Beethoven's 7th, mvmt 2, Allegretto

As I listen to more classical music- mostly from the Beethoven symphony compilation on my ipod- I would love to play bassoon again, just for the sound. Just enough so that I can play bassoon with a recording of the symphonies and play along and become even closer to music- just like singing along with an other song.

Right now, this is one of my favorites, Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd Mvmt, the Allegretto.

But my art! Last semester feels like years ago as the weather brightens. I have a strip of sunlight coming through the window and warming my face every morning, begging me to get out of bed.

Last weekend was I-CON, which just was a mess of transportation, but I got to meet the nicest people and didn't spend nearly as much as I thought I would. And I survived without a jacket, too.

I have 1 month left of school. In that time, I have main projects to animate, I have 3 papers to write (one due each week starting next, and I've barely started them), and I have finals in the same classes.

Then, summer.

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).

bring in the new year with Fleet Foxes

Somehow managed a nice, round number for 2010 posts, but it's not anything like 2009 posts. This marks almost the third year of this blog.


2010.
What happened last year:
I got into Pratt, New Paltz, and Purchase, waitlisted to CalArts, decided on Pratt, graduated Herricks High School.
I started college and did well in my first semester.
I started playing Maplestory.
I love my overgrown puppy.
Movies.
I started listening to more alternative and indie music.
I also noticed that I've said a lot of things like, "I want to ____," and I never get around to them. I shouldn't say, "I want to do all the things I want to do", because that's like running around in a circle to try to make a tornado. So maybe I should just do things, rather than spending too long trying to think about priorities of things and orders of things.


Start of another year.

What a life I lead in the summer, What a life I lead in the spring,
What a life I lead in the winded breeze, What a life I lead in the spring.
What a life I lead when the sun breaks free as a giant torn from the clouds,
What a life indeed when that ancient seed is a berry watered and plowed.


What a life, What a life, What a life, What a life.


What a life I lead in the summer, What a life I lead in the spring,
What a life I lead in the winded breeze, What a life I lead in the spring.

Spring rebirth, for all of us.

I've spent the last couple of days in stac quietly writing and drawing.


My house is like several rock concerts happening at the same time.
One little brother is singing Beatles Rock Band in the living room, and the other is playing guitar or bass and blasting Tommy or Beatles or Weird Al. No one says "a little less noise there!" because they aren't bothering anyone.


From this, I have learned that I get work done when things are quiet.
Mornings are quiet.
If A = C, and A = B, then B = C. I forget the name of the postulation.
Therefore, I will do work in the morning.


These are from March, but my scanner wasn't happy. Hexagons (distances are the same between their centers, which is interesting for game design), I was tired during stac-notes one day, and that's the guy from the Heroin seminar. He was scary.

"Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks".

I'm sure there will be similar posts by the end of the week, but I can't go to church around Easter without going over Jesus Christ Superstar (one of the only Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals I really like) and Godspell, that crazy, horrible, pathetically executed musical I preformed a few years ago.


My Easter my isn't made of peeps and chocolate. It's made of going to church for each holy day, reciting passages with hundreds of people (like a play), and singing the saddest, then happiest, music. Every piece in minor chords, then Easter happens, there's a rebirth, and the music is in major chords.


There's something special, though, about memorizing four-part-harmonies in Latin. When all the notes are together, when a chord resolves, when the sopranos actually hit that high G. It's like Fuerzebruta, when there's a ceiling of water and plastic. But this time, you're in that bubble, and there's something beautiful about it.


Now, there is much stac-work to be done, much research to do, and much pokemon to be played.

fishtank.

Weather: Tsunami.


Today starts spring drawer cleaning. At the beginning of every season (alas, we've skipped some) each kid in my family, with help from mom, goes through the drawers to take out clothes that haven't been worn or are too worn. Anything with holes in it, any bad gifts from birthdays and holidays. They all get sorted into bags and donated.


Writing this entry is also procrastination.


Listening to Plastic Beach, getting stuck on Superfast Jellyfish. Gorillaz reminds me that I'can listen to rap without imploding.


I've been looking up Pratt housing, and I'm able to keep fish.

Broken Bride, Part IV, over and over again.

Drawings from stac, college holes and pitfalls, space metaphors, psychology, and the importance of hard-learned confidence.


First, the drawings. I used a pen and oil pastels to cartoon Juliana, Nikki, and Ashley. Not flattering, but I like the colors. I'm not developing that to answer why I like the colors. And each one has a longer-than-normal nose.

