Before easter, musicals

Today is the first day of Lent, the 40 days before Easter. No eating meat on Fridays, visit grandparents more often, go to church more, and give up something. I don't know what I'll give up. I think, though, that I'll say 'thank you' more, and have at least 2 out of 3 meals made by my own hands. This shouldn't be difficult.


Visited my grandparents today. Gramma is forgetful, Grandpa gives too much. They set a new record: there were 19 gallons of ice cream in the freezer.
I dug out Grandpa's old car, a beige 1991 Toyota Camry. It will be mine when I have a license. It has AM/FM, and a tape player, and it runs. I've named it Jimmy.


I found something interesting in a documentary about the Princess and the Frog. One of the lead animators talked about how Lassetter liked the look of the 50s-era disney (Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady/Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, Alice). The art direction didn't lighten up until Dalmatians. I don't know why these stand out so much, but I just don't like them.
60's - '77 (Dalmatians to Pooh) and '89 to '99 (Mermaid to Tarzan).
Drawings from rehearsal today.

I'm not sure who this kid is. He reminds me of Barnaby from Hello Dolly, but with Peter Pan's voice from the disney movie. "I dunno, Cornelius." Someone was singing in a similar position at rehearsal, and I added the store-clerk outfit. The original 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes', which was the opening of the WALL-E soundtrack. Remember when actors had to dance and sing, and didn't have to look pretty?

Peter Pan Indians: Disney song, vs. the Mary Martin Version song.

sum-ups.

Less blogging the last few months. I've been working on Carousel. And not at home.


My practice. Reading. I want to finish Earthsea by Monday, and start the Saint-Exupery book after that. Other than that, I need to finish the Lord of the Rings series. After the Stac book, Letters to a Young Poet, then the Accidental Masterpiece.


I think I'll post the pages I read each day, and a quote from each reading. And some line of reflection. That should be enough. All set to go on monday. After Superbowl, after finishing Earthsea.


A Wizard of Earthsea is basically about a boy with wizard talent, who goes to a wizarding school, releases a shadow upon the world, fights a dragon, fights a malign stone from before time, and needs to fight the shadow. It's a typical, simple fantasy book, and it sounds a lot like Harry Potter. Only, it was published in 1968. So a lot of children's fantasy is based on it. The world is a giant archipelago, Earthsea.
There's a moment when the dragon will not fly over a stretch of ocean to fight him, because dragons belong to wind and fire, and men of earth and sea.


By the end of the show, I'll make a giant post with all the possible sets I've drawn.

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."

sets

I'm almost done with the Book (or Part) 1 of Lord of the Rings, meaning I have about four to go and I'm about halfway through the Fellowship. Book 2 has the Rivendell Council, and I can't wait.

Today, about eight STAC people went to theater workshops at Adelphi college, and we sort of had an awakening. It wasn't 'we're better than everyone'. It was more like 'wow we really have learned a lot of important art culture'. Personally, I didn't learn a whole lot of new things about making props or stage makeup or scene painting. I should have signed up for classes I didn't know anything about.

I realize I can be decently egotistical sometimes, but I try not to make people feel bad. And I really hope it doesn't get in the way of my work.

UPDATE ON CHILDREN'S SHOW SET

I duct-taped a bedsheet to my ceiling, turned off my light, and put my night-stand light behind it. I'm so happy the idea works. Now, I just wish I could get a flood light and a larger sheet, and get the powers above to approve of my light-cloth-cardboard set.

John is terrorizing my paper-city. The paper isn't really solid.

I found out how to turn off flash in the later ones, rather than covering it up.

The idea has quite a few flaws in it. This is okay for little kids, but regular kids (6-8) are probably gonna want something more substantial. Thanks, Zach, for bringing me down to ground.

what about

I feel like ignoring responsibilities and watching pixar movies all night. But I need to paint some primal costume designs and come up with a list of set design limitations.

I feel like my standards are so high I can't reach them and only DaVinci and Schiele can touch them. I feel like I can do anything, so why am I doing this? It can always be better. Do not blame the world for boredom. Blame yourself. For you are not poet enough to call forth it's riches. Rilke.

