girl posse

Wow, 2am. Movie night went long and into extra innings.

Signed up for my testing-out-of-math exam. I hope all goes well with it. At least I am trying. Uhg. I really do NOT want to take math. Again. Bleeh.

I finished up all my cleaning with an hour to spare. I didn't sweep the main area because a guy was applying gesso to some massive canvases. It would have been rude to stir up dust onto his work. I killed my time chatting up Andy, Rebeca(not sure of the correct spelling) and Gavin. Work still puts me out of my mind with boredom. I kind of want to start looking for a job that will go somewhere but any job I take to earn actual money; those jobs would kill my weekend.

At home I composed a printable list of my lendable comics (mainly for Craig, Andy and Jon's borrowing purposes).

Made it back to school in record biking time. Missed the first of the animated shorts at art film night but it was something I had seen before. Some of the shorts were brilliantly constructed. Some were cheesy. There was a really great one about a chicken having an affair with a fish and the rooster found out. Most of it was conveyed with just the facial expressions. After the shorts were done most of the people cleared out leaving Me, Jack and Gavin to watch Primer.

Yeah. Watching Primer again I really still don't get it. I don't think I enjoy it enough to watch it more to try and figure it out.

Grabbed some more Pizza and bid farewell to Jack and Gavin and rode home through the night rain. I forgot to put the bag over my seat when I returned to PNCA for Art Film Night and my seat was soaked with water. My bum was sooo cold and damp when I got back.

Relaxed a little and Mel invited me over for movie night at her place. So I hung out and chatted with Mel, Cidney, Darya and Mollie. Some of them played chess. Then we went to Safeway. Then we watched Barack Obama on Jay Leno. Darya made delicious pasta for us(she rocks). Then we got around to watching a movie; Mallrats! The lines were not largely convincing but it still was cute. I knew I was getting tired as the movie progressed but I had no idea how late it really was.

Dream time now!

two eyes on the floor

Finished and printed out all my digital tools pieces with a minute to spare to get to drawing. I did two for the "my choice" part because I'm not sure either of the two would cut it on their own. I did one with just orange, yellow, green and blue and the other just solid black and white. The orange, yellow, green and blue one looks really snazzy. Might return to those colors for later artwork. I was working from the theory that you can fill in any map with five colors (or was it six?) and never have the same color touch itself. Okay sure with four there was some touching but as a whole it has a nice pop.

The substitute, Peter, he had us start with a 15 minute pose. I wasn't warmed up and my drawing looking terrible. We gradually sped up to two 10 minutes, two 5 and a 3 minute pose. I warmed up and definitely became more confident with the lines that I had to make within my time constraints.

Then it was lunch time! The meal at student council was magnificent. Noodles with meat and veggies. Mmm. Delicious. Stuffed my face and enjoyed having several people holler at me. Well not holler but they were like "hey Trillian!" and that's cool. I like getting attention for being awesome. The main point of the meeting was about how PNCA is trying to get a building to expand into. Might take a bike trip down to see the building Sunday (seeing as how I love my Sunday bike rides).

Returning to class we started with a 10 minute pose and then did two 30 minute poses. I was astonished about how confident and correct my lines were. I could just...draw the model. There wasn't the constant searching for what was correct. Something clicked. Now I wonder if Arvie's methods of starting fast for warm ups and slowing down might be screwing me up. Well. It is a little early to tell. Every drawing I get better.

I really need to start taking photographs of what I have been doing. This was supposed to be an art blog. Nearing the big 100th post and still no art.

Made a quick grocery pickup. Took a risk with riding with eggs. They all made it home uncracked.

Sean made buffalo burgers and we sat down and watched Day Watch. If I didn't know it was part of a trilogy (possible quadrilogy) I would be really pissed at the ending. The visuals hold up to the first movie and I like the continuing of the mythology of the Russian sci-fi it has created. The plot was a little strung out and it seemed like it didn't have enough to fill it (like the first one did). It is clearly a bridge between the first and the third.