College results: Yes from Pratt, No from CalArts. I think I'm going to Pratt. I don't like not making decisions, and I don't like chance and 'leaving things to god' and uncertainty. But there is certainty, now, isn't there?
     How can you be sad when you shot your rocket to Pluto and hit Ceres? You're still got past Mars, and a hell of a distance away from Earth. That's a great accomplishment.
     Mere Exposure Effect: the more you see and think about something, the more you warm up to it. I don't want to have to warm up to it. I'm not used to... I don't know... I'm not sure... I'm not comfortable... I just want to...
     And thus, I catch myself in a pitfall. You hope for 150%, get 110%, but in reality, on Earth, there isn't anything better than 100%, and it's an achievement just to get to that.


In the end, I've seriously developed as an artist in the last year. I've gone to figure drawing classes, I've gotten more comfortable with being by myself in the city, I have no problem keeping a sketchbook.


So I guess I'm sort of back where I started. First long-term goal was STAC. That took a few years. Next, CalArts. That was a year, at least. I think I'll apply as graduate student later in life. So, here comes a time when I need to figure things out.


Back to the beginning.


A1-bqx is a blog established in the middle of my junior year of high school, back in February of 2009. Since then, it has been through makeovers and fast times and slow times. But I'll keep it going.

Starlight express

This was originally written Saturday night.A Movie. Family. Old Ways.

I've been working on Carousel, which takes up a lot of my brain. Last night I watched Jet Li's Hero, and today I was color-coding sets from the play. They are color-coded, a little.
Hero is about a man, Nameless, who approaches the Emperor of the Qin empire with the weapons of three assassins that have plotted against the monarch. It's also about the story of how they were defeated by Nameless, in epically beautiful martial arts battles. We should make a martial arts movie in Stac.

Today is a family get-together, and I'm going to be interrogated about colleges. I've only heard back from one. My cousin has heard back from many more. She's uncomfortable with non-white people, I do art, she's a star basketball player, I write blogs. We are from different worlds all together. But she's still my cousin. I wish her the best.

I've gone back to my old ways. I've been listening to a collection of Essential Andrew Lloyd Webber. The music sounds the same. Sometimes bad musicals touch you in just a certain way. Starlight Express: a musical about trains. Longest running show in Germany. Some beautiful songs, but not 'up there'.

St. Nick on the Fourth in a Fervor

Been listening to Ha Ha Tonka all day. It's like southern rock and bluegrass and I saw them a few months ago at a Ludo concert. I love listening to a rock band that can sing. Or that may be in comparison to Ludo and Decemberists. I don't really listen to music anymore.

    Other than that, I fully intend to do really well on my midterms. Not just pass, do well.

    And I don't feel part of my house anymore. I'm going away to college. I'm leaving. Soon I'll have a license to leave with that. Escape. I don't even want to sleep in my bed anymore. I spent last night curled up around my radiator.

    I haven't heard back from colleges, except for 'sign up for this thing online for such and such', and I don't know what I'm doing.

Supposed to redo the layout and colors. Not now. Finding the right colors by hex-code is time consuming.


Boat Song, a really soft Ludo song.

I have a cookie gun and extreme worry.

My brothers got a drum set for Christmas. It's set up in the living room. I'm blasting Maximum the Hormone two floors away and I can still hear it.

My art is very safe, in the back room of Ganes's room in school. I need to get it and put it in a portfolio and send it to CalArts. We get back on Jan. 4. It needs to be in California by Jan. 5. I've been very good with not freaking out.

     I was on the way to craft stores when I drew this self-portrait. In the mirror of the passenger seat, with a ratty pencil and notebook. I need a self-portrait for at least one portfolio, so I've been practicing. I wanna do one like Juliana's. And the face-shape bothers me. And the top lip shape. And the lack of help-lines. And what about making everything into shapes with Kandinsky-epic coloring? Like a child's block, but not exactly cubist.

Zombie, Fela Kuta, and Christmas.

Merry Christmas. No 'whad'jaget?', just that I have another large sketchbook. The extended family went, ooh, ahh, draw something, so I found a marker and showed off. I drew a self-portrait, and I like this one. There is enough going wrong with this picture in 'reality' that i'm just leaving it alone.
     I remember seeing a Man Ray figure-drawing and thinking 'I couldn't get into college with this.' And I smiled a bit because it's a little pathetic. On one hand, Man Ray is just a person. On the other hand, what am I expecting colleges to expect? Am I an intellectual artist? Can I be?
I've been listening to Fela Kuti's Zombie.

