with great rain comes great rain pants

Just got home about half an hour ago. Really long day. But it didn't feel like a long day, actually I feel great. I am on top of things and working hard. Still, spending thirteen hours at school? That makes for a very long Friday.

The day started with rain. At first I thought "dang" but then I remembered I have my rad rain pants and so the journey wasn't that bad.

My comic lit class, the conversation is mostly dominated by one guy. He knows what he is talking about and is really into comics but doesn't let up for the other people that often. We talked about McCloud and I spoke up a couple times. During the break I talked to Trevor (the teacher) about the imagination creating horror and how that makes it that much more effective when utilized in films (instead of just showing all the gore). Then we watched a video about the history of superheroes, as we won't be studying any superheroes this time around. Cool, if a little cheesy, video. Didn't know how much went on during the ages of superheroes. Wow!

Then during my hour break I completed a print. It ended up pretty cool; it was a blue black print on the paper and that works a great deal better than the warmer bone black ink. I could have done a second but I didn't want to rush it so I checked my email and went off to work.

I keep thinking I am forgetting to do something at work because I always finish up my tasks super early. I sweep, I scrub the bathrooms, I check the paper towel and toilet paper levels, I change out the trash...I must be missing something? Anyway, it gave me time to read Crooked Little Vein. Yeah, Ellis should stick to graphic novels. It isn't that bad but it isn't this magnificent feat of a novel. It is almost funny but not quite. I'll see how it finishes.

Then I spent an hour and a half in the print lab. I had to replace the blanket in the press and the pressure was off so my first print was a little light. The second was much better but still a little wonky. The blue black ink is giving me issues...or maybe my hands are really oily. But anyway, I am ahead on my printing so that is really cool. I only needed one proof for next week and now I have four (three blue, one brown). Well...one of them is light so it is more like three. But still, three. I am on top of things! Yeah!

Jim also called me and set me up to be part of a focus group. So that is cool. Jim works calling people and asking if they want to be in focus groups. It is paid as well, booyah!

After printing and the focus group call I headed off to movie night. It has been moved down to just one movie now and they are actually good movies. Tonight’s was Basquait. It was really sad and the lack of music seemed to detract a little from the film but overall it was very touching and I wanted to cry at more than one point. And you can't go wrong with David Bowie.

After the movie Jack and I went to Urban Grind and I grabbed flavored steamed milk and we chatted for a while before departing each others company.

I rode home, made myself some spaghetti and sauce, and now I am kicking back to watch Lost.

I left at 7:45am and returned at 9:20 pm.

fear & frustration

Today was...difficult. I did the assignment for Modou somewhat wrong. The first part was right but I didn't know the second part also had to be done on the same sized paper so I have to redo that. I do not like doing assignments wrong when I attend class and pay full attention. Not at all. He is also not above saying what he thinks, calling you out, and humiliating you in front of the class. I wasn't outright humiliated but it still wasn't fun being told I was wrong. He said worse things to other people ("You came late so this is no good.") but I'm still distressed about it.

We did still lifes and then we were told to find the animals in the things we had been drawing. I saw a scorpion/whale/platypus/anteater all in the same teakettle. And Ibanez and a camel in this fancy silver teapot. I forgot how to draw most of those with any sense of realism so really only the chubby platypus turned out. Modou liked them so I guess I passed.

I walked Lindsay to work and swung by Powell's to pick up The Time Traveler’s Wife. Yay for having lots of copies and a few on super sale.

Didn't spend much time at home. Ate Trader Joe's cheese puff and watched the new Lost episode online. Pretty good start, interested in seeing more. Very mysterious with the Charlie and parachuting person stuff.

I met with Lennie about studying abroad. Belgium does not have a summer program so I am going to make Pont-Aven in France my main focus. It seems cool. We had a great meeting concerning my options. Yeah I'm rather pissed at PNCA. They seemed to punish me for registering early by adding a first unit of Illustration to this semester. I will be here for three years but my last year I will probably be part time. Right now I am looking at studying abroad in Belgium at Hogeschool Sint-Lukas for a semester in my Junior year. This is something I have to think about now so I am not leaving it to the last minute. Like I am doing with France.

After the meeting I quickly wrote up my still life sum up for painting, grabbed a bite to eat, and hobbled off to class. Well not so much hobble as shove my way through the throng of smokers.

The final touch on my still life was to add a background but the wash looked horrible so I am not so keen on it. I think it looked best three-fourth of the way complete. Oh well. Happens. Sat between Jen and Karen and we had a fun old time in the back row singing songs and exchanging words.

