Spitting Air

November

2011-11-19T01:06:00.001-06:00

I had so many sheep paintings pinned up in my studio, I thought, why not add another?

Goauche and colored pencil

Growing

2010-12-27T04:19:00.000-06:00

So, it's been a little while. One thing I've discovered is that I'm not very good at multitasking. I should get better at that. Anyway, my only excuse is that I got so consumed by the summer (working A LOT at a restaurant and pet sitting) and then the working A LOT of the semester that I simply forgot that I wanted to chronicle things in this way. However, to be totally honest, this past semester has not created much that anyone will want to see. I think that this semester was basically a kick in the ass, one that was direly needed. I think too much and do too little, and the result is a lack of confidence that I felt pretty sharply in contrast to a group of students who have been forced into drawing drawing drawing, just draw don't think so much draw. In a way, I wish that I had had that experience, but regret is a silly and nonconstructive thing. I can only move forward and moving forward entails a keen focus. In all honesty, I've never really kept a sketchbook before, but I have decided that this should become a fairly large part of my process. I imagine so much up in my mind and I can see it so clearly there that when the time comes for me to translate that to imagery I haven't really worked it out physically enough (especially with the new very short time constraints given at RISD) to always convey it successfully. I have learned a lot, and sometimes it was painful, sometimes my lungs were in my stomach, but with a week out to clear my head and get some sleep, I feel very optimistic about my future. I'll post images of the few pieces I feel happy about in a week when I'm back in Providence, as I didn't really manage to get decent pictures as I was readying myself for the airport, but I will leave this amazing webcomic I found by Emily Carroll that really boosted me up creatively as OH MAN it is ATMOSPHERE! It is actually quite similar to the sort of comics I want to do, so I was pretty excited to see it.

For serious, I love the colors, I love the rendering of the characters, I love the attention to detail. I've never really tried to do stylized figures, but my interest in comics is pushing me to try it. I think I'm going to start slow by doing exaggerated facial expression studies and exaggerated body pose studies and then hopefully at some point figure out what my stylized figures will look like. I'm going to guess they're going to be on the more realistic stylized side, but I'd really love to be able to blow out those facial expressions and pump up that drama or humor.

Bon soir!

THINGS ARE HAPPENING

2010-08-02T22:42:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Well, a lot has happened. I moved out to Maine in early April, got a couple of jobs, and have managed to pull out of my year and a half long "oh, I just dropped out of the University of Illinois with naught but 12 credits to go, but I'm transferring to finish up at Rhode Island School of Design, but they haven't accepted me yet, well the accepted me last year but I didn't have enough money or where-with-all then, so I have to apply again for this fall" stage of my life. This was not a very fun period, for, as many had pointed out to me, RISD is an exceptionally difficult school to get into, and what will you do if you don't get accepted. Fortunately, I never have to think about that in a literal sense! Now, it's "I'm moving to Providence in early September, and I'm starting school on the 15th, and I'm majoring in Illustration!" Much shorter and less embarrassing and more specific. Also before people find out that I have like, five hundred credits already they aren't all like, WTF are you doing, girl?

So I'm pretty psyched. I haven't gotten much art done this summer for, as my mother warned me, it is difficult to work jobs that have nothing to do with my art and have the mental or physical energy to actually do other work. Especially when it's two jobs. And one of them is in a kitchen. And you're not in your studio environment half the time because the other one involves living like a hobo, moving from house to house, dog sitting. I hope to rectify this next week, however. We'll see. On the plus side, I may get a few days break from ramen next year.

Finally, I noticed that I did not post the cover for the new version of The Sheep Child that I had been working on. While it's not the greatest thing ever, I'm pretty pleased with it because I managed to get the type to interact with the painting I did.

Ultimately one of the things I have to learn at RISD is how to make paintings and drawings and mixed media pieces by hand and then add type elements that look natural and interact well with the images in Adobe CS. I don't think I'll get that in my first year--I'm taking Illustration I, Drawing I, Painting I, and a mandatory art history class my first semester. But all my liberal arts and gen eds transferred, so I won't have to take any liberal arts classes unless I want to, which means more room for studios. Mostly I'm excited that somehow, even though I didn't pick them (the transfer office of a small school is surprisingly bureaucratic) all my classes start after noon and I get a three day weekend. Whoo!

Also of note: thank you to Christina Rodriguez for prompting me to do this far past due post. I got a copy of Storm Codes, and it is gorgeous!

Extra Super Awesomeness

2010-03-19T03:17:00.004-05:00

while ago, I posted about Long Ago & Far Away. At the time, I couldn't really find any videos on the internet of it, and I kind of think I wouldn't have known how to embed them anyhow. I'm a little amazed, looking all the way back then, that this blog has been around for three years at this point. Anyway, I was looking back at those old videos again because my younger brother and I decided to watch an old paleontology program that we used to watch all the time when we were little. I randomly looked them up on youtube, and lo and behold, someone's posted quite a few of them, including one of my favorites, Svatohor.

There are three parts in all. It's a pretty intense stop animation. I think I get some of my creepy, aesthetic leanings from having watched these things. My mother said there was also a creepy french circus claymation one, but I have no memory of it. It is actually one of my aspirations to, at some point, do a stop animation with dolls and a set I have designed and made myself. Stop animations have such an interesting atmosphere to them that really adds to stories like this Russian folklore.

Of course, one of my other favorites was the phenomenally done Wind in the Willows.

This was also a stop animation, and it was terribly British in an awesome way. Of course, it features animals that are known only by what species they are (obviously there is not more than ONE Rat, Mole, Toad or Badger. These creatures simply appear and are only men for some reason). Mr. Toad is akin to a Bertie Wooster who hasn't a Jeeves, and Mole, Rat, and Badger are the straight men who smack him in the head from time to time. Like Svatohor, the stop animation lends a great atmosphere. Because a great deal of time was spent on these projects because they are stop animation, it often feels as though their worlds have more depth to them then a good deal of the cgi stuff coming out now. A prime example of this would be Tim Burton's latest version of Alice in Wonderland, which felt exceedingly one note, obvious, and flat to me. Like anything else (for example, mass manufacture over something hand done) there are pluses and minuses, and budget cuts and time saving leads to a loss of attention to detail and an obvious passion in the project.

Finally, I finished my RISD application a week or so ago. We were supposed to send in three drawings: one of a bicycle, one that used both sides of the paper, and one of something from three different perspectives. I am really hoping they haven't gotten any bicycle drawings quite like this yet:

I really like tea.

Heh heh . . .

2010-02-13T01:57:00.007-06:00

ood grief, I'm terrible. I suppose it's hard to get back into doing something when you haven't done it for awhile and your brain feels like mush a good deal of the time. At any rate, the least I can do is update with some images from my illustration class last semester as well as some new images from my most recent project, a reworking of the book I made a year or so ago, The Sheep Child, based on a poem by James Dickey. Given formatting issues I have when I try to put strange spaces in things in blogger, I won't even try to type it up, but you can read the full text here. I will more than likely go more into the challenges of illustrating such a thematically rich piece when I've finished, and the book will be available for purchase on Lulu, though I don't think I'm allowed to make any profit off it because I don't have rights to the poem.

Anyway, here is an illustration assignment from last semester. I was supposed to do a pencil drawing of a hand holding an object:

This piece was basically the first serious pencil drawing I'd done in a LONG time. It was nice to remember how to handle the medium, and that I can get some pretty rich results from it, though I think general use in future will be in mixed media pieces. I also got some water soluble pencils, so I'm a bit excited to experiment with those.

Next is a ink drawing of some mushrooms. the assignment was to do a full value drawing in ink of vegetables. Now, I discovered last semester that intricate full value pen and ink drawings are not my cup of tea, but I am glad that I know how to use them, I suppose. Again, such a technique will also probably only be used in a mixed media piece, but I quite like this piece because it only took a couple of hours and though it is full value pen and ink, it is a full value pen and ink that is true to my way of working, which is messy and fairly expressive but also given to moments of specificity and intricacy and detail. Or, at least, that is what I hope I achieve.

I have a few more, of course, but the size of the assignments is just outside the range of my scanner, and I have to piece them together, which is fecking annoying. I've been coveting a larger scanner for not a terrible price on Amazon, but I'll wait until I move to purchase most likely.

Here are the new pages for the book, though I'm posting the at the moment as is and without text because I'm still messing about with that stuff. I think they're both terrifying, but generally people I show them too disagree. Perhaps I've been spending to much time with the text as well as staring at them in the early hours of the morning. They are both a mixture of watercolor and gouache.

I'm only reworking 6 of the pages, and some are collages with old photos, and some are simply abstract paintings, so for the ones I was reworking I wanted to find a place in between the concrete imagery of the photos and the abstract backgrounds. That place is in these slightly stylized lambs and sheep in atmospheric settings.

If anyone randomly would like a high quality giclee print of any of these or any of my other images, please email me (spittingair@gmail.com) so we can chat!

Now I've got to finish one more page, and then its off to the publishers.

Hokay, here we go again

2010-01-05T07:17:00.006-06:00

pparently some people actually look at this, (and by "some people" I mean close friends and family, but whatever) and they keep telling me to update it, so here we go again. Hopefully at some point I will figure out how to make a website and this will just be a link on a larger website where there will also be my full portfolio and a store and such.

I took a couple of classes at NIU this past semester (Illustration I and Watercolor I) which were a good, though in some ways a somewhat painful, learning experience. They were painful mostly because I had to start at 8 am, which, unless you are a morning person, is pretty much horrible, especially since in studio classes you generally have to actually DO things as opposed to sitting mindlessly in a lecture. I also learned how to do full value ink drawings, which, while I'm glad I know how to do it and will probably use parts of the technique in other work, am looking forward to (hopefully) never having to do again. The intense tight line work is not at all my style, which seems to be leaning more and more to water media at the moment. I learned a good deal about watercolor and the things it is capable of doing this semester. It was a little strange because I was in a class with a bunch of students who, while only two years younger than me, made me feel quite old, simply because there is a pretty big difference between a sophomore in college and a senior. It also seemed that I was pretty much alone in really wanting to learn how to use watercolor and in loving the medium. It felt like a lot of people were taking the class because they had to, which, while understandable, was a bit strange after having only taken upper level classes with people who were taking what they wanted to take for the past couple of years.

Though I did about 10 paintings this last semester, there were really only two that I felt brought me forward, only two that really did anything differently from what I'd done before. In the first one, which was done earlier, I was doing a reworking of of a painting from when I was doing My God. This is the orignal from around a year earlier:

Here is the new version, done around two months ago:

In the second one, I used a lot more color and there is more of an awareness of texture. I don't think this is the final version of this work, but one thing I appreciate about watercolor is the fact that all I have to do is staple a wet piece of paper to a board and I'm good to go. If I want to do multiple versions of an idea I can much more easily because, unlike oil, I don't have to worry about making a canvas stretcher, stretching canvas, and gessoing before finally getting started. It's much more pliable in this way.

The second piece was much more personal. Both of my grandparents on my mother's side passed this last year, so I wanted to paint a portrait of them for posterity and for my mother. It had also been awhile since I'd done a portrait, so I guess I also wanted to see if I was still capable, as once I mostly did figure study. I looked through some old photo albums and found a picture that my mother took maybe ten years ago when we were all on Martha's Vineyard together staying at my Aunt's house. While somewhat unconventional, I chose this photograph because it was a time I remembered distinctly, it was a time we were all together, and it feels joyful. It also has figures interacting, but not in an obvious sort of fashion. It doesn't feel pose-y, like many of the other photographs I looked at:

I then tried to mesh tight painting (which I am much better at then tight line drawing) with an abstract color background. I think this painting is a big step forward for me, and I am going to be very interested in working with figures more in the future. I had forgotten how much I enjoy portraiture.

So that's all for now. I will be uploading my adventures in illustration I at some point fairly shortly as well.

A Spot of Tea

2009-05-21T00:58:00.004-05:00

So. One of the projects I'm working on this summer is a book about chinese tea with Nick and Lali. This is the first draft of a cover:

S'il te plait, click on it to see a larger image. It is a watercolor painting and I put the text on it in Photoshop. I wanted to block out the text with masking fluid and then erase it away so it was all white afterward, but that didn't allow me much room for error or messing around with the type, so this was a much better choice I think. Also I kind of enjoy the hard graphic edges of the type in contrast to the organic nature of the painting. The type is, of course, now subject to minute changes that the normal person will probably not notice, but will be a big deal to graphics people. Specifically typographers. I've never taken a typography class, so I'll probably run this by some people I know who have.

Also, today I bought this amazing stereo that has bluetooth, has a dock for an iPod, has a dock for a usb, can play regular and mp3 cds, can play FM and AM radio and has an alarm clock. I was super excited because it was everything I ever wanted in a pretty cheap package, and I thought I would be able to connect my computer to it wirelessly (the bluetooth) only to discover upon trying to connect my computer to it that there are different kinds of bluetooth, and the stereo was a2dp or something, which mac osx 4.11 does not support for some idiotic reason. So I was thinking I would have to return it, because most of the reason I got it was so that I could play music and watch movies wirelessly on loud, quality speakers when I discovered that apparently you can buy a usb device that adapts your computer to a2dp bluetooth. Or something. I'm not even really sure why there are different kinds of bluetooth. Anyway, I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm going to call Best Buy tomorrow and have them tell me what to buy so I know for sure that it will work with a mac. Ridiculousness. It seems every time I buy a new technological product, I have to invest in something else to make whatever I just bought work the way I want it to. C'est la vie.

New Harry Potter Book Covers

2009-05-15T23:28:00.011-05:00

Maybe? I hope so. I don't know about everyone else, but I've always felt the illustrations/covers of Harry Potter (the American Edition, don't know about the others) were just all right. Not really my style, I suppose. Examples:

They certainly look like children's books, which I suppose to an extent they are, at least the first couple. But really they have become a lot more than that, and each one grew in maturity and I wouldn't really recommend the last book to an eight year old. These new designs (which, as far as I can tell, were done for fun and are not going to be published) are classic, mature, and really just well done aesthetically.

I am iffy on the fifth one (Order of the Phoenix) because the image of the world in someone's hands is a cliche and this hasn't really added any twists to that. However, the seventh one (Deathly Hallows) is especially brilliant because it subtly introduces the concept the the idea that the seventh book hinged on, which was that everything at that point was polluted and controlled by the evil doers (Voldemort). I also enjoy the sixth one (Half-Blood Prince) because can totally see that scene in the book. Overall, I would say these would be a nice change of pace to the children's illustrations that seem to be de facto for Harry Potter covers. You can see them in their home environment here.

Hmm

2009-05-08T17:28:00.004-05:00

It has been a while, I see. I guess I went through a bit of a . . . creative death for a few months. This last semester at UIUC has not been good. Frankly, I'm ready to close this chapter of my life and move on . . . by going back to my hometown to study for a semester at NIU! Hahahaha! Oh wow. Can anyone tell how awesome I am?

Anyway, I did get into RISD, but I am going to defer for a year. And because they don't let transfer students defer, I mean I am going to reapply next year with a really amazing portfolio. They gave my a $15,000 scholarship, which pretty sizable and makes the whole thing doable, but I'm hoping that if I step up my game next year I'll get even more. Also I really feel like I'm not in a place right now where I can handle the stress of taking a lot of hardcore studio classes, having to worry about living in a new place far away from anyone I know, and getting a good part time job. I need a year off. I've been in school for 17 years for goodness sake!

So this summer I'm living at home, but so are Maddi and Vanessa. It'll but just like high school, only now we can all drink! Whoo! My goals to get back in the creative groove consist of the following:

Start sketching. I had to do three drawings for my RISD application, and while I was doing them I realized that I hadn't actually really drawn since the end of my sophomore year of college, or something like two years earlier. Doing rough sketch outs of what goes where for the first part of a painting is not drawing. It is part of the painting process, which is completely different. So I will do at least one fully developed sketch a day of whatever I feel like sketching. I want to become really adept and fast at drawing. This skill set has always slowed me down because I'm perfectly capable of it, it just takes me a little longer than it should. Annoying.
Make at least two master painting copies to work on my technical skills. These will probably be Turners, a John Singer Sargent, and maybe an Odd Nerdrum.
Rework The Sheep Child so I've actually finished a freaking project.
Work and finish this new book project that I've been discussing with Nick and Lali. They want to write a text about Chinese Tea. I like tea, and also have an idea for a cover, so I hope to do all the graphic stuff for the book and then we can publish on Lulu.
Work on illustrating my mom's short story. Hopefully if I can do all of these things I will have not one but three completed books to put in my portfolio for my RISD application next year. Whoo!

Here are some of the paintings I am hoping to copy:

JMW Turner--The Burning of the Houses of Parliament

John Singer Sarget--Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose

I am tired.

More Adventures in Layout

2008-11-20T00:46:00.008-06:00

We're going somewhere. Some more initial layout:

I'm thinking of using this for the final page:

I'm actually really getting into this. The computer allows the process to go a lot more quickly and I can work on it pretty much anywhere if I have the right files and images uploaded.

