. The inside texture includes a failure from photoshop- I forgot to turn off the Layer containing my UV texture editor snapshot lines. My light is slightly less pink.

Helped a senior color his final project, using Flash and a lot of Eye-Dropper -> Paint Bucket commands. I really like this coloring- there are pretty finite rules with wiggle room in inconsequential areas.

I've also been watching a lot of TED Talks.

I decided that I would follow my own world-flow path. I do not particularly like staying awake into the late night. I still partially fear that the sun will not rise if I stay up later than 2am (though that may be exhaustion). And my productivity decreases if I have less than 7 hours of sleep.
"Normal" is different for everyone, and I know right now that some part of me primally rejects staying up all night. Someday I might.
I tried yesterday to wake up earlier. I was sitting in front of a computer at 6, feeling awake, and watched the sunrise. I can't imagine it any other way. If I sleep from 11pm to 5am, I think I can make it through finals.

Aster

This is a rather poor aster, but the idea is fine. And from a distance, it isn't that bad >_<.
I ma try to add a second bump to the middle so that it's not so.. glow-y.

Next is a snowdrop. Then, sleep.

Morning Bird gets things done

This is what I did this morning, before noon.

A rose, still in production, but looking decent. And a checkerboard next to it.

A poppy and poppy-bud, with simple color. I put it in the vase. The vase is supposed to have water in it, but I don't quite understand how to do that with the refractions/reflections. So I just duplicated the vase, cut off the top, colored it black, upped the transparency, made it smaller, and put it inside. And I don't know what's up with the wood texture, but it's trolling me. 2 lights +reflection in the table.

Second go, changed the second light to a nice pink (and its shadow to green). The black background is unsettling.

I need to make more flowers. *bane of my life.*

3D Modeling progress

Surprise! This is due Tuesday! next tuesday, not a week from tuesday.

I made a directional light for the scene, painted the orange-yellow texture, smoothed the middle part, and made texture/translucency things for the petals. I still need to make the leaves, and their bump-mapping. Their color will be interesting. Yay.

Reach 80 by the end of the year.

Well, shit. 2011 is almost gone. Since I've made it this far on the blog, I'd like to get an even number of posts. Goal? 80. I should also look to find out if I made and forgot any resolutions.

Welcome to the beginning of the end.

Finals are coming. And I have the privilege to do 3 final projects on the same day. That day is also my anniversary.

In un-finals-related news, we have been covering mirrors, reflections, refractions, glass, all sorts of fun things. We covered ray-trace and depth map shadows. The still below is from a rendering of my Thanksgiving-homework, a showcase of my work.

The bottle is supposed to have a label on it, the 'background' is cheap and not lit well, the ray-trace shadows are grainy. The bottle also doesn't have the refractions that (I think) will make it look like it has a shell rather than a thin layer outside a darker layer. And there are no bump maps on anything.

In the spare un-school-related news, I've been excitedly following the 2012 republican debate. When I registered up to vote, the card my parents got in the mail said that I'm a registered conservative. I tried to register as 'nothing' or 'other' or 'independent', I don't want to be part of a party this early in my life.

In less serious news, my hair is purple again! A skunk-stripe of purple. It's the very top layer of my hair.

But at the same time. I've been in the computer labs (loosely) from 9am-12pm, 4pm-11pm. I'm looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow morning.

how much have i written.

I have written.
Two papers in the last 2 days, and I have written them. Right now I'm up to 2450 + 1600 words.
Yesterday was 17th century trading of porcelain from China and beaver pelts from America, based on Timothy Brooks' book Vermeer's Hat.
Today is Friedrich's Two Men Contemplating the Moon (1830) and Gauguin's Ia orana Maria (1891-1892).
A book report and a visual analysis. Both with theses.
Times new roman, 12pt, double-spaced, 1inch margins all around, no extra spacing between paragraphs.
Yesterday was 8 pages. Today my outline goes to 9 pages.
8 page minimum (I think), 5 page minimum.

I do not have any other homework done for tomorrow, but I have Thanksgiving Break to make it up.

The best part is that I have a 12-15 page screenplay due next week as well.



