fun facts and evil men you didn't know

Had a nice slow morning and afternoon. Woke up at 10 and dozed till around noon. Mmm it was nice.

Showed up at school at 3. There was a class but I asked the teacher if I could emulsify and expose. She said it was okay as long as her students had first priority. I showed JP how to apply emulsion. Did my three screens. Waited around. Different people in the lab asked for my printing advice, I felt very cool that people saw me that way. You know, helpful and knowing. I obliged to the best of my ability. Sivonna texted me to tell me she was running late. I was halfway through exposing my second screen when she showed up.

When I was helping Sivonna with her screen, the TA told me that there was a class in there and that I should make sure not to occupy their space because they have priority. I told her that I asked the teacher and she said it was fine. Also, a grand total of three people were actually using the printing tables, everyone had just spread out their stuff way way around. It was weird that I had been there for a while before she decided to confront me about my presence. I guess she didn't like how people asked me for advice over her.

While waiting for screens to dry, and exposing units to expose, Sivonna and I talked and looked at the poster show that is in the commons right now. It is way rad. Hundreds of posters from all around the world. A lot of political stuff.

My three screens are ready to go and Sivonna's exposed quite nicely. I can't wait to print tomorrow.

I rode my bike home, grabbed a heavier coat, and rode to the East side. BT invited me to a little documentary viewing party at Anthony & Allison's. He made pie, Allison made mac and cheese. Tesar and his lady were there, as was Thomas W.C. Other people were there but they left before the documentary started. We all played Tetris for a while. I lost some and won some. The documentaries were from this short series called The Century of the Self. It was four one hour parts. The first was about Freud's nephew Edward Bernays who pretty much figured out how to deceive people into buying things, among other things. Basically he was pretty damn evil. I started drifting off in the second part, which was about the war. The third part was about the 70's and 80's and EST and hippie stuff. Uhm. It was very interesting, I just wish I was more awake during it. And also not freezing cold as for some reason they didn't believe in heat. It was weird to ride my bike and not dread going out in the cold. It was a fun night, and an effortless ride back. Just went straight across Broadway Bridge, which sets you down on 10th, so you skip the whole waterfront hill.

Just going to finish up this episode of Project Runway and crash. Printing tomorrow! And Mel's 21st birthday! Hopefully my sore throat and snuffles will be better.

Also I trimmed my bangs all by myself yesterday! It is really easy to do in fact. Take off the volume straight across and snip upwards to break up the chunky line.

booyah

Woke up at 7:30am. Let out a swear as I bounded out of bed. Showered, grabbed a granola bar, and magically arrived at school right on time!

I was out of it for the majority of class. Wasn't keen on my ink work. I need to get slightly better paper. Well, anything is better than bond. I didn't have any caffeine what so ever today, mainly because I didn't have time to brew up a thermos of black tea.

With 25 people in class, the wall of art in illustration filled up. We had to tape or pin our stuff up. A lot of people who came late had to put theirs beneath or above other pieces. It was cool though, to see it all together. We had a a general conversation about the process. I said that having to include digital print and documentation in the turn in process encourages us to get our projects done ahead of time. Then Martin went through the pieces and gave feedback. Only he talked about the work, it wasn't open chat time. By and large it was extremely favorable across the board. The pieces themselves were also damn awesome. A very diverse group, but we all get along swimmingly for the most part.

My Fanny Drazier piece had the comment that there was some nice drawing in the concept sketches and maybe the face didn't need the shading. The class got a good chuckle when Martin called out Danny Frazier's opinion on it.

Kristen, Josh, Janessa and I went to Mio Sushi for lunch. After the way harshness of yesterday, I needed a treat. Shrimp sushi is my favorite. Mmm! And I ate a lot of it.

Back in class we were given an impromptu illustration assignment. It was designed to see what type of image we could create in a few fours. It was either a 3"x3" Dante's Inferno video game illustration, or a 3"x5" Haitian earthquake triage editorial thing. I thought I would do the video game at first but an idea of a shot of the doctor the story is about (Michael Millin) looking through a hospital curtain with blood splattered on him came to my mind and I jumped on it. The thumbnails were due by 2:45, but I talked to Martin at 2:10ish. And I jumped right in. Sketched it out. I was laying in some flat color and about halfway through I though it looks like crap and ditched the color, and worked on the lineart some more. I touched it up, tightened it in, threw in a color for the doctor's coat. Originally there was going to be a scene of hospital beds through the curtain. I put some red in as a background color, and found that I liked how the illustration looked at that moment. I waved Martin down and he said that it was a very good illustration and that I was could consider myself done. I tightened the picture up a little bit and felt really good.

Nice that a long stressful week ended on such a high note. Hurrah!

