first a sty, then a splinter, now another sty

ARGGHHH. The combination of below freezing weather and wet eyes and make up and biking seems to have resulted in another goddamn sty in my eye. This time it's on my bottom lid. My eye was getting puffy last night. And now this morning with a cold compress, I can see the sty. Bleeeh. Why are my eyes giving me so much trouble! Just need to wait this out. Again. I wish my eyes wouldn't water when I ride my bike. I should get goggles to protect my eyes.

Anyway. Spent a large portion of the day trying to track down people to draw. And twitchy my eye. Uhg. It's so swollen and irritating and twitchy and not at all attractive. At least it isn't weeping...anyway. Went to Trader Joe's and got some food. And got Heather and Daniel locked in for some drawing. Met them at Ram's Head at around 6:30 ish. They treated me to a pint. We chatted, I drew. We went to Daniel's place and they watched some comedy stand up things and I drew and they drew a bit. Lots of talk. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of drawings. One usable, but the fact is that I did a TON. Volume is good. I shouldn't have to settle for a composition out of a few mediocre images. My eye had been depuffed before I left with a cold towel. But by the end it was big and bad looking. I hope it is better by tomorrow because I told someone I'd help them with a video project. I don't know how much of my face will be seen, but I'm not pretty with this eye sty. The last one had one gross swollen day and then it had gone down by the next day.

Seems like a batch of seniors always develop health problems. Maddison got mono. Nathalie slipped a disc. Now my eyes are constantly dealing with stuff. BOOOO. It is really distracting.

So tomorrow will be a video project and then some drawing and reading I guess.

Todays Portrait Is: Caroline Cronshaw.

giving people back themselves

Martin meetings are either awesome or stressful and make me want to cry from stress. Not that he is mean, he is just very good at being honest and pointing out weak spots.

But first blah blah I got up blah ate scramble blah it's cold blah rode my bike. Okay.

So yeah, in the meeting the art got a basic thumbs up, though the anonymous group side of the poster might still needs some extra treatment that does...something. I dunno. And some of the color blocking on the other side needs more thought. Still, having printed the images out at 11x17, I must say that they look really good at that size. I can't wait to actually start printing my thesis. I need to do a ton more drawing. But the main thing is how do I talk about my piece beyond acknowledging that we are all individuals in a collective and that I'm drawing my friends and giving them art. THE BIGGER GODDAMN PICTURE. What I got now is that I'm giving people back themselves. I could give anything, but I'm giving portraiture. That means...something. It was very stressful and now I'm a bit scared of the midterm meeting. If I don't think harder and keep honest and true about it then I'll be wrecked by the panel. Baaha. No fun. Not looking forward to it. Just need to work work work and get my paper printed. My paper still isn't here for some reason. They said a week. Grrr. It'll show. And once I get it I'll print print print. I can always add words to the design of the poster later. Another layer ain't no thang (it just means I can't give them away just yet). Martin suggested maybe some proverbs or something that deal with the themes of the pieces. I don't know how I feel about that idea though.

The sub came for yoga and it was great restorative class. Much needed. Undoes all the stress of the mentor meeting. And I feel all floppy afterwards. It is very cold today, but there is no snow. Yet. Right now I'm writing at 6pm, and in a few hours I'm going to the east side for Thom's going away party. He is going to Korea. We'll miss the awesome dude.

*****

Just got back from the partay. My ears are so cold. They are the old bit that gets exposed to the cold air, that and my face. It feels all funky and chilled. The apartment is warm, which is nice.

Anyway. The house where Thom is at was on 33rd and Knott, or just about. But on the east side of the river. Which means going from 22nd, down to the river, and then 33 more blocks. Plus a bridge. At 8pm. In freezing temps. I had my long johns on, and my long sleeves, and my sweater, and my gloves. It was my damn ears though. Brrr. Still, it was a clear night and there wasn't much traffic. So that was good. I was the first of the PNCA clan of friends to show up. A lot of people I didn't know, but they were cool and I made conversation. Ate pizza. Drank a responsible amount of booze. Thom leaves on SUNDAY!!! I'll miss him, even though he comes and goes from Portland so often. We'll cross paths again. Hes like the nicest guy ever. Anyway. Samala came. I chatted with this guy Sam, who is Chloe's brother. At least I think her name was Chloe. Josh, Janessa, Jon and Dom also came. And Jalissa and Morgan B. and Kevin C. They came and went. Soon it was just the PNCA clan. We played King's Cup and Jon improved a song and we sang to Thom. It was a really nice night. I kept mostly sober because I knew I'd be biking. Drinking and biking, its a bad idea. Especially when you know you'll be coming across street car tracks on your commute. I took lots of pictures. Love my friends. Totally rad people. Some good times have been had in Portland.