It may just be the Daft Punk talking but I am really loving Stronger by Kanye West.

kick up and fall over

I figured when I finished my essay about how much I dislike Larry Rinder I would post but the essay took me up to midnight and I preferred to just sleep instead.

One would think that when I sleep in I get more time to be awake, make breakfast and get a good start on the day. Wednesday is actually my worst day for getting to school on time. I always manage to make it on time but I always cut it very very close. Today was the closest.

Had to figure out how to bring my paper to school; bristol isn't really known for bendability. Also my bike is making funny noises from the back tire. Next Wednesday I will bring it in to the free shop for repairs and a checkup.

Got to class all right, all I missed was the teacher telling us to clean the tables. She showed us how to use Gouache and for the next three hours of class Patrick complained about how he used up his entire tube of yellow and about the worthlessness of color wheels. We complained less about the cost of the darkroom overall than he did about the loss of $6 in that one class period. It is art school, a cheap art school, you will be buying supplies. Get over it. We made lots of little color gradient swatches and will be cutting them out and making a color wheel from the best of the bunch. I got through them pretty quickly but I'm not sure how good they are (I'm not familiar with gouache as a medium). At least I have room for error.

Lunchtime was comic club. We just got the fliers up yesterday and we had an amazing turnout. Pretty much doubled even though our Pizza's wee oddly tiny. Craig, Chelsea, Kristin, Jim, Taylor, Karen, Sean, Tabitha, Mel, Cidney, BT, Suki-Rose, and about 6 people I didn't know were there. Very awesome! We talked about plans for the zine (we are re-envisioning it under the unifying theme of "science" and it is no longer called Macho Adventures Battlerama), our plans for comics, ideas for the club, the upcoming new PNCA anthology and whatnot. I'm excited that it is getting off the ground. Sure it is starting late but it is awesome none the less.

Time Arts was mostly a quick critique of our videos. Some of the poetry ones were downright amazing and certainly better than some of the stuff I have been watching at Art Film Night. The animation videos were also very snazy. I felt my video lacked a continual soundtrack and was more random for the different segments. Should have utilized the loops in Garageband more. Oh well. We are moving on to graphic novels in Time Arts now so I'm very "booyah". We are doing a one panel gag comic for homework and I know exactly what I want to do.

Then came yoga. Even after being out of it for two weeks I was still able to do it and I am not as stiff today as I was after the last session. Some of the poses required more balance than I was capable of and I very nearly fell over. Our final challenge was handstands and I managed to get up twice (we were against the wall). I really need art strength. I had no idea yoga required so much of it; really intense bending there.

Skipped open life drawing and peddled home. Kicked back for a bit then went over to Mel's for cake and movie. Watched about an hour of Art School Confidential before remembering to write the essay. The stereotypes are so hardcore in Art School Confidential and thus far I have only met one kiss ass/blowhard. The rest I haven't found.

Finished my essay, four pages of ranting about how Larry Rinder's odd points of view, and crawled into bed. So glad I am not stiff right now.

stop! nap time

Enjoyed a killer nap this afternoon when I got back from class. Just crawled into bed when I got home and passed out for an hour. So good. Still recovering from odd recent lack of sleep. I exercise everyday and still I don't get enough sleep. Well, I can snooze till 9 tomorrow.

Finished my monochromatic and complimentary shapes projects for Digital Tools. Now I just have to do anagulous and one of my own choice. Should be done on time. Sweet.

