milestonearrific

1000th blog entry! Whooo!
That is a lot of writing. Hundreds of thousands of words.

Slept in. It is Friday so that is what I do on Friday. And Saturday. I'll probably try to set the alarm on Sunday so that getting up on Monday won't be such a pain.

Ate toast. The fire alarm went off so I had to stuff Luna in her cat carrier. Katie came back during the alarm so we chilled in her borrowed car a little while waiting for it to end. After that was all over we went for three dollar burgers! Shelly even remembered us after all these months we have been gone.

After dinner, I joined Katie in her errands and she also agreed to take me to this fabric place she knows, Fabrics for Less. We went to Camera World, but they didn't have the thing for her tripod that she needs. Fabrics for Less had a lot of silks, but not enough in the stretch jersey type that I want. I bought a couple zippers and we went to Goodwill to see if they had a handbag. They didn't.

Made myself a bowl of popcorn. Watched the last episode of New Amsterdam. Now to sip hot apple cider and point my eyes at some existentialist reading. Yay.

end of week

999th blog post!

We did wet media in The Figure. That is ink and brush and bamboo pen. I couldn't find my pen so I just used a brush, but Moran whittled the other end of my brush down and made it double ended! I wasn't too enthused by the things I did. The poses were very short so by the time a layer of ink wash had dried, it would be time to start over with a new pose. Oh well.

Illustration was an In Design demo and meet with Martin day. Mia gave us a demo about In Design, the program used for layout and book design. We made mock source book pages. They are pages that go into illustration books that are used for reference for hiring artists. So we made them for ourselves just to have practice. I only had the images on hand to make mine, but I am pretty happy with it. Large, bold and cropped.

I bought some lean cuisine and a root beer for lunch. Mmm. My semester plan meeting with Martin went really fast. Even though I finished my work early, I still hung around till 5. Chatted with Karen for a bit.

I'm working on another zine. Gave my classmates bits of paper to draw on, and once I get enough I will put them together in a silkscreened zine! Whoo!

I have shin splints real bad, probably from yesterdays hill filled day.

Got home. Ate food. Watched TV. Poured through my sewing patterns book. Started drawing designs. Getting ahead of myself a bit though. Need to get fabric.

Sent out some thank you cards as well. Yay!

Oh and did laundry. Tomorrow I shall rest and read. Yay!

mock sourcebook page

mock sourcebook* page

*sourcebook is an image resource for the promotion of artists

walking!! argh

Sleep. Glorious sleep.

All eight hours of it.

Got up at a decent time. Actually packed a decent amount of food. Sandwich, apple, slice of spiced apple bread that I made from a Trader Joe's mix, and a couple cookies. Enough to get me through the day.

For the first hour and a half of Homeland we talked about landscapes and their meaning.

Lunch was staple zine and cut the top offs time. Now I have a pile of zines! Hurray! Very cool.

Back in class we watched some Bob Ross, the "master" of landscape painting.

And then we walked.

We walked to the Max and realized we forgot Lana back at school. Oops. Took the max to Goose Hollow. Walked up the huge hill to the scenic bridge and then up to Washington Park. And then up to the Rose Garden. A lot of up hill walking, for well over a mile. I'm so out of shape. We left school at about 2:20 and got to the gardens at 3:10. We spent an hour drawing the landscape. Or attempting to do so, it got really cold really fast. At around 4pm we gathered and discussed the experience. And then we walked down the hill. Straight down the hill. Which was a much more direct way than the long way around that was the Goose Hollow direction. Because my bike was still at school, I joined the group returning to PNCA. Took the max for a little distance, but walked the rest of the way. Chatted with Kirsten (not Kristen).

Sat around for about half an hour relaxing. Did not want to bike home just yet. Chatted with Sandra, Tabitha, and Robin. Then I went home.

Pasta! Salami! Finishing Dexter season four!