Portland has some great great people in it, and that is what I'll remember about it. The people. Not the trendy coffee shops or the hip this or the hip that. It's the people. It will always be the people. Some of the greatest, nicest, honest, awesome, devoted, ambitious people in the world are here. And I love them passionately.

Ride back seemed shorter and less...taxing. And less windy.

Todays Portrait Is: Jade Sheldon.

the great portland blizzard

It snowed! Like an inch...but there was legitimate snow sticking around in the morning. That was pretty cool. The great thing about Portland is that when it snows AN INCH, classes get called off. Okay just the morning classes, which have no actual relevance to my life. Still. Pathetic. Come on Portland. You call this weather? It wasn't even iced over or anything. Rode to school. Photocopied my sketches. Unfortnatly the art director lady couldn't come in because the day care she puts her daughter in was closed. Boo! So we talked about our sketches. Mine and Kristen's were some of the first that people were drawn too. Huzzah! There were some fantastic ideas around Behemoth. Nicole had two pages and when she revealed the second page, we all went "ooohhh". It was a nice little batch of stuff. For the rest of the first half of class, we worked on getting our stuff onto the class blog and general art...stuff. I ate the remainders of last nights meal for lunch (and late lunch). On Tumblr I discovered that the fabulous illustrator Scott Campbell was doing a live webcam stream of his latest Showdown (a series of small illustrations of famous showdowns). So I got in on that, and then it turned out that there was only 50 people allowed to watch the stream at any given time. I kept it on, on mute of course, and sort of double tasked the rest of class. I would see the drawing and then listen to the web design lecture. I'm not terribly interested in the web design lecture, all though we do need to get a proper website made by the end of class. It is good to have this stuff and good to know the resources. I think I'll probably get a domain name for cheap (trilliantrillian.com or something...maybe trilliantrilliantrillian, a Beetle Juice type thing) and do the design through Indexhibit. They mention not wanting sites to look too templated, but I'm not a web designer so I don't really care. I think that as long as I do some great background designs and stuff, that will work. I have ideas already...mmm yeah. Anyway. So that was the rest of class. When class was over I was able to turn on the audio of the live stream and at the end, Scott Campbell answered a few questions. It was really cool, seeing him work. Sketch, scan, manipulate scan in photoshop, print, trace onto paper, color it, line. And he was working really tiny too. So cool. I then worked on scanning my thesis stuff at the monstrously huge 600dpi. Most standard print resolution stuff is 300dpi, which is the number of dots per inch. The more dots, the more resolution. I needed to scan my small drawings at that high a resolution so that when they get blown up, they don't get too horribly pixeled. I went to my studio and dropped stuff off. Talked to Mel. Went to school. Put on yoga stuff. We had a substitute for yoga but she never showed (probably due to the weather). About eight of us were there and all wanted yoga, so we taught ourselves! We knew the general order of things, and we all guided one another through downward facing dogs and "the warrior that isn't the other warrior" and "tricky bind" and pigeon and wheel and "counter flop". It was great! Amazing how the students most noted for slackers all stepped up to the plate. Art students I mean. We rule. We also did three Oms. All though on the third everyone was reluctant to start for some reasons and then when one did, which was really awkward, we all broke into giggles. I love it. Love love love it. That is how community works. We all want something and band together. Sure it wasn't the most trying of classes, but we went forward and did it anyway! We culminated our knowledge. Chatted with Jon and Dom. Went home. Ate a salad and drank some orange juice. Watched my tellie. Now it isn't even midnight. A really good Thursday. Tomorrow is my meeting with Martin, yoga (if the sub shows) and then Thom's going away party. He is going away to Korea to teach English. He'll be a great teacher.

Todays Portrait Is: Nicole Cuvin.

draw day

Slept nicely in. Maybe I would be more stressed if I didn't sleep so much. Maybe I would get more done if I didn't sleep so much. Hmmn.

Had a massive scramble to give me the zest for the day. Documented and queued up the next few days portraits. Then at about 3pm, I headed down to Pioneer Place. It was so cold. I need to remind myself why I even have long johns. Keep forgetting about them. Keep thinking "oh it isn't that cold". When it says it will snow in Portland, I know it probably won't snow in my area, but it will at least be cold. Anyway. I went to the mall and drew lots of people in different ways. Trying to figure out how to do my "anonymous scene drawing" drawings. One half of my thesis art is anonymous collective stuff blah blah blah to counter the personal portraits. Did that for a few hours. Called Heather at 6pm, who I planned to hang with and draw. Got directions to her house and headed out.