On another note, another childhood love I've been getting back into aside from Tintin is Ranma 1/2. I hadn't read the comics in a few years, so I forgot how completely ridiculous and fun it is. The basic premise is that Ranma is a teenage male martial artist whose accidentally gets knocked into a cursed spring while training in China. The spring has a tragic history of a woman drowning it in some 1000 years ago and now anyone who falls in turns into a girl when splashed by cold water. Hot water reverts them to their original form. So Ranma turns into a buxom red head every time he's hit with cold water. There are all sorts of springs, and throughout the series new characters who have fallen into springs of drowned cats, pigs, ducks, and yetis riding oxen while holding an eel in one hand and a crane in the other, pop up.

So anyway Ranma and his father go to live with his father's old friend Soun Tendo. The father's decide that Ranma will be engaged to Akane, Soun's youngest daughter. Both Ranma and Akane are vehemently against this and what follows are a bunch of action packed (mostly) silly stories. I'm one of those weird people who laughs out loud if I'm reading something funny, and I laugh a lot during Ranma. You can, if you so desire, read it all online for free here: The New Ranma 1/2 Project. It also has a lot of T&A. I'm not sure if it's normal to seem topless teenage girls running around all over the place in Japan, but this was apparently a series aimed at children. Anyway, if you're not offended by black and white line drawings of boobs, it's fun.

Dean from Gilmore Girls and Marica Gay Harden, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

2008-11-19T13:36:00.005-06:00

This appears to combine schmaltzy Hallmark Channel Christmas movie with Thomas Kinkaide. I think a teenage crush just died. *sigh*

Layout

2008-11-18T01:03:00.005-06:00

So I'm laying stuff out on the computer and I'm not terrifically over the top happy with anything yet. I think I need to do some more stuff by hand to scan in or something. It just feels kind of amateurish at the moment, although I do think the cover is pretty close. I've been working on that a lot and only just started on the pages, so I think it's a matter of just continuing to mess around with it. It's a process and given time constraints, the computer is really the best finalizing tool because I can undo with a click. I think I'm learning, too. The other plus is I can present several of them in crit and get feedback and then simply fix it on the computer. So perhaps in this experimental phase, this is best.

I got some more vintage photos that I ordered online from New Jersey this weekend. Some of them just give me the heebie jeebies! I'm pretty sure that some of the babies are dead in the photographs. It wouldn't be surprising as taking a photo of the recently deceased was a pretty common thing 90 or so years ago. It's pretty weird looking at all of these photos of random people from the the beginning of the 20th century knowing that they are either very old or very dead now. The photos all reek of another era. It's a strange atmosphere. Some stuff I've done with new ones:

Paul said the lower one looks like a vampire, which I am not going to argue with. I actually think it looks a little like Batboy:

Hee!

COFFEE

2008-11-10T23:26:00.004-06:00

Hey, you know whats kind of fun? Screwing around with an antique photo by putting gouache on it and then scanning it into photo shop and screwing around with it some more there.

I'm actually enjoying myself and I'm not super stressed. About this project. At the moment. I do actually have about five more pages to write for a short story tonight plus two free verse poems, so that's nice.

I give you . . . Sheep Girl!

Her power is her phenomenal sense of fashion. She is rocking that giant velvet hair bow.

The Sheep Child

2008-11-09T19:27:00.002-06:00

So for my final project of the semester I'm going to get a book done. So I can do this without having to worry about the writing aspect of it (I am having a lot of trouble feeling that any of my writing is in a state to be published at this point and setting it in stone is only going to stress me out) I am going to illustrate a wonderful and pretty famous poem by James Dickey called The Sheep Child. I've also decided that due to time constraints, lack of resources, and a lack of technical skill on my part, to do the illustrations, scan them into the computer, pair them with the text and mess around with them in photoshop or illustrator or whatever, and get the thing published on lulu. I am sick of not being able to mess up and learn because I don't have the resources here or the time with resources. If I mess up on the computer, it's no biggie. Just get rid of that layer. I, of course, am going to continue hand making books in order to get better and more technical, but I simply don't have time for a crummy badly bound hand made book. I want something crisp and clean this time round.

So anyway. I got a bunch of antique photos of children and babies from the early 20th century at one of the local used bookstores. I'm going into them with goauche, though I've only messed with one so far. I scanned it in and then selected the oval. Then I just added a bunch of layers and text in photoshop and came up with the first draft for the cover. I don't know. I'm going to let it mull and show it to some of my friends in graphic design to see what they say.

I can't wait for this semester to be over.

OMG!

2008-11-05T16:21:00.004-06:00

So I am just amazed at all of this. I can remember just a year ago saying, "If there was going to be a first black president, it would probably be a republican." I'm so glad that I was wrong. Granted, if stuff hits the fan in four years, it might be different for a woman, but I'm not going to think about that horrifying possibility right now. Anyway, just from having done all the research I've been doing now and over the summer on the foundings of slavery and the civil war era really makes this moment extremely emotional for me. It's bittersweet because of a huge loss across the board as far as gay marriage was concerned, but I guess we can't have the first black president and gay marriage in one night. What are we, the Netherlands? I still can't believe there was such a huge historic event happening just a few hours away from me in Grant Park. I really wish now that I had been there. I guess I'll go out of my way to go to the rally for the first woman president that I actually want to vote for.

As an ending note, here is Obama's amazing speech, "A More Perfect Union", from after the whole Jeremiah Wright brouhaha. This was what really sealed the deal for me. He spoke to the American people about the tense and complex issue of race like we were adults. Like we were people who could move in the right direction, who could understand these issues and really turn things around. Like we could see that things aren't black and white. Like we could try to understand, forgive, and heal.

WOOT!

2008-11-04T23:42:00.004-06:00

In honor of my brother, I'm letting this wonderful song speak for a nation:

What a night! Now just to finish it off with a defeat of prop 8 . . .

Books, Specifically Covers

2008-11-03T17:48:00.009-06:00

So I've always thought that a great job would be designing book covers. I mean, I am definitely guilty of buying books that I thought looked mediocre just because they had a stunning cover. Granted, this is more in the graphic design realm than I am now, but over at RISD they have a class just for book cover design. I would definitely take that class, especially after checking out some of the awesome book covers at The New York Times Book Review and The Penguin UK Blog. One of the coolest sets of book covers I saw were done by Penguin designer Coralie Bickford-Smith when they were republishing a bunch of classic horror stuff for October. The coolest part? They are cyanotypes! My favorite kind of graphic design is the stuff that has an element of hand work in it. It always just seems to have a lot more depth if there is some part of a photo or hand drawing in it. That's just my aesthetic. But these covers are just GORGEOUS:

I think what I really like about them is that they are spooky and haunting without resorting to the cliche of black and red and white. You can see her talking about the process of making them here:

Design to get you hiding under the covers from Penguin Books on Vimeo.

In other news, I am currently reading an extremely interesting book called Jonathan Loved David by Tom Horner.

I think a lot of people who have read the story of Jonathan and David in The Bible (Samuel I & II) would agree that they were probably pretty much gay for each other. This book talks about middle eastern attitudes toward homosexuality in Biblical times, and much like their Greek and Roman brethren, many men were getting it on with each other. I found this very interesting because it sounded like there were a lot more men sleeping with each other than would count for a contemporary gay/bisexual population. It would seem that a lot of men were unabashedly bisexual. This started to make me think about how probably a lot of our own preconditions on our sexuality are socially conditioned. I mean, obviously all of these men were sleeping with other men because they wanted to. It's not like when they slept with women in order to procreate. There was really no motivation other than wanting to, and perhaps in some instances a power play. I am really interested by this ancient world idea of manly men who heroically love each other. There are several stories of it: Jonathan and David, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and Achilles and Patroclus. Was this a love between people who considered themselves equals in a time when love between a man and a woman could not be about respect because of the socially constructed sexism and gender segregation of the time? I wonder about "love" between men and women from that time. After all, it would have been very rare for a man to have viewed a woman as more than an object. And yet, they would think they were in love though they knew next to nothing about the object of their affection. These are the themes I am going to explore in my next short story, I think. You can read Jonathan Loved David online on google books here: Jonathan Loved David.

Also: Lot is a douchebag. What kind of man offers up his own daughters for rape? That is messed up.

Hey!

2008-10-26T04:45:00.001-05:00

Who wants to watch the season premiere of 30 Rock a week early?

Me & My New Bestie

2008-10-24T22:53:00.014-05:00

Gouache. You cheeky bastard. You had me fooled a few years ago. I thought you were annoying, stupid, impossible to work with. I will blame this partially on the lack of gouache technical direction I got from my design teacher. I tried to treat you like any other paint, but you weren't like that. You were your own animal. Why didn't anyone tell me?

I became reacquainted with gouache through the work of Kara Walker:

Untitled, 1996

They Say Water Represents the Subconscious in Dreams from the series American Primitives, 2001

Middle Passages, 2004

It's opaque and much more textural than watercolor. As I veer further and further away from literal translation of imagery (i.e. photorealism) and start to experiment with collageing and photo techniques, I think that discovering how to use gouache will be very useful. First, I already know it can be used to make very nice and graphic text that also looks slightly distressed:

This is the cover of a book I've been working on for my (now finished, whoo 8 week classes!) Japanese paper making course. I traced the type from my computer and then filled it in with white gouache. This is a look I really respond to because it's hand done but it looks really graphic and doesn't venture into Holly Hobby the way hand written text (especially text hand written by me) tends to.

I also like how it can be used kind of like white charcoal--and opaque white line on a darker paper.
This is a very simple collage on page one of the book--> the girl was a line drawing done on a darker grey paper that I cut out and glued onto the eggshell white of the page. The text on the pager was once again traced from the computer, but this time I lined it out in watercolor. All of the shadows and atmosphere color has been created by watercolor. Once again, I like the line this hovering between graphic and hand done.
I don't feel that this page spread is quite as successful as the last one, but this book was really more experimental so I'm not overly concerned. One thing I learned was to always make sure you have really sharp Exacto knives if you're going to insist on doing a detailed cut out. That was not fun. Actually, just steer clear of Exacto knives and get a surgical scalpel. They have a much more ergonomic design and are MUCH sharper. I mean, they're meant to cut through layers and layers of skin with great precision, so they can probably handle some 120 lb cold press paper. You can pick them up at Talas Online. I recommend going with handle #6 and blade #25.

Anyway, I prefer this spread:
I guess only wish I'd worked a little more of the gold into the other side. It looks a little violet heavy there.

There is more, but I'm effing exhausted. I'll post the rest tomorrow.

Also, everyone's favorite stuffed bear, Paddington, made it onto the google search page for his birthday!

This was a while ago (Oct. 13) but still, happy birthday, Paddington!

Finally, this comic made me laugh because I just turned in a (very bad) chapbook for my advanced poetry class a week or so ago:
A la pictures for sad children.

New Method

2008-09-26T01:32:00.004-05:00

So I was figuring out the text on the pages that I had done in InDesign the night before crit. It was really REALLY frustrating because it didn't look great. At all. And in order to split the text up in a way that doesn't completely ruin the painting, I would have to do weird stuff with it and reading it became labyrinthine and confusing. People in crit agreed when I showed them the final printed off version. So I've made a decision. The text is no longer going onto the pages.

These paintings are different than anything I've done before. They are huge, but full of negative space. Because I was thinking that they would end with text on them, I decided to focus on a single central subject. They are also incredibly layered so I feel there is a lot of depth (visually, not subject matter-ily) to them. I couldn't stand to ruin this SPARSENESS that was creating such an atmosphere. I mean, the POINT of the paintings was to create an atmosphere to go along with the text. So, here is my new game plan:

I have extra white pages at the beginning and end because I was planning on doing twice as many huge painting pages. I even have extras on top of them because I was planning on having collages at the beginning and end as well as a title page, etc. SO. I am going to use these extra pages and fill them with the text. I'm not sure how I'm going to put the text on the page yet. Maybe screen printing still, maybe the old version of etching. Maybe Van Dyke prints. Letterpress would be the coolest but LORD I don't feel like dying at such a young age. The idea of setting all that type physically repels me. Plus my school has apparently decided that art students can't have access to the facility that has all the alternative process dark rooms and letter presses and etching presses this semester even though it's SITTING RIGHT THERE WITH ALL THE MATERIALS IN IT. Ugh. Seriously, how effing ridiculous that we HAVE resources and I can't use them.

Anyway. I'm still doing the collages of violent religious imagery--in particular of Joan of Arc and Jeebus--but there will be text on those pages as well. I will integrate the collages in with the text. Then the story will be split in the middle by the watercolor paintings I have done, which will have screen printed onto them just a sentence of the text that I find particularly powerful. I think I will begin the book with a watercolor painting that just takes up parts of a double spread, but has room on the bottom and top for text as well so the middle isn't strange and sudden and so you start to feel that sparse landscape atmosphere at the beginning.

Whew! Lawd, so much work to do, so many decisions to make! Hopefully I'll have this somewhat figured out by the end of next week. Now here is the painting I just finished recently:

In other news, The Office was awesome. Hurray for the return of fall television! Also, a post on my collage inspiration, Kara Walker, is pending, but there are SO many images that it will have to wait until this weekend. If I'm not puking all over the place, that is. I think I have caught something horrid.

HELLO LADIES ARE YOU CREEPED OUT YET?

2008-09-20T01:43:00.008-05:00

Pages 9-10. Hurray! Also, it is Friday, so that is exciting. And now pages 9-10 with the potential text as done in In Design with my new favorite font, Adobe Jensen Pro. It's cool enough to look like it's sans serif, but it's totally serif:

This text is by NO means set in stone. I was just playing around and getting ideas. I'm going to pass all my text by the graphic design prof here who is evidently a type nazi before anything gets printed on my precious precious paintings.

My friends, having internet in the studio is a blessing and curse. While I can now research images and such with ease, I also can spend too much time looking at things that are amusing but distracting and watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on magical, magical Hulu. But I do find some pretty ridiculous/awesome things. For example, I'm pretty sure this is the only way Wuthering Heights will ever be interesting to me:

There is also this educational comic on the Japanese language and culture. You know you love it, ladies.

Via Yes But No But Yes. There is a glorious list of ancient ridiculous comics going on over there.

Finally there is a fine specimen of manhood seeking out a very specific wife on Yahoo. His "Quick Disqualification List" of 19 bullets includes "You have to go to the bathroom more than once during a four hour date where we first have dinner at a restaurant then see a movie." He then goes on to create a "Quick Qualification List" of 12 bullets:

Besides those things that can be ascertained from the "Quick Disqualification List" above, the following is a list of things I seek in my future wife.

My preferred height for my wife is between 5'4" (162 cm) to 5'8" (172 cm). However, if you are very thin, shorter is fine, and taller is fine if you are slim.
Though most men like large breasts, I don't. The larger the breasts, the more I'm turned off romantically. Bra size 32 B is my preferred, but any size up to 36 C, depends on your height, is good. Any larger than that will depend on the rest of you. I've seen women with 36 Ds that are fine. But if you are in the 40 Ds and above, forget it, a total turn off for me romantically.
Weight wise, for the following heights, the indicated weights, give or take 10 pounds, are generally best, the less weight the better. However, depending on your build, an acceptable weight may be quite different. For example, I have heavy bones, in high school, I was 20 pounds over what the charts said I should be, but there was no fat on me whatsoever. I've known girls that were very slim but weighed 10 pounds more than the average girl her height and build. Whatever your weight is, you must be somewhere between thin/slim to a lean athletic (meaning, not much fat). To help you better understand, in American sizes, if you are a dress size bigger than 8 or in plus sizes, it would be highly unlikely that I would be interested.
1. 5'0" - 90 lbs or less
2. 5'4" - 120 lbs or less
3. 5'8" - 140 lbs or less
You are under thirty years old. My preferred range is between 24 and 29 for such girls have generally finished their formal education and have a good idea of what they want for themselves in life. However, I will consider younger and older. If you over 29, you will have to be pretty and slim.
You have no children, will not have children and do not want children. I have already raised four wonderful children and do not wish to raise anymore.
Sorry, but when it comes to turning me on, light chocolate to white skin color is needed. However, there are exceptions for darker skin, but they have to be very beautiful.
As my wife, you will have no desire for a career of your own, since as my wife your career will be working side by side with me starting and running our own businesses (Yes, I’ve started and ran my own successful businesses in the past). Only my future wife and me will know the details of the businesses until they are started. All you will know now is that they will be financial in nature, they will help others financially.
You are a hard worker. My wife to be and I will work hard together, play hard, rest well, and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Our work will have us traveling all around America. The fruits of our labor will enable us to travel around the world if we choose.
You are content in humble circumstances. My future wife and I will live humbly at first and as our businesses grow and flourish, so will our lifestyle. Therefore, if you are looking for an easy life of play and leisure then I am not the one for you. This eliminates virtually all girls of well to do parents for such girls are used to getting everything they want and have an expectation of instant gratification. My joy will come from watching my wife’s enthusiasm and excitement of growing businesses that provides the financial freedoms to do the things she so desires to do.
You must be able to get yourself, at your own expense, to anywhere in America.

ETC.

Then comes a wordy tome that has paragraph titles like: "An obedient wife is NOT the same thing as a slave!", "Do NOT fall in love with me until I say so!", "When a Wife Becomes a Whore" and "Multiple Wives". Unsurprisingly, he has been searching for several years.

