Aquarium Visit #1

Watercolor fish sketches in an aquarium. It sounds like a good idea. Until you figure out that the halls are dimly lit so that the children can scream "I SEE NEMO!" because they have a better chance of seeing fish with the tank being lit.

So when all the colors look like they're mud, I was working with basically no light.

Fish and some abstract... underwater.... coral? rock? background?

   

Prof. Layton, keeping my brain working.
Driving, keeping me on my toes.
Cooking, keeping me alive.
Now all i need to a set-up of my watercolor set, and to finish making the sketchbook for them.

Geographic pride.

Today I went on a field trip to the Heckshire Museum in Huntington. The main show was about Long Island artists, including Cindy Sherman and Lee Krasner.
     In STAC, we sneak into museums. In Art Class, we get a tour. "Have you ever been to a museum before?" Yes, we're AP Studio kids. We weren't answering the questions because they weren't very good questions. There was a set of ethno-photography, but out of context. The African warrior was in a studio getting his picture taken. Instead of pointing that out, why can't we ask Why the artist may have chosen to do that? Or go further to reflect on the artist's ideas of ethno-photography?
     It was a very Long Island day, though. Long Island artists, a trip to Huntington, passing every old shop.


I wasn't listening to the nice tour guide. I was drawing. The caterpillar's from earlier in the day, and started as an exercise.

250 ahhhh

250. The colors will change tonight. I'm looking at something plum and golden-yellow and red.
My portfolio. Warning: many many nudes ahead.

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."

pics. selsun blue is smelly in my hair.

some of these are old designs for projects.

caricatures:

tommy (profile).

argon. (Argon, the nonreactive gas in light bulbs that makes sure they burn. 'light

 bulb' representing ideas.) sort of in his own style, too.

watercolors:

Oberon the fairy king (emotionally hurt but won't show it) and Evil Robot Marie from Metropolis.

experimenting with real watercolor.

UP. omg clouds. the whole time I just stared at them the whole time... and there was the whole balloons + leafblower idea, which was amazing *vague on purpose*.

drawings left in school. it was a nice rapunzel design.

word of the day: Extrapolation. an inference derived from known facts.

summer's the worst, summer love is a scam.

should i be learning how to paint/color using computers? Like photoshop? I'd rather learn how to use a pencil. and later, I'll use a pen tablet. That's the next thing, after landscapes and real watercolor. After that, I'll try oils with painting. I think oil painting is part of Art Bootcamp.

i had this cutout/painting idea for Rapunzel, but its in school. I'll see if i can make a series of cutouts/paintings. Painting would only be for the backgrounds, and the characters will be cut out. Grimm or Anderson? I have a Grimm book, so Grimm.

current projects. most are due in the next 2 weeks.

STACart man vs. machine ebony pencil drawing.

Film- must edit SOuL CANDY on FinalCut. Must learn FinalCut first. Find music for it, get brother to write music?

Cutout project in Art. Bring in the construction paper. Draw out outlines and thumbnails.

PANdemic. Lead a team of people to make a color theory mural based on the works of Paul Klee. Lots of squares.

Learn Pitman Shorthand.

Midsummer night's dream poster project character designs.

From left: Helena, Demetrius (painful angle. lets call it cubism. worst haircut evers.), Hermia, and Lysander. I know Lysander is based off a characture of someone, but I forgot. Maybe a Hirshfield picture.

who are the people in your neighborhood, x3, oh who are the people in your neighborhood? the people that you meet each day.

this guy was picking up his grandson from elementary school. the kid was really cute.

and there is a design for an unpretty princess. "ugly" is too harsh a word. she's bored, and she's royalty. she is the cousin of the real princess (the deer-eyed prince killer), and she's a changeling. not the evil kind but like the exchanged baby at birth kind. she shouldn't have perfect posture, or she should have perfect posture. no inbetween there. the squiggles next to her are supposed to be a dragon shoulder.

SHADES of BLACK. like my soul lols.

workshop with Cathryn: today i learned that i really reallllly need to stop and stand back for a second. this also comes from the specific vs. general. Specific is when you have to paint a part a specific way. the general, when you stand back and see the affect and the shapes and the colors. it's a very good thing to balance.

while writing my paper i came upon more than one problem with general and specific. In history, i usually do not attempt to distinguish between the two, except for the 'Major Themes' that each kids gets pounded into their brain. Like the 'containment of communism' theme of Cold War. But I cannot, for ex, tell you that the Tet Offensive was less or more important than the fact that women in WWII would draw lines on their legs to represent stockings.

on painting: i loved the video yesterday by Margaret? just the method of painting is so decisive- one layer after another after another. if something doesnt feel right, it doesnt feel right. just do another one. or flip it over and consider it that way.