*Edit*
I finished each of these. The art history paper ended up being 7 pages, and the screenplay was 9 pages (and crappy).

I've been thinking flowers, maybe daisies, to brighten up the room...

NURBS petals (altered planes) and a polygon sphere (smoothed temorarily). Temporary color, too. On the way to a bouquet!
I need to find out how many petals daisies actually have. Wiki says ~20. 18 it is.

3D Modeling final

And this is the first drawing for my Maya modeling final. It will contain birth flowers, from each month, coming together in a bouquet. The flowers together in one place is impossible because of different growing seasons, but they come together to make a year. At the same time, they are fragile and delicate and are constantly in a state of decay. The vase sort of represents the world that contains this metaphor for time.

I think of this piece as a painting. I'll design how I create the petals/leaves first- what shapes I'll use and how I'll make a lot then tweak them to make each petal a little different.

HAPPY NOVEMBER

So this is what I did in class today. I R photoshop genius! Not really, but this is my first attempt at coloring. I even used different layers. Why didn't I do this in high school? These are characters for my Animation I final. And there isn't even any purple.

Midterms are over

And life can start again, it is the fall rebirth.

And what is happening? I'm too close to the center of Occupy Wall Street, most of the kids from my friends support it. I don't know what I support. I'm not in the 1%. But the 99% is not my life. The more I want to feel this coming together of our generation, I can't. It is the same as school. The kids around me stay up all night working. I can barely keep my eyes open past 2am.

What works best for me? How can I get the most out of what I do? I can start by waking up early everyday and getting even 2 hours of work in before class, because I can do that. I can go beyond assignments while still fulfilling them.

How can I make MY life worth living to the fullest? How can I learn the most in such a short period of time? How can I stay with a project for weeks without boredom, and how can I learn the patience to overcome that?

my midterm is due on thursday

I won't freak out, I'll just sleep less.
It's a profile self-portrait map, with the top lip, nostril, and eye indented as lakes/inlets. I still need to finish the coastline and mountains and make a wall for the hairline, and I need to find a place for the castle.

it's been a while

I've been working and working and working and I've learned so much.
I've also not learned- last weekend I read 50 pages of world history, just for my teacher to spend all the time on the shorter reading. "I should have known" doesn't qualify, I don't have much foresight, but at the very least, I should have spent more time on the other homeworks. As soon as I find out how to screen capture on macs I'll try to get my scifi lab up here.

I've continued with the self-portraits, some are definitely better than others.

At this moment, I'm in a dark computer lab, on a mac, pretending to do my modeling homework. We use Maya 2012 and I must complete a science fiction lab by tuesday. I also have 2 small stopmotion projects, and at least 40 pages of reading.

I also stayed up till 4am last night. 4am is the morning. I don't like it. When I stay up at night, I feel like the sun won't come up in the morning.

It's not that much work. Or, I feel like it should be more. Or, I can sequence time and plan more effectively. I don't know. Next semester will be more, I hope. The best days are when I don't have 5 minutes to breathe, I have everything done and I get things done, and I come back to my room still energized after 9 hours of classes.

Luck, The Importance of Planning,

I say that I'm lucky, I wish people luck. And I don't really believe in a 'luck', but coincidence, circumstance. And I believe that I know myself well.

To know thyself is to know how far you can go. I'd forgotten to hole-punch my animation paper (we use the  -        .        -  punch), so I planned out as much as I could. I have two hours of lunch before Animation 1, so I punched my papers and did it. 7 seconds on 2's, 100+ drawings, put into iStopmotion, exported for Quicktime. I felt like such a superhero. And I didn't gloat. I just smiled like and idiot in class, filled with personal satisfaction in my own abilities. When a mistake was made, I formed a new plan of action and did not succumb to stress.

But how far can I go? My classmates stay up almost all night, my own roommate gets sleep whenever she can. I don't feel the stress. I see time in blocks of hours, and I usually don't need to stay up later than 2 or I can wake up a few hours early if I need to. And in some ways I find this distancing. Saying 'oh, I am able to structure my time in such a way that I usually don't need to stay up too late' is elitist, arrogant.

I wasn't expecting my dashboard to fill with new stac blog posts. Good job, little artists!