And lo, I leave you with a glorious abomination of God that could only be a Dürer:

All Aboard the Gettin' Things Done Express. Next Stop: 1/3-DonesVille

2008-09-17T00:51:00.008-05:00

Bwahahaha! Okay, I'm currently pumped on a three espresso shot caramel machiato. Perhaps this was a questionable decision seeing as I have a packed day tomorrow and class starting at 9 am, but whatever. I'm getting things DONE.

First? Pages 7-8! !kaPOW!

The next two pages are already taped down and on their way to getting done. They should be finished by tomorrow AT THE LATEST.

!sha-ZAM! mock up for pages 9-10, pages I've already started painting.

11-12 are already figured out, so 13-14 will be my goal tomorrow. Gettin' stuff done is pretty fulfilling. Also for some reason there is a girl in my narrative writing class whose name is Precious Angel. I don't know if her parents named her that or if she decided on her own that that was her name, but I don't know which is worse.

Poor Rosie!

2008-09-15T16:38:00.006-05:00

I was pretty aghast to find this photo shopped horror of a classic piece of Americana feminism, generally because people are trying to pretend like Palin is a feminist when in reality she is anything but. She is a woman conservatives like because she touts every ideal--particularly gender ideals--that they hold dear in a pretty package that really has no substance.

We can do what, Sarah Palin? Charge victims for their own rape kits upwards of $1200? Create abstinence-only sex ed programs while criminalizing abortion, even cases of rape? Ban books in libraries? Start faith-based wars?

With each new thing I hear, the more disenchanted I become.

Hey look! I'm alive.

2008-09-15T01:13:00.008-05:00

Back into semester now. The trip to England made me not want to be in school anymore. And then I came back and I was and that sucked. Especially because I missed a whole week and everything was going on and I had to catch up. After a fairly stressful week, I'm back into it and I even have a prospective finish date for My God: December 1. I plan on having all of the big pages finished by October 5, which gives me 3 weeks to paint 8 pages out of 12. Also, I plan on having no social life. Fortunately, after a dry summer imagery has been coming really easily and I already have another 3 pages mapped out and 1 about halfway done.

Mock up for pages 7-8.

Pages 7-8 being transferred onto big pages.

Mock up for pages 9-10. This will probably change a bit when it hits the big pages, there is something lacking. I think I may have applied the water colors too thickly over the entire thing. It will be a slower, more thinly layered process when I get to the big pages for it.

In other news, Tina Fey and Amy Poeler rock.

Also, so does Jon Stewart.

On Holiday

2008-08-16T16:30:00.002-05:00

I'm going to be in the UK until the 27th. B'ham, Bristol, London, and Edinburgh.

Moving is Horrible

2008-08-10T13:30:00.003-05:00

I think I am this robot (click to enlarge):

A la Gunnerkrigg Court.

So I've been packing up my apartment. I have entirely too much crap, but it's a little tough not to when you're an artist, especially when you watercolor, oil paint, sew, knit, build, print . . . I will always need a ridiculous amount of supplies. My new place is pretty amazing though. It's a house apartment in an old Victorian. A huge step up. I'm really looking forward to decorating it.

Aw Shit.

2008-07-30T00:46:00.003-05:00

A la John Cambell.

If I wasn't so sure I was going to be rich someday, I would be getting headaches all the time thinking about how much higher education costs in this country.

Summer Reading II

2008-07-26T20:37:00.009-05:00

Currently I am doing research on the United States, mostly pertaining to race and gender relations. I was always interested in historical gender relations and how they are relevant to gender relations today and how we can continue to move equality forward, but I recently also became interested in race relations. I think it may partially have something to do with the coming election as well as the disconnect I feel with the side of America that is still full of racism and sexism. I was also prompted to research because of my fascination with Faulkner, who chronicles both antebellum and postbellum south in his novels. Absalom, Absalom!, his book I am reading at the moment, is the story of Thomas Sutpen's attempt to create an antebellum southern legacy from low class standing as narrated by Rosa Coldfield (his much younger sister-in-law and later, fiancee) and Mr. Compson to Quentin Compson of The Sound and the Fury fame. During the war, Sutpen leaves his two daughters, Judith and Clytemnestra alone in this great southern mansion on a plantation he built years before to fend for themselves while he went and fought for the Confederacy. Judith was his daughter by his wife Ellen, a "true" daughter while Clytemnestra (Clytie) was his by a slave and therefore was a slave owned by her own father. Rosa, her own father having passed, comes to live with Judith, her niece (Ellen was her sister). One of the most fascinating portions of the book for me is how these three women, all related in some way, live together and survive together in this sparse room yet hardly speak, hardly know each other. They are kin but one (Clytie) is considered hardly so. Rosa is Judith's aunt, yet Judith is older than her.

"We are three strangers. I do not know what Clytie thought, what life she led which the food we raised and cooked in unison, the cloth we spun and wove together, nourished and sheltered. But I expected that because she and I were open, ay honorable, enemies. But I did not even know what Judith thought and felt. We slept in the same room, the three of us (this for more than to conserve firewood which we had to carry in ourselves. We did it for safety. It was winter soon and already soldiers were beginning to come back--the stragglers, not all of them tramps, ruffians, but men who had risked and lost everything, suffered beyond endurance and had returned now to a ruined land, not the same men who had marched away but transformed--and this was the worst, the ultimate degredation to which war brings the spirit, the soul--into the likeness of that man who abuses form the very despair and pity the beloved wife or mistress who in his absence has been raped. We were afraid. We fed them; we gave them what and all we had and we would have assumed their wounds and left them whole again if we could. But we were afraid of them.), we waked and fulfilled the endless tedious obligations which the sheer holding to life and breath entailed; we would sit before the fire after supper, the three of us in that state where the very bones and muscles are too tired to rest, when the attenuated and invincible spirit has changed and shaped even hopelessness into the easy obliviousness of a worn garment, and talk, talk of a hundred things--the weary recurrent triviata of our daily lives, of a thousand things but not one. We talked of him, Thomas Sutpen, of the end of the War (we could all see it now) and when he would return, of what he would do: how begin the Herculean task which we knew he would set himself, into which (oh yes, we knew this too) he would undoubtedly sweep us with the old ruthlessness whether we would or no . . ."

(Faulkner, 126-127)

Because of the way the society is structured, these women become little more than paper dolls for Sutpen to command. Without him, they are merely surviving, with him they are miserable and aware of his brutality, but have a purpose. The war has stripped these societal gender roles to their barest roots with the men cast as objects of fear (yes, objects, for violence in our society can objectify men just as much as sexuality can objectify women) and the women as ghostly figures for their use. It's creepy and haunting, but undoubtedly accurate.

Along the same lines I am also reading the following:

I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with all of this information, what book will come of it, but hopefully after more research I will be able to focus my brain and create something interesting. I guess we'll see. Really, right now, I need to focus and finish creating all the imagery for My God, so it's possible all of this will become a side project real soon.

Holy crap that was the nerdiest post ever. Also, only three and a half weeks until classes start up again.

Stationary.

2008-07-14T19:43:00.010-05:00

Ho-kay. So the stationary is (finally!) up in the shop. Here are some photos! As per usual, click on the photo to make it larger.

Late Summer Hydrangea Stationary:

Late Summer Tulip Stationary:

You can order as many as you want HERE.

MORE COMICS

2008-07-13T22:43:00.003-05:00

click to make larger.

So, it has come to my attention that one of my favorite webcomics, Minus., has come to an end. It's a great, sweet, weird little comic about a little girl who has the power to do anything she wants. If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out. Also, you can buy prints for a very limited time.

I'm going to have a photoshoot for my stationary tomorrow. It should be up for sale in my etsy shop very soon.

COMICS

2008-07-10T02:42:00.004-05:00

So fat little ponies will always make me giggle. Especially when they poo.

Thank you, Kate Beaton. Comics like these make me want to kind of start doing silly little comics of my own. The only problem is I would take all the drawing way too seriously and a silly little comic would turn into an epic project. What is the matter with me?

Another reason I love Shetland ponies? Because when I was little my parents would take my brothers and I to this place called Blackberry Farm all decked out with tractor rides and a little train and stuff and there was this little Shetland pony wheel with the ponies tied to a revolving pole and kids would be set on them and they would lazily walk around in a circle like they had been doing it ever since they were little little. A look in their eyes and you would know that their souls had long been dead. Haha!

Also because the spunky Dick King-Smith character Sophie (her name is like my name! That is why I read the books!) wanted to be a farmer who had a Shetland pony. And a spotty pig. I have similar aspirations.

I have found an awesome new artist that I am too exhausted to write about now. But later. And also new stationary.

Guestbook

2008-07-01T00:31:00.008-05:00

So, my brother is now married. It's still a little weird and I think it may take a while to get used to saying "My brother and his wife," etc., but he seems happy and Lali, his wife (!) is a real sweetheart so I think it's good. They got married on Saturday in our backyard with an audience of only about 20 people. I don't think our backyard could have fit many more. The past week has been a whirlwind reunion of relatives and meeting new relatives. Apparently I now have relatives that live in Peru and Japan. It was strange, too because everyone was speaking different languages and there were some people who barely knew any English and I don't know Spanish or Japanese so we had a bit of trouble communicating. But it was fun and crazy and cool. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone better in the future.

Anyway, part of my wedding present to my brother was a handmade guest book. I made it all from scratch aside from the paper, so I ripped the paper down and sewed it together. Then I took a piece of watercolor paper and painted some atmosphere on it and glued down one of the invitation fronts. Then I poked a hole through the inner bit with my awl and strung a piece of the herringbone ribbon through to act as a tie. I then attached the sewed together paper by gluing down the decorative paper (which was sewed on the outside) to the book front. Voila! Easy book! If you want to know how to sew paper together, this site has a much better tutorial than me: Make-a-Book

Pictures:

There's one more part that I'm going to add in a bit, but in order to do it I have to figure out alternative photography, and that is another adventure entirely!

More wedding present updates to follow. I still have two more things that I'm working on to give them.

DIY

2008-06-14T01:49:00.008-05:00

A couple of really neat DIY (Do it yourself) projects were featured on Design*Sponge and Skinny Laminx this week:

Whitney's Mason Jar Lights

Ceramics transfers tutorial

I would be all over these if I had a house to hang the lights in or a car to access the screenprinters. Maybe I'll do the plates next semester before I leave so I still have access to the kilns at school. I think I know a screenprinter who would be willing to do the other bit, but if I just know what sort of into to use on what sort of paper, it would be really easy to do that bit myself.

I have so much stuff to do before I go home next week for my brother's wedding. Let's see . . . finish 10 more invites, make a wedding album and guest book, and finish the Bacchus painting for him. How does time manage to go by so quickly???

Pages

2008-06-06T14:40:00.009-05:00

Whoops! I totally forgot that I took a photo of pages 5-6 when I first did them weeks ago.

I guess I've been MIA for a bit now. What can I say? Summer = late drunken nights, fifteen hours of work a week, and a lot of sitting around doing nothing other than watching every episode of Peep Show on youtube. I am working on some stuff, but very s l o w l y. I've got a couple of mock up pages in the works that I'm a little unsure of, but I guess we'll see.

Watched Pride & Prejudice (the Joe Wright 2005 version. Others were too stuffy for me. Hell, the book is too stuffy for me.) again (15th time? Who the hell knows.) this weekend with Maddi and Steph. I found these comics done by the hilarious Kate Beaton that address Jane Austen's societal impact:

Oh Mr. Darcy!

P.S. His first name is Fitzwilliam. How sexy is that?

Summer Reading

2008-05-19T03:34:00.006-05:00

One thing I like to do once summer starts up is get reading on some stuff that I wouldn't have time or the mental stamina for during classes. This summer I've got a few things on the table. First I've various poetry books that I'm leafing through (it's a bit hard to sit down and try to absorb a lot of poetry at once, each poem really usually deserves at least half an hour's thought or so) and I'm trying also to get through Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! The first time I tried reading it I was in high school and though I could digest The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, for some reason I couldn't make it one hundred pages in this book. But last semester in my American lit 1914-45 class I read and wrote an essay on his short story Barn Burning which completely reminded me why I loved Faulkner in the first place so I think I'm going to give another go. It's already going much better than last time, I think. It helps that I have more education to put it in more context, in particular the Bible as Lit class I took sophomore year. I'm also reading Victoria Finlay's book on color, Color. It's basically a history of color pigments and all the scraps humanity has gotten itself into on account of ochre and lapis lazuli and such. It's pretty interesting so far. Right now I'm reading about the graphite mines in england. Apparently in the '60's America spent millions trying to find a writing utensil that would work in zero gravity for space missions. They asked the Russians, "What do you use?" The stared at them blankly for moment and then replied, "A pencil." Hohoho, how stupid are we?

I walked to Allerton park yesterday morning as dawn was breaking again. I've decided to steer clear of campus because campus is kind of gross. Plus Allerton park is a really nice big park.

Photos! It turns out that walking towards downtown Champaign has a much better view of the sunrise, as well. Dawn and dusk are my favorite times of the day. They have the most beautiful light.

Finally, a poem:

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

--Richard Siken

Future Projects

2008-05-15T02:58:00.013-05:00

It's no secret that I've been leaning away from traditional oil painting over the last year. Well, when I unpacked and moved my whole studio I sent all my oil paintings and paint supplies back with my father. Because that's it. I've decided to take an indefinite hiatus on oil painting. It was decided after I hit a wall with the Joan of Arc painting which I did not chronicle on here because I'm a lazy ass, but involved a lot desire to defenestrate the offending object. Anyway, I've been looking at new projects to pursue over the summer. For one, I'm going to entirely figure out the text in my book. If I can figure out how to put the text on AND the imagery for the remaining pages, there is a huge chance I will complete it 3/4 of the way through next semester like I want to.

I've decided to try out the huge world of experimental and alternative photography. I'm going to start off with simple van dyke and cyanotypes and pair the imagery with watercolor and gouache in collage form. I took black & white old school darkroom photography freshman year and HATED it, but I think that had a lot to do with the process of developing the film (one glint of light and you would get clear negatives) which took eons and was BORING as well as the fact that my teacher had a huge stick up his ass and wouldn't let us talk or listen to music in the dark room which made for many dull hours. Anyhoo, the reason alternative photography would be great for me is because you can use a digital negative . . . you just print it out onto a transparency in the size you want and you take it out into the sun to expose it rather than dipping sheets of paper in chemicals for eons in what looks like the inner working of a soviet submarine. I've gotten this amazing book, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James. It goes really in depth, explains the processes and how to do them and variations of them as well as the history of them and their relation to new digital processes that can help them.

Plus the dog is cute.

I've also been checking out various artists who use alternative photographic processes. One of my favorites that I've found so far is Dan Estabrook. I in particular liked his series Nine Symptoms, which is supposed to illustrate symptoms of falling in love.

Shortness of Breath

Loss of Appetite

Weakness

Heart Rate Increase

Chills

Fever

Delirium

Sleeplessness

Euphoria

They are simple, monochromatic, but this is what makes them work. They are like pages out of an old medical book trying illustrate something abstract so that you can consult these and know that that is your illness. The idea of love as a disease is not new; Gabriel Garcia Marquez basically wrote a treatise on it in Love in the Time of Cholera. But the visual nature of these images feels fresh to me despite their aged look. The ones for Shortness of Breath, Weakness, and Euphoria in particular kill me. I would love to see an entire medical journal of prints like these of transcendental emotional states. An abstract idea, word becoming specific. Yet none of these are too literal.

I think I shall try some collaging out tomorrow, though I can't do the photo processes yet because I've had to order the chemicals and they won't be here for bit as they've come from New York. I mean, seriously, what town DOESN'T have a local shop to buy photo process chemicals in these days.

On a final note, here's a photo from a while ago of working on invitations late at night in my apartment.

Ta!

New Morning

2008-05-12T17:11:00.011-05:00

I went on a walk this morning just as dawn was brimming over the horizon. It's really on these walks that I totally realize what a disgusting area I live in. You can't escape the beer cans and mud and patchy grass. It makes me sad. I walked all the way from my apartment to the Krannert Center for Performing Arts because I knew that I could climb up to the roof there and all the buildings kept interfering with with my view of the sun. All I could see was a golden haze obscuring tree leaves. Campus was empty, only three or four people dotted the sidewalks and they walked with a purpose, most likely work. By the time I got to the roof of the Krannert, the sun was a huge blinding orb in the middle of the sky. I had missed it. I was still early and lovely, but the moment of it cooly arching itself over the tip of the treeline had passed. I suddenly realized that there was no way I would ever be able to make it by myself--walking alone when it is still dark that late holds danger on an abandoned campus, and I would have to start twenty minutes or so before dawn to witness it.

Perhaps I will find someone to go with me.

I picked two dandelions. When I smelled my hands after I went back to when I used to crush them when they were yellow into a paste while I was playing house. This was at Littlejohn Elementary, in the old rotting wooden playground equipment that they've since replaced with hard primary colored plastic.

Prairie

ii. She Knows

Brown waves of dirt lurch and toss; the farmers
plant crops in long, parallel trenches. Her curtains’
green vine blue paisley print winds, reminds
her of water and flood, which is where she treads
each morning when she sends loose a shimmering
pair of pigeons to roll and return by dusk, a descent
reminiscent of all these flown depths.