circles in the shades of black: one of the visual themes of the PANdemic mural is that eventually all color lines transition into black tiles, which are filled with squares of 'shades of black'. It seemed too much, too much of the same. There's no transition. So I added a circle right in the middle of the page and added the dark tiles around it. I think it really lets the tile, and hopefully the mural, breathe.

day

the post-ap schedule today:

1 watercolor PANdemic

2 watercolor PANdemic

3 Sub in SS- drawing

4 Band

5 Reading in english.

6 drawing and painting 1. (design/color/colored pencil)

7 STACart. (design/drawing)

8 STACart.

9 STACart.

and my chem teacher from last year (style totally stolen from Craig McCracken). some sorta sweater and pants... on a packet that tells me what to do for an english paper. i think this might be handed in. oh, well.

i thought that the differences between arm widths would bother me, but it doesn't.

Klee

ok. im going to be fully ready for tomorrow's painting. i feel like im running a workshop. im making 8 tiles of mock-up: 

red-orange, 

orange-yellow, 

yellow-green, 

green-blue, 

blue-purple, 

purple-red, 

red-black,

black.

technically, if there's a black tile, there should be the beginning white tile. whatever. this is only a model of the actual, and as long as the idea goes across, everything will be fine.

I really really like the idea that only one person is moving at a time for the bittersweet symphony film. If we can get a dolly, and have a lot of people be still, it will be so friggin awesome. i think it's great that stac people can say 'wow thats a great idea lemme throw out everything my group did and do it'.

drawings in blue crayola marker.

edit: the colors look great. more later.

princess and the frog

PRINCESS AND THE FROG CLIPS.

this is a movie i would wait outside a theater in the rain for. lasseter seems just a little overwhelmed... at least, he looks like he has another appointment. whatever. it looks great. i must see it more than once.

the Cathryn painting workshop. this should be an interesting workshop. hope to learn a lot, yada yada yada. . . i want to experiment more with acrylics in general. perhaps that's next year's thing. or this summer's project. this year i learned watercolor, and ive worked with acrylic and charcoal extensively for the first time. and ink, although that's still on the 'to Learn' list. I realized today how much i don't like prints, and that prints especially don't work for textured drawings. You get the feel of the art, but it isn't the same.

i've been reading the Imagineering Way, a little book about developing ideas with a group, making ideas a reality, the nature of ideas, and opening yourself to all possiblilties. i looked for quotes (ive highlighted most of the book) but none of them really work in this context, without their story. and some of them are just like: There's nothing you can screw up that can't be fixed. well, if people in stac followed that, they would make decisions more, wouldn't they?

fanfare and Klee

the kentucky derby. wow. theres a horseracing story:

each year for my grandpa's birthday, the whole extended family goes to Belmont for the day. grandma makes pnutbutter and jelly, grandpa, the aunts, and the uncles gamble. and if any one person wins too much, there's ice cream for all of us. no one wins that much. then we go to my aunt's house that's on the border of queens of nassau county and have bbq burgers. and most of us are sunburnt by then but don't really care.

so there's a certain comfort at the racetrack, just to be there without gambling yourself. i actually tried drawing the horses one year. i should do that this year. but it seems too much like... oh look at me i'm gonna use family bonding time to prove that i want to b an art-person. at the same time, WTH should i care- i need to learn how to draw horses.

i came up with a few examples of color-blending with watercolor. this is from a set i borrowed from Ganes, so its the same PRANG colors. Blue-Yellow. there are a few interpretations. and i really just wanted to paint.

note that these use a brick pattern for the placing of the squares. we'll just call them bricks. brick pattern works better for me, but Klee used more of a grid pattern. Gradatation is the change in color, from the first to the second. this can be through another color, a set of colors, or by interweaving the two original colors. Saturation is literally the same principle as the salinity of solutions: more dye, stronger/brighter color; low saturation in watercolor means there is more water. simple.

1st attempt: a more literal transition, with the same hues of two colors (blue and red). it doesn't work for me.

2nd attempt: different hues of the same colors (blue and yellow). theres some green in there, some orange in there, mixed in with the blue/yellow. it's more interesting, but the flow isn't right.