I have been relaxed with my work, but I have time to get on it A busy semester awaits. A busy, paper-eating semester (between animation and screenwriting).

I have, however, found a new love in friendship bracelets. I brought some cotton thread with me to school and weaving has just been an amazing stress relief. Plus I've been using manual dexterity in almost every class this year, so it's good practice. Plus it's great procrastination. And a calm-down from the focusing energy of my work.

folding box

I've completed my first animation!!
and class isn't for over 12 hours. Success.
hopefully it won't be harshly received.

thus, school starts again

First day of classes, 3rd semester.

Some teaches faster than others. They teach fast, I mean. My classes are falling into two categories:
1. It's what you make of it.
2. Work hard, follow assignments, do well.

So out of this year, I need to make sure I get the most out of everything. And a sketchbook. I need to draw more.

Orientation Staff, Mingleling, and How I've Improved

The last two weeks have been move-in, preparation for Orientation Week, and the week itself. All of which have left me tired and worn out, to be rejuvenated during the hurricane this weekend. Hurricane Irene.

Over the last week, I was in social skills bootcamp. We practiced answering questions correctly, respectfully, and positively (freshmen have questions). I learned a ton of getting-to-know-you games, name games, and ice-breakers.

I got a lot of practice. When my schedule actually tells me to Mingle with the freshmen, I took initiative and joined conversations, added myself to groups, and tried to talk to new people.

I came to Pratt terrified of this getting to know you bullshit. And now it's just something that clicks me into a mode of "I want to get to know you" rather than "what are you thinking about me? Is it bad?" I think, at this point, I assume that people will either like me and talk to me, or stay clear of me.

I don't want to say 'it was an experience like STAC', because it wasn't- I had less than a week to get to know everybody and lose my shyness, then a week to work as the team we became, and now it's all over until I seen familiar faces next year.

After the whole experience- this is the college life I didn't have last year. I can keep my door open and people will say hi, I can get to know people. Through O-STAFF I met a lot of heads of clubs/associations, the top people of Student Involvement, and may have even found a small job for the year.

So if you can join any kind of student leadership group, go for it.

shoutout from the computer lab

My computer is dead. A summer of being in something close to storage, and the hard drive won't speak to the other parts.

Long live Aldrick, 2007-2011.

packing, it's about time.

I am at ease. A day at home to get everything done. Cooking dinner, visiting grandparents, packing for school. I have bedlinens, cleaning supplies, bathroom/make-up things, towels, and winter clothes done. I'm very excited to be going back to school.

I'm going to miss so much. But I look forward to so much. It's even.

I need to admit something. My music tastes have recently turned to hiphop and rap. I cannot say "I listen to it", because that would mean I know more than a couple of albums. But I enjoy it.

backtoschoolbacktoschool

As the summer comes to an end, an end for the college-bound, I am so glad to get out of this place. I've done my own laundry, other laundry, and a ton of cooking all summer. I still have all my towels, bedsheets, and winter clothes packed. Most of my clothes will be able to fit in a luggage. I have a few bins.

So now all I have to do is finish cleaning out my room, fanticize about grocery shopping and write my initials in the books I'll bring. (There's a lot more work than that but I'm not worried.)

I'll miss being in constant contact with old friends. From school, I became more conscious about my appearance as I met more people and had to make new acquaintances. I became a lot lazier about that as I was home.

So I guess after being so anxious about not doing anything, not doing anything didn't kill me. It's not happening next year.

Fashion. I don't know.

I've been looking up fashion. I'm not... the internet educates. I want to learn where no one can judge me. Isn't that pathetic? That we become creepers on online magazines and blogs, where everyone can read everyone else's opinion? Just to find out what our own opinion? But after everything, fashion is opinion. There are high-ups, who sell t-shirts for $200. I don't research them. I want to know, as a plus-sized young woman, what I can do to just look a little nicer. I'm just trying to explain this to myself. Because I'm still trying to understand plus-size fashion.

I'm trying to understand if it's about complementing and adding to a body or about hiding what you don't want people to see and excentuating the nice bits. It's probably both of them. And it's confidence.