--Laura Koritz

I am a midwestern girl who grew up on flat fields and flat ground. I know the starkness of a bare tree alone on a field of dust and snow in midwinter. I know rusty chain link fences, the vastness of a frothing sky, and the slight dips of ditches before tall golden corn. I am grateful for this simplicity. Even when I move to Maine in six months I will be grateful for it. And in Maine I will be grateful for the indigo deep ocean, the jagged high rocks and the moments on the side of the road that pass by so quick you miss them if you're not paying attention.

I am grateful that I am able to find the sublime in these moments.

OMG Are you still obsessed with blue and yellow??

2008-05-05T01:32:00.004-05:00

A thousand times yes. I don't know when this gold/yellow/blue/purple thing is going to be over for me, but it's been going on for over a year now. I can't help it. I makes my eye area happy. To go along with this: Invitations!

I find it pretty difficult to work at home these days seeing as I'm not here enough (maybe twice a semester?) to warrant taking over a whole work space anymore, but if my mother's wild eyes when she found out I hadn't finished all the invites for my brother's wedding (what? yes he is getting married. Yes he is only three years older than me. No I haven't met his fiancee yet. Yest it weird) were any indication, I knew I'd better carve out a temporary area. Apparently I work at the kitchen table now. Anyway, they are stamps of hydrangeas that I got at Michaels that I worked back into with watercolor. Then I printed off the info onto vellum and ripped it to size and glued it on the back. The ribbon is the coolest, snazziest ribbon in the world: herringbone. I will never use anything else ever. Anyway, it was fun to do these and I have loads of paper and stationary left over so I think I'll just make some extras in other colors over the summer and sell them on etsy. Apparently I have to buy a plane ticket to England later on and I'm almost puking myself at the costs of everything.

Also, sorry for the blurring out on the second pic, but US Weekly says there are bad people on the internets.

More Poetry

2008-05-02T01:58:00.016-05:00

I've been feeling pretty inspired towards poetry lately. It's actually a great format for me, particularly if I wanted to do visual books because of the brevity allowed. I read Natasha Trethewey's entire Pulitzer Prize winning book, Native Guard tonight on the train to Chicago and there were parts of it that really struck me.

What is Evidence

Not the fleeting bruises she'd cover
with makeup, a dark patch as if imprint
of a scope she'd pressed her eye too close to,
looking for a way out , nor the quiver
in the voice she'd steady, leaning
into a pot of bones on the stove, Not
the teeth she wore in place of her own, or
the official document-- its seal
and smeared signature-- fading already,
the edges wearing. Not the tiny marker
with its dates, her name, abstract as history.
Only the landscape of her body--splintered
clavicle, pierced temporal-- her thin bones
settling a bit each day, the way all things do.

--Natasha Trethewey

I've been very interested in poets and artists who deal with race and gender. Another I've been struck by is Kara Walker. (click on it to read it)

I love this imagery of these girls leaving a man tied, a man changed by the body, the body he claimed to hate.

So here's something I've written. I think Jordan, my friend who deals with male mythology and interaction in his paintings, would like this.

Snakes

The men shake
the snakes that float
like gauze on their faces. Rough

holey gauze is sewn
into their skin so they are
careful with them, careful to let

them follow wherever they go,
to not slam them in doors or thrust
them in fires. These nerveless filmy

snakes won’t feel the sudden
squash of door and jamb as they swing
together, won’t sweat as white flames
blossom into their tails. But the bodies
follow, they will shrill when they try to move, they
will fever as flames flower them over—Hard

though it is to know the snakes, to care
for the snakes as one would care for anything
stitched to their face, it is harder still

to leave the chin bare, to feel a smooth cheek,
to acknowledge the delicately drawn jaw
line the pencil
left no hard edges no rough &

ragged lines, it’s all dove gray and white, pristine
and pretty. Don’t worry—they’ve heard don’t worry about that.
But they do and the snakes on the face, the ones that don’t feel
a thing give mettle to the snakes in the trousers, the robust ones,
the ones (tw)itching with life.

--Sophie Loubere, 2008

Poem

2008-04-28T03:01:00.003-05:00

Harry Houdini

Everyone defends you, Harry—
no one says you were tired or old,
washed up or undone. They say, only
that you weren’t quite ready
when the stranger’s balled up
fist sunk fiery into your stomach,
the unseen purple of the bruise
sailing through body fat, organs,
and tissue. Not ready,
not just yet, but the stranger went
before you said go—
how shameful, like drowning in
a bathtub, a bucket, a teaspoon
of water, unshackled, unroped,
forgotten and useless,
altogether private.

--Molly Sutton Kiefer

Weirdness

2008-04-24T01:41:00.004-05:00

I'm doing research on Faeries as well as Biblical etchings, in particular Gustave Doré, and I have run across some oddness. Granted, it might not be as odd as the summer project I'm researching them for, but they will certainly help to make that project odder, which I think is fabulous.

For example, this etching of Cain and Abel making their sacrifices.

Cain looks like a woman running away from attackers or something. There are loads of instances of this in Doré's work. It seems like it's going to be a perfectly normal illustration of The Bible or The Divine Comedy or something, but then there is a moment of just total weirdness. It's pretty awesome.

I also found this when I was reading a wikipedia entry about Faerie mythology:

It's called Ängsälvor (Faeries of the Meadow) and it's by some Swedish artist named Nils Blommér who died all young and tragic. I checked out his other like, five paintings and they weren't anything too special, but this one just gets me because all the Faeries look like cherubic angels and they appear to be floating, not dancing in a circle. It's just very strange looking. looking at his other work, I don't think this is intentional strangeness, but it is fabulous nonetheless.

More on my weird summer project when I figure more of it out. I didn't realize it was so strange until I told some of my friends here in studio about it and they were like, "What are you on?" and I'm like, "Just crack, as per ushe." SO I'M A WEIRDO, don't pretend you didn't already know.

Vast Continued

2008-04-21T20:48:00.004-05:00

Okay, so when I said pages 3-4 were almost done I was totally lying. I went in the next morning and it was totally wrong. For one, I realized that her head looked like it was blowing off when in fact she was supposed to look like she was just floating peacefully, albeit dead. I also went in and made her body smaller because I felt the scale would be more effective. This was all spurred on by critical but kind words from by studio mates. Thanks guys! It looks so much better now.

The mock up pages the image is based on:

The (hopefully) final version, except for the text. I still have to decide how I'm going to adhere the text and whether or not I want to work into the vellum and text a little or if I want a border or what. I'll see what people say at crit, I guess.

Sleep

Vast

2008-04-21T02:12:00.010-05:00

"It wasn’t ever going to stop raining because Day-oos was angry and she was going to drown but what better way to go? She saw it clearly. Her little body floating upside down in a vast green sea. It was too late to make a raft, too late to apologize or pray. But she was naked as the day she was born and was slippery with Day-oos’ wet earth."

Pages 3-4 are basically finished. Perhaps a few more final touches, but it looks like if I work pretty hardcore for the next week, I can get two pages done a day.

Finally, how I do the text:

First, I format it on the computer. It took me a while, but I finally decided on Adobe Jensen Pro for my font. Then, I upload the files (which I do in Photoshop, which I know is a more annoying way, but it's the way I know and it works so leave it) into the school's lasercutter Illustrator template. The laser cutter etches the text into the plexiglass. It looks like this, only less blurry:

Then I smear some Charbonnel Etching Ink (it's oil based, unlike screen printing ink which is water based) over the entire thing until its all in the letters. I wipe it clean so only the letters have ink on them:

Then I place the plate on the etching press, which looks similar to this:

Then I take the vellum, which all this time has been soaking in water (for at least half an hour) and smooth it over the plate. I smooth the felt on the press over the plate and the vellum and then roll. Once I've rolled over the plate once, I remove the felt and peel off the vellum, which now looks like this:

Yes, it's a hell of a process, but I think it's totally worth it. The text is slightly embossed, it's a little more inky than it would have been if I had simply printed, and it smells like ink, which I just love. There's nothing like getting high off your art. I also love the smeared, rubbed quality that is in some places on the text where I didn't rub the ink away quite enough. One of the ideas behind the execution of this book is tactile. Everything except for the etching is done by hand.

Ugh. First day of final crits is tomorrow. A week and a half left of school.

OMG! OMFG!!

2008-04-20T02:05:00.007-05:00

Real book pages, people! I am on a roll, folks. First off, my plexiglass laser etched text on vellum worked out REALLY well. I was so nervous, but it came out fracking beautiful. My main goal before the end of the semester is to get the rest of the text cut and inked. Anyway, I've gotten pages 1-2 done and have taped down and done the first layer on pages 3-4. I plan on having pages 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 9-10, 11-12, and 21-22 done for final crit. Yes, it's a lot but my crit isn't until a week from Wednesday so I've got time. Plus the water color paintings really don't take that long because I already know what I'm doing mostly. If I can get all of the rest of the text cut out next week then I can ink them next Saturday, too. Plus then I'll have half my pages done, which will be pretty cool. Anyway, here's pages 1-2. For the love of all that is holy, please click on the images to see bigger versions. They are painfully small on the screen if you don't.

The original mock up pages on 8 1/2 x 11 inch computer paper:

The full pages with text on 22 x 30 inch Arches 140 lb watercolor paper:

Individual pages:

Phew! Bon soir. A bientôt.

TWO MORE WEEKS, PEOPLE

2008-04-18T02:34:00.005-05:00

Working on my brother's wedding invitations. It's so much fun! I took a stamp I bought at Michael's and stamped it in sepia brown ink on all the cards and I'm going in and doing watercolor washes and detail in each of them. Also, I love stamps! I think I'm going to really get into this sort of stationary this summer and try to sell card sets on Etsy and see if anyone else needs wedding invitations, etc. It would be nice to bring in a little cash considering that tickets to England are all OVER 1,000 DOLLARS. What? Yes. Ridiculousness. Because it's not like I'm going to have to spend another 500 once I get over there or anything because they are in the opposite of a recession.

Also of note:
1) SCHOOL SUCKS.
2) I am 21 now. Bow to my supreme adult status! Sadly, no one has yet carded me. It was kind of anticlimactic.
3) I am transferring for realz now. Suck it UIUC! Oh, sorry Mom. That was too negative. Anyway, one more semester of school and then I am out, yo. A good year and a half of working a real job and then hopefully RISD.
4) I need a break from oil painting. Did you know that oil paint smells bad and is kind of messy?
5) I am getting a new camera with birthday money! I'm leaning toward the Canon G9: 12.1 megapixels and a 6x zoom. Paul says it's sexy, but that kind of actually made me want it less. I think he wants me to get it so he can play around with it. We'll see. I'm going responsible buyer shopping with my dad in a couple of weeks. I want it before I go to LA to pick up Vanessa.
6) Vanessa and Maddi are going to live with me this summer. Vanessa and I are driving back from LA. Road trip!
7) My summer is going to be ridiculous.

Creepy Baby Alert!

2008-04-02T02:46:00.005-05:00

When I began this painting, I didn't intend for the baby to look so creepy. But things like this just happen to me. He's really meaty, too. When Jordan saw it, he said, "Now that baby has been drinking his milk! Hahaha!" It was obviously hilarious. It's a good thing Joan's a warrior, because you have to be frickin' warrior to carry that thing. Such a huge head, too. I'm thinking of making it all pale and veiny. I find creepiness, particularly in my own paintings, amusing. I suspect loads of other people just find it creepy, but oh well. At least I can amuse myself.

In other news: new layers on the face and hair!

I'm pleased. I really wish I'd figured out the thick paint/impasto thing earlier. I love the texture on her face. I'm SO glad I did it. Hooray for risks with positive results!

Dead tired now. Sleep.

Wrapped Up In a Book

2008-03-31T23:04:00.007-05:00

Okay. So. New mock up pages. Now my task is to a) do several large page versions and b)get some of those printmaking collages done. This would all be a good deal easier if the printmaking lab was open more than three days a week for four hours at a time, but there you have it. I was also disappointed today because I was going to get some stuff cut at the laser cutter today only to find that it didn't start up until noon and I had class at one and it takes a bloody half an hour to set the thing up anyway so chances are I would have been late or whatever. I dunno. I've not skipped that class yet, so maybe I'll skip it on Wednesday and just get all the laser cutting done in one go and get loads of prints done on Wednesday.

When I was thinking about imagery for my book, I had to take many things into consideration. There was the easy route of just literally illustrating what I had written, but given the flow and fluidity of the text, this seemed like a very bad idea. It wouldn't go at all. Rather, I've decided to create an atmosphere. The atmosphere consists of a loosely painted background, perhaps a landscape or a surface of some sort. Then, within this loose painting there is a moment of clarity. An object which stands out amongst the washes of color in hard edges and crisp lines and declares its specificity. I chose objects that stood out in the text for me and were important to me. Granted, not all of the text follows this philosophy. I decided that when the main character, Verity, is indoors, she wouldn't be in those vast washes of color any longer. Rather, inside everything would feel much more concrete and she would be so close to it that the objects that were one clear and far away were now right up into her face to the point where they almost become abstract. Often they do become abstract. Pages 9-10 are an example of this. Anyhoo, here are the pages that I am satisfied with and can see going on to become large. There were loads that did not pass muster, but I think so far I have 12 out of 24 pages figured out. I'm halfway there, so it's not all bad.

pages 1-2

pages 3-4

pages 5-6

pages 9-10

pages 11-12

pages 21-22

Horrid, horrid bubbly book case. I guess at least you can see my color scheme and the lining paper I'm planning on using, though. This is all only 8"x10", too. It's really freaky to keep reminding myself that it's eventually going to be 22"x30". Ridiculous.

Basically at the midterm critique was that they had trouble translating everything into something with a final form, so they wanted me to make some big pages so they can see how I envision the final product. I'm getting started on that next. I can't believe there is only four weeks left in the semester. Insanity. So much to do. Ugh.

listening to: Sufjan Sufjan Sufjan

Production

2008-03-30T22:09:00.007-05:00

I am officially awesome. I was super productive today. AND the Joan of Arc painting is finally going somewhere. I can see the end in sight, folks.

Outline of the figure.

Filled in and somewhat painted face of figure. I wasn't terribly happy with where the skintone was going, though.

See? Totally gross. She looks all bruised up, which given the armor fits I suppose, but still not what I was hoping for. I wanted her to glow.

So then I did something drastic. I'd been looking at impasto in old master paintings and I really wanted to use it, but I wasn't exactly sure how. So basically I mixed a few pink skin tones together, didn't add medium so it's just thick paint and went to town. Right now both she and her child look like a lobster, so I turned the canvas toward the wall so no one could see it until it was done drying. It wasn't totally dry for like, two weeks. It was intense.

Finally, here's what I did today. It's defiantly going somewhere. I think a couple more layers on the face and she will glow. Huzzah! I really don't want to do that baby, though. Blug. I guess I should do a layer on him before I do anything else on the painting. *sigh*

Midterms Over

2008-03-28T23:49:00.003-05:00

Phew! I got quite a bit done this week. I haven't pictures of the mock up pages on me, but I'll take some tomorrow when I go to studio. Tomorrow I'm stretching and gessoing loads of smaller canvases as well as trying to make my Joan the Mother painting pretty again. It's SO ugly right now, but it's only because I'm trying to build up a layer of impasto. I showed it to Ros and she got a bit excited and said she knew it was going places, so hopefully I'll be able to live up to her expectations. If I do something nice with it tomorrow I'll post some before and after pics. If not, I'll cry.

Anyway, here's the final version of the architectural painting I did for Ros's class. It's like, 6' by 2.75'. Everyone thought it looked like a sheet of reflective metal, which is cool but totally unintentional. Anyway, I love oil painting and will obviously continue, but I think it's going to be more of a side project for me. My real focus will be books.

listening to: She & Him -- Volume One

Research

2008-03-19T01:10:00.007-05:00

So now that I've decided I want to go into illustrating, I've been doing some research on illustration work that interests me.

Paula Sanz Caballero:

Really cool style. She appears to work almost entirely with textiles by hand. Even though they are stylized, her pieces also contain depth and she creates little worlds with fabric and thread.

Kenneth Lavallee:

I love the graphic, vintage playfulness of his style.

Jillian Tamaki:

Probably my favorite so far. Her style is so cool! It's reminiscent of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, but it also has a hint of Americana to it. She's also doing graphic novels (the above, Skim). She didn't write it, but it's still a bit closer to where I'm headed than all the magazine work I keep running into. I mean, I'm certainly not above taking a magazine job. I just hope that that doesn't become the highest point of my career.

Anyway, it's really amazing. I've been spending so much time trying to find painters that create compelling work and it turns out all I had to do was look up illustrators instead. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm defiantly going to check out that graphic novel, too.

More mock up pages soon. I've done four more and have to get 16 more out by Wednesday at 8:30, so there's going to be a lot at once.