3rd attempt: this is what i think should happen, and is the hardest to do. color gradation from red to blue. there are greens and oranges mixed in here, one place or another, but the flow is intact. the saturation isn't as varied as it should be (in this pic, at least), but the purpose was to get a feel for the flow of color.

monster, phoneless, not fair

all-state scores came out today.

in the most childish, whining voice possible: IT'S NOT FAIR.

why should someone get a higher score than me for not doing nearly as much work? why should people not work for something, win, and be praised for it? this is terrible and IT HAPPENS EVERYWHERE. its in every profession and with anyone you work with.

and today was spent doing so many things so that i wouldn't have to think about it. a B+ is a good score, but its not progress from last year. and grades are terrible- they sum up time and energy into a little letter that means too much. and it's not like i have people chasing me around to work on things- i have my own standards and they are too high.

but i have things to work on.

microwaved chocolate cake works out better than i ever thought it would. all i have to do now is figure out a way to make it in the stac microwave. thats gonna be on may 12th, after the ap bio test.

mexico was hit hard this week, with swine flu and press and now an earthquake. the good thing, i guess, about all these outbreaks (mersa, swine flu, avian virus, e. coli) is that america is now fully prepared to deal with the inevitable supervirus of the 7th extinction.

my phone decided to disappear a few days ago. probably thursday or friday. i should be more worried, but im not. there are some people who would be going through epileptic shock at this moment. the only thing im worried about is that i'll miss a babysitting call/job opportunity, or that i wont remember a number. i should keep an external addressbook anyways.

there was a part of the book ive been reading for a few months where MainCharacter and Nemesis-Child teleport randomly onto a beach. He finds some gold things and pockets them. Then there's this monster who goes to attack him for stealing. but the monster like.. has a floral and beautiful scent that takes over your vision, too, so the Nemesis-Child gets confused. MainCharacter puts up telepathic blocks. the creature, in its description, looks nothing like what i drew/painted. there is some visual confusion around his left shoulder, and the profile drawing should really have a more muscular back, but i don't know the muscles of the back very well. too.. anthropomorphic, overall.

i have a good 6 hours of biology hw to do. about 1500 words. i would be fretting, but im not. on some sick level, ecology is interesting. plus i intend to vex the teacher with humans for 'animal examples'. she doesnt like that much.

meaning with context

meaning through context. i must learn how to use this. perhaps this could be some missing link i still have to find out.

after All-state auditions, i plan to spend a lot of time finishing the art project from the beginning of the year with the watercolor people. it needs a title. and i was thinking about how that could be framed or shown. and what if every person was individually cut out and framed? this lead to 'invisible portraits', a series that's just different frames that suggest personality. i also have two 4-panel, weathered windows i want to use for an art project. i don't know what i'd do to them. paint them, keep them dirty, paint a reflection in them. something general so that people put their selves into it.

its so interesting to hear what people talk about with the pictures, because sometimes they just say something that's just a bit off and it ends up revealing a lot about them.

a tree pattern that i found on an agenda book of this girl i don't really know. i really need to copy it from her book exactly, these aren't right. they're just very geometrically shaped trees. there's something with the branch-lines extending to the edge thats just so interesting. tinted green/yellow. and there's a part of Walter's leg. he's not yet done- he still needs to be colored.

Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather

I started meditating in school today. just trying to calm down, breathe deep and slow, slow the heart rate, concentrate on an object. i was up at 5:40, before the sun, to do schoolwork. I was late to school. I spent two hours doing schoolwork before going to school. What kind of existence is that? just all day has been preparing to explain myself for things that are never asked. for multiple classes. and i was so dulled from thursday, and tired from the work in the morning.

i walked about 1/2 a mile at 10pm with a large wooden chair. 

and no one bothers to ask. My mom was once talking about me and i overheard. she said that i would do things just so that i could say i did them. that might be true, but i don't do drugs or drink. I'll walk home with a chair, or 20-ft bamboo pole, or put cucumbers in a basket and deliver them to my friends house on her birthday, or call the local elemetary school to see if i could plant a tree on the property (they didn't get back to me. I had a tree, though.) Not to one-up people, but to see reactions. How does someone react when they see someone crossing a major intersection with a considerable dining-room chair?

Different kind of self-portraits. lots of selfportraits lately. water color water

y color, changed for darker midtones and tinted a little green. been noticing that most of the music i listen to looks like this- swirly and sorta dark and condensed but also comfortable, enclosed. terrible position/proportions in the drawing part, but it was all about the watercolors.

I found a small piece of blue colored pencil. This was done while i was listening to the World's Fair radio thing. i think the lip looks like a mustache a little. and the hat. oh god the hat. i really like from the neck down, though. i think i finally got Jackie's stance for when she was the Giantess. Fashion design desaster too, really.

Not a self-portrait. I found out that the bit of colored pencil was watercolor pencil, so i started using my finger and a little spit to make softer lines. the upper light part of the mouth used to be a lip, but turned into teeth because it looked more convenient.

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.

watercolored self portraits about hair

these are entitled "why is that piece always out" and "ode to that curly mess i found at 5:30 this morning."