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Friday, April 11, 2008

fresh princess of Bel Aire

Lindsay got into the juried show at PNCA. Go her, she totally rocks!

A wee early for a blog but hey, why not? I'm going out tonight so I might as well make it early rather than late.

Comic Lit ended with a brilliant debate about the inclusion of 9/11 to the Marvel/DC universes. It was the first real debate, everyone rather agreed up until then. Turned in my paper, drank tea, talked about Super Spy, listened to presentations, watched the rest of the documentary we started at the beginning of class, and debated. It was fun.

I left my key card at home so I had to do a quick circle back to get it. A brilliant day so the bike ride was very enjoyable. Work went fast and things got clean. Afterwards I went to check out my first apartment!

It ended up being two places actually. The first was at the Portland Tower. The actual studio wasn't open she showed me around a little so I could get the feel. Pros: nice 50's building that keeps up with renovations. Quiet seeming community. Just enough off Burnside but still really really close to everything. I have roof access apparently. Opening in time for me to move out. Cons: two burners, small fridge, and no oven. Only one studio opening on the second floor. A little pricey.

The second place was the Bel-Aire apartments. It is on Burnside. Little building and it got really quiet once I was inside (but I don't know how it will be at night). Self locking doors so really secure. Pros: full stove and larger fridge. A little closer by a block. Cheaper. More studios opening in May. Cons: Right on a main road. Mostly a view of a parking lot.

The lady I talked to was awesome and were open to showing me around. I like these places. Right now I am weighing pricey and small kitchen but slightly nicer area and building versus cheaper with full kitchen in a not so great place.

Went home, picked up Lindsay's black light, ate some pasta, read some of Alan Moore's From Hell (holy crap this is a dense comic), and looked through my closet and picked out my house warming party outfit!

Right now it seems to be: white chucks + blue knee high socks + black leggings + floral mini dress + orange Henley underneath + the cuteness that is Trillian. It might be a bit warm but it is fun and it will be colder by the time I go out. It has been insanely nice today, I hope it keeps through the weekend.

1:40am update:
Back from the party. It was fun and I knew a majority of the people that were there. I was the first and met Nicole's two roommates. Then came Natalie and Brian. Matt, Craig, Tricia, and Jason came in a group. Sean Carney and a friend were there. The guy who remembers my name but sadly I do not remember his name, he was there with his boyfriend. Andy was there. Michael (one of the MFA, not the Michael mentioned previously) was there for a bit with his kids. Another MFA whose name escaped me was there. BT and a girl who is in my comic class were there. Aidan delivered Pizzas and joined us later. There was about 3-6 people who I didn't know that breezed through during it all.

I mingled and chatted with most. Nerded it up. We watched the original Night of the Living Dead with Sean and Jason doing voice overs. I also watched Venture Brothers for the first time (hilarious). Nicole's place is great. They have the bottom half of a house. Huge kitchen, living room, work room, two bathrooms and three bedrooms. And they painted their own walls!

Yeah, I'm so cool.

don't forget to blog

Two hundred and fifty blog posts in this thing now. This one is going to be a shorty, probably.

Took me forever to go through Piercing and figure out what parts I want to do. I have it now. For sure. Yes.

Experiments in Drawing was super fun today. We had a model(Flora) and we were allowed to draw her with whatever medium and in whatever way we wanted. The goal is to do a large drawing made up of parts of our figure studies. The goal was to be experimental with how we portrayed her. I tried different line width, weight, and values. I worked mainly with blue ink washes (the last one was sharpie) and the quick lines really spoke to me. It was a great class period, I hope we do more of the same. I was doubly amazed at my skills today.

I went home and watch Artemisia. What an amazing woman, not that amazing of a movie. Sure it was powerful but I don't think it did justice to the detail of some of her work.

Also I emailed and called my way part way through the list of apartment buildings. Left my number on the machines at most of them. I have a viewing tomorrow, and a maybe that I need to figure out my move out date. I really want to stick to the West side. Craigslist is mostly East side places. It comes down to living with someone in a house across the river versus a studio on this side.

Painting was the first class period to work on our finals. I finished up the portrait of Llyw. It looks great. The invented color works nicely, he has a real mass in relation to the wall, there are dark darks and light lights. I am really pleased with this portrait. Only a couple more to go now!

