trading Japanese comics for Italian ones

Ahhh Friday. My designated do nothing day. Time to sleep in, take it easy, and let the week digest.

Katie had a job interview so we didn't get to the Leaky Roof till about 4:30. We didn't get our booth or have Shelly serve us, but the hot guy waiter. Turns out he is really grumpy and not good. It's no fun to be an unrecognized regular. Still we had a nice chat and devoured our burgers.

We walked to Powell's later on. I brought some of my old Manga to sell and got 18 bucks in credit, which I applied to The Dylan Dog Case Files. I didn't like Kevyn Aucoin's other book Face Forward. It had really bad design. Saw Barry in the store. After there we went to Spartacus, the local goofy lingerie shop. Katie was picking up some things for the Bachelorette party. A mother came in with her sons. Her sons looked no older than 13. What kind of 6th grader wants to go with his mother while she buys naughty lingerie? Weiiird.

I enjoyed a Curly Wurly on the walk back to the Goose. Been enjoying a lot of the sweets in the care package. Need to pick up some milk so I can make some of the box pasta for myself.

The lipstick stayed intact for pretty much the whole day. Now that is long lasting.

bag blogger, no biscuit

Last night Blogger decided it wasn't going to work. I kept getting error messages and a code to use to report my error. But they didn't give me any contact information as to where I should report my error. Tried for an hour and then just wrote my entry in a word document and went to bed.

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And now Blogger is telling me I can't just copy and paste. Argh.

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Sometimes I find it odd when Martin says the quick, three hours pieces are more powerful than the three week ones. Wore my red lipstick and it was highly complimented. The manifesto review went well. Well for me and Danny and Rachel and Kristin. Not that the others did horribly but there was some struggle. Beth and I misread the assignment and did 3 manifestos as opposed to three ideas for one. Still, I did at least two ideas for each. The David Lynch and Kaiser Chiefs were well received. Each had a clear idea to go on with. I think I’ll go with the David Lynch. Next week will just be drawing portraits of him and making sure I can represent him.

Kristin and I went to Miso Sushi. It was good sushi. Very fresh. Took a little while to get it, but it was worth the wait. Doesn’t have the funky tasting rice that Sushi Land has.

Rest of class was spent working on a photoshop project. Scanning in the language of our sketchbooks and manipulating them around and making a new image. Not painting, just collaged. Sort of slacked but Martin kept a strong eye so I didn’t entirely blow it off. He showed off R Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis. Learned some new things about classmates. Good things but nothing that is my place to write in here.

A Chipotle opened up near school and were having free burritos as a grand opening. Stood in the long line behind some PNCA people. Actually the line was half PNCA people. The free burritos were from 5-7 and classes got out right at 5. Heh.

Ate half of it for dinner. Other half will be breakfast. Caught up on my television. I’m really excited for So You Think You Can Dance. What a twist that the girl dropped out and the husband and wife got to be on the show together. Wheee. Mollee is adorable. I don’t like seeing the first people go. I think it might be one of the tap dudes. Glee had an awesome episode. Puck’s internal monologue is some of my favorite in the show.

Burger Friday is tomorrow. Have to make a comic run soon before I run out of my illustration money. Then drawing! Another 4-10 page rough draft due Monday. I can’t wait to put my red lipstick on again.

I love a red lip

Didn't get much sleep but I didn't nod off once. Amazing.

We finished the Richard Pryor stand up. And then we talked about history and trying to get from Miller's Tale to stand up. Barry credits stand up as an American invention and mentioned how many cultures don't have a stand up practice.

The first 7 minutes was spent rigging Christmas lights around the projector display. The next 20 was spent looking at this very naughty print from the 1500s. I would post it but I think that would get me another email from mom, even though it is art. It was very explicit and I heard the artist was exiled a couple times. We learned extensively about Callot and Rembrandt. Talked about Musketeers and Wishbone and how Robin is out for blood ever since she was called a rule follower.