Then illustration work. Wrote up my semester plan. It is very minimal but I feel good about it. Sketched my ideas out. I feel like I should do more, but I can't think of more right now. First project I am doing character sketches and a final image of an original character: Fanny Drazier, a maybe 20's era reporter/journalist. I'm excited about it. Another definite project will be a promo poster for Carmen.

Ahh so exhausted. Weekend is almost here! Damn, already looking forward to resting up.

wiped

Boy howdy am I tired. I was doing really fine but then it all caught up with me in the past hour.

The Figure! We Received a more in depth lecture about simple proportions and laying out the figure. Again, I was taught it but I wasn't following it very well. And class will be different. Tuesdays are tough and full of information, Thursdays will be fun and wet media. Anna was our model. She has a new tattoo and piercing. The tattoo is of the rocket Saturn V. Pretty cool. Class went fast.

Silk screen! We talked about our semester plans for an hour and a half. Mine are mostly mass production things. Little bits I can sell. Emphasis on many, not few. If that makes sense. I want to do a lot of projects, instead of a few larger ones.

I went to student council for lunch. I was there to represent and talk about yoga. The date and times of it are still up in the air, but I can't wait! Gotta get fit again. No more softy Trillian!

Photocopied and cut out my sketchbook drawings. Making a little zine so I had to get the images ready to be oiled up. A class came into the photocopy room so I couldn't finish. Thankfully the next two hours of class was lecture and demonstration. Lecture about a brief history of screenprinting. There was an image of these old stencils that used silk thread as structure. Previously the Japanese had used human hair. The demonstration was on this technique for printing multiple layer wash drawings and how to play with the exposure to get different levels of detail. I would love to do a print of that nature, just need a good subject matter (when in doubt, draw a cat).

In the meanwhile, I got my stencils ready and my screen prepped. Only needed one for my zine project as both of the stencils fit just fine. All this silkscreening stuff, it comes pretty natural to me now. I have my system down. When I started school, I caught a glimpse of the print lab and it just looked like a mass of confusing equipment and chemicals. Now it all makes sense. Funny where education will take a person.

Anyway, printed one side of my zine. Took a break. Walked with Karen to help her pick a studio. It was raining furiously. Walked back. Printed the other side. I used blue for one side and orangey red for the other. It looks decent. Not the best printing or the most professional. But pretty good for a little zine. I'll be mailing these out to some people in the coming week. Got them folded, they need to be stapled and cut. Whoo!

Chatted with Karen at Laughing Planet. I ate an apple. Go me and restraint!

It was raining all the way home. A car honked at me. I was pretty far over towards the shoulder and many other cars had gone past me. What a jerk. I wish that there had been a red light up ahead so that I could have broken his side mirror off with my bike lock and peddled away at high speed. Seriously, honking at bikers isn't going to make them bike faster. It will just distract them and probably make matters worse for you.

Ate rice and lettuce and salami for dinner. Yum! Read my readings. Well parts of it. I am starting to majorly doze off now. Good night sleep, here I come!

long class name is long

Turns out the Existentialism & Phenomenology class is really Existentialist Phenomenology. We will be reading Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. No Nietzsche or Kierkegaard.

Exactly the types of names and words a person wants to discuss at 8am on a Monday. Melissa, Deanna, and Leo are in the class, as well as Tuna and some of the MFAs. The majority of the people in class are new to me. Sort of rare at this point, normally I know a good bunch of the people in my classes.

The teacher, Adam Arolla, looks a bit like a more hip Jason Statham. Apparently he DJs at Holocene. We talked about how all science is entirely hypothetical, just some things have not been proven false yet. But what makes science science is that it is falsifiable. And we talked about perception of the world and stuff like that. It was a heavy introduction that went fast, but I am excited for it.

1) all experience is intentional. Perception is a conversation.
2) all experience is interpretive.
3) beginners mind. sedimented manners of encountering an interpreting perception.

After class I printed some of the required reading. Not a big pile of stuff...yet. Swung by Trader Joe's. Apples, pasta, sauce, salami, mayo. The staples.