Went home and chilled. Called a few more places. Ate some food. Stressed. Went through Piercing trying to figure out what to adapt. Called mom. Stressed some more after that. Wrote up my proposal for class. Tomorrow Nicole is having a house warming party. That'll be fun.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

I drink [my] milkshake

Yoga was cancelled today! Nooo! I'm all tense and stiff, I need the bending! So instead of getting bent I made my comic run. Got the new issue of The Boys(awesome) and Doktor Sleepless(need to get caught up). Daniel and his beard were in the shop as well so we chatted about comics. He suggested some and said he would loan them to me so I didn't have to buy them. What a swell guy. One of the indie comics, The Clouds Above by Jordan Crane(actually it is a children's book), caught my eye when Daniel pointed it out. It has such beautiful artwork and color (Crane is a printmaker, or so they say) that I picked it up on the spot.

I didn't etch or print in Printmaking. I mostly viewed another long long demo and worked on correcting my plates. I added hard ground to one, aquatint and hard ground to another, and smoothed down the bigfoot one. Now it will have a shadow of the old image when I redo it. Actually I think the leave have potential to be quite cool and airy.

I gave a little speech on Gerald Scarfe. It wasn't the best. I should have practiced more. Passed around my tome of an art book.

Comic club was more pizza and more jamming. Not as awesome as the last jam but still quite fun. We finally got paper for our own utilization. Now we just need to compile the comics into a zine.

Hung around school looking at places and contacting a few people about them. I need to bike around North Portland a bit to see how far I can go and what is an actual reasonable distance. I have no sense of biking time and space when it comes to other areas. I should learn. If the weather is nice on Saturday I might go out.

I came home, did my laundry, got some groceries, made a milkshake, had dinner, read some comics, and generally relaxed. Miss my yoga. She offered a makeup on Sunday.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

THE LIST

It is 10:20pm Tuesday night. I have three things left on my "oh my God I'm stressed out with all that I have to do" list. The first isn't due until Friday and that is a proposal. I just have to figure out what part of the book I am adapting. No biggie. The second is figuring out what to do for my Art History piece. I already have an idea, I just need to sketch it out and start on it. Also no biggie. The third is just a general, "I need to print" memo.

In short: I have passed by the major stressful assignments. I have the painting rewrite in. I have a good chunk done on my sequential piece. I wrote my paper on Gerald Scarfe and selected images from my artbook to show the class. I have my stone etched. I am ready to take on Finals Month.

So Experiments in Drawing was mostly discussion. Is just talking about a concept art in itself? How do you price work? And some other stuff. I contributed a little less to the conversation than normal. It was really hard to jump in as I kept having people talk over me. This was true for a couple people. Mmmm. I walked back home with Lindsay. It was raining slightly but that was okay.

I perused Craigslist for apartments and ate some lunch. I want to move out after this semester so now is the time to look. Hard to find a place when you are a student with no income (seeing as how I won't have my custodian job when this semester ends). I went in early to talk to the lady at housing. She gave me some lists of places to call and other print outs. It is a pretty long list, must be a few cheap places open.

After that I sort of threw together a better proposal. I'm still not solid on it but I think I can make it work with a more careful choice in my subject matter (who I paint and how I present them).

Painting was spent working on my mountain men piece. They are dancing around a fire at night and the drumming mountain men catches a wink from one of the dancing mountain ladies. Charlie digs it.

Returned and picked up some library things. I have some open time to relax now. Whoo! Need to take it, because it will be crunch time soon.

Final Project List/Things to Finish by Finals:
Art History: Renaissance to WWII: Piece influenced by Art History/Final Test/Final Paper on a piece in the Portland Art Museum
Experiments in Drawing: Presentation of a concept. No piece produced, just an idea and have that be art (yeah, I don't know either. Somewhere along the line the "drawing" part was forgotten from the title).
Painting Techniques for Illustrators: Sequential painting. Series of portraits that reflect a timeline of my life.
Printmaking: Intaglio & Lithograph: Finish first stone and six prints. Second stone, two color prints of currently unknown number. Rework old plates and produce some more prints.
Illuminating Manuscripts: Comics, Strips, and Graphic Novels: Read and respond to Alan Moore's From Hell. Produce my own comic (I am illustrating in comic form a scene from Ryu Murakami's Piercing).

That's it.

task master (I wish)

Whoo! I am back on task!