I don't think, at the Macy's level, fashion is specifically about personal expression. There is one plus size section for anyone from 15 to 80, and more often than not, I feel like I'm sorting through clothes to find a blouse that doesn't look like a midlife woman giving up.

Would I feel more confident if I wore clothes that fit well, complimented and excentuated my body? Yes. Could that be as simple as wearing lucky socks? Maybe. It just sounds like there are ever-changing rules in this game of first-impression changing.

Daily Practice discoveries

I'm up to daily self-portrait 85 or so, and I haven't been posting them because I've been home all summer without a scanner. But I wanted to take some pictures and post some of the drawings that are in a style I'm beginning to see more of. It's made of straight lines and curves, and is very very geometric. I want to see how they translate into more three-dimentional drawings, but I like them so far.
#41 Lizy-Doll, #55 Bthing Suit Try-On, #77 Geometry trying to be more interesting, #79 Sitting on my hands, #80 Happy July 4th! (fireworks are scary)

Emotionally, most of these faces are hiding for one reason or another.


 

Vidja games

Here is an official list of things I want to finish*:

Advanced Wars
Fire Emblem
Super Mario Galaxy
Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
Maplestory - Aran up to level 120 by school
Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books (3 more left)
Frankenstein
Painting my room

This is easily 100+ hours.



*Finish: Not 100%, but finish enough. If not finish before school, I'll try to bring them to college.

I can change I can change I can change I can change

Women, do we marry our fathers and become our grandmothers? Do we end up living the same lives as everyone who came before us? Do we inherit our anxieties and pessimisms, fighting them back with diagnoses? That's pessimistic.

The housepainting project included a wall behind a very heavy breakfront, filled with the Nice Stuff. My mother explained where each piece came from. My great-grandmother's plates, made in England. An important Italian trinket given out as a wedding reception gift. Glass from Corning Glass Factory. A rock painted gold.

I got to go to a hardware store today. I just felt this overwhelming rush of potential. Each thing can be used to make something.

It's starting to get late. I wanted to read before I fell asleep from exhaustion. But a week of painting and reorganizing and changing furniture hasn't slowed my pancake quest.

I hope anyone's reading this. I think I'm just writing them to keep up with writing (I haven't even written a dream-record in at least a month) and keep a record for myself.

mroe summer

Still more summer. But I'm gladly busy with my quaint (at the worst, pathetic) goals. Like watering my garden in the morning, and I'm still trying to make the best pancakes ever. So far, they involve cornmeal.

And I guess that's what I look forward to: food. Not fast food, not out to dinner, I want to make it. It's a fantasy of failure and having to try again. It's an occupation of time. I want to find some creative way to mix flour, butter, sugar, and milk. It's precious.

I painted half the livingroom, rearranged the furniture, and packed a full garbage bag full of stuff from a sideways bookshelf.

I'm still doing my self-portraits. I don't know when they'll ever be online, but they will. I should probably put an adult-content warning. Nothing explicit, but as a project inherently about body-image, and clothes are unnecessary.

Keeping Busy.

It's been weeks, and everything is still a mess, except, for some reason, my head. One month till my birthday, another and I'm at school. I'm keeping busy:

Gardening. I borrowed a rototiller and cleaned up a plot in the backyard. It's midway through June, but mom already bought the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. I even consulted my books (what's the point of having them if you don't read them?) to get the spacing and planting right. I love the work. I hope that some day I'll grow my own vegetables.

Painting. I have the paint, I haven't painted my room yet.

Cooking. I'm trying to make the core recipes for next year, make sure I can make real healthy food in a short amount of time with a few ingredients- how much can I do with flour, eggs, butter, sugar? Would it be cheaper to bake my own bread?

Asking Questions. I want to know how businesses and politics work. I love learning about it. What laws govern businesses and religion and politicians and real estate and how they are interpretted. I've become increasingly interested in corruption and I want to be able to understand the economy better than an art student stereotype. I want to have intelligent conversations with people. I'm also preparing myself for the upcoming presidential election.

So, tomorrow, I'll wake up early and make french toast ravioli.
http://www.newlyweds-blog.com/2010/09/23/stuffed-french-toast/.
I probably don't have ricotta, but I'm thinking of putting something else in there, like eggs or PANCAKE BATTER. Pancake in french toast. THIS is what summer is about.