We had a substitute in Drawing because Arvie is out sick. He looked a little like John Cusack/my old boss Mike. I was all ready to blog complaining about his first assignment but actually it went pretty well. It is understandable, I think, that when a teacher tells you to spend 45 minutes trying to draw a perfect circle that a person would be mighty peeved at what seems to be a rudimentary assignment. Also an impossible one as no one can really draw a perfect circle. We were reviewing them against a light blow up of a perfect circle and Daniel came sort of close actually. We only got through five circles compared to the blowup when the bulb burnt out and the substitute (I think his name was Peter) let out a swear. So we eyed all the rest of the circles. Kat wrote "perfect circle" on her circle. Har har. After lunch we drew the new installation. I had no energy for it so it did not turn out that well. The new installation is hella trippy. I wonder if I can grab a photo of it.

Biking home was hell. So tired.

After my nap I watched Chasing Amy. A little crude at times but I did enjoy it. A good little relationship flick about how if you don't listen you will totally miss the honesty within the person you love.

Then watched House with Sean. Great episode. But now I wanna snooze. Sleep in! Whoo!

ZZZ's times three

Oh boy, it is getting harder and harder to wake up for my Monday classes and to stay away through them all.

Art History had a small snafu with the projector (hey guess what, you know that warning about replacing a bulb that has been popping up for the past two weeks? They meant it) and there was some shuffling and we ended up in the computer lab. Took some good notes but then my eyes just closed...then opened and I had no idea what she was now talking about. Damn!

That lecture was followed by another lecture. This one about color theory. Sally gave us all Butterfingers (left over from Halloween) but even that sugar was not enough. I stayed awake but my focus was shot. Blah blah blah, color theory is so boring. At least our color wheel can be non-wheel.

Ate some of Yo's soup for lunch. YUM. Ate it all up.

Time Arts had my third lecture for the day; about the different kinds of microphones. We also watched La Jetée, which 12 Monkeys is based after. Very surreal and trippy with an excellent score. I loved how even though it was still images through out, it still had movement. Like 12 Monkeys better but this was really inspiring.

Then we moved on to our video projects. Mine is all done. Wheee!

Rode home in the dark, not dusk. Did my laundry. Watched television. Yay that Heroes is finally looking to be getting into the action now. After what, six episodes? So tired, time to give in to my days desires and sleep.

sunday services

I saw the reprise of Cartune Xprez today. It had technical problems during the TBA Festival and so they put it on for free. It also contained both programs from TBA (one was international and the other was local), making it two hours of weird and awesome.

The first part before intermission was the international one I tried to see with Rubie and Nathan. I think that if they had seen it they would have been way too weirded out and will never visit me again. They set the mood the same way as before with the colorful looping blobs animation Tarpit by Takeshi Murata. The first was James Duesing's Tugging the Worm. It was very bright and had rather choppy noise. About a Utopian...something world where this bird walks about and changes bodies with a muscleman. I don't really know, it was weird. Amy Lockhart's Tell Mumsy I Love Her was about 2 minutes of a drag queen in a canoe. Shana Moulton's Whispering Pines 4 was magnificent. The first part was live action and then it went into something Pi-esque and talked about spirals and rectangles and the perfect spiral thing. Also a lady danced about while her body was filled with an animation of a fractal. That is always cool. Ola Vasiljeva's Michael Jackson Teaches Birds to Sing was short and rather unfocused. Didn't like it much. Philippe Blanchard's Stupid Tricks 2 was many types of brilliant. Some of it dealt with endless motion with objects and others were balance tricks. Really lovely. Ara Peterson's Treetops. Uhm. I forget that one actually. Timo Katz's Whirr. Uhh that one as well, not memorable. Martha Colburn's Meet Me in Wichita was a really violent recreation of Wizard of Oz.

Then we had intermission. Yay! Go out into the sunlight. And then back in and snack a little.

The pre-show loop was by one of the Hooliganship boys, Christopher Doulgeris. It had a lot going on in it and it hurt my eyes a little. Amy Lockhart returned for Walk for Walk. Which. I don't remember. Wow a lot of these shorts were highly unremarkable. Isn't that a bad sign? I don't remember Bruce Bickford's Inversion Layer or Nicolas Pittman's Synaesthetics II. One of them I think had some really intense patterns that continued to hurt my eyes severely. Hooliganship included one of their videos which was a nice little musical short (I really dig there music). It was just way to short. And it moved abruptly into Chel White's Choreography for Copy Machine.