I have a good restart on my sequential painting. I just emailed Daniel about the comic jam and anthology. I did half of my experiments in drawing assignments (I didn't quite know what was assigned for the other half, I'm not too worried). I have some ideas about my rewrite, but that isn't on the deadline yet. Yup. Still frustrated but getting less so. Now that I have my list. Always have to have that list.

Art history actually filled a class with great theory and interesting concepts. Libby got into a great monologue about her quest for the sublime. We looked at The Death of Marat. So powerful. Amazing to think the portrait was based after post-mortem etchings David did. MMmn.

Yoga had a couple new faces. It was unusually stressful on my shoulders today. Normally I don't have as much pain there but today it was hard to stand. I'm also really tense. Yoga is much needed!

I met with Martin French, my developmental advising dude, after class today. I think he likes me. My opinions on Modou were not totally one sided. I know what I need to work on and asked mainly how to seek them instead of deny or wait for him to point it out. He said that I have the potential to be a really great painter. It was a nice little meeting. And because I met with him on Monday, the first day and when he was all open, I got a special prize! A micron pen! Whooo!!

After my meeting I did the photoshop assignment for Modou. Didn't take that long. It also doesn't look much like a pencil drawing. Ehh. Yeah. That class is that class. It is what it is.

The nice weather is all gone so now I'm not over burdened by my sweaters and coats. I love my new bike route. So much more scenic. Much better view.

Hung out with Karen, Robin, and Jen tonight. We watching The City of Lost Children in the background (I have forgotten so much of that movie). It weirded them out a little. Then again, it is a movie that if you look away for 10 minutes and look back you are normally faced with some weird happening on screen. What can I say, it's French. I sketched and started painting my sequential. The lighting looks a lot better. The more dramatic, the easier it is.

Now I sleep a little easier. A little less stressed.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

frustrated I am

I don't like my painting. I'm going to just start over. It looks like crap. The color is washed out, or it is too thick and all wrong. I don't want to spend six hours trying to fix one piece when I have to do three. Wasted so much time on it. Thought it would be good. NUH UH.

Blegh.

Couldn't get a full night sleep. Ibanez kept bothering me. Lindsay is still gone.

I hate Sunday night. I am not ready for another week of school. I haven't even recuperated.

Transporter was a good action movie. Jason Statham invented whole new kinds of ass to kick. Read more Scott Pilgrim and got caught up with The Boys and finished American Virgin(what a horrible ending). That was fun.

Talked to mom about stuff.

I'm frustrated.

what a piece of work

I thought the first etch would take a long time to do. Turns out it only took me about 15 minutes. It is the other etch's that are much more time consuming. I over rubbed mine, or I did it too hard, and it became a little washed out. Actually, I thought some parts were too dark so I don't mind that that happened. I just wish I had more control and it was intentional that I did it that way. Oh well.

Got that done, I am way on top of things! Printmaking wise.

Since I got my paycheck I went to my local comic shop. I was only able to but Scott Pilgrim volume 4 and that was just because I had only my purse to fit it in. There was a new issue of The Boys out but I didn't want it to get wet (no larger bag to put it in). I am so going on Tuesday (or tomorrow...) to get it. Apparently Edgar Wright(Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Spaced) is in line to direct the Scott Pilgrim movie. The series isn't even done yet. He is a great director and I think he would fit nicely with the comic. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how great a comic it is. Go Bryan Lee O'Malley! You rock.

It was raining so I spent the rest of the day inside. Cleaned up. Snuggled with Ibanez. I took it easy because I didn't get a nice full sleep. Hopefully tonight I will. None of that waking up at 5am then 8:30, then 10:02 crap I've been having. OR FIRE ALARMS. Bah.

I picked up a package from Fedex for Karen. I've been her little helper on several occasions now.

Jim came over and hung out for a few hours. He uploaded his finished graphic novel onto my computer for my free reading enjoyment. It is around 150 pages I think, it was a big file. It has taken him five years to complete. Go Jim! But yeah, we hung about and looked at some stuff on youtube. I made us cheese steak sandwiches. He said they were quite tasty.

Nice to have some company. Lindsay has been out and about with her friends since Thursday afternoon (she has only been home once since then, and I didn't see her when she was).

My main Sunday goal is painting and emailing. Now that I have written it, I must follow through.