A little catch-up

STACnight. Congrats to the kids who put on an amazing preformance. I heard a lot of "I wish I could have done that" from my fellow alum, and overall, it proved to the parents and the visitors what a compassionate group of kids can do.
It was one of the best, if not the best, STACnight I've been to. It's also my fifth.

At the show, I was asked "are you happy at Pratt". I'm not happy at home. I'm happy when I'm busy. I don't miss the smokers and hipsters and film majors (sometimes all at the same time), but I miss the work.
I'm up to... I think today is #55 of my self-portraits. I don't think I've really seen improvement, but I know that I have to do it every day. I finished a small first sketchbook and started on a new one, which I dislike because felt-tipped pens seep through. I don't think anyone else actually cares about that.
The self-portraits give me 10 minutes a day to think about forming a positive and healthy relationship with my body. To believe, when I am alone, that I am beautiful, or quirky, or interesting, or that I just have big eyes. But I rarely feel ugly. I get down if a pair of jeans doesn't fit the way I'd like it to, but I have a lot of jeans, and I have time.
I have time. I don't know what to do with it. But I have it.
If that was the description of an object, I would throw it out.

I keep going back and forth on my personal religious beliefs. It is very hard to develop a religious opinion without the help of media, ministers, and parents. I don't like religious politics. I like moral lessons through ancient example. I like looking past and understanding context of texts. I hate when religion and politics cross in America.

#400

This is post 400, at the beginning of the 2011 summer.
There are a few things I wanted to do.
I want to finish a few videogames.
Finish reading the Earthsea books, and some of the other books on my shelf. They are technically young adult fantasy.
I've started taking apart my desk, so I should continue that.

I've had 4 cups of tea today. two with morning one with lunch one after dinner and they were all caffeinated so. Maybe I'm addicted to caffeine? Maybe I'll just finish Advanced Wars.

A Deep Breath and a Cup of Tea

Summer, and I always feel like I'm going to do something great and then something blocks the way. okay. I'm not that sick. I just feel lousy. A snot-nosed kid. Doesn't that make me an artist? Being scared by dreams, worrying over nothing, flying from one obsession to another? Does that even matter?

I was recently asked how well I know FinalCut. Is there a way to respond to that? I don't know how to measure how well I know a program, except with a quantity of time/experience and a example of quality. I wish I'd learned by a universal guide.

I've been playing Advanced Wars, Days of Ruin on DS. It's become a personal obsession that reminds me of how much I loved Fire Emblem until all my characters died.

When I was cleaning out my desk, I found a ton of drawings that reminded me of how raw my artwork was in high school. Raw, but so interesting. If I ever get my computer back together, if I ever get a desk to put it on, I'll scan those in. They'll be reprints, but they're still interesting. And I found a poem, too.

So after about 9 months of intensive training, what do we do now?

I don't know. I'm going to finish my tea.

The third: What I learned in college. Year 1.

Time is fluid. I often had many projects to work on for a week, and I had to figure out when I would do them, and fit this around constants. I have a painting due in a week and I'm not doing anything Monday night so I can get it done then but the homework for Wednesday needs to get done Tuesday morning so that I have time Tuesday evening to do Friday's homework. After weeks and weeks of thinking like this, I don't think in any other way.

High school did not prepare me for this time scheduling because if we had homework, it was probably due the next day. I think this forces procrastination. I think this evolution of thinking about time happened when I realized that if I get something done sooner, I don't worry about it.

I realized that as much as I dreaded my drawing class, Professor taught us how to think about the process of the drawing. It wasn't about pencil control or shapes, but about how to see the human figure from the inside out. We break down the human figure into the gesture and then simple shapes.

I learned:
How different kinds of light create color,
how to mix acrylic and oil paint,
how to create any color with the primary colors and white,
how to see color and shadow,
how to make a design interesting,
how to paint from a still life,
how to arrange a still life,
how to use InDesign, Illustrator, FinalCutPro,
how to generally use a Mac
how to mount anything on nice paper,
how to conceptualize a plan into a 3-dimentional shape,
how to cut and rip paper in a straight line,
how to quickly pack,
a decent amount of pre-1800s art history

and I don't know what else. There's a lot that's not in there.