The weather was just horrible enough that Lindsay and I couldn't be bothered to leave the apartment for First Thursday. Karen came over and we drew and chatted and I added an idea to Lindsay's idea book. I made gyoza which was enjoyed thoroughly.

Karen left and then I noticed the time and remember I had yet to write my summary of Understanding Comics for class so here I am blogging late at night after staying up working on that. I'll be tired tomorrow and I have a fair amount lined up to do:
Comic Class!
(Printmaking probably)
Work!
(more printmaking probably)
Movie night!

Leave at 7:45 am, get home at 8:30pm ish.

juice lifts the spirit

Just finished my drawing homework. Lindsay had a music mix and I had a music mix. All in all, very awesome. We each drew continually for ten minutes on a piece of paper and then drew from the patterns that we found. Lindsay made a whole band, I had a couple little things but I dunno. I'll see more tomorrow...probably.

The rain on the way back was terrible. I am really out of practice for both putting a plastic bag over my seat and remembering my rain pants. Oddly enough, the rain didn't bother me in the least. Even though it was coming down quite hard I still went out of my way to Trader Joe's and made it home with a smile on my face. The smile was due mostly to the grocery run. I picked up juice! I love juice. Well it was more lemonade this time around so maybe I should say I love sweet non-carbonated beverages in large jugs that I can enjoy in any amount I desire. Safeway no longer has the juice I love. During Printmaking I decided to go to Trader Joe's so I think that thought kept me motivated for the dreary ride. I also picked up cheese puffs. Love them.

Learned two new techniques in Printmaking. Sugarlift and Soft Ground. Not sure how much I remember from either technique but once I get working on them I can write more about them. I have ideas for the Sugarlift plate and maybe the Soft Ground. Very exciting. I also managed to run off two more prints from my plate, after I etched in further detail. The waffle knit etch on the girls shirt looks GREAT. Far exceeded my expectations. The dots on the mans shirt are subtle but effective. I'm very thrilled with it and can't wait to run off a series. I did one test on newsprint with the new etching and a proof on good paper. The ink was uneven for the proof but Yoshi digged it.

Left a little early from the Goose and picked up some printing paper from the nice people at Art Media.

Comic Club had its first meeting of the year. The regular folks were there plus Jen and August. We wolfed down 5 Dominos pizzas. Tasty. I think they were mediums though. We talked about the zine and random things. Not very exciting but off to an okay start.

Printmaking takes up most of my Wednesday. I love Wednesday.

Professor Plum, in the Drawing Room, with a Revolver.

Clue Night was super fun! We were not playing it exactly right the first couple times and so the games went really fast. Tabitha is a crazy Clue player! She won most of the time. The last two games I had figured out 2/3 of the crime but she always beat me to the last one. Tabitha and Chelsey (I have been spelling it Chelsea, when it is in fact Chelsey. Whoops) did not come with a costume but the rest of us made up the difference with sheer awesome.

Jim was Colonel Mustard, Kristen was Mrs. Peacock (though seemed more Madame Rose in her execution). Karen was Miss Scarlett. Karen made us smoothies and I made some cupcakes which were enjoyed muchly. I employed the same use of self decoration that went over so well at my birthday. Diana had essays and Robin was sick so they couldn't make it. Mel was there for about 2 minutes, she had other things to do I guess. Oh well, maybe next time.

My Professor Plum outfit consisted of high waisted dark blue Jon Valdi trousers (courtesy of Auntie Celia), suspenders, a purple top, a sash tied into a bowtie, novelty glasses, brown pointy shoes (also thanks to Celia), and a drawn on stache. Oh yeah, I was rocking.

Okay, on with the rest of the day. Lindsay was sick so she couldn't attend class. Also six other people could not attend class so it was just eleven people total. Most of the time we drew painfully boring still lifes and spent a few minutes each continually drawing on this one big piece of butcher paper. I brought in my bear rug, expecting to talk about culture and use it as an example, but we never brought the subject up. Not the most interesting class but not the worst. The next few weeks seem exciting.

Riding home was hell. My art travel tube is a pain to go anywhere with because it doesn't really stay secure on ones shoulder. It kept sliding down my arm along with my shoulder bag and I had to keep stopping, in the rain, to adjust it. I really hate that tube, most of the time it just isn't worth it. Need to figure out how to make it not be such a horrible contraption. I was right pissed off when I finally returned home. But once I settled in, all was well fairly quickly. I baked cupcakes for tonight and chatted with Lindsay. She just had a random short illness it would seem. Hmmn.