Frack you, UIUC

2008-03-07T23:18:00.015-06:00

Alison Shaw

Blerg. What a gross day. So they posted course schedules for next semester and it turns out that the studio class I really wanted to take are scheduled at totally impossible times. For example, Ninth Letter, the class that is all about the literary arts magazine here where the students basically illustrate a story or essay and which sounds so up my alley is from 9-11:40 Monday/Wednesday. Guess what else is at that time? My mandatory and one section only studio class. So I emailed the teacher in charge all "Wtf??" and she was all, "we didn't mean to exclude studio majors, it was just the best time to meet with the creative writing people". So basically I cannot take the class. At all. Which sucks. A lot. Because there is no book arts any more because Bea is leaving and the University couldn't give a crap about it so they're not hiring anyone new in that field. Printmaking is barely available, and not available at all next semester. They're just totally getting rid of any technical/crafts classes that don't have anything to do with design. This really pisses me off because I'm honestly pretty bored by conceptual art and like more tactile art than graphics classes. So I was really annoyed for a while that I was going to have to just take random studio classes that would have nothing to do with what I'm planning to do in the future because the University is going in a different direction from me when I realized that I need to do more. So I checked out RISD's site to see what they offered aside from just a studio art major because I'm sick of listening to blowhards say blowhard-y things during crits and I found out that they don't offer a master's degree in illustration, but they do offer a bachelor's degree in illustration. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to get a second degree in illustration at RISD. They have so many amazing classes like, Watercolor: Intro to Medium, Printmaking Techniques for Illustrators, The Magic of Books, Picture and Word, Master Painting Techniques, and The Collaged Image. Basically it looks fawesome. I talked to my mom and she said a lot of my stuff should transfer (hopefully) so I could get to the good stuff right away and it would only take 2-3 years. Then I could start a career as an illustrator and work my way up until I'm writing and illustrating my own books and novels. I mos def want to get into kid's books, too. I've been looking up loads of children's illustrators and the poor kids are getting crap these days. I mean, seriously, what the frack is junk like this:

Just cause they're a kid doesn't mean they wanna look at cartoony crap. There's so much gross cgi stuff and junk that anyone cranks out. I want to bring real beauty and depth and humor (sometimes, not in my current project) back to illustrated books. Those are the books I still love to this day. I've decided I don't want to be a gallery artist. That seems dull to me. All the making paintings about the same thing over and over is just blah.

Speaking of paintings, I have a new favorite artist. His name is Odd Nerdrum and he is a weirdo that I would never want to meet but LORD can he paint. I found this GIANT book with like, a bagillion of his paintings + details called Themes at the library and I've been scouring it, often with other painting people, ever since. I think the other day Jordan and Paul and I look at it for like, an hour. It's that cool.

Some of his work:

Girl with Red Hair detail

Bathing Icelandic detail

The Kiss

Barter Detail

Boy with Twig

Return to the Sun

White Summer Portrait

White Summer Portrait detail

Woman with Child (haha! That baby's head totally cracks me up!)

Profile

Glah!!! There are so many things I want to do, but I feel like I have to teach myself everything!

I have to go to RISD. I just have to.

Late Night Adventures in Snow, Painting

2008-02-29T02:14:00.008-06:00

Okay, so I had a pretty busy day today. First I had class which I croaked my way through (this damn cold just won't leave!) until 2:15. Then I was starting work today at 2:30 like, eight blocks away. I was going to take the bus, but it was leaving just as I got outside of the Architecture building so I had to walk and I didn't wind up getting there until 2:45 because I am slow and I had to go to the bathroom. Anyway, the first day went well, the atmosphere is really causal, and I learned how to rip out and rebind books. I fixed two! It was pretty exciting. I think this job will be a very good learning experience and will provide a lot of practice for when I make my own hardcover book in several months time.

I worked until 6 and then took a nap and woke up at 8 but suddenly realized that I had to have dinner and that there was an episode of 30 Rock I'd not seen yet so I lolled around until 9:30 when I finally got my ass over to studio at which time I stepped outside and was like, why the hell is it snowing???? Dammit I want spring already. Then I didn't even work and Vivian and I went to get coffee but her car, who was wearing a spare tire because she'd gotten a flat, suddenly started making weird noises so then we checked it out in the Dunkin' Doughnuts parking lot only to find that her freaking spare was now flat. So we drove back to her apartment and watched half an episode of Project Runway while she was on hold with AAA, who said they don't bring tires to people which I totally think they should. I mean, come on! Get a deal with a specific tire place and sell the tires to people who really need them. She's going to have to have her freaking car towed tomorrow. Man, I have to learn how to change a tire and the oil and so much stuff when I get a car. Anyway, we called Saferides and they brought us back to studio and then I wound up working until 2 am. I actually really like working late. There's just something about late night that makes me want to produce.

So. What I've been working on? I'm building up a background for this Joan of Arc painting I'm doing. Kelly's posing for me tomorrow. She says her middle name is Joan after Joan of Arc so she's perfect for it. Here it is process wise:

Layer 2

Layer 4

These are pretty horrible pictures. I need to get some clamp lights. I'm pretty psyched about this painting. I'm working on a whole post that talks about what I'm doing with the icons and my whole thought process on this thing.

Finally, really cool book artist/painter I found: Ghada Jamal.

She works in many different and very interesting styles. It kind of makes me want to produce some poems that go together and make a little beautiful book for them. Maybe I'll do that this summer. I don't know. So much to do, so little time!

Agnes Ma makes my life

2008-02-21T09:41:00.002-06:00

Quote of the day: "I must say, my last few lungs have been quite pleasing to the eye."

Yay Agnes! I'm so excited for you!

Also of note: Today I got a real job with real hours! I will be working at the Oak St. Library Facility fixing up and rebinding torn, wet, and mistreated books from the libraries around campus. Supposedly UIUC has the largest library in the United States aside from Harvard. They recently acquired their 10 millionth book. They have amazing facilities and I'm really excited. Thanks to Christine who helped get me the job. I start Tuesday.

I have a headache

2008-02-20T00:52:00.003-06:00

Also? Liquin kicks Galkyd's ass. Layer two of the architectural space painting for Ros' adv. painting class. It's not done by my normal standards, but I won't get reamed in crit tomorrow, either? A) it's hella bigger than everyone elses and B) it's evident that I put more time into it than a lot of people did. Hopefully it will be dry tomorrow morning so I work on it a bit more before the class at 1.

Production

2008-02-16T14:35:00.005-06:00

The view of the nuclear power plant outside of my apartment.

The last couple of days have been odd to say the least. First I found out that the writer's strike is done with and that many shows will be returning in a couple of months. That was good. Then I get a call from Maddi about the horror at NIU. Fortunately, my father is all right, but it was really scary, especially when I found out that the shooting happened in a geology lecture. And then there is the fact that the gunman was a grad student at here, at UIUC. It's horrifying. I thought then, well I guess I'm safer because I'm not and won't be taking any more huge lecture courses. But I shouldn't have to think about that. Something needs to change.

Then I found out my brother is getting married! Obviously I'm happy, but it's really weird, too. I mean, he's only three years older than me and I haven't even met his girlfriend, Laura, yet because 99% of their relationship has taken place in foreign countries. I think I started hyperventilating a little when I found out. Evidently it's going to happen this summer. I've started an engagement present for them:

It's Nick's favorite mythological character, Bacchus, drinking and pissing at the same time. It obviously isn't finished yet, but I'll probably get it done today. They can have a nice decoration for their foyer and Laura can see what her future will be like at the same time.

Also being worked on:

An imagined architectural space for Ros' advanced painting class. First layer. Hopefully it will dry by Sunday so I can do another layer in time for it to dry by Tuesday so I can get at least three layers in. We didn't get nearly enough time to work on it. I think part of the problem is that Ros works with Galkyd which dries sometimes in the same die. I have discovered a real distaste for Galkyd because it's too thick and it often dries into a gross gloop in the bottle once you've opened it so I work with Eco-House Citrus Cleaner (a turpentine substitute), refined linseed oil, and stand oil. These all take a lot more time to dry. Oh well. It doesn't matter too much.

Also, Friday morning we went to visit another artist studio. It was Steve Hudson. I really liked his use of color and technique. He used a lot of impasto and it was very old master-y. It reminded me a lot of Rembrandt and Odd Nerdrum, but with more saturated colors. He was really funny, too. Quite dorky in an adorable sort of way. He said he used Winton for underpainting, Windsor & Newton's student brand that Ros spent about ten years telling us not to use the class before. I thought a vein was going to pop in her head. It was funny because he just seemed really unaware of what materials he used though it was really obvious that he knew how to use them. Unfortunately, he hasn't got a website. The three paintings on his Parkland aren't what I saw in his studio, but I couldn't find any other images. It's really frustrating when you want to look up an artist but can't find any of their work online. Artists, get good websites! That's what I'm going to do this summer. I'm pretty sure no one else has claimed SophieLoubere.com.

listening to: Belle & Sebastian--The Boy with the Arab Strap

New Semester, New Projects

2008-02-11T16:15:00.001-06:00

Okay, so technically the semesters been on for about four weeks, but I've been doing loads. I'm quite caught up in several projects: one the illustrated book version of the short story I wrote last semester, My God, another a painting of Joan of Arc, and the last various paintings for Ros' advanced painting class.

Anyway, I came back from break and the girl next to me, Jess, had dropped so I moved things about and now I've got a huge studio. It's pretty exciting because now I've a space for oil painting and a space for watercolor. Here are some lovely pictures.

So I've got everything all nice and cleaned up and pretty. I've also made a new nametag for myself.

It's all ideal for creating. So about my first project, the book. I've basically decided to plan it all out like a good girl. Considering that I want it to look really professional (I'm aiming for it to look like a really cool hardcover children's book) I've set all the type in Indesign and Photoshop and am having my graphic design friends who have taken typography go over it and help me out with that. I'm also doing little watercolor studies for every page on computer paper. Examples for pages 1-2 and 3-4:

1-2

3-4

These are 8"x10", though the book is going to be 22"x30". I know it's nuts, I know it's huge, but if I do it well it should have the effect of making the person read it feel very small, like a child. This is the idea. Plus it gives me loads of room to paint.

I've been doing stuff for the cover, as well. As the protagonist's hero is Joan of Arc, I found an old engraving of her burning at the stake online. I put the image into the laser cutter we have here at school in the Art & Design building and it cut out an etch of it into plexiglass. Then I took it over to the press in Noble Hall. I mixed up two colors of ink: gold and grey. I wiped the plate down with the ink while my paper was floating in a water bath for about half an hour. Then I put the plate down on the press, put the wet paper on the plate, smoothed felt over them both, and rolled over them. There were only two that came out all right, though I did six.

I think I'm going to go with the gold and have the cover of the book (the fabric part) be that color grey. The stamping will be white. This paper will be the inside bit that's glued to the covers.

By the way, it's here that I'm going to send accolades to my good friends at The Paper Studio. They've got the greatest paper choices and they always send a lovely little hand letter pressed thank you postcard. They're a good example of a small company with great selection and service and they were a great find.

At any rate, that's what I've been up to. Still so much to do! I would go on about the Joan of Arc painting, but I've not really any images yet and that's for another post entirely.

Phew!

Also of note: exactly two months until I turn 21. Woohoo!

No Country For Old Men

2008-02-03T10:38:00.000-06:00

So I finally saw this masterpiece. Kelly and I had planned to see Guillermo Del Toro's (Pan's Labyrinth) latest, The Orphanage, but it stopped playing this weekend so I was like, have you seen No Country For Old Men? She hadn't and it was exciting because I'd just about given up on seeing it in theatres.

Anyway, it was effing amazing. The Coen Brothers have made some of my favorite movies (Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski) and they keep getting better. Everyone keeps talking about how it's so violent, but honestly it's not much in comparison to say, a Tarantino flick in which the director obviously finds a great deal of beauty in violence. The most violent bit was at the beginning but after that the violence is relegated to either the discovery of what was a violent scene or shooting scenes. There are some scenes of cleaning of gunshot wounds as well.

Really what got me was the way the story was told. I'm sure a lot of this rests on the Cormac McCarthy novel it's based on, but it was just amazing the way it took all of these storytelling conventions and flipped them on their head. It's steeped in ideas of folklore, in western heroes and villains, and yet the way it handles these conventions and expectations makes the theme of changing times--at least in the view of the protagonists--all the more potent and evident. It was somewhat meta. Not as nearly in self aware a way Atonement, but it was still there.

Also, this guy?

Awesomely creepy.

Go see it. Now.

Reading: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Crafts & Politics

2008-01-21T22:48:00.000-06:00

So I got my absentee ballots a couple of days ago and thus have been gnawing down my fingernails over who I should vote for for the Democratic presidential primary. Thankfully, my mother sent me this very in depth quiz you can take to find out which candidate suits you best based on issues at Glassbooth. The results didn't surprise me terribly--of course its Dennis Kucinich, the candidate least likely to win. The candidate who runs every time just to make a point. Oh well. I found a compromise. It's John Edwards that I agree with on the most important issues, which are health care and education. I wonder if a democrat gets elected they'll take care of health care right away so I won't have to pay for health insurance when I leave school. Anyway, it's a cool quiz and I guess that as an Illinois resident it doesn't matter too much who I vote for because Obama is sure to take the state he's senator to and Illinois is sure to go blue in the overall election because of Chicago. Thanks for the link, mom!

Also, here are some pics of the table I painted and decoupaged for my parents for Christmas. It was a week late because the paper on top was all warped and bubbly for a long time but it settled down and turned out pretty well I think. The watercolor painting took too long to do normally, but I think I'm going to get these tables ($9.00 at Target) paint them and bang them up (the funnest part! Finally an excuse to hit something with a hatchet!) and decoupage some pretty paper on top and sell them on Etsy.

Listening to: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood--Neko Case

Maine and RISD

2008-01-18T21:07:00.000-06:00

Well, school's started up again but whatever about that. I'm making a book this semester, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, the last seven days of my break were occupied with going to the beautiful state of Maine to visit my auntie Caroline and Tish and their four dogs (Rosie, Sky, Strider, Molly) and their two cats (Little Bit, Sandy Bit). My mother has always claimed these animals as my cousins in lieu of human cousins. Anyway, we first stopped off in Providence, Rhode Island to check out Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). There was a graduate studies lecture at 8:45 that I went to that was somewhat informative but also ridiculously boring so I skipped out a little early and we explored the campus on our own. The area of Providence it's in is actually pretty cool, it reminded me of a smaller, more compact Chicago. They have a trolley system and there are hills (that was a little San Fran, actually) and it's right next to Brown University which is, you know, all ivy league and such. There are nice little houses with apartments right on campus, and best of all? Their logo is pretty kickass.
Imagine that on sweatshirts and mugs in pretty colors. The plus side of an all art school is that the artist is on the forefront of the school's thoughts. We don't get the Mad Max building with bats and ceiling tiles falling all over the place and a wireless plan never. We get nice big facilities that are very secure and pretty. There is also a printmaking MAJOR which I'm psyched about because you KNOW that means their printing lab is stocked. I might even get to *gasp* take another class and fully figure out photo emulsion silk screening. They also have this year long program which teaches you how to be a better teacher without actually getting a teaching degree, which I would take advantage of because one way I can make good money before I become published and wildly successful is by being a professor. It's not my ultimate goal, but if I do it I want to help kids out in the best way I can and be the best I can be. There's nothing worse than a shitty teacher. I'm pretty generally stoked about it, actually. The only major downside is a price tag of $32,000 a year. I'm not planning on going for another five years at least, so I think I'll apply a year ahead of time so I can find out what sort of scholarship and assistanships a poor white girl like me can expect. I'm not getting $60,000 dollars in debt, that's for sure.
Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, but here is the reason I didn't want to leave Providence until after January:

Who can resist Liza?? Someday I will put on a musical of Caberet at Ol' Gaffers and I will get Liza Minelli to play the part of Sally Bowles if it's the last thing I do. I don't care if she's got vertigo and she's 90.

The rest of Maine was great. I always love visiting Auntie Caroline and Tish. We hung out with the dogs, went to the L.L. Bean headquarters in Freeport that's open 24 hours a day in case you need a flannel shirt at three in the morning, and Auntie Caroline and I went to see Atonement which was playing everywhere there even though it was playing nowhere in Illinois. I'll write up a review on it later, but it was brill. We also went to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit in I forget where, but there was this irritating lady who followed us round and kept telling us we had to stay two feet away from the paintings even though we weren't touching them and they were under glass. The whole point of going to see artwork in person is so you can look at the details, lady! That was cool, though, he had some really stunning watercolors that were pretty inspirational. It was funny, there was this painting that I recognized as one that had always been in the Hillside, a restaurant that my family frequented during my childhood. I had always quite liked it but only then realized that it was a Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth, Braids, tempra on paper

His paintings work best when they are haunting and dry, dark and subdued. When you can see how he painted in some parts and not at all in others. This is why I particular like his watercolors more than his temperas. Even still, there is something about this painting. She is a Nordic woman, a little rough but full hipped and fertile. She lives in snowy lands.