So I went up Morrison (or whatever the west one way street is) turned North on 12th. Turned East on Lovejoy. Crossed the Broadway bridge. Turned left on Williams. Rode that for a while. Went past the venue where Odd Owl played at. Turned onto Fremont. And turned on another street, but I won't say to not give away Heather's location to any internet stalkers. But it was a good 2 mile bike run. And thanks to it being so cold, I wasn't dripping with sweat when I arrived. I wasn't all that exhausted either. Need to put some air in my tires. I'll do that tomorrow. Anyway, we hung out for a few hours. The drawings I did of her were not quite right, but at least I was drawing. I have plenty of the friends side of thing to draw from already, so that isn't a major issue right now. Keeping up with the drawing is. Afterwards, I went to Karen, BT, and Phil's to hang out with them. Since I was on that side of the river, might as well touch on all the bases. It is actually a lot easier to get over there than I thought. Broadway is also much more convenient than Hawthorne ever was. We swung by Fred Meyer's, and I got myself some Deli food. Then we hung out and watched BT play Red Dead Redemption for a bit.

Then it seemed a good time to go home. Didn't want to return when it was too late or cold, but it was already pretty cold. What with the snow and all that. It didn't really become apparent snow till I was in Nob Hill, and it wasn't sticking. Still, snow is snow. It was a pretty brisk ride home. But the apartment was warm and Justified was waiting to be watched. Did some more Behemoth drawings. Tomorrow we will have the art director in class and she'll give us feedback. It would be so cool if one of us got printed on a wine label. All legit and stuff!

Tomorrow is class and yoga. In between that? More people watching probably.

Todays Portrait Is: Amanda Belmont.

good mood day

Woke up to a chainsaw in the courtyard. They are apparently bringing in some landscapers or something. So they just took out a bunch of plants and trees and stuff. It looks barren. So I'm looking forward to the time when they put more stuff in. My eye is doing much better. Hurrah. A little bit twitchy, but not nearly as teary as it had been. I was worried about pink eye or something. Just hysterics. Yay healthy.

Went down to school at 1:30ish to get a cupcake from Kristen and Tabitha. They were holding a bake sale to fund their thesis. So yeah, did my part. Chilled and chatted. Then returned to home and did some portraits and went to Trader Joe's and did some shopping. Found the seaweed snacks. They moved them to a place that I couldn't find. But now I know where they are.

Then yoga! It was a fun class. Volunteered to help this girl with a video project on Sunday. Back in the Studios, I hung with Jon for an hour and drew him. Thesis stuff.

Went back home. Ate some stuff. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the mall and draw people and then call Heather and hang out and draw her. Holla!

Right now is television (Glee, Lights Out, White Collar) and more portraits. Like being on top of them.

Todays Portrait Is: Rachel Haywood.

double digest

Sunday:

Got up. Had a breakfast. At 2:30ish I set out to find a coffee shop to settle into and work away. Bubble Tea place was packed. Starbucks was packed. Coffee Time was packed. I need an outlet for my computer (it doesn't hold any charge), so I can't just settle in anywhere. There was a second Starbucks way down on Lovejoy and that had space. I got an iced tea and a sammich and got to writing. It was slow going. Very slow. At around 5pm I returned home and then hopped on down to the studios. It was horribly slow going. I was mostly just spewing my thoughts in a somewhat constructed manner into several sub sections and stuff. It got later and later and I got tireder and tireder. Also when I was putting on my eye pencil, some flake or something from the wood got into my eye I think. And it really irritated my eye. Its hella blinky and teary. It comes and goes but is generally annoying. I've flushed it many times but it still is irritated. I left for home from the studios at around 11:30. Relaxed a bit. Ate some food. I was up till 3am working.

Monday:

And I got up at 8am to continue working. Just needed an extra page written and some editing. It wasn't so bad, it just lacks research. Which is kinda bad because it is a RESEARCH PAPER. I didn't get much sleep. And my eye is still irritated. Still, now I know the direction my research will take. Sort of. At 2 I called it quits and went to school. Turned in some extra prints for the portfolio (they miscounted, thankfully I had extras). Then I walked to Safeway and got a much needed energy drink (a small one, not a Rockstar or Monster) and some microwave meal. Microwaved it. Ate it while waiting for class to start.

For the first bit of class we talked about papers. Then we did more mind mapping, though the people who went this week it wasn't the most helpful because they'd already had to do the paper without our input. Joan was sympathetic to haggered and tired most of us looked, and were. During break I chatted with Rachel and Jenn. My eye started acting up. When I don't think about it, or poke at it, it gets better. I just have to keep it out of mind.

After class, I scanned in my compositions for illustration. I'm happy that I'm already a bit ahead on that assignment. It is wine label design for a real client (potentially). I have some more ideas to do. I chatted with Mel. Went home. Did some dishes. Watched House (good episode). Ate pasta. Going to relax now. Watch some stuff. Draw some stuff. Get to bed at a decent hour.

Todays Portrait Is: Chase Velarde.

twitch

I have a twich in my right eye from an irritant, or maybe it is just stress.

I'm tired. And still have a (small) way to go. I'll give you the full report tomorrow.

Todays Portrait Is: Jared MacKenzie.