Attention!
Quick march!
Slow march!

Left turn!
Right turn!
About turn!
Double up!
Salute!
Open your hat!
Stand at ease!
Fall in!
Fall out!
Fall down!
Get ready!

Halt!

looking for a sideshow album.

Pretty marks with the new watercolor sets. The colors are amazing. Especially that good yellow. Silver paint marker over it. Been making some colorful self-portraits with them.


Thought about perfume today. A whole sense, in a small bottle. What about putting a sight in a bottle? A sound? A feeling? We can put a color in a bottle. And a taste. What about a feeling of a thought? Before the thought has a language?


Also thought of using balloons in a set. Original idea was for a yellow-brick-road that could be projected different places. The children's show set, eventually, would be fabric (easy to bring around places). And it may have balloons.


Been listening to Decemberists' Hazards of Love album. I'm still trying to understand it. The album tells the story of Margaret, who finds a fawn who is the Protagonist. He is the son of the Queen, who is nature, and she doesn't like Margaret.
And there is the Rake, a man who killed his own children just to be single again, and he kidnaps Margaret, and the Fawn makes empty promises to the Queen and the River to get her back.
Myth, simple characters, really deep, dark themes (infanticide, repayment, promising, nasty karma, drowning, kidnapping, possible prostitution). Some beautiful music, complete with an instrumental interlude. And it all starts off with a low organ prelude.

First words:
My true love went riding out
in white and green and grey
Past the pale of Offa's Wall
where she was want to stray
and there she came upon
a white and wounded fawn
singing, "Oh, the hazards of love."

Peace of Mind

I understand about indecision
I don't care if I get behind
People livin' in competition
All I want is to have some peace of mind.


This is George. I think either the shutter speed was slow or my hands just can't keep still.


I got to join Juliana's portfolio review, and questioning artsy things.
Where do you want to go with art? I don't know right now.
Would you rather make your own project with a mentor or be given projects? The first, definitely.


I've been working with underpainting on two pieces. I think I once heard, but I'm not sure, that a layer of complementary color makes the other complementary color on top either stand out more or decrease in saturation.
One painting is a landscape containing an invisible castle, and I did the second layer (after the base offwhite color) in shades of pinks, from red (closer) to white (farthest). I hope that when the painting is painted green, some of the pink will still stand out. I was also thinking of keeping the pink and drypainting the green on top of it.
The other piece was started today, a portrait of the Queen of Hearts, based on this painting of Louis XIII. I've been wanting to put her in a time, but Luke basically said no research, no one notices. So I'll do no research and try not to claw my eyes out.

shostagigi

Made a flipbook. It was bad and rushed, but it is a flipbook. That's a basic start.


The few people in the STACroom around the end of school spent at least an hour bitching about Shostagigi problems. So, here is a working list of things not to do:
Do Not spell his/her name wrong
Do Not tell everyone who you have
Do your research
Do ask friends and family

Add more. I don't feel like these are new ideas, and I know there aren't actual rules, but not doing anything for a gift just isn't fun.


Princess and the Frog comes out tomorrow. I have a lot to do this weekend. I probably won't see it until next weekend, after the PiG paper. How to write a PiG paper: 1 part Kontroll soundtrack, 1 part Tea, 1 part reading Rilke to digest what writing should taste like.

all I want is to have some peace of mind.

Listening to Peace of Mind, Boston, over and over again. The whole house has been singing it since this morning.  We even did Axel Rose covers. Best voice to imitate.


For the last two nights, I watched Alice on SciFi (screw the name change). It reminded me how much I needed to read the original Wonderland stories. Last year, SciFi did a similar change to Wizard of Oz, called Tin Man. Both stories were changed with central plots around technology, running a nation, and family relationships. It's like having two movies made by the same crew. Everything is so similar.
I don't know who designed Tin Man and Alice, but I like it. Something is a little too modern, a little too budget-tight. It was do-able. Except for a forest, general setting, lighting, facial hair, and a considerable amount of basic sewing. And I totally disagree with a lot of the plot and characters, but I like it. Some things explained too much, some things never are mentioned again, and sometimes, badassery ensues.


Self-portrait, used a mirror, I need to do something in art class before I implode. It took up a whole page, and I didn't crop it here.


I think my next project will definitely involve the Queen of Hearts. Not Alice, just the Queen and her minions.

concerts and consistancies.

There are a lot of things. First, is that I went to my first real concert. 4 bands played, but people went to see Ludo. I've been to Peter Paul and Mary concerts, I've been to Warped tour, but this was a nice room with really decent people. Everyone sang every song ludo played. And I feel like I learned a lot about lighting from the stage.