Rode back home. Sat down. Ate food. Drank fluids. Watched stuff. Tomorrow I am going to help Sivonna screenprint. Then later on BT and I are going to hang out with Anthony and watch documentaries or something.

triage

In class illustration based on the concept of triage in Haiti.

3"x5". Photoshop.

well that was bad

Uhg.

I made it through the day, but it wasn't a fun making it through the day. My essay sucks. I had to photograph the pages of my book because there were no online versions of the pieces. Uhhg.

Spam and egg for breakfast!

Got to class and found out the first chunk was devoted to going to the Chinese Gardens and checking them out. For some reason I left my scarf and gloves at school. It was raining all the way there and continued till it was time to leave. I was wet and cold and wearing totally the wrong coat for it. Still, it was nice to see the special gutter things in action. The gardens are meant to be observed during the rain. It was just numb and cold. We read the little booklets and all that.

I stopped by Lovejoy Bakeries and got hot chocolate and some pastries for lunch. Best hot chocolate I have ever had, hands down. I just sat in the library and warmed up and dried off.

My presentation was horrible. I thought I knew what I would talk about, but I didn't. I mumbled and couldn't form coherent thoughts. It was bad. I'm not looking forward to getting my grade for this back. After that we watched Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. A great film about a topiary dude, a lion tamer, a naked mole rat enthusiast, and a robot scientist. Each explained their passions and that was it. The themes overlapped. It was good, hard to explain. We talked for an hour after that about gardens and then walked to Kristen's place for her and Tabitha's project. They converted their apartment into an indoor garden space...sort of. The critique wasn't favorable, unfortunately.

I hung back a little afterward, and was about a minute late to yoga. Bonnie was subbing. She is a tough teacher. I am sure I'll be feeling all the strain tomorrow. It has been months since I last did it. Oi...

Wasn't raining when I returned. Watched the new episode of Lost and White Collar (such a great low impact show for when I want to relax, really charming and this was a fairly delightful episode, White Collar I mean. Lost was a rather useless episode). Now I am going to watch an episode of Weeds and fall asleep at a reasonable hour for once.

gotta get it done, have no choice otherwise

Blogging now so I don't have to write it when I'm more dead tired in two hours.

Figure: check. The majority of the class was spent doing five minute proportion drawings. We looked at Euan Uglow and Stanley Spencer art books for the last half hour of class. That was good.

Emulsified screens.
Bought paper.

Talked to JP and turns out he had paper to print on right there, so I didn't have to run and get some. Nice! Printed out illustration pieces. They look pretty good side by side. Happy I got to check all that off my list early.

Went to student council for lunch.

Got back and pretty much printed for the next three hours, and I got three colors done! It is turning out pretty good. I'm going to do another three layers over the weekend. It needs greater depth of color. I got a pink layer, a red, and a brown. The next will all be progressively darker browns. I'm excited to work on it more, and that is a good feeling to have when it comes to art. Generally I have that feeling with screenprinting pretty much all the time. The lab was very crowded, but what are you gonna do when they put 9 people in a class that only has 12 tables to work on (and you need more than one table to work on most of the time). Time passed fast.

Spent about thirty more minutes in the library looking up artists. Finally got a great book: Land and Environmental Art. Perfect resource to browse through and find artists. Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christo's Umbrellas are being added to my paper on gardens. I was silly to think this would be easier because of growing up around the damn things but nope, it sure isn't.

Got home. Drank some caffeine. Read some articles. Now I'm just writing.

twelve hour monday

Even though I spent the majority of the day sitting, I am really tired.

Existentialist Phenomenology:
Uhm. Another heavy day. I'm really digging this whole concept of only questioning reality when things go wrong. Also the whole only being able to perceive something through our perceptions, and the impossible inability to see someone beyond how we will take it in. It is a trippy block. "The real has to be described, not constructed or formed." Perception is the basis of knowledge. "Science operates according to a theory of reality in which there is a clear demarcation between interior and exterior but this isn't how things actually appear to us." Making meaning. Object subject. Everything is learned. Also apparently Seattle is the only place you can study if you want a degree in existentialist phenomenological therapy.

My to do list for the next two days is extensive, so I got right down to it.
Scan Fanny Drazier sketches? Check!
Assemble sketches into an 11x17 size file to print out? Check!
Print off remaining reading assignment? Check!
Finish digital illustration because I have to print it out and there isn't much time to print stuff out when you have class all day long and really the only time I have to do it is tomorrow, so I have to finish something that is due Thursday today? Check!

The last one was checked off at 5:30pm. 11am-5:30. In the library lab. Working. I ate two granola bars and an apple. Being stationary fights the hunger. Watched and listened to a ton of stuff. The time flew by.

After that, I powered over to Laughing Planet because I knew they had my favorite in: Mr. Green Jeans burrito. Totally vegetarian but still delicious. Edamame, sweet corn, black beans, pico de gallo, pepper jack I think, and it is all tasty! Also got a lemonade. Karen ordered some food and we chatted for a bit. Then I went back to the library.

Look up Guy Billout because I want to write about him. Check.
Find out Guy Billout has NOTHING AT ALL written about him outside of Illustration annuals.
Tear through books trying to find something to do with gardens that relates to reading. Get very tired. Decide on Tarsem for a part. Check.

My paper will focus of the idea of gardening as creating work using the land provided, as opposed to bringing in new content. I'll be using Tarsem's film The Fall as an example for its rich on scene location imagery. There is a lot of beauty already in this world. I need to find more artists though.

Tomorrows to do list:
Draw in The Figure
Expose my screens (three of them)
Talk to JP about printing
Buy paper
Announce yoga at student council
Go to library and look up more artists
Print! (screen printing and finals for illustration)
Possibly library it up some more
Go home and write paper and construct power point
Go to bed very late, but happy because I can sleep in till 10am!

KEEP NATALIE IN AMERICA!

Fanny Drazier

Fanny Drazier.

11"x17" in print.

Photoshop.

Graphite on bristol paper.

Fanny Drazier - work in progress part two

Another work in progress of Fanny Drazier. Don't know what I'm doing with the background just yet.

11"17" in print, photoshop!

save Natalie!

Saturday:

Slept in a bit. Not much but still a bit. Lounged around. Ate food. Adobe crashed on my computer for some reason and absolutely refused to open any of the .pdfs. Which sucks because I need to read .pdfs for class, the majority of our assignments are not in purchased texts.

Nikki came over with Baby Elliot. Oh my god he is the cutest baby ever! And so mild mannered and adorable and expressive. I played race horse with him. That is I held him in my hands and jiggled him like I do with Luna and other cats. He loved it. Great baby.

Karen and BT were having a house warming party, emphasis on the party. The theme was "your high school self". I didn't go for the casual self, more the mismatch assemblage of black clothes self. I tied back a bunch of my hair to replicate the 'do I had and put on some legwarmers. It was pretty silly. Rode my bike to 23rd & Stark on the other side of the river. I brought them a caution wet floor sign as a house warming gift. I was also super early so we got our pre-party drink on.

Leah showed up with her three metalhead roommates, who were pretty cool dudes. Didn't break anything. Jay, Tabitha, Sandra, Anthony and his lady friend, Evan and Holly, Agnes, Ursula, Phil & Andy, Taylor, Katie, and a few other people I'm obviously forgetting showed up. It was crowded and awesome. I had a great time, but I was also really tipsy. The booze was free flowing so the party got loud quick and then everyone bottomed out really soon. No sense of pacing at all. Karen and I both went to woozy tired mode at about the same time and went into the bedroom, closed the door, and fell asleep. I mingled like crazy, which wasn't hard to do because their apartment is small and there were tons of people. The porch was happening, the living room had head bangers, the kitchen was full of drunk people kissing, and there was even a slapping competition. It was pretty off the wall but no one called the cops because, like I said, the party pretty much ended at midnight.

There were some great outfits. Karen had a blue wig, Katie was mall gothed out, Evan had a flannel shirt and an over sized The Tick shirt under it, Agnes put in more of her piercings, Tabitha had her hair done in a mohawk. It was fun. I can't wait for pictures to start showing up on the internet.

Sunday:

I didn't drink that much, enough to keep me going and I drank a good deal of water, so I'm not hung over. Just tired. BT, Phil, Katie, Karen, and I met Evan and Holly at Pine State Biscuits for breakfast. The biscuits place sells biscuits that are made up of these Louisiana biscuit makers grandmother's recipes. They combined them to make the ultimate biscuit. Apparently there is always a long line, but it was so worth the wait. I had the standard biscuits and sausage gravy. Katie had this fried chicken, bacon, cheese, egg monstrosity, as did Evan and BT. I managed to eat about half, and saved the rest for left overs.

It was a nice day to ride back. Not too hot, not that cold. When I got back I pretty much got situated in front of the computer, downloaded a new Adobe reader which fixed the problem (whatever it was), and read readings about Olmstead and Anti-Olmstead and Arcadia under Glass...stuff. Pasta dinner.

I heard some people had less fun at the party, which is a shame.



On a serious note, my friend Natalie Abulhosn might be getting deported. PNCA wouldn't allow her to register and then reported her to immigration. She has 60 days to leave the country unless she is allowed back into school. Natalie is one of the most hardworking students I know. She lives for the school and the art scene. The petition to keep her with us is here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/keep-natalie-in-america