The second: What I had in college. Year 1.

Since packing, bringing everything back, and repacking, I've had a lot of time to reflect on things I've had in college.

Also, not all of them are material. Being home, I sincerely miss not telling anyone where I'm going when I go out, having my own clean existence, and not being able to choose food without caring too much about the price.

I have a lot of stuff. So much stuff. An unbelieveable collection of useless knickknacks, art supplies, clothes, books. And I want to see how far I can go with de-cluttering. Not cleaning yet, just getting rid of all of this useless stuff that I don't use anymore. Make scrapbooks of things, pick up papers from the floor, and do I really need so many books? 3 bookshelves of books and I'm trying so hard to fill boxes for donation. Do I really need two different graphic novel versions of Macbeth? Why do I have these anyway?

There is a specific problem: I have an object that was either a gift or something from a younger me, and I don't know if throwing it out will upset anyone. It may take a few minutes for me to decide. Will my Aunt care if the ceramic teacup gets trashed? What about the "Soup Bible" cookbook I'll never use? Why can't I just get tickets or experiences for gifts instead of things? I keep as many of my tickets as I can, and they fit snugly on a shelf.

How can I throw out the relics of my early teenage years? Or even before that?

I also found and went through a lot of my old sketchbooks. I went through a lot more sketchbooks than I thought. I have a lot of empty ones, too. I shouldn't have to buy art supplies for at least 5 years.

But I've been working on it. I don't know if I'm being heartless and trying to forget middle/high school, or if I'm being realistic and forward-thinking. Probably a bit of both.

Art.

LCD is over, so here is some of the larger pieces of art that didn't fit in the scanner. They're all huge files, and photoshop'd the same way- re-sized, cropped, and making the lights lighter and the darks darker (but not a contrast difference).
1. I think it was a self-portrait at one point, but this is the luminosity painting I did over winter break. Acrylic on Cardboard.
2. the third of the 3d glasses set, this is somewhat cubist. Charcoal and Newspaper.
3. Abstract cubist luminosity/chiaroscuro painting. Acrylic.
4. Foreground, middleground, background exercise, with normal, faux, and sfumato color palettes. Color-aid.

The first: What I did in college. Year 1.

I wanted to start with a list of food. I didn't realize how much the food changes in college. I ate lunch and dinner in the cafeteria, and had cereal for breakfast. When my meal money piled up, I had cereal from the cafeteria. The best part, I think, is that I still have not completely exhausted all the kinds of food. But here are some things that I generally started eating more of and less of when I got to school:

More of
String beans, Broccoli, Ramen, Pork, Ice Cream, Fruit Smoothies, Honey, Muffins, Rice, Lettuce In Sandwiches, Tea x100

Less of
Burgers, Pizza, Fresh Fruit, Steak, Soup, Pie/Cake, Salad, Peanut-Butter and Jelly, Real Italian Food

Some things are good, some are bad. Overall, though, it's just been a different food experience. Next year, when I don't have a demanding food plan, I'll finally be able to enjoy Brooklyn.

more arts

These are two of a set of 4, all based around 3d glasses. I love both of them for very different reasons.

some arts

it's about time I got some art up here. These are still lifes with flowers and patterns, based on Matisse. Nice-quality watercolor set, but the purples were difficult. The top one is better, but the idea behind the second is more interesting- a silhouetted bouquet against the sunlight outside.

watercolor, i miss you

I finally got my hands on a water-bush- a synthetic brush with a little water compartment in the handle. Osmosis doesn't work quite as fast as I thought it might, so I'm consistently misjudging the amount of water that comes out.
     The pigments are actually really nice and condensed (besides lacking purple). 12- black, white, lemon yellow, golden yellow, ochre, crimson, vermilion (blood-orange), light red (?), yellow-green, viridian green, cobalt blue, and prussian blue (darker, less intense). all in a little box.
     It also comes with a sponge, which is crap and will be replaced by paper towel or jeans leg quite shortly.

Technique:
I have a habit of picking up excess color/water with a dry brush. Because your brush is also the source of water, you can't have a dry brush. In my brother's words, Roar.