Painting was of a still life of our own choosing. I put together freaky fish, Zaphod, Sluggy, my pink necklace, and Fab 1 into a little composition. I only managed to fill in most of Fab 1, half the necklace, and freaky fish. The fish looks awesome but I am a far cry from being finished with it. Really I just wanted to get home so I could become Plum and enjoy Clue. We had a brief look over of our still lifes from the past week. My white one looks pretty nice actually, I might have a future in this watercolor business (ha yeah right). Next week we will be moving on to gouache. Joy.

The second ride was easy peasy. Put on my costume, grabbed the cupcakes, and hauled it up stairs to get my game on! Yeah!

our culture, our bearskin rug

I made a bearskin rug tonight. It represents our(Lindsay's and mine) culture. Well, really it is a sheet of left over butcher paper cut(by Lindsay) into a bear shape and sharpied partially by her but mostly by me to look like fur. Actually, it is pretty damn fantastic looking. I am going to bring it into class tomorrow. I hope I don't chicken out and don't show it.

Art History is fantastic at 11:00 am. I can't believe I survived it at 8:00am for a whole semester. Blimey. Learned a great deal about the slow shift into more realistic art.

During lunch I went to the Pont-Aven lecture which was cancelled. Lennie gave a brief synopsis anyway (one person who was going to talk about it wasn't able to come). I think I will apply to it as well. There might not be a Belgium summer program.

I printed out my forms and corrected images for my digital portfolio. Be a great deal easier if I had photoshop on this computer but I left my disk at home. Oh well.

Went home and relaxed for the rest of the day. Tried to watch some of Lynch's Inland Empire and I became really lost just 15 minutes in and it is a three hour movie. I will give it another shot tomorrow.

suddenly a nap appears

I am nearing 200 posts worth of (almost) daily blogging. I think once I get to the one year mark, that will be really something.

Lazed about for the start of the day. I started watching some of David Lynch's video shorts. Really strange things. I wonder why he isn't brought up more in my textbooks and classes. I put a thin blanket over our ugly couch and draped one of my bed sheets over my book shelf. I think I was having a Christo moment.

I started reading Epileptic and then decided to take a nap. Then before I knew it, it was 6:30 and I had not taken any photos. I had to reformat the memory stick because it was set up for a Mac but once I got that out of the way taking pictures of my portfolio was a snap. Now I just need to correct them in photoshop. And now that I have the images, I can upload more art and make this an actual art blog!

After photo taking, Lindsay and I sat down and had another talk about culture for our class. We have been having many talks and we are still not quite there. After our talks I wrote up my essay for Art History that is due tomorrow(an ungraded essay).

This School Week in Portland:
Mon: Pont-Aven summer study abroad lecture during lunch
Tues: Clue Night
Wed: Return of Comic Club
Thurs: Meeting with Lennie about studying abroad
Fri: Return of Art Film Night

And all through that I have lots of stuff to sort out for studying abroad.

bag it up

Collage and game night at Karen's went long. I got home at around 3:00am and decided to just go to bed instead of pushing myself to stay up later and blog.

Anyway, yeah. Hanging with Karen is so fun and awesome. She had a great place and the company is awesome. Smaller crowd this time. When I came over Robin and Karen were watching the new Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley. It was really pretty but it didn't grab me. Plus it seemed like Mr. Darcy was stalking her. Jim came over after the movie was done and we sat about chatting and munching on food. When it got late we started to play Payday and that ended up being really fun actually. Karen has a great deal of really old games. There was also more talk of the upcoming Clue Night and a general comic making collective outside of the club.

I didn't get around to taking photos; those will be done today. There was a get together for the Goose Hollow people that Karen was hosting as part of her RA duties. These girls made some comment about the Styrofoam plates that were there for use. Something along the lines of, "Don't they know we are art students?” After those girls left I broke out the Apples to Apples and we played for a good two hours. I met some cool new people and we had lots of fun.

After I helped Karen bring the leftovers back to her place we went out for a walkabout. I saw a cute guy on the streetcar and we talked a little about comics but his friend showed up and royally blew it. We checked out a mediocre record store and then went to Powell's. Mostly I wanted to see if a couple reference books were cheap there but they were not. I did find a great book about people, their bags, and what they keep in their bags. The book itself is a bag. I loved it and ended up getting it. The book is really well designed and I have been showing it off as much as I can.

Took a little break after hanging with Karen to grab some eats. James came by and dropped off the comics I had lent him and I gave him back the ones he had lent me. Nice little trade off. I ate some left overs and lounged, completely forgetting to set up for taking photos. Oh well. Karen called me and so I went up and had lots of fun. I promise staying up late won't become regular. It sure is fun though.