In full it is simply amazing, that 45 second clip does not do it justice. I'm surprised that technique isn't used more often in animation. It makes a beautiful result and seems quite efficient as well. The next four animations listed on my program don't ring a bell either (Jeff Krischen's Singsong, Gretchen Hogue's Forest of the Flowers, James Sumner's I Will Truck and Corey Lunn's Darn Dance). If I didn't have my program I would have no memory that this many clips played. E*Rock + Mumbleboy's Superheroz started to annoy me as it went on. It had some great potential but then it would switch back to the same dull Superhero head change. Some great snippets but they were too short and far between. Finally, Joanna Priestley's Candyjam was a delicious treat (har har bad pun) to go out on. Excellent stop motion animation in combination with drawn out scenes.

Some pieces weirded me way way out, others were delightful and gave me a good laugh.

The whole event was at Clinton Street Theatre, which is in South East Portland. I rarely go past 5th in West Side, let alone cross a bridge and go into the 20's on the East Side. I should go there more often, it is nice, flat, and relatively low traffic and the instant I crossed Hawthorne Bridge a fellow cyclist complimented me ("I don't know what I like better, your leg warmers or your helmet"). The directions I got for getting to the theatre were designed for cars and so I couldn't take the proper exit to get onto 3rd from the bridge. It was easy enough to loop back around and under the bridge (safely of course) and get onto 3rd, which became Division and then turn on 25th and end on Clinton.

I left an hour before the show so I would have plenty of time (I have no way to tell how long something will take me to bike ride if it is out of Downtown/Pearl/Chinatown/Alphabet District) and I managed to score a pretty sweet thing-to-lock-my-bike-to. I didn't see anyone I knew (besides the Hooliganship guys but I don't really "know" them) so I nabbed a spot in the second row. I had twenty minutes to go till the show. Daniel, Rob and a girl I didn't know but knew she went to PNCA were there but they didn't sit with me. Jon was also in attendance and sat in front of me for the first part (don't know where he went during intermission as I didn't see him for the second part or when we got out). I didn't sit alone, and the people next to be were both very friendly.

I took a leisurely ride home from the theatre. Sunday is a great time to bike around Portland; I think I will try and take more meandering bike rides. I think my distance for today was in the 9-10 mile range.

Then for the rest of today I was really tired.

odd blind note

My blind date was interesting. For the first part of the day Adam and I were with Karen and her boyfriend Nathan; who was very abrasive and a self-proclaimed jerk. So that set the day off on an odd note. Wandered through Chinatown, went to a Starbucks and then went back to Karen's place. We dropped Nathan off and we three ventured out on our own. We went to a church bazaar that had some neat little trinkets and some cool purses made out of books and old board games. We drove down to Hawthorne Street and did some more wandering. Lots of hip stores and weird things on sale. There's a Coldstone exactly across the street from a Ben and Jerry's. Tough competition. We went to the Baghdad for lunch, it took them a while to get our drinks but not so long to get our food. The sandwich was decent but needed to be toasted. My hot cocoa came from a packet.

After Hawthorne we dropped Karen off at Lloyd Center (where she works) and went to see a movie. Nothing was playing in the Mall's theatre at a good time so we went to the adjacent one. The only one playing right at the time we were there was Dan in Real Life (Dane Cook AND Steve Carell, bleh). Actually it was a little better than I expected but still overall, not that good. Any sense of real emotion came in small little amounts, but I guess the main surprise came from me not wanting to totally punch out Dane Cook every time he was on screen (I really don't like that guy).

Then we wandered around the mall for a bit chatting and looking at books in Barnes and Noble. at around 8:45ish we parted ways at the Max station.

I had fun but it was a little awkward due to the note the day started out on.