Anyway, that was fun. I really like it out there. It's near the ocean (they're twenty minutes from a great rocky beach) and the landscape is so different from the midwest. There are hills and marshes and forest everywhere. It's rugged and beautiful. I talked to them and it looks like I may move out there for eight months or so and save up some money working before I travel and head to grad school. I'm training right now for a career, not a job. There is no job for me to fall into like and education student falls into teaching or a med student falls into being a doctor. I have to work my way up there and find out exactly what I want. To do that I need more school. I think I have a strange path in comparison to a lot of people who will be looking for real jobs where they have a ladder to climb instead of schilling coffee to save up for more school. I'll figure it out.

listening to: Pride and Prejudice Soundtrack--Dario Marianelli

Earliest Memories

2007-12-20T01:57:00.000-06:00

I was looking for writing exercises to practice with while I'm between projects (I could do a rewrite of my latest, "Father Fox", but I need to think some more about what I really want the story to be about) and I came across a website called Earliest Memory where people have posted their earliest memory in a couple of sentences. For some reason my breath catches when I read these. They are succinct, raw, and very real. It also takes me back to when I wrote about my earliest memory a couple of years ago:

"A pink room (gray magenta). Panic. My little brother has fallen again. He’s small, small enough so he can’t walk, small enough so that his hair is still wispy golden white. He’s been cut on the head and they need to give him stitches. We were visiting a museum. Or a planetarium. Or an aquarium."

I wrote that slightly over two years ago. I would have been two months into my first year of college. It just shows that even though I didn't really feel it as much then, I knew that I wanted to write and I did it on my own. I tried to get into a creative writing class the next semester, but they filled up too fast. I think it was good that I didn't. There was a gradual build up over the next year and a half of me realizing exactly how much writing meant to me and that I wanted to make it part of my career. This desire is what gave me the confidence to pull through the rough patches of my first semester in narrative writing. I know what I want and I know what I have to do to get there. Constant reading, constant writing, and constant thought.

Now if only I knew exactly what I wanted out of "Father Fox".

Creeper of the Year

2007-12-19T16:33:00.000-06:00

Creepers are everywhere, guys. Some are easy to spot: they lack any social niceties whatsoever and so get hitched with the nickname "Creepy Joe" or "Creepy Tom". The worst, however, are the ones who manage to come of as charming to the otherwise unaware. They permeate society and try to make their brand of creepiness acceptable.

And so, I award Joe Francis, the entrepreneur behind the Girls Gone Wild videos who commercials haunt my viewings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report with Creeper of the Year. While I certainly protect his first amendment right to videotape girls with low self-esteem, he is also misogynistic, completely unstable, and most likely a rapist. It also doesn't help that he made a website for himself in order to give himself a new family friendly image. His take on the situation? "It seems that my chief sins have been 1) having way too much fun and 2) having discovered a way to make money doing it." It also features a FAQ section where he is asked questions like, "Would you consider yourself the new Hugh Hefner?"

An extremely interesting and perverse article on the matter here: "Joe Francis: 'Baby, Give Me a Kiss'" by Claire Hoffman of the LA Times.

Coming in a ridiculously close second? A blog post calling itself a parable by the name of "Just Love on Her" and its myriad of comments. *Shudders*

Horizon

2007-12-15T12:20:00.000-06:00

They whipped down the I-88 at 80 miles per hour. The sky out the dusty window was a brilliant blue and clouds frothed over the sun down to the horizon.
“God,” Sophie said, “the sky is so beautiful. In flat places like this, the land has its own sparse beauty, but because of its simplicity the sky becomes the interest. In mountainous places the land is the interest.”
“Yeah, I miss it,” Vanessa said.
They listened to a play list Sophie had made for the five-hour journey to see Maddi. They were relaxed because at the moment Wilco was softly playing so they could still talk to each other.
“I’m not worried about being caught speeding,” Sophie said. “Because where do the cops hide? We could see them a million miles away its so flat. They hide in the middle between the two lanes. And sometimes behind bridges but not really because there isn’t often a road bit they can pull off on.”
“I’m not worried about being caught speeding because you’re the one driving,” Vanessa grinned.
Sophie scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue but her eyes never left the road. Vanessa took out her knitting. She only knew how to knit not to purl but she hadn’t dropped a stitch yet. It had taken Sophie an hour to teach her how to knit the night before because her fingers weren’t used to twisting and turning yarn. They had awkwardly stumbled over each pull until the coarse acrylic yarn had formed uneven ugly stitches. Now her movement wasn’t fluid, but it wasn’t confused yanks either.
“I want to make a scarf,” Vanessa said.
“Why? You’ll never use it.”
“I can use it when I visit in during Christmas.”
“True.”
Vanessa had left. Now she inhabited bleak highways littered with cars and outlet stores. In the distance were craggy blue mountains speckled with snow. Their beauty was overwhelmed by the smell of gas, smoke, and rotting lettuce. Sophie never wanted to go back there. There was too much filth. But she remembered one sunset on the Pacific that had looked like Turner painting. The sun had scattered yellow light off the ocean and there had been a hazy purple pier that felt miles away. They had been ankle deep in wet sand and for a moment the only noise was the soft rock of waves and the only smell had been salt. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath until a car alarm suddenly screamed in the distance and she had cried out in surprise. They had slumped in the sand to watch the last glow of the sun disappear over the horizon while high-pitched shrieks sounded into the night.

One of my final personal essays for Rhetoric 243. The painting above is one I just did this past summer of the Merritt Prairie for my mother of a picture she took. Putting together the writing portfolio is literally the last thing I have to do . . . at this point I'm more revising enough to get an okay grade. It'll all right if I get a B in that class because I'm pretty sure I have A's in everything else. I got my essay on Faulkner's "Barn Burning", Tin Ore Man (last punny title!) back and I got an A-. Plus the final for that class was ridiculously easy. I just hope I'm not stuck here tomorrow because of this horrid winter storm.

Weird moment last night: Vivian and I were waiting with Christine for her train when Christine called her parents because the train was really delayed. She started speaking to them in Chinese. Then, Vivian's mother called and she started speaking on her phone in Spanish. I suddenly felt extremely white. The only thing I could do if my parents called would be to speak in a British accent and say the words "loo"and "lift". Oh well. At least I know what Marmite is!

Also, I don't really speed, Mom. I swear.

listening to: Feist--1234

Almost Done

2007-12-13T22:12:00.000-06:00

This is the holiday card I made for my mother. It was pretty simple, actually. I just traced out a design in pencil (I traced the text from the computer screen) and blocked it out with a watercolor mask (basically a waxy liquid that dries and protects the paper from watercolors when you're doing broad washes or something), did some atmospheric junk in the background, erased the mask, and voila! Simple and pretty enough to print out easily. A good card for people who like the color blue and peace.

So. I have my one final tomorrow afternoon and then I've got to revise four personal essays before too late on Saturday and then I'm done for another semester. I've still got loads of cleaning to do, but I've been sick with a horrid cold for the past couple of days and since most of my friends are too busy studying for their finals, completing papers, or leaving campus to hang out with me, I've been lolling around in bed reading and watching Miyazaki movies that I've downloaded for free from Veoh. They're all in Japanese (I prefer it to the horrid large names they usually hire to voice the Miyazaki movies in English) so that and lonely bedridden-ness have me muttering to myself in Japanese occasionally. It's a little weird and I'm looking forward to going home on Sunday and the human interaction that will follow.

Memories of the 7th Grade

2007-12-11T20:48:00.001-06:00

Oh Robert Jordan. I stopped reading this series in the 8th grade after they made Egwene head Aes Sedai (that was the breaking point--she was severely unqualified), but I do remember the good lunchtime conversations in the 7th grade about it. It was next step up the fantasy maturity ladder after Redwall, after all. It's funny to look back on the days of my youth (youth! I'm 20!) when I read fantasy all the time. I was also really into The Mists of Avalon. I then went through a period where I only read high literature (i.e. Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Woolf, Garcia Marquez) but I have recently been looking back at the genre. I like to think that in every genre, there is some great, some mediocre, and some bad. I do still have roots in Fantasy. I love the work of Miyazaki, I read folk tales and religious mythology, I'm exploring graphic novels, and texts like Le Petit Prince hold a special place in my heart. I (obviously) also love Harry Potter, Narnia, and His Dark Materials. I think that by accepting fantasy again in my life I have matured because I am opening myself to all sorts of literature that I might have turned my nose up at before.

However, I would classify Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time as bad fantasy. It suffers from the same thing that a lot of fantasy books suffer from: lack of creativity, lack of depth, lack of character development, lack of originality. I suppose on some level it works as an escapist text, but I have trouble escaping into such a trite world where I am annoyed with all of the characters. At any rate, Robert Jordan died earlier this year and it looked like his ludicrously long fantasy series would remain unfinished. Hilariously enough, his wife Harriet decided to choose another fantasy author to finish the work in Jordan's stead. Evidently he's got notes and such compiled for what he planned for the remainder of his bloated fiction. Read the ridiculous interview with the luck author here: Memory of Light Interview.

Will I read it? Probably not as mostly all I remember from the series is that they called people "woolheads" as an insult, the main character Rand winds up in a threesome, and there was some female character (Selene? Something to do with the moon, I think) that all my friends who had read more than me convinced me was a man in drag. This totally brings me back to when I was ten and Maddi and I made little felt tunics and clay swords and shields for rodent Beanie Babies and named them after Redwall characters. Good times.

The Golden Compass

2007-12-09T01:25:00.001-06:00

So I went to see The Golden Compass tonight. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I thought that it was generally quite well cast, but that when writing the screenplay the screenwriters forgot something fairly important: the book is third person close to Lyra the whole time. The first one, anyway. The second book introduces Will, but we really aren't there yet so never mind. Anyway, the scenes without Lyra, which made the movie third person omniscient, felt awkward to me, espcially seeing as they were made up, not in the book, and therefore assumptions. It also didn't help that characters would say things that sounded very awkward but were said to let the viewer know what was going on. One especially artless piece of dialog required Lyra to cry upon being rescued by the Gyptians: "You're Ma Costa! You're Billy's mum!" as though she was only just meeting the woman when they obviously had known each other for some time. I would have been much easier for her to cry "Ma Costa!" in delight and have someone say something later about her being Billy's mum. At any rate, there were several instances of this that just stuck out horribly.

Another problem I had was the fleeting introduction of characters and their sudden attachment to Lyra, and the almost cartoony vilification of the Magisterium (evidently it is a technical ecclesiastical term in the Roman Catholic Church referring to the teaching authority of the church). I mean, that was certainly there in the books, but not to this point of ludicrousness. It actually all reminded me a lot of Ivan's The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, but to the extreme. The "church people" in the movie were barely under the pretense that they were doing it for the good of humanity. In order to make it more digestible, they changed the feeling of the Magisterium to that of a "big brother" a la Orwell's 1984, or to Stalinist Soviet Union. It felt like a bit of a cop out to me, actually.

Along with this, I won't spoil anything, but they completely cut the last bit of the book out. I suppose they wanted to end on a happy note or something, but without the ending Lord Asriel's character was flat as cardboard. I also think that the ending in the book is a lot more intriguing and would be much more apt to have me come back for more.

Okay, that was the ugly. Now for the good. I thought the girl who played Lyra was pretty much spot on. They have a great, very cool character in Lyra and they didn't let it go to waste. Lyra was well developed, as was Mrs. Coulter and Iorek. Everyone else basically gets their five minutes. Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about the good, so I'll say that Iorek was completely kick ass. He made me want to have an armored bear of my very own. He's voiced by Ian McKellen so I was getting flashes of Gandalf all over the place. There was one bit where Lyra was crossing a skinny ice bridge and he was behind her and I kept expecting him to go "Fly you fool!" Man, that would have been cool. The fight scenes were also really cool and even portions caused Christine to duck behind her coat though there was literally no blood. She's just a pansy. It was oddly beautiful actually, because when the person died, their daemon would vaporize in a puff of glittering gold. Kelly and I both agreed that Lyra had adorable outfits throughout. I coveted a little knitted bonnet hat she wore in Norway, just in a different color.

Anyway, it was a bit clunky, but overall fairly entertaining. I'm just really picky and it really just didn't blow me away like I'd hoped (but didn't actually think) that it would. I think I was better able to understand and see depth in things because I'd read the books, too. I think they could have done a less ham fisted and artless exploration of the humanistic ideas that are inherent in the books. It also occurs to me that the people who are so frightened of this movie and the books and who wish to censor it are acting exactly how Pullman accuses the Church of acting in His Dark Materials. Like I've said before, if you can't read Pullman without giving up your faith, then maybe you didn't have any to begin with. It's not about how Christianity is evil. It's about the corruption that is bound to occur when flawed humans are given something as powerful, strange, and beautiful as faith.

Interesting article on it all HERE.

Atonement

2007-12-05T22:48:00.002-06:00

I've been trying to get into contemporary fiction lately. After all, if I hope to get published someday then I should know what my peers are doing. I am starting with the much accoladed Ian McEwan and the novel Atonement. I'm only 7 pages in and already:

"She took her daughter into her arms, onto her lap--ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet--and said the play was 'stupendous,' and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl's ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth" (4).

"The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained" (7).

It's just beautifully written, very true, and I feel so inspired right now. Someday I want to write something that makes people feel these very things. Right now I'll stick with what I'm calling my "Creepy Little Girl" stories. Perhaps someday they will be bound together in a book called, "Creepy Little Girls and the Mothers Who Love Them".

In all seriousness, though, I think I was a bit hard on my story the other day. It felt a bit irredeemable, but I've been looking at the work shop responses and it seems like its completely fixable. I'm just going to take a bit of a rest from it for a few weeks.

Whew!

2007-12-04T23:21:00.000-06:00

I was haulin' all over the painting building today! After my final contemp art issues class (no more wiki! No more presentations!) I went on over to take a picture of my painting with a fancy schamcy Canon Eos 5D digital camera (12.8 megapixels!) which, incidently costs 2,100 bucks, when I realized that I didn't have the compact flash card necessary to save the photos onto the camera because my regular old 5 megapixel camera used a memory card instead. They don't lend them out at the Art and Design desk (where I got the camera, btw) because I guess people kept stealing them. It doesn't make much sense though, actually, and is really annoying. I mean, they check stuff out. Just charge the people who stole the compact flash card the amount the card cost on their university account. Now I have to spend twenty bucks to take high quality pictures of my work for the next year and a half. Blug.

Anyway, I used the tripod to get good, non blurry non shiny photos of the final product of Yellow Mountain, Iceland. C'est tout for this semester in my adventures in painting!

Also of note: Justin told me it looked like a "giant, throbbing cock". He also found a vagina in one of my paintings from last year. I'll miss you when you go to that South American country next semester, Justin!

Listening to: Bob Dylan--The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Oh Politics

2007-12-04T01:20:00.000-06:00

What is going on??

Too Much Too Much

2007-12-03T18:16:00.000-06:00

So I had my final painting crit today as well as my final short story workshop. Gluh. Bad scheduling on my part. It's not so much the work that was involved, it's the amount of effort that goes into hearing people talk about your work. I don't know. I'm glad it's done with.

On a lighter note:

Granted, as of this moment I am not actually in the show. I was having an identity crisis with my painting and hated it so I opted out. However, I now quite like my painting and have emailed Jennifer to see if there is still space. Regardless, several of my friends work is in the show and we're having a big fun reception with food (but no alcohol, sadly) on Thursday. It should be fun, especially seeing as I have a paper due the next day.

Also: I did the cover illustration for my short story today. I didn't' show it to people because they generally seemed to have no idea what was going on, but here it is:

The story still needs a lot of work in order to make it at all discernible to people who aren't me, so this will probably be a later in the semester spring project. I'm pooped.

listening to: the voices in my head discussing whether I'm talented or full of it.

Ice and I

2007-12-02T02:23:00.000-06:00

Today my mac's weather widget had a little graphic with little white round balls bouncing off the ground. Hail! Not only hail, though, as I soon discovered. Also ice rain. Basically here's how my walk to the studio went today:

Me: (on the phone with Christine) Hey! Are you going to studio tonight?
Christine: No way. Even though I have a roommate who could easily give me a ride to studio from our apartment, I choose to remain the warm glowing warming glow of my apartment.
Me: (Stepping outside and slipping a little) Aw frack! Ice! My nemesis!
Christine: Blah blah blah plywood.
Me: I swear to God, Christine, I slip and fall every year. This is super dangerous.
Christine: Blah blah blah gesso.
Me: Oh my God! I am seriously going to fall! This is some intense ice! (falls on ass. Ice is cold. Gets up.)*

*Repeat three times.
(Note: Actual conversation may have been slightly different.)

That ice was really dangerous. I pretty much skated the whole way, and talked on the phone at the same time, which was a super good idea for someone as clumsy as me. Anyway, I think I need to get some golf shoes or something. I wouldn't be surprised if I met my end over ice.

On a more creative note, I'm basically just saying screw it and putting my painting up in the crit as is. I'm not really sure what else to do with it and it's a learning process so I don't really see why I should have final final work in the crit anyway. I'm in school, not the real world.

I like it. It, by itself, doesn't fully convey my concept, but I honestly didn't have enough time to fully figure out my concept and do three super layered paintings. I'm not too worried about getting reamed in crit this time, I'm more worried about my grade. I want to boost my GPA so I can get good scholarships for grad school, and I think that because this entire semester I've gone completely outside of my comfort zone and haven't given up, I deserve an A. I mean, if I wanted to stick to doing realistic portraits I would be kicking ass right now. I know I can do that. I want to open up my paintings to new techniques and abstraction so they can become more than just realistic depictions. They can become their own abstract, atmospheric worlds.