Daniel, Diana, and I went to Laughing Planet for lunch. I wasn't starving so I just had a quesedilla. Another pal joined us and we talked and gabbed and conversed. Then went back and learned. I ran out of interesting things to say during lunch and rambled during class.

Walgreen's did not have the Covergirl type of lip stuff that I wanted. They just had the second stuff that didn't review as well. So I went with Revlon because that is what I've been using. I decided to go with a very not subtle color: Ultimate Wine. It is RED. But I think it suits me. It goes with my eyes but isn't too orange for my skin. I put it on and was amazed. Lasted flawlessly through yoga. We were in room 204. Hillary, Ingrid, Tatum, the other girl, the other other girl, and Raquel. Oh and me. A fine bunch of ladies. I did quite well. I'm amazed at how fast yoga time flies.

Got my illustration homework done. I'm not sure how I feel about the Manifesto's though. They are not really political at all. Not sure how well that will go over. I'll see tomorrow. I have Kaiser Chief song lyrics, David Lynch, and Yoga.

real hard at work here

Every Monotype class, we start with reviewing last weeks prints. My major one is under the care of Martin so I didn't get any feedback. We then went onto a viscosity technique demo. You roll a plate with a layer that is saturated with oil and then draw into it with something that removes the viscosity. Like a piece of cardboard. Then you roll onto it with a different color that is much thicker and due to the difference in viscosity, the different color will only stick where there isn't the different stuff. It will stick to where it is clean. I thought it was pretty cool and worked on two prints. The first assignment was an image with yarn, a bird, and a candle. I drew Tarryn tripping over yarn trying to get a shuttlecock (a birdie) and a swarm of birds gets in the way. Oh and she has candles attached to her head. I only drew her there because she was there. I rolled and carved into it twice to define the lines more. A lot of her face got lost because I didn't go over it a second time. But it ended up with a cool aged affect. I asked Chris the tech to sit and I drew a quick sharpie portrait of him on the back of a plate and traced into that. I removed and rolled four times before I printed. It was a cool combination of monotype and my own drawing methods. A great combination and it looked like him. I might continue with this method.

Lunch was leftovers int he library. Madeline, Bekka, Robyn, Rachel, Terry and I sat in the couch area and gabbed about TV. Terry talked about the mixed messages some of the thesis people gave him during mid term review. We all talked about Buffy and a Whedonverse all out battle and who would win (Cordelia if she never came back from heaven was the main choice). And other nerdy things.

After class I went to Nordstrom's to check out the makeup counters. Katie gave me pricing misinformation. While I loved the colors it was both twice what she said and plus five dollars. All I want is a good color of long lasting lipstick/lipgloss/lipwhatever. I've been using her kind and I like it but it is hers and there is not much left. I was polite but told them it was out of my price range (using my illustration money, but I don't want to use bloody half of it, or even a fifth). Got home and googled Cover Girl. Then I got sucked into their website. You can input all your colors (skin, hair, eye) and then they tell you the best matches. Ahg. Spent way too long deciding between Spiced Satin and Red Satin. Anyhoo, I'm going to swing by Walgreen's tomorrow between class and yoga.

Drew a birthday picture for Bekka. Katie wanted an X-Files "I Want To Believe" poster for her studio so I drew her one as a present. It's got Luna flying in the sky instead of the space craft. Katie loved it. Also worked on homework. Reading, drawing, sketchbooking. You know. I'm still doing a Bonnard print, but I think I changed it to the one of the chick with Champagne.

Lie to Me was good. Recognized Garret Dillahunt from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford almost immediately. Very distinct but still talented. Worked on some portrait sketches.

cult of flair

There are care packages and then there are care packages. My latest was the latter. Two boxes of Pocky, two Choco Panda, two botan rice candy, three pasta box, two rice thingies, two peeps, three jars of tuna, potatoes, kitchen scrubber, cookies, chocolate, Tiger's Milk, and even more. The only thing it was missing was those fruit leather things. But still, a huge box of food goodness. Consumed half of the rice almond dish for dinner tonight. Mmm.