It is amazing when you wake up early and run some errands and still get back to the house before the usual time you are even our of bed (11:56am).

Put away the dishes. Finally got around to making the spiced apple loaf mix I got about a month ago. Read some of the required reading. Watched Dexter. Wrote up my proposals for printmaking. Looked over syllabus. Loaded and ran new dishwasher load. Watched Katie play Zelda: Twilight Princess. Generally puttered around and consumed food.

Screenprinting! Figure Drawing! Tuesday!

I checked out Magnolia and Bicycle Thieves from the library. Will watch them some time soon.

best birthday EVER!!

Yesterday (the party)

I made cupcakes and tidied up the apartment. Adam made some truly awesome burgers for lunch. It had bacon and stuff in them. And avocado. Delicious. Yum. The sink drain got clogged from all the intense cooking. I borrowed a plunger and unstuck it, and vacuumed again. Had to have it looking nice for the after party.

The theme was shiny so I put on my sparkly striped tights, my hand made skirt, a black top, and my super sparkly over shirt. I looked great. Karen, Adam, Robin, Diana, and I made our way to Blue Moon at fifteen till 5. We arrived a little after, but were the first ones there. We took one of the long tables in the back because it was near other tables that were prime to take over more space once people arrived. Harmony and her fiancee Peter were the first to show. It was during happy hour so cheap food was bought on mass. And I didn't put down a single penny.

While only scheduled for 5-8, we stuck around till 9. We ended up taking all three tables. People who came: Diana, Robin, Karen, Adam, Harmony, Peter, Peter's brother Paul, Cherish, Isaiah, Sandra, Sandra's pal Alice (if I remember correctly), Kristen, Madeline, Justin, Daniel H., BT, Katie, Nikki and her baby Elliot. I think that is it...

Kristen gave me flowers. I've never received flowers before. And I got several cards. Madeline gave me a fake cupcake. I was ordered a real slice of cake and everyone sang happy birthday to me. Everyone was really social with one another. I moved around a lot because I didn't want to ignore any of my most awesome friends, many of whom were sparkly. Elliot, the baby, was adorable and awesomely behaved. He just stared at everyone and was cute as a button. Everyone just went into full "awww look at the baaaby" mode.

We were nerdy, we were sociable, we were not that loud, we were arty, and just in general we were awesome. The atmosphere was perfect and things could not have worked out better. After I blew out my candle, I was pressed for a speech so all I said that having such awesome friends is all anyone should want from life. Without a doubt, the best birthday I have had.

After the long dinner, everyone that was left at the table (Robin, Diana, BT, Karen, Adam, Peter, Paul, Harmony, Madeline, Daniel, Justin, and Kristen) returned to my place. Some biked, some carpooled with those who had cars. Some people made booze runs. Everyone fit in the apartment in a great way. My living room isn't that big but it didn't feel overly crowded. I put in Labyrinth on the projector because we are all nerds and that is a good movie to chat over. I had a beer and Diana made me a drink that was a little bit creamy for my taste. Katie came back from another birthday party and had a balloon. It entertained me very much.

Between movies I drank a little bit more, and that little more I shouldn't have consumed. So I got a little sick, but in a respectable in the bathroom way and not...all over myself or on my guests sort of way. That sucked, but thankfully I was in my own apartment so it was easy to just say good night to everyone and fall asleep. Apparently everyone stuck around through Star Wars (hopefully to sober up before they drove home). I was out.

Today (the day after yesterday)

Karen and Adam had crashed here. Adam made us fluffy eggs and hollandaise sauce drizzled over bacon and toast. I felt ill so I couldn't finish mine. It was gourmet though. I mostly sat around in a daze and watched stuff and napped and Karen and I watched some Kids in the Hall. I ate some crackers and drank ginger ale. I am still way tired. It should make getting to bed early tonight no big thing though.

Way fun party. Lots of awesome friends. Piles of them. I wish I could say more about all the happenings. Good times.