I also started a cover illustration for my short story Father Fox. It's a weird story that's about femininity, youth, innocence, and growth. It's getting work shopped on Monday. I hope that this workshop goes as well as the last one. The last one was really helpful and people seemed genuinely interested in my story. I'm going to show them the illustration and see if they think that the story lends itself to being fully illustrated. I plan on making a beautiful book in the end.

The girl (Luce, the protagonist) is modeled off of Degas' "Little Dancer Age 14".

It's odd. It's a pretty creepy statue, mostly because of the skin tone and the use of textiles, but I still really respond to the aesthetic. I think it's beautiful.

Also, I am really looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass in two weeks! Of course, it came with the controversy I expected it to. Here is an article from a Christian media magazine listing the reasons that The Golden Compass and Philip Pullman are the devil incarnate. What I love about this article is that it is essentially trying to warn unwary Christians of the evil hidden behind the well crafted fantasy story. To this I honestly say that if Philip Pullman causes you to lose faith then maybe you weren't terribly faithful in the first place. The point of religion is not to follow blindly. If you are truly faithful then Pullman will simply perhaps cause you to consider what it is that you believe and deepen your faith through thought. Yes, Pullman is kind of an ass. Yes, he says some nasty things about C.S. Lewis and Narnia. But seriously you need to both chill out. They're both great, imaginative stories that I treasured in my childhood. It is indeed nice to live in a world where I can love both Narnia and His Dark Materials as well as Harry Potter.

Holiday movie list thus far: Sweeney Todd, The Golden Compass, and Juno (Oh Michael Cera, you're my favorite!!).

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens--The Avalanche

Back in the Swing of Things

2007-11-29T22:59:00.000-06:00

Holy crap kids, I just had the hardest time getting back into it after this amazing break. A helluva lot happened. First I went to visit Maddi, met her roomates who were so much fun that we all went to bar on a Monday night, watched the amazingness that was the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I mostly only watch old movies to laugh at them), came back to DeKalb, ate mashed potatoes in a house full of cats, watched The Last Emperor (which we did not realize was 3 hours long!) with the rents, and went to see Maddi's dad in his glorious role as early '80's Chicago punker at the screening of the documentary "You Weren't There: Chicago Punk 1977-1984". Enjoy assailment of ears here:

It was both awkward and amazing.

Anyway, I came back Sunday and was all "Oh hell yeah, I'm going to work my ass off and get all this shit done!" Then I went to my studio. I looked at my painting. I looked at it and I loathed
it. I wanted to trash it. I wanted to never look at it again and start fresh and hope for the best with that. So I didn't work on it. It hung over my desk in my studio as a very literal symbol of how much I sucked. Then I had to write a rough draft for my rhet class for Monday and my second short story for narrative writing for Wednesday, so I did nothing with it. I kept putting it off and off and off until today, when I realized that if I didn't do anything soon that I was going to have to present it at crit like that. That left me cold but it got my ass in line. I went in today and mixed colors and suddenly, after 20 minutes of work, I didn't hate it anymore! See kids, I should have trusted myself more. The studio class has made me lose so much confidence in my painting ability that I forgot that I do, in fact, know how to paint. I've been doing it for years. Just not specifically in this way. Anyway, here's what it looks like now that I've integrated that giant white spot in:

Sorry it's so blurry. Here's a detail where you can actually see what the damn thing looks like:

I think it breaks it up beautifully. There's still work to be done, obviously. The bottom needs some work. But I can see the end in sight, and it put me in the best mood I've been in since Maddi, her roommates, and I all broke into a Spice Girls song on the way back to their dorm at three in the morning last week. I was seriously giddy. Ask Kelly and Christine.

I also worked on Galapagos Islands, and I think that it's coming along as well, but there is no way that it's going to be done when I put it up at crit. The Iceland painting is layer on layer on layer and thats why it's rich. Galapagos is like, three layers and layers require time to dry. It'll be on layer four or five by crit time. Oh well, I don't even care. I just care that I broke the fracking Berlin wall with my Iceland painting. Anyway, here it is as is:

Detail:

I'm going for "Sky of death assails the light of the growing earth". They're volcanoes. I'm rethinking the idea of the volcano as growth and fertility of the earth rather than as a destructive force, I suppose. I don't really know whats going on with the China painting. I just never got it started and now it's a stretcher with a layer of gesso. If I start start it and put it up at crit it's just going to look like ass. Of course, the level of finish could work for the concept rather than against it. Or I might just do something crazy that my mother would hate to the China painting I already have started. I dunno. We'll see.

Gluh. Crit at 8 tomorrow. They are getting some serious comments about crit time on the ICES form. Three out of fifteen weeks of class for crit? A little ridic.

listening to: Arcade Fire--Neon Bible

While Maddi is tutoring . . .

2007-11-19T18:45:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I did something drastic to my painting, just like I said I would. I think also that I had kind of a break through. Not a huge one, but enough of one that I don't feel like puking anymore. Here are some pictures and details.

See the huge ass white spot? That's new. It's going to dry while I'm gorging on mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and then I am going to make it a lot less white.

Yeah. We'll see. My mom liked it, but she pretty much likes everything I do, which is nice, but not terribly helpful. *sigh*

listening to: Maddi helping some freshman with a paper on Dharma.
Reading: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Thanksgiving Break AT LAST

2007-11-16T22:09:00.000-06:00

Port 2 Port Press has put out their beautiful 2008 hand cranked calander which I will not be investing in because of England trip and saving up for a car.

This is, however, what I aspire to. I'm going to put out my holiday cards after this week (a bit later than should happen, I suppose, but still before December) and see how those sell. If all goes well, then this spring I will start work on a 2009 calander to be ready for next November.

Thank goodness class is off for a week. I desperately need it, not just because I love to sleep in, but also to revise my essays, start another two essays, and finish my next short story. I'm going to get as much writing done as I possibly can because when I get back, it's all studio all the time until my final crit on December 3. I'm going to do something fairly insane to my painting before I leave just to get it out of its slump . . . I'm at the point where I really feel like I don't know how to paint anymore. This is good because it means I'm challenging myself, but it's also super frustrating. I just hope that I get a breakthrough with it and that I'll love it in the end. Right now I just don't love it. I know I love a painting I do when I just can't stop looking at it and it makes me feel really proud and happy. I am not anywhere close to that feeling.

Thing today that did make me happy, though it was a bit premature? Altgeld Hall playing Christmas carols after my last class as I was walking to the financial aid building. I was also kicking around crinkly fall leaves at the time, so it was little weird.

Thing that made me upset: the knowledge that tv, my precious tv will not be showing anything new for awhile. I will sorely miss new episodes of The Office (Jim and Pam were going to have dinner at Jan and Michaels!), 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and House. Seriously, just give the writers what they want. How are they even arguing? It's ridiculously obvious that the writers should get paid.

To tide us over:

listening to: Sufjan Stevens--Songs for Christmas (Yes, I know it's too soon. GD Altgeld Hall . . .)

Layer Five

2007-11-10T22:08:00.001-06:00

Of note today: Apparently our (UIUC) football team beat Ohio State, which is apparently a big deal. Or something. This was evident as I walked to the painting studio and saw three wailing police cars rush past, one ambulance, and hordes of shrieking drunk people conglomerating outside of frats. As much as I love Friday Night Lights (mmmm, Tim Riggans . . .) I always get annoyed every loud Saturday. I think I will move to Urbana next year where I will happily remain unaware of whether our football team is winning or losing.

listening to: Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins--Rabbit Fur Coat

Working Working Working

2007-11-09T22:50:00.000-06:00

Okay, so here is a not so horrid but still not terribly good picture of layer 4 of Yellow Mountain, Iceland. When I finish it I'll definitely borrow a tripod from upstairs Art & Design and get some good lighting going on. Anyway, I'm just going to keep building up until I feel like it's done. Also here is the first layer of Yellow Mountain, Galapagos Islands.

Still a looong way to go. I built the stretcher for the new Yellow Mountain, China, today and will probably stretch tomorrow. Good times.

I also realized that I don't have a job right now, and that its really cramping my style of occasionally spending money and saving up for something good. Last time I spent a chunk of money I'd saved up was on my macbook pro. So I've decided to make some holiday cards on the letterpress here at school and sell them in my shop, which right now only has paintings in it that I've kind of overpriced because I don't really want to let go of them. I think over winter break I'll get my craft on and make some bags and cut some linoleum for more cards on the letterpress. We'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work out, I'll get a real job.

I took one of those color quizzes. This actually sums me up pretty well, I think.

you are violet
#EE82EE

Your dominant hues are red and blue. You're confident and like showing people new ideas. You play well with others and can be very influential if you want to be.

Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan.

Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

It's very true that I work on projects like that. I keep telling my mom that it's going to work out in the end, and she never believes me but 98% of the time it does.

listening to: Cat Power--The Covers Record

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

2007-11-09T01:02:00.001-06:00

Spooky, scary . . . boys becoming men, men becoming wolves.

Iceland! Oh Iceland! (Theme Song of Iceland)

2007-11-06T23:14:00.000-06:00

So this is exciting: I basically know what I'm doing now. It, sadly, includes abandoning the China painting I've been working on up to now. But like I said previously, it's not a total loss as I do think I learned a lot about the way I need to paint for these projects in particular for that. I'm going to build the new stretcher for that (I really just couldn't stand to just gesso over all that work . . . I still think something can be done with it) fairly soon. I've already got all the wood cut, it just comes down to builiding and stretching and gessoing another stretcher. It's funny because when I first started to do it, building my own stretchers from scratch on my own felt really good. It felt independent and like I was capable of making a lot of my own stuff. But now it's just a drag, mostly because this is the fifth one I've got to do this semester. I know I can do it, and that's enough for me now. I can't wait until I can afford to pay for someone to do it for me.

So anyway, I suppose I should actually write down what my idea is and what I've been thinking about a lot in terms of contemporary landscape. China is old--3.2 billion years?--as old as the earth. However, as far as civilization is concerned, China is a huge mesh of old and new. While there are still huge areas of farm land littered with illiterate peasants, there are also huge polluted metropolises which seem to be China, and the worlds wave of the future. Soon (very soon, particularity when you consider time the way that I am in the age of land masses) vast fields, forests, and open areas in general will be a thing of the past.

Iceland, on the other hand, is newer. It rose up from the ocean floor because of its volcanic activity. It was created from fire but is named for ice. It is still growing as from time to time a volcano will erupt, continuing the cycle. I find the idea of this continuation of life in the midst of human struggle fascinating. We haven't even been around for an ounce as long as the earth, Iceland, or even the last place I am going to portray, the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos Islands are also volcanic, and they are where Darwin developed his theory of evolution because of the way that all the species evolved internally because they were isolated form the rest of the world. I think that this is what is interesting about them and what makes them the last piece in my series. Before human interaction, how much longer would they have gone on being isolated? How much longer would there have been a place that certain species inhabited that no other place ever would have seen? I think I will shroud this painting in a cloak of cloudy glazes, only to have growth (the volcanic activity) poke through and glow as brightly as a coin in the sun. Iceland, too, will be shrouded, but its life will be a funnel of smoke filtering into the sky. China will be flat and eroded, dark and glowing at the horizon. Glowing over the edge of earth.

So here are the first three layers of Yellow Mountain, Iceland.

One

Two

Three

Blug. I need to invest in a tripod or stop sucking at taking photos so much. Part of the problem is that they're shiny because they're oil paintings so I can't take pictures with the flash on, and for some reason without the flash my camera takes only blurry photos.

Outside of art news: Today my American Lit prof made a noise that sounded like "OooooOOoo" (think a weirder Twilight Zone noise) after saying something particularly convoluted. Upon receiving odd looks, he explained that "Sometimes I say something so pretentious that I just have to make that noise after." It made my life. He is such a weirdo that he makes me feel normal.

Also I finished a paper in two hours, and I feel pretty confident about it. It is titled "Oh No She Di-hin't!: Female Relationships in Nella Larsen's Passing". I have to admit, one thing (the only thing?) that I will miss about writing academic papers after I finish with them this semester is coming up with ridiculous titles for them.

listening to: Ella Fitzgerald--Blues in the Night

Today's Painting Philosophy: Simplicity is your Friend

2007-11-04T15:55:00.000-06:00

"Norham Castle, Sunrise"
JMW Turner

Learning

2007-11-02T23:42:00.000-05:00

Layer 5? 6? I forget. It feels like layer 1 million. And I'm not even a little close to where I want to be with it. I think I applied too much paint in some places, and now it's lost the glow it had. Not entirely, but enough for me to be frustrated by it. But before I do something rash like gesso over it, I'm going to put it aside and work on the Yellow Mountain, Iceland painting. I think that though this first Yellow Mountain, China painting may be a bust, I learned a lot from it. If I do gesso over it, I have a lot clearer of an idea of what I want to do as opposed to just randomly painting. And isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing in college? Learning? So I'm not too bent out of shape about it. After all, my first oil painting was total crap but the next one turned out really well. I just needed to get a handle on the materials, and in this case, the landscape in my mind, which I want to glow but be in a dark, ominous atmosphere because of the rapidly changing landscape of China. I imagine myself floating miles above this brown and green landscape. Little puffs of black smoke hover above clumped areas of architecture. Then, a breath of wind and they scatter and darken my view. All I see is soot.

I chose China for a reason. It's old and steeped in tradition but the past sixty years have been wrapped in change. The past ten have been like a giant leap into industrialization and now they seem to be grasping the future with a vice-like grip. The question is whether or not it is a good future with breathable air. Another question is whether I can convey all these ideas in one painting.

I've been looking at Turner because he's one of the first artists you turn to (ha!) when you're thinking romantic landscapes. Him and Frederic Edwin Church, at any rate. I really just can't get enough of Turner in particular, though. His landscape are rough and soft, and they really glow. I've been looking at these and thinking simplicity:

In other news, I made some bread! It takes awhile, but if you're sitting around your apartment writing say, a paper for five hours, then you have plenty of time to start bread, realize that you've run out of flour halfway through, make the 10 minute journey to Walgreens, and come back and finish. I'm pleased with it, though it did kind of fall apart the minute I tried to cut it, which was weird because it sounded hollow when I knocked on the bottom like my Mom said it should. What did I do wrong, Mom? Oh well, it still tasted damn good. Jam and cream cheese on fresh baked bread with tea is one of the greatest pleasures in life.

Listening to: Regina Spektor--Soviet Kitsch

2007-11-02T00:38:00.000-05:00

"Besides having sex with men, The Finer Things Club is the gayest thing about me."

Oh The Office. You never cease to please.

It's that time again

2007-11-01T17:36:00.000-05:00

But first, a ridiculously blurry image of my painting! This, my friends, is why I quit photography. I suck an every frame was blurry. Anyway, I thought two more layers but its just not done yet. I guess I'll just keep working it until I feel that it's done. I'm starting two more paintings (Yellow Mountain, Iceland and Yellow Mountain, ?) so I'll be able to step back from it a bit as well.

So it's time to sign up for classes again. I got an email asking me if I was going to graduate this spring because evidently I have enough credits to (even though I've got a bit more to do for my major) so that was kind of cool because I know I'm getting close. Seriously, 3 more semesters?? People keep asking me what I'm going to do when I graduate, too. That happened a lot less last year. I figure I'll take a year off and work or travel or something, and then maybe apply to the MFA creative writing program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Thank God MFA programs are only two years. That means I can get an MFA in writing and studio no problem. Plus Vancouver looks like a really cool city, and my parents may or may not have moved to Oregon by then.

These are my classes for next semester:

Creative Writing 106--Intro to Poetry
Art Studio 499--Advanced Painting
Art Studio 351--Intermediate Studio II
Art Studio 210--Ceramic Sculpture I
Art History 360--Women and the Visual Arts

I'm going to have 3 studios all in a row on Monday and Wednesday. It's going to be kind of intense, but hopefully none of them will schedule critique on the same day. I would die.

Listening to: Johnny Cash--American IV--The Man Comes Around

To The Old Country!

2007-10-29T00:52:00.000-05:00

Guess what? I'm going to England this summer! My brother is getting a multi continent flight which allows him to go to North America (DeKalb, obviously), South America (Peru) and Europe (England and Spain). I'll be joining him and his girlfriend, Laura, in England where I hope to see my grandparents, my uncle and aunt, and a plethora of sheep. Right now I've only got like, $300.00 to my name, but I've got commissions coming so I should have at least 15 hundred dollars by summer. I was saving up for a car, but who needs a car when you can go to England with your brother who you haven't seen for a year and a half?

Listening to: The Decemberists--Picaresque

Getting There

2007-10-28T00:15:00.001-05:00

Layer 5. I predict two more layers. The highlights on the clouds are too white right now, I have to add some subdued yellow brown purple? in there. The mountains just need a bit more specificity in them, but not too much or they'll lose their beauty. Anyway, it's fast and its fun. Would be believe I started this less than a week ago last Monday?