The narrative image critique was relatively harmless. Daniela gives us another week to work on stuff if we so desire. You know, time to include what we learned in critique and all that.

Lunch was a bagel. Looked at books. Talked to Josh and Jay a bit. Wrote up my analysis. Printed it out.

After lunch we got into two groups and read our allegory's out loud. Danny's rhymed. Kristen's was cheesy but fit perfectly. Bryan's was comic book dialogue and read in a way that he is always known for. Natalie's was recited at a mile a minute. Robyn's was a nice little tale of twins. The other group was full of giggles and guffaws and was very loud. We had to close the door.

The next assignment is about character construction. Mary, the other teacher when it comes to writing exercises, had us write character traits on sheets and pass them around till we had something really goofy. Then we had to write a day in the life of the one we got. Then we had to come up with our own one, if we wanted. Finally we took a personality test, to further put home how much needs to be considered in our personalities. Mine came up that I was neither totally neat or messy, artistic, low in patience and was a little bit mean and anxious. Err yeah.

Killed time on the Internet while waiting for 6:30 to roll around. Well before killing time I went to Office Max. Had to get a new reem of bristol paper. It's good to have a sturdy general drawing paper around. There is this type of pen put out by Paper Mate called Flair. Very specific. Danny and Bryan clued me into them. What they lack in nib refinement, they make up for with bleeding. Normally bleeding is bad, but these pens do it so evenly that you can do a line drawing and go back into them with a water brush and add fast ink washes with no clean up. Hurrah! They only came in 12 packs, so I think I'll give one to Diana now that she also has a waterbrush. I love getting new art toys.

I was quite successful at yoga today. Got into the lunges and all that. Today's class roster was: Miss Mona, Alise, Jenna, Kayla, and Ingrid. Thinking about adding some yoga manifesto to the project. There are a lot of mantras.

No rain. Made myself dinner and played with ink washes. Watched only House.

I felt really good about my appearance today. My hair was in a side part and braided at the nape of my neck, but only a couple twists of a braid. The hair that wasn't long enough to get caught in the braid hung in waves over the side of my face and my makeup was pretty superb. I felt really good. Long hair is nice but sometimes it gets so bushy.

Trobriand Marriage Ceremony - Monotype

Monotype. Don't know exact size but vertical the plate was around 22"-24".

workday (finally)

Slept in but I managed to keep a good working streak once I got on with it.

In order I:
-Read The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr. It was quite good. One of my favorites of the non comic required reading. Created a beautiful sense of imagery using the senses beyond sight (the main character was blind).
-Finished painting for the allegory. They are okay. I should have done them better though.
-Drew sketchbook responses for the reading.
-Worked on allegory.

Still working on the last thing. It will be a long night, but I don't have to get up till 10.

The last episode of Mad Men was intense. My jaw dropped when Betty found the key. So unbelievably intense.

Nibbled lots of sunflower seeds. Ate two pasta dinner. Well two smaller portions. One with Alfredo, the other with tomato sauce.

One of my manifestos will come from David Lynch. I know that much.

Yesterday, at 2:17pm I realized that the office closes at 2:00pm. Have to wait till Monday to get my care package. Or Tuesday if they don't open before 11am.

read girl read

I had Katie wake me up at 10. So I wouldn't sleep through most of the morning and into the afternoon. It worked! Got up at 10:30. We ate breakfast (she made bacon and eggs and toast) and I introduced her to The Avengers. She was both awed and confused.

Last night I finished Doug Dorst's Alive in Necropolis. I bought it because I thought it would have tons of ghost action. In general, all the ghosts took a secondary plot it seemed. They didn't affect the town that much and the true climax of the book had nothing to do with them. Don't buy it if you want ghosts. The main character of Mike Mercer was well enough described, but everyone else fell fairly flat. It had some good moments but I wouldn't really recommend it any time soon.

I worked on my required reading for class. One of them printed at the tiniest font possible. I got about five pages in and then started to fall asleep.

Here are some awesome posters: