puppet progress

Me wearing the head (and new shirt).

In progress painted head. Redoing the eye makeup.

Lots of fun! Got the fabric for the hair, so that should be on tomorrow.

the best (silver!)

Friday:

Best day I have had in a long while. Just feel great. Revitalized!

Morgan had the sketchbook zine in hand when I showed up to class today. He held it up to show to everyone and said that this was...I forget the exact word he used but something that implied beyond A plus plus work. He also said that he wished I would stick around at PNCA and do the same thing for every Focus Week.

After my great day, I came home and blogged and in the process, my computer became encrusted with spyware. This happened while I was blogging so the above is the only part that was written before I was prevented from posting. Damn. Well I'll try to write it all up again. It was a busy day. Now back to figure drawing:

Last ink day. I had a large leftover sheet of paper from a prior drawing project, a nice toothy yellow sheet. So I drew all my figures on that. But before we got to drawing, we had to seek our revenge on the audio class. We share a wall with an audio class and they constantly soak our class with their work, which is quite distracting. So we massed in a little figure drawing choir and in unison, we projected the Flintsones theme song at their wall. Ha! Brilliant.

Then it was time for ink drawing. Morgan read to us an essay about Cubism by Jon Berger. Quite fascinating to actually put art in context, as opposed to just learning about the pieces.

Illustration was an open work day. It started with Martin thanking us for the artistic energy we have had this semester. He left for a few minutes to sort something out. In his absence, Beth whipped out some ice cream from Ben & Jerry's. Delicious! We love Beth. Martin loved the ice cream.

My letter shapes got a good review. I totally messed up inking the picture of Guy Pearce though. It looks ugly and...sloppy. But I still used it for a rough composition. I was having trouble making it look like the image in my head. Now I'm not quite sure what that image was...

After class, we went to Yur's for a little pre-First Thursday drinking. Just beer and friends. Danny, Leo, BT, Karen, Josh, Janessa, Jon, and Dom namely. And a few MFA's and their friends occupied another table. I wonder if PNCA students constitute half of Yur's revenue? Every time I am there, we tend to dominate. BT gave me a drawing. A wonderful drawing of Hercule Poirot! A few months ago he revealed to me that his mustache was fake. It broke my heart! In the drawing, Hercule is saying "It's always been real for you Trillian xoxo Hercule Poirot". Love it!

Karen got Danny to draw her a sandwich.

Josh, Janessa, Jon and I wandered down to the 13th Street First Thursday booths. Mostly overpriced knick knacks and large ugly sculptures. Then it was time for the Illustration Juried Show!

There was free cheese and crackers and wine! Whoo! The show looks pretty good. A lot of variety. You can really see how different and varied we all are. Martin mentioned earlier today he will be showing our portfolios to some higher ups at companies. Exciting.

The winners of the Juried Show were announcer. Winners were picked by the Jury.

Bronze- Sally Jablonsky

Silver- Trillian Spencer

Gold- Kevin McClain

That is right. I won silver. 300 entries, 50 picked for the show, and I was SECOND! SILVER! WHOOO YEAAHHH! The prize was cold hard cash. Nice!

Janessa and I went to Life of Riley afterwards. I had a soda because I wasn't ready to drink more. Josh showed up and said he saw a ghost in the bathroom. He said he saw someone enter the bathroom and he followed and then there was no one in the bathroom... probably a secret agent.

Cupcake also showed up, I don't know her real name, well I do but I just prefer Cupcake. Anyway, we wandered over to Everett Street to check out that stuff. I got separated from the crew when I locked up my bike, but I found them outside Igloo. Craig Wheat and his lady Olivia were also there. Craig had a piece in the igloo show, but the place was packed and it was impossible to see any of the art. Booo!

I wandered with my friends and wandered straight into a strip club with them. Cupcake, Sean Carney, Olivia, Craig, Josh, Janessa... the place was called Magic Garden. I broke a little of my prize money on a drink. Spent most of the time catching up with Craig and talking about how good friends don't care if you haven't really talked in a few months. Also talked to Olivia about tattoos. I've been thinking about getting ink a little bit lately. I think a Patsy Gelb designed great blue heron would make a good one. Hmmmn. But I need more of my own money, and I just don't have enough of my own money to get one. But yeah, it was fun. Also one my classmates turned out to be a stripper! I won't name her name, but she isn't illustration. After one of her sets, she saw me and waved and came over and I commented that it was nice to see all of her tattoos. Turns out one of her good friends Craig knows...from Montana. It is a really small world, as it turns out. Or maybe just small for artists. Ha.

Lots of fun. At 11 I parted, got my bike, and road back to Life of Riley and caught BT and Karen right as they were finishing up their dinner.

Walked Karen back to her car and then rode off to Pionner Place to see Iron Man 2! The ending was a little anti-climactic, but the effects and characters were good. It was quite funny. Scarlett Johansson was very attractive in her little outfits, though a little on the thin side. Kicked a lot of butt she did. But yeah, it was good just not great. Very much a middle movie, and not all that stand alone.

Today was great. The weather was also fantastic. Got home at around 2:45am. Went to bed at 3:30 after blogging which ended up being unbloggable. Woke up at 4:30pm...

Saturday:

Woke up really late, so I got right to work. Painted my puppet head. Started to tidy up.

My computer was infected with spyware, but thankfully only the Marvin account was unusable. On the Arthur Dent account I was able to download a spyware remover and clean my computer. Nathan helped.

Did laundry.

Jay Lee is going to come over in a few, we are going to get food. I'll update again in the night time, I just wanted to get last nights happenings written up. Whoo!

Update!

Jay came over and we went to Thai Chili Jam, the nearby Thai food place. I had the something something something noodles and Jay had the pad thai. Mine was sooo delicious. Perfect meal to have after not eating a lot for such a long time. Got totally stuffed. In return for the meal, I mended her pants! She needed some patch work done and she thought of me and my sewing abilities. So I looked up a video online of how to patch, I practiced on a pair of my own jeans, and then did hers. And they look great! Legitimately patched up! Whoo! She had to catch the bus at 11:30 so she took off a little early.

I watched the new episode of Community. It was so good, I watched it twice. Yall should watch it, it is on Hulu.

Tomorrow morning I go to Fabric Depot with Karen to get fabric, and then I draw draw draw because I am way behind in draw draw drawing.

I can't bother talking, just going to leave notes

I can't stop being exhausted. But I'm plugging along.

Good ol' Homeland class.

Kristen and Matt gave some presentations. The theme of today's class was banquet. So lots of reading about good food and genetically engineered food. Whee! Duford brought up a good point about how food is sort of the new cause that people fight for. Or something.

Karen got me a slice of pizza for lunch because she owed me a pizza debt from a few nights ago. Went to the post office after that.

For her project, Kristen made a sort of country fair display featuring corn and corn food and corn products. The smell of the popped corn was nauseating. All the food was yellow or beige and when it was piled together, it looked gross. Bleh.

Hannah on the other hand made flax seed bread loafs and made her own butter and brought in jam she made and one her husband made. It was so delicious, all of it. Perfectly sweet and salty. I told her that my mom always said that a man who makes jam is worth marrying. Okay in truth my mom never said that, but it seemed like a good comment to make at the time. And why wouldn't a jam making man be worth marrying? My mom just never urged me to go after boys and make one my husband, jam maker or otherwise.

Finally Gabi (Gabbi...Gabby) made a quilt referencing the 7000 years of agriculture and how it is beneath us...and stuff. Uhm.

Then we all watched Food Inc. Goddamn I don't think I can eat any meat for...like 19 hours. Uhg. Really depressing and eye opening to learn where it comes from. Meat and grain and all that. Really informative, if only I hadn't nodded off in the last 15 minutes of it.

Had a final chunk of discussion then it was done!

Cut and stapled my zines. Got a 10 minute rest on the couch and then it was yoga time!

Just me and one other student. I should have requested more shoulder work. Mine are in terrible shape. Bleh.

Last night I went to get some ibuprofen and noticed the 180 capsule bottle I bought last semester was three-fourths gone. So I left a passive aggressive note simply staying that Katie should get her own because these were mostly gone and I barely had any of it. Big bottles of pills are expensive, that is why I bought a lot so that I wouldn't run out any time soon. She wasn't pleased about the note, but I can't be bothered to be confrontational anymore. I just need to finish this semester and get home and more importantly: away from here.

Had some pasta. Watched The Pacific. Then I put on Ravenous and worked on my illustration stuff, which is a two part poster for Ravenous! In the full length of the movie I only got the text done. I'm doing two posters, same title text. One will feature Carlyle's character, the other Pearce's. I'm excited for this.

week has barely started...

It is only Tuesday but I'm totally dead right now. Blehth.

We only did two poses in The Figure. Two loooong poses. One hour each. Took a while to get started and had a longish break. I'm pretty satisfied with both of the drawings, it just is exhausting to draw that much. My legs were paining and it was only 11am. I had a full day of printing ahead of me.

JP was sick so I had to figure out the printing on my own. Well, Matt (other Matt) helped me a lot. And it worked perfectly! Got some nice quality prints of my sketchbook drawings, just ready to be put on a screen. Which I did. Two screens with emulsion and exposed images ready to be printed by 1pm.

Went to Safeway for lunch. This guy got the last of the baked potato and bacon soup right before me. He just greedily poured it all into a large container and was all "ha ha, that is the last of it". Boo! But turns out the corn dog, plus potato wedges, plus small soda meal is only 1.99. So I gave that a shot. I was surprised at the size of the small soda. Looked more like a medium. The corn dog was tasty as well. Mmm chomp chomp.

Cut down my paper. Got some nicer paper from Christy, stuff that was leftover from the poster project. Cut it in half by accident. I needed to cut it into 11" slices, but when I cut it into 20"...well I went from getting six zines a sheet to four. Damn. Oh well. I'll think through it more next time.

The printing took about an hour longer than I had expected. 100 two sided zines takes TIME. Lots of it. Lots of time on my feet. My legs hurt so bad, and I got quite hungry. I folded and stapled a couple, but saved the rest for later tonight.

Ordered some hot wings when I got back. Really need to go food shopping, I keep eating out. Ate them while watching Glee.

Folded my zines while watching Treme and Lost.

Listened to This American Life while painting my puppet white as a base coat.

So very tired...

The zine looks great though. Can't wait to staple and hand them out.

swoon! find your people!

I like Monday. I don't have to write as much. It is pretty much way over my head, computer, food, nap, yoga, go home. All though, I did do something different after yoga. But first:

Way over my head. Damn existentialist phenomenology. I started out almost having a grasp of it, now it has all gone to hell. Kind of just sit there and try to focus. I'm so screwed on the final project. I'll do it...but if I get a B in the class I'll totally be please. Computer. Scanned in my sketchbook and created two 11"x14" 300dpi files ready for fancy printing tomorrow. Did a mock up to make sure the layout is correct, and it totally is. Posted some more sketches. I just want to print print print, don't want to do anything else. Blah. Food. Got soup. Didn't have the good bacon and potato soup though. Meh. Also got a pity parfait because I didn't get the Big Giant internship. Oh well. Keep at it I guess. Nap. Got a good one and a half hour one. I didn't nap that much for the longest while, and now I really look forward to them. The library couches are that good. I shared the long one with Sivonna. Two napping illustration majors. Yoga. Did some modified, assisted bridges. The sun was out and I was positioned right in its path, so I was warm and toasty. And then... Swoon. Swoon is a street artist turned installation artist turned "I'm going to make a boat with a bunch of people and sail down the river in it" artist. Totally rad lady. Her art is phenomenal. Just exquisite figure drawings. Some are cut paper, some are wood block. They are quite individual as well. She talked for about 45 minutes, and then answered a few questions. Her main advice was to "find your people". Find your group. Find your collaborators. Find those people that make art and will encourage you to continue making it. I think I have a lot of these people. For the boats, check out: http://www.swimmingcities.org/ Home. Well first, Karen, Lacey and I went to Pizzacatto and got some slices. Mmm. BT, Chloe, Ursula, and Agnes were also at the Swoon lecture, but they went their own way. Now I am home. So tired. Tomorrow I get to print!

Spring Thesis Sketches 2010 - Batch 2

Pages from my sketchbook. Drawn during the Spring 2010 Thesis proposals and defenses at PNCA.

Micron in floppy moleskin.

●retail therapy

Saturday:

●Kick Ass. A movie. Went to the late showing at Broadway Metro. It was fun. The violence was varied, and it had some good silly moments. Enjoyed watching it, don't know if I'd feel like watching it again.

●Puppet. Applied another layer. Constructed the nose.

●My room. I tidied it a little. But some stuff away. Looks better to me, but still needs a lot of work.

●Sleeping. I did a lot of it.

●Eddie Izzard. Started watched Dress to Kill on Netflix. Started dozing off so I shut it off and went to bed.

●Exhausted. I am so very very tired.

●This semester. Really has kicked my butt. Two weeks left.

●Enthusiasm. Gotta get it.

●Doctor Who. AWESOME!

Sunday:

●Clothes! Went to Forever 21 and bought some. Two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, and a western shirt from the sale rack. Came it at an amount that is equal to the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

●42$.

●Some of my older pants have trouble fitting.

●Should pick up some regular cardio and a better diet this summer.

●Just five pounds should be enough. I like being able to fit into my clothes. I look the same, just a little softer than I was a few months ago.

●Got some more layers on my puppet.

●The nose is all on and it is really shaping up.

●Almost time to paint!

●In the next week I gotta go to Fabric Depot and get some brown fleece for the hair. I should be able to shred it, and have it stay together enough. Not sure how I'll attach it just yet.

●Tidied a little bit.

●Didn't draw at all.

●Really need to draw.

●Need enthusiasm.

●Breaking Bad just keeps getting better.

●Gotta stop watching television.

●Work. Work.

●Work.

●Sleep.