In other news, my material itch is dying to be scratched by this FAWESOME bike designed by Jorg & Olif. Sadly, I really have no need whatsoever for a new bike because I just got one a bit over a year ago. I suppose it's also worth noting that this bike costs about $600.00 not including shipping and handling. But look how pretty! And it comes in red! Oh well. I'm sure the company will still be there in a few years when I'll need a new bike and if I got this one now, it'd just get stolen or ruined anyway because drunk college students are morons. Trust me, it's homecoming weekend and I'm at a big 10 school. Speaking of which, I've been thinking about living in Urbana next year rather than Champaign. I like how close my apartment is to the painting studio, but really most places in Urbana would only be a 10 minute bike ride away. I also went out to visit Christine who lives in Urbana and its so pretty where she is. There are brick sidewalks and vibrant orange leaves all over and a pretty little church. It felt like a whole different place. There was a place rented by the same leasing group I'm using right across the street from her, actually. And it's so ruddy loud out here, even during the week. I guess we'll see. I need to check out the places first.

Listening to: Jon Brion--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Soundtrack

Foreign Landscape

2007-10-26T19:19:00.000-05:00

Layer 4. Also, I finally have the paper with my idea and internet in the same room, so here it is:

1) Romanticization of a place I have never been based on the name and my own perceptions of the country it is located in. For example, Yellow Mountain, Spain would be different from Yellow Mountain, China.

2) I am physically removed from China. I am orally removed from Yellow Mountain because Yellow Mountain is the English name. Even if I go there, I am removed from the landscape and population due to my extremely different way of life. To say you understand a culture is an attempt to control the culture.

3) How does Yellow Mountain differ from the Rocky Mountain peaks or other mountains I have physically experienced?

4) In my mind, Yellow Mountain is beautiful. Yet when I consider China, I think of huge polluted cities where the locals spit all over the streets. I wonder if China's newfound industrialization will, like a tumor, swallow the beauty of Yellow Mountain. Also I think of damn commies.

So yeah, I guess I'm thinking about a lot of stuff. I just need to really convey it on the canvas because you can think till the cows come home and if the work doesn't back it up then the work falls flat. I'm thinking of doing the White Cliffs of Dover next, which I think will be a big contrast because I've actually been to England. I haven't seen the White cliffs, but still I'm a LOT more in contact with that culture than Chinese culture. Hell, I'm drinking tea imported from England right now.

I'm getting there with the tea cozy. I think I'll start decreasing in a few more rows, which means getting the double pointed needles out which is the grossest, but at least it means I'm almost finished.

Wood shopping with Kelly and Christine tomorrow! I'm going to make like, five stretchers!!

listening to: The Cardigans--Life

Layer Layer Layer

2007-10-25T12:09:00.001-05:00

Okay, so this is actually layer # 3. I forgot to take a picture of layer # 2 until layer #3 was almost done. I actually really enjoy working like this, though, because the paint is so thinned down that it dries quick and I can work two layers in on the same day. Sometimes I do get a bit distracted if other people are in the studio though . . . last night turned into a trip to Steak & Shake and Walmart at 1 am with Kelly and Hector instead of a really productive working time. Oh well. At least it was fun!

Anyway, once again I can't write down my complete ideas associated with this project because I forgot my whole notebook in the studio when we were leaving last night! If only we had wireless in the studio. I am irritated that it is taking them so ruddy long to do it. What do they think we do? Internet would be most beneficial to a studio artist because we could use it for research or looking up images and the like, things I often really want to do while I'm in the studio but can't. I guess its just one of the downsides of going to a huge university whose bureaucracy often doesn't understand art students specific needs. This would never be a problem at an art school, but then I couldn't take creative writing classes at an art school so its a switch off.

Oh, and ridiculous story: Yesterday morning I was going to fill up my water bottle and go to the bathroom in the basement of the painting building but the girls bathroom (which only has one stall, btw) was being cleaned by the janitor so I decided to use the boys room because there are like, 6 guys in the painting program and its usually empty. Also, I've never really thought boys and girls sharing bathrooms with stalls is a big deal. Also, the guys bathroom has THREE stalls + two urinals. I mean, come on! Anyway, I go in and I'm about to shut a stall door when I realize that Frank, the guy who is like, fifty in charge of the woodshop and is really nice, was at a urinal.
"Aren't you in the wrong bathroom?" he said.
"I'm so sorry! The girls bathroom is being cleaned!"
I just about died! Oh, and in case anyone was wondering *coughHectorcough* he was not still using the urinal while he was talking to me. Anyway, he left and I went to the bathroom and came out and was filling up my water bottle at the drinking fountain when he walked by me and said, "They just had to be cleaning the girls bathroom at the wrong time."
"Yeah."
And that was that. It was so awkward. If it was any of the guys from my class I wouldn't have cared, but I just guess it was cause he was older or he was Frank or something. Seriously though, what kind of girls bathroom only has one stall??

listening to: Iron & Wine--The Shepard's Dog

The Calm after Midterms

2007-10-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

The first layer of my newest project, Yellow Mountain, China. Its 5' x 2'. I painted the background butter yellow with a mixture of gesso and ink and then, in a technique that my lovely studio mate Christine invented, thinned some oil paint down with turpentine until it had the consistency of milk and squirted it on the canvas on the floor with a turkey baster. I then blotted it with some brown paper, waited for it to be almost dry, and turned it on the side so parts of it dripped down a nd created highlights. I won't be working this way the whole time, just initially to get my shapes. Its a piece about my perceptions of China, a piece about romanticization through distance, a piece about stereotypes and my inability to truly understand the culture of a foreign place. Hell, I barely understand American culture sometimes. Anyway, I have this whole thing I wrote about my idea that goes pretty in depth, but I left it at the studio so I'll do that with the next layer post.

I had my conference on my short story (My God) today. The good news is that my prof thinks I've got a really good start and that my use of language is really working. I just need to make things clear about the character and such that weren't before, which I can do through more interaction with her parents and school mates. I'm actually really excited about this story. It's definitely the best thing I've ever written. My prof is really helpful and understanding, too. The class got off to a shaky start, but I'm really enjoying it now. We watched a movie based on a short story the other day--Away From Her which is based on The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro. It was really amazing. It was about this couple dealing with the woman's Alzheimer's and how they ended up putting her in a home and she all but forgot her husband and fell in love with another resident. It was so unsentimental and cutting but beautiful at the same time. I highly recommend it and the short story.

I've started on a tea cozy because it's getting ruddy cold now and I want tea every minute of every day. I'm knitting it like a hat only I've added an extra 24 stitches so it'll fit a bit better around the pot.

Listening to: Band of Horses--Everything All the Time

Good News!

2007-10-18T00:21:00.000-05:00

So it appears that Stephen Colbert is running for president. He appeared first on The Daily Show to announce his intention to announce, and then later announced on his own show.

Since I'm not really attached to any of the candidates at the moment and Mr. Stephen Colbert is one of my favorite people, I would have to say he defiantly has my vote.

Hmm. A New Direction?

2007-10-17T21:17:00.000-05:00

Okay. So crit didn't exactly go as I'd hoped or planned. I was told some (very little) helpful things and then a lot of things that made no sense. One guy complained that my narrative was hard to follow even though the first bit (the bit I expected him to follow; the 2nd bit is hardly a narrative yet) is simply exposition and fairly clear. He mixed up which character had the baby (if it was the main character, Waverly, or her mother) even though I clearly wrote that it was the mother who had the baby. It was overall just really frustrating because we only had 15 minutes and the graphic novel, even at only 16 pages so far, is a fairly complex thing to look at. And then there was the complaint the style was very different than the normal graphic novel, which I had actually thought was one of its strengths. Not everyone agreed on this, but ultimately because of the way the crit happened I felt a bit like I was being attacked and that nothing I had done was working or was right and that it never would be right because I'm just not capable. It's a horrible horrible feeling to have, especially after you've worked so hard on something. I think there were some legitimate comments but we didn't even end up getting into the content of the work and it was just overwhelming. So what did I learn? Not to put a graphic novel in a crit. It's too complicated. I think I need to step back, start a whole new project, and not even ink another page until I have the storyboard for the whole thing drawn out. Right now I just kind of feel like crap.

Anyway, I have another project in the works. I'm going to start a more abstract painting series where I take this technique that Christine invented where you thin down the paint and and just plop it onto the canvas in drops and then do all these layers . . . anyway, when I start I'll upload photos of the process because its a bit hard to explain to non oil painters. The process creates these odd landscapes and my idea was to take a place I've never seen like Yellow Mountain in China (my brother was just there) and paint an abstract landscape based on what I think it looks like because of the name. So no one send me pictures of Yellow Mountain!! I'm doing this because it will be more relaxing and fun and it will allow me to explore and it's really what I need right now after this morning.

I have to be at class by 8:00 am on Friday. We've had to be in an hour early for a 9-11:40 am class all week. I hate crit week.

I'm Over It. And Also? Three More Pages!!

2007-10-16T01:10:00.001-05:00

Who is that whiny bitch from before? I'm so over it. What was I going to do with another art degree, anyway? You don't need a degree to write a novel, just skill and creativity. Now I won't have to write a bunch of academic essays for all the extra english classes I was going to have to take.

In other news, more pages. I'm getting faster, I think. 15 down, only like, 90 more or so to g o. Anyway, here is 13. Mother is buying a dress.

Aww. Look at the baby. I think the snot bubble will become a running gag.

Annnnnd *drumroll* . . . my first word bubbles! I debated for a really long time how to do these, and I ended up deciding that they should be done by hand and written by hand. I think it was a really good choice. Doing it on the computer would have looked to perfect and out of place.

I should have another page done by Wednesday because thats when I have midterm critique. In the meantime, enjoy Mother's cleavage.

Sigh

2007-10-11T13:35:00.001-05:00

Well, I guess I'm not going to get a double degree after all. I talked to an advisor and he said that only my UIUC gpa has to be 3.25, not my UIUC gpa + my Kish gpa. So instead of getting a 3.30 by the end of this semester like I thought I would, I would have a 3.00 or something because I got a stupid D in physics and a C in another class and stuff. In order to have a double degree you have to have been in the other college (my case, Liberal Arts & Sciences) for at least two semesters and you've got have a 3.25 in order to apply at all. I could get a 3.25 by the time I graduated, but by then it would be too late. He said he would make sure that I could take the classes and stuff, it's just really disappointing because I've worked so hard and I took three classes this summer to make sure that I could get a double degree and still get out in four years. I mean, I guess this takes a lot of pressure off, but . . . yeah, it just sucks.

I guess I'll just take the writing classes and try to improve myself and focus on my artwork.

Fuuuuuuuck (A Rant)

2007-10-05T01:04:00.001-05:00

Okay, so yes, I can still graduate in 2009 with a double major of Painting and Creative Writing. It is technically possible. However, I'm not so sure it's going to be fun anymore. In order to graduate I need to take at least 16 hours each semester for my remaining three semesters. However, having three hour long studio classes twice a week can really muck things up. I have to take 13 (I have no idea why it's not 12) more hours of outside studio (i.e. not required for my painting degree). When you take a studio, it has to be a studio you like or else you're not going to want to do the huge amount of outside work required and you're not going to get a good grade. As someone who wants to leave college with at least a 3.5 (grad school ain't cheap) this is hard because the one studio I really wanted to take--Book Arts 1&2--is taught by a professor who is not only leaving after next semester, but isn't even teaching book arts next semester. I've tried for 2 1/2 years to get into that stupid class but it was always filled up by I was able to add classes. So that leaves sculpture (sculpture 1 is about making shit with cardboard. I don't want to make shit with cardboard), photography (no way), ceramics (yes, but it's way off campus so it has to wait until i get a car), and printmaking (already did, last semester).

Anyway, the reason I'm bitching and moaning is that there is a painting techniques class next semester taught by Ros that I would like to take. Problem? Both M/W/F Intermediate Studio (always 9-11:40) and that class (M/W 1-3:40) intercept with the three possible sections of my Intermediate Narrative Writing class, which I need to take in order to take Advanced Narrative Writing, and finally Creative Writing Tutorial. Also? I need to take english classes as well as art history but the english classes I want to take all intercept with the art history I want to take. It's so frustrating because bio majors would never have this problem because there's like 20 sections of every class they take. I just don't know what to do. Am I really going to have to take classes with subjects I'm not really interested in just because the others are at a bad time? I've paid my dues! I don't want to do that anymore!

It's still early. It's still possible they'll add more sections. They better.

listening to: Rilo Kiley--Under the Blacklight

Hey Look! New Pages!

2007-09-30T16:56:00.001-05:00

And they only took me a week and two days to do. Here we have pages 12 and 13. For the second part--the part which is no longer detailing Waverly's childhood--I am switching to a more subdued palette and I will be working to make things a lot less flat. Which means that every page takes a lot longer because I have to layer and layer the watercolors on. I really like the end result, though.

Hey look! Clothes hangers! Perhaps we are now in some sort of department store?

We are! And Waverly is chillin' out with a mannequin that looks kind of like a badass Venus de Milo! Why? Because that's how cool I am.

Gluh. I am never going get this whole thing finished in time for the Chicago comic con this summer.

So Bill O'Reilly is a Condescending Racist Asshole. What Else is New?

2007-09-26T23:25:00.000-05:00

Oh Bill O'Reilly. It's amazing the things that come out of your mouth. Almost as amazing as Pat Robertson, but that's for another post entirely. It's so funny when people think they are being complimentary when they are, in fact, being horribly racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or sexist. I like to call it the Michael Scott syndrome. Bill O'Reilly suffers horribly from this ailment. As he said in a recent radio show, when he went to have dinner with Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a restaurant so famous it has its own entry on Wikipedia, he was shocked and simply couldn't get over many things.

"And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship."

I am not even shitting you. Also, he had a great deal of insight into the African-American community in general, a community he obviously knows in depth and first hand.

"I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: "Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."

So I just have to say that it's good that we have someone like O'Reilly around to solve all our race problems. Really, it's very important that we create black and white situations that have black and white solutions. There should be no grey area here, nothing O'Reilly can't figure out and work with. It's obvious that "gansta" culture is the ruination of "blacks", even if all O'Reilly really knows about "gangsta" culture is the stereotypes on BET. His cast of characters in the Black community read like the cast list of a bad after school special.

Also, this is really more fodder for the idea that Stephen Colbert's caricature is pretty much spot on.

*Sigh* now back to my essay, How Amy Lowell Totally Breaks the 2nd Commandment (In Verse). That GD lesbo.

listening to: The Smiths--Girlfriend in a Coma

Creepy . . .

2007-09-18T00:43:00.001-05:00

Okay, so evidently my beloved Wikipedia was just too liberal (??) for some people so they created Conservapedia, Wikipedia's weird cousin that everyone tries to avoid at Christmas dinner. I guess their main complaint would be that Wikipedia is wrong sometimes, but . . . well duh. It's an online encyclopedia edited by people who can randomly sign up for it. You aren't supposed to use it as a resource for your thesis on Hermeneutical Exploration Of Onomatopoeia In The Works Of William Carlos Williams As It May Or May Not Relate To Post-Agrarian Appalachia. You're kind of supposed to know that going in. If you want hard facts, use a real encyclopedia. If you want to find out about the elephant population is fit to burst, you go to Wikipedia.

Anyway, one of Conservapedia's creepier entries was on Women and Men. First off, they're not terribly informative. I found out that a) women can get pregnant, b) women have thighs like rocks, c) oh, and that according to the Bible, women had best be subservient to men, quiet in church, dress modestly, and constantly pregnant. The men's entry is even creepier, because it simply says that man was created in God's image and that women had better not usurp authority.

I have never first hand experienced sexism and I'm so far removed from it that its just freaky to read stuff like that. We were discussing sexism in my Contemporary Art Issues course the other day and many people seemed to think it a complete non issue. We're past that. And in many ways I feel past it because I think that I am respected by my colleagues and I've never encountered a situation first hand where I saw anyone being disrespected because of their sex. I mean, reading Jane Austen novels where the protagonist had to marry and that was simply the only thing she could do with her life makes me laugh because the situation seems so ludicrous now.

And yet, we still can't get something as simple and straight forward as the Equal Rights Amendment passed.

Dead Legs Layer El Numero Dos

2007-09-16T15:46:00.001-05:00

We're getting there. Probably 1-2 more layers . . . and may I just say how much I love galkyd, but just wish it would dry a bit slower? Parts of it were already drying up as i went into the legs! It was freaky!

First Essay of the Semester . . . Finished!

2007-09-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

For awhile I was scared. I mean, no more 200 level classes for me. It's 300 and up from here on out. I was really terrifically frightened of the papers I would get because I previously would generally write one paper a semester before because I was taking mostly studios. And sometimes those papers would be being graded by people who had English as a second or even third language *coughasianmythologycough* so they would end up being much too generous to a paper that was written in an hour the night before at midnight.

So anyway, I was a bit nervous about my first paper this semester. But guess what? I finished it today in only two hours, much of which was spent twiddling my thumbs. Do you know why? Because I've read The Brothers Karamazov twice already and the topic ("Ivan Karamazov is split between two contradictory ideas. Explain what the contradiction is, using at least two passages from the novel to support your ideas.") is so kickass because I actually spent a good deal of time thinking about ol' Vanka K. after I first read the book and really knew the answer to the question the moment I read it. I also already had all the great quotations I would need underlined so they were easy peasy to find. And this was how my essay, "Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov: A Tortured Soul Who Is Wracked With Some Sort of Negative Emotion ", was born in a mere two hours.

And this is why from here on out I am going to email my professors over breaks, find out what all the reading for the class will, and read it before I go back to school. It makes life so much less stressful.

Listening to: Simon & Garfunkel--Cecelia