Too. Much. Water.

Well, I'll keep going. Pics edited in later.

another picture-less post

It's coming to the end of the my first year, but it's no where near done.

Portal 2 just came out. And I realized that I'd never finished the first Portal. So I sat down and finished it in 3 hours of full attention. uh, where did this come from? A lack of consequence, perhaps.

I think that's all I have to say.

waste of a day

Last week, I asked myself, what did I do today?

And all I could think of was, I don't remember. I don't think I did anything.

At the same time, I did many things.

But when you can't remember what you did, it feels like you wasted a whole day.

netflix, netflix, get away from me.

What have I done today? What did I try to do? What did I actually do?

I watched the Producers, The Jerk, and Burton's Batman.
I did my laundry, showed, ate meals.
I started my drawing homework but ran out of paper.
I broke my plaster mold.
I wrote a blog.
I went to the library and looked through a guide to FinalCutPro.
I painted my nails and went grocery shopping.
I drew 8+ pages of story work for a film project, which I am now debating on throwing out for a simpler, more surreal dream-sequence of a film, rather than a real story. But, why can't it be a real story.
It's because the ending. The monster roars and moans, and it's my soul that it sees.

I still have the drawing homework. I still have a rough draft of a paper due tomorrow. I don't have a thesis for it yet.
I still want to see Eyes Wide Shut, but I'm having trouble finding 2 1/2 hours of free time.
But I consider movies like my studying.
But I have schoolwork.

what i did during lunch

I made people happy today ^_^

summer plans

It's been forever, and I don't know if I've done anything spectacular. I've learned InDesign and Illustrator. I've attempted crosswords.

I've worried about my summer. I don't have a plan. I've sent out applications to 8 possible internship opportunities in New York. I don't want to volunteer when I could get credit or a stipend or even some money. I'm not even asking much. The growing nothingness of summer is so much more scary than any assignment I get.

on spirituality, nature/art, crossword discipline, being straightedge

It's Ash Wednesday, when Christians burn last year's Palm Sunday palms and draw a cross on your forehead. And now, I'm sitting in the computer lab wondering if my appearance is being disregarded, considered, or remembered. But at the same time, I'm trying really hard not to have an itch on my brow. I'm not particularly religious. But I think it's important, and there are times when you're walking on a trail and the trees move in a pattern and the grass smells just right and it's a special moment of beauty. That's holy.

Spring break is next week, and I don't really have anything to do for a week, which is a pity. So I wanted to drive to Sand's Point and draw something. I should paint something. The least I can do is bring a watercolor set and get basic line and color down. I just need to do art over break, draw a landscape from life.

Crosswords are like hitting a brick every day. Sometimes you break it, sometimes you know how to break it, sometimes you just can't get a handle on it. But there's always a new brick every day.

I describe myself as 'straightedge', but I don't... there are people who.... there are things that just don't interest me, and they tend to be on the same plane of thought, even though common morals of society give them different values. Like, I don't smoke and my ears aren't pierced. I don't hate people who do things, illegal or not, but as long as they respect my decisions, I can usually respect theirs. If they're not killing themselves slowly.

I love the way people walk. Toes facing inwards, outwards, wide at the knees, one knee a little twisted. It's wonderful.

Prayer for a Midterm Paper

This is not the first time I've had to sit down and write a paper in a sitting.
It will not be the last time.
I just hope that I can express myself clearly, try not to use pretentious words, and still make the page amount without any stupid antics.
I hope that I will not make serious grammatical mistakes.
I hope that I will not be working on this paper during lunch tomorrow.
I hope I will be able to print it out in time.

"Education provides both society and the individual with methods of nonviolent expression."

sketches

I don't keep a regular sketchbook, these exist in what's supposed to be my drawing notebook. The first half are ones drawn last night before I went to bed, around, say, 2am? drowsiness should be apparent. The others were drawn this morning while having breakfast in the cafeteria. Oh, and the sandals were drawn when I realized, during drawing, that I didn't have non-flipflop sandals to drive in this summer (I don't like driving with flipflops).