I was singing along with this soft song, Topeka, and afterwards this girl in front of me turns around and says 'you have a beautiful voice'. And I was like 'umm... thanks'. It was unexpected, but it actually made me feel good.

At Penn station afterwards, i witnessed a young guy trying to ask out this woman, but apparently she only spoke spanish. He said 'you know, only 30% of what I'm saying is words', which i was gonna high-five him for. She didn't understand a word, politely walked off to her train.

People smile because there's danger. Because in apes, when you show teeth, it means there's danger. That's why men like slapstick- it's physical danger. I don't know where the joy is from, but I've started using a smile to show that something's wrong. I want to see who will get it.

pointalism

I'm going to the Ludo concert tomorrow, so i've been listening to their music. There's a rock opera, Broken Bride. It's about a guy who goes back in time to save his love, forward in time, saves the world from a dragon-apocolypse, and is granted his wish- to see his girlfriend one last time. I didn't realize the last part. He goes through this epic battle against zombie armies and dragons and then he's singing softly about being with her, after he spent so long trying to deal with her death.

Today we talked about drawing symbols versus drawing the actual shapes. I don't agree- I think everything drawn is a symbol of something. Some symbols just have a lot more observation and detail. You can't draw the real thing, you can only make markings on paper that look like something. That's one of the reasons I don't really do much sculpting: I make illusions, not real things.

This is the pointalist piece. The camera destroyed the colors. It's not done yet.

Everybody's got the right to be happy....

Been listening to Assassins today (Everybody's got the right). The musical covers the motives behind presidential assassinations, and it's just so interesting.

Tomorrow I continue working on the pointillist piece (now that I have a middle green thanks luke), and I'm hoping to present it to STAC.

After Romanticism, I was going to work on a Romantic art piece with Hansel and Gretel. What's more Romantic that putting them on a path in the woods with a lantern and scary trees visually blocking the path at every end? Hopefully quill and ink.

Thumbnail and other doodles. The thumbnail isn't the first, it's planned. Cept the fallen tree should be more scary. Hansel's dropping the shining stones... I don't even know if he does that. The path is on the side of a slope, up on their left and down on their right. The pic doesn't really show that.

"Pilfered Waistcoat". Girl getting clothes from the remains of Princes... from a lot earlier in the year. The prince-killing princess. On the right is a version from last summer.

Teaching, Kebabs, and Chimeras

listening to 5/4, Gorillaz. I know they're not good musically, but w/e. iTunes on random: Rockin' the Paradise (Styx), Fuzzy and Blue (and Orange!) (Sesame Street), I was Meant for the Stage (Decemberists).

First.

Student teaching. My mom was a lawyer, then stayed home to raise 4 kids, and now that the youngest is gonna be going into Middle school, she's getting her teaching degree. She's student teaching a 9th grade history class. Not too much homework, but like a little paragraph every night, and I think that's fair.

She came to me this afternoon with her book and asked me if this was a boy's handwriting. Cursive letters, neat, straight, little circles over the I's. No teenage guy has neat handwriting. Plus the name was spelt wrong. We come up with a decent plan of attack: collect the notes from the day's class. I wonder how much he's paying her.

Second.

Alex Kebabs and Grilled Soccer

3 pounds Alex sirloin

1 Hawaiian pineapple

1 soccerball

Assorted Peace and Love flowers

Ground Manhattan seasoning

12 skewers

Cut up the pineapple, sirloin, and skewer them with the flowers (check for bugs). Cut up the soccer ball. Grill somewhere outside, preferably on a beach. Make sure to season the kebabs and the grilled soccer ball in the last minutes before eating.

Third. Everything happens in 3s.

Tee shirt design.

One of my ideas, the one I'd go with, is a darkish purple shirt with the emblem of a golden yellow Chimera on the side, in total medieval style. The Heraldic term is segreant, a wingled quadreped on its hind legs. With parts from Bear, Eagle, Lion, Horse, Dragon, and Hart, perhaps. Or antelope. I think these are noble animals, 6 of them to represent the diciplines, all coming together to make this one sort of wonderful beast. Not aggressive, bit it's a symbol of togetherness. And one color is cheap. And I want something I can wear. And the 6 animals will be represented separately on the back.

It's fallable, but workable. I don't have a visual, because I still don't know exactly what's happening. But I don't want a shirt with a logo that had nothing to do with the slogan.