In response to molly and niki: I don't have it, it's never been part of my world, but I'm surrounded by it.

too much time to think

Today a man being interviewed about Hard Day's Night said that surrealism is the point when two realities touch. It makes total sense.

Update 1. Children'sShowSet.

Shadow puppets. There will be a great white bedsheet, with a cardboard-cutout of a city skyline behind the sheet, and a light behind that for a shadow. Then for a different scene, we could exchange the skyline cutout for another cutout. It's fairly simple, easy to figure out, painfully cheap. And I feel like shadow puppets, basically, are a kid-thing that kids can relate to. We could even have a pots and pans percussion parade.

I would love to have a model ready for Yuvgenia, because I await and dread the critique. And I want to show what I learned last year. I'm about a month ahead of myself, but that's okay.

Update 2. ShirtIdea.

Once upon a time I got a book about Heraldry. At jousting matches, the coat of arms would be annouced by a small, loud man (the Herald), using all these fancy old-French terms. At the back of the book is a stencil mat with some of the different animals and patterns you could use.

So I put together parts from the eagle, lion, bear, horse, and dragon. And I added horns for the antelope. Gemsbok. Oryx. It's just the same thing. I added color. Now I would need to redesign it to look less like a kid's stencil. And it should be longer. And it should have some sense of balance.

Oryx horns, eagle beak, lion's mane, bear claws, horse end, dragon tail.

listening to PleasePleaseMe.

I think I got ink for my printer but I'm not sure. Nothing new really, except school.

I want to work on the children's show- it's about a girl who's a were-pidgeon. At night she turns into a pidgeon? Something like that.

Looking for a book in my room- Imagineering your world. I know I put it somewhere to I could actually finish it, but i lost it.

I need to figure out a crayon project involving fairytales. I was thinking of doing a pointilism-like piece with the bottom half as Jack climbing the beanstalk and the upper half would be Rapunzel's castle, with their silloutettes. it's very nice in my head- i'm gonna start with preliminary tests tomorrow. I want it to be big, too, so that you'd have to see it from far away. I need to figure out the green to purple-gray transition.

learning from experiences

listening to: Holst's the Planets, Jupiter. it was stuck in my head afterschool.

today was exhausting mentally. 7.30-8.15, essays on evolution, then- salsa dancing, WWI, Beowulf epic music, power struggle themes in english, turning swirlies into shapes into a theme in art, and trying to understand what art i need to work on after yevgenia, and how i'm going to take what she says and use it in such a way that i can learn from it.

i have to work on background, putting characters into scenes. a lot of that is spacial awareness, and mapping out where the character is before things go on paper. there is also the use of color and design of the illustration or picture by tone. identification at least somewhat complete. now, i have to figure how to start and learn about this.

my mom's trying to figure out a visit to CalArts during break. i would have to set up for a tour and to meet with the people there. ive been getting a little better at those things- calling for pizza, speaking up to order food. its easy to hide behind people when there are three siblings around.

i need to decide how the music for my nick film SOuL CANDY is going to work. i don't have any experience with music-writing, so i'll have to listen to the soundtracks i have. i have an idea of the style. http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/corteo/show/video-music.aspx. excerpts from this show are much more serious than my film requires, but the style of it is amazing. I saw the Corteo show summer 2006, and it completely changed 'circus'. these people don't have elephants or glitter. they are clowns, people with a story to entertain, sad or happy. they have wires to fly and ladders to balance and poles to walk. it just made Ringling bros look so stupidly americanized.

no drawings here on account of the work load of the week. catching up and studying and writing worksheets. not fun.

Yugenia (spelling?) workshop

Yugenia workshop- hoping to learn more european set design. a lot of the photographs weren't just "bushes on wheels" (Music Man actually has a tree on wheels). And the materials were more fabric that foamcore and recycled crapwood. there was a lot of puppets and puppetry, which reminds me once again that America doesn't like puppetry except in Tim Burton movies and Rennaisance fairs.

i'm glad that she likes my work but I sorta wish I could do more. like, having a few days to consider what the story means rather than going to a literal translation for the set. and the "we're going to make models after the design" definately startled me. But it's good that she told us that after many of us designed the sets, otherwise I know that my design would have been different.

i would love to work on the set but i have pit on wednesdays.