And sandals guy walked past me after I had his drawing on the page. The last drawing, of me drawing me with hotchocolate, was finished about 40 minutes ago from this post. Overall, a productive morning. I guess.

Paintings and Crayon Color Designs

In a proper title format.

These are last week's classwork and homework, as well as what I did in Light/Color/Design this week.
We painted a still life that had two opposing lights from opposite directions, then we recreated the still life with color-aid paper, aka veryexpensivepaperthatsmellslikechemicals and it comes in every color (unless it's second semester and you have a second-hand pack).

There's also designs, color ideas, and crayon tests for a design project. It's based on all the ways to use colors my class learned all year, and we have to create designs for the 4 seasons, on a 'grid' made of the diagonals and medians that occur when you make a symmetrical golden ration rectangle/square set. aka that mathematical swirl.

cuts

I am cut up. I have cuts all over my fingers from a hard candy experiment (very hand candy), in places where the band-aids don't stay on for long. There's a pimple-turned-cut at the corner of my mouth, which will never heal because it is constantly reopened. My fingers have paint on them, which needs cleaning. My nails are, for once in my life, consistently longer than my personal average, and 8 1/2 of them are painted purple (aforementioned band-aid attempts). The worst of them, I believe, is a 1/2 inch cut that is not artery-deep, but reopens uncomfortably at the bend of a finger.

I think the worst part of this physical affliction is that it will all heal, with time. And other things will eventually take their place.



In an unrelated event, I got netflix, and started watching Firefly. And then I found out that there were only 14 episodes, and I was very sad.

long writing, music

I keep discovering albums on my ipod, thanks to friends who give me tons of music that I never get around to. So, I've been listening to Love Below, Outkast, and Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne. Yes, the Stacy's Mom band. The atmosphere of 'sad NY office worker needs a drink but knows it's bad for him' is like a different face of Jonathon Coulton's 'sad office worker is too busy dreaming to have any relationships'. This is also contrasted with the Decemberists's 'Victorian peasant is sad, has a sad life, and drowns after falling in love'. I love this, it feels so unabashedly bias and incorrect.

Today was the DDA meeting for the freshman in my department. We are 2D/3D animation and 'interactive arts', which I don't understand but it sounds really interesting and important. The head of the department gave us an overview of the next 3 years of our lives. I can't wait. It's going to be so much better than this year's mess.

So, that leaves me with the summer. There are so many things I want to do, many things I should do, and so many options. I know, though, that I need to redo my room. It hasn't changed much since the beginning of middle school, and now that I don't live there, it'll mostly be storage for art supplies and a studio. With a bed. And a large desk in the middle of the room, with a great studded-leather chair, a bust of Julius Ceasar that tilts backwards to reveal a secret room behind a bookcase. At the very least, a desk with storage space, and a set of bookshelves in the hallway (to replace the sideways one and clear up my room).

Some LCD work

These are all from the last 3 weeks, selected works. Oil paint, unless otherwise noted. We did Chiaroscoro, Cangiantismo, and Sfumato in the same month. Chiaroscoro bottles from life, Cangiantismo indoor/outdoor scenery, and Sfumato self-portraits.
Okay. Chiaroscuro: bottles, abstract with same palate. Cangiantismo: stained glass flower design (gouache on paper, then cut and pasted), indoor/outdoor painting. Sfumato self-portrait in a grid. And last is the case I made, so that I can carry wet oil paintings from my class to my room without getting everything ruined. It's made of a Crispix box, corrugated and pressed cardboard, duct tape, rubber cement, and masking tape. It can hold six 11" x 9" pieces.

happy valentine's day

The manifesto didn't get sent in.
Valentine's Day is coming.
And it can also be used. as a hat.
I made a film with animation in it, as in, a movement every 6 or 8 frames that come together to make a whole. I filmed it through a window and in a mirror, with the drawings out of dry-erase marker. It came out well enough for the action to be conveyed, but I don't think it's anything close to smooth. Also, I realized halfway through drawing a walk cycle that I wasn't placing the body correctly: they were too close together. So I redid it, as shown in the Richard Williams book. All 15-20 secs of animation took about 3 hours. The editing of the video took about the same time. I've gotten much better with final cut.