a day to print and teach

Oof my knees. The joyous pain of productivity in print.

So I got up at 10ish and showered and stuffed some toast in my mouth. I forgot my thermos of tea at home though. Booo. Got to school at around 11:30. Claimed the back six tables for my one off class. So cool that I was asked to teach over all the other qualified people. Why me? I know I've taught a couple people here and there. And I have a joy of sharing art and practices. And I think I'm generally personable if you aren't a total knob. Either way, hurray! It was only a class of five: Tom (who I called Dom the whole day, other people called him Tommy but I think he introduced himself as Dom and I repeated Dom and was never corrected) Carla? Sarah? Dominique and Emily. A nice little group of four seniors and one graduate. Heather and Mel graciously loaned me a screen for my class. So I started with emulsion. I didn't give a live demo, I just had each of them apply it to a screen in turn. And they all did super! Applying emulsion should not be rushed. Then I found out that through a miscommunication they didn't bring images to print, only paper to print on (and also not a lot of paper, but I had brought down a reem of my Mohawk thesis paper (I have 2000 sheets and at most will use 1200 of them, and that is a high estimate)) so I told them to either draw something, pick something from a sketchbook, or print something I provided. Three drew something, one picked from a sketchbook, and one printed a drawing I did on Mel (using Mel's screen). I also exposed a two color images just to show them how to do two color registration. While waiting for the screens to dry, BT was in attendance and I asked him to give a little talk on at home printing. And off the cuff he did a really great job of explaining and tips and times and stuff. I only know in studio printing, so it was great to have someone supplement it.

Explaining takes so much longer to get through all the steps, but we got through it. Screen by exposed screen, we got all set up to print. And we had a hoot of a time! The double color demo went over well and I gave them all a print from that. Having the reem of paper to print on really made the experience fun, because they were able to play instead of running out of paper. They printed a ton, though it didn't make much of a dent in the paper. And they used up lots of left over ink(always a bonus) and did split fountains. And it was enough printing that I was able to help a few of them trouble shoot different problems. At around four I said that it was time to clean up because more people will inevitably be coming in to print. I showed them one by one how to remove the emulsion. And we separated the piles of prints. I also photocopied a bunch of my little guides to printing, just so they could take home most everything I said and it wouldn't all be memory. It's good to have a record of technique to fall back on. Also told them to email me with any questions. We had some good goodbyes and when they left I did a little jig. Thought I did quite well.

Then I plopped down exhausted in my studio and talked to Jon and drank a soda. Went home. Ate a peanut butter and honey sandwich and drank some tea and watched part of a TED talk from the artist JR. Then I realized the library closed soon so I rushed back to school. Printed out the two Robin print layers. Applied emulsion to two screens. Set up my space. Oiled up my transfer. Counted out 65 sheets of paper (50 for the actual edition, 15 for the midterm panel concept one). The color layer is fantastic. It is a soft brown that fluctuates in golden tones. Very lovely. I only got about half way through the black line layer. The school closes at the STUPID time of 10pm on Saturday. I printed both layers on the fridge. They didn't come close to lining up, but now they are there until the fridge is replaced (the last fridge with my Lucky Luna on it is gone, this is a new fridge in dire need of art). I just put the screen against the fridge and pulled a print. Mel's pizza print is also there looking awesome. Robin is the perfect figure for a print fridge. Hehe. I got out of school right on time. It was raining and a couple of the prints got droplets on them, but no major biggie. The prints look good. My fingers might have smudged a couple. I'll have a good spy at the edition tomorrow or something. It looks like each layer needs an hour time to print, not including time to expose screens. It would take a little less if I had someone catching paper, but I can't plan to have that all the time. It's off to good start. I've missed the printing studio.

Now I'm back home, tired. Once I revive I'll draw some more portraits. Gotta get back ahead of it all. They come easier to me, which is nice.

Todays Portrait Is: Betsy Brandt.

oatmeal!

AHHHH just spent the night having a beer with Matthew "The Oatmeal" Inman. Eee that was so cool. But I'll start at the start.

Got up at around 11. Showered. Got dressed. Karen picked me up at about 11:50 and we went to the magic land of Arvey Paper to pick up my paper! It was such a little box, totally inconspicuous. And to think that all of that will become my thesis. All though only about half of it truly will. The rest will be scrap paper for projects and stuff. And also for other prints. It is good to have quality paper on hand. All though now I'm pretty short on cash. More so thanks to the wonderful hospital visit. BUT my eye is now in no pain whatsover and it is healing. There are still the sty bumps, but they are diminishing. Just gotta keep with the drops and all that. But the swelling is now almost entirely not noticeable.

I didn't make myself a single meal. Ate out entirely. Crap. After the paper and dropping it off, Karen and I grabbed lunch at Yur's. I just wanted a grilled cheese and a soda. Talk to Craig a bit, who was working. Then I went home. Did nothing. Went to school for yoga. It was a nice yoga. Though the leg lunges I'm not so fond of. Returned to the studio. For about two hours I listened to Feast for Crows and wrote up my guide to screen printing. Just tips and tricks. I'm teaching a small group of high schoolers tomorrow how to print, so I wanted to give them a little guide to take with them as a reminder of all the things. If you are out of practice, some things are easy to forget.

Then at 7ish I rode my bike to Powell's to see the book talk and signing that was happening there tonight. Matthew Inman does this website called The Oatmeal, and it is pretty funny stuff. And he made a book, so there was a signing and talk and stuff. Karen came as well, and there were a lot of nerdy looking types in the audience. But the space for talks was pretty full. When he came out, he stood right in front of me as he was waiting for his introduction. I did a quick sketch. He talked for about thirty minutes. Had some good laughs. It was a bit of a wait in the line to get the book signed, but Karen and I had a good conversation about topics. I actually got the book signed to Karen and I, I don't know why. We talked in line about asking him out to a beer but we chickened out. We then wandered in Powell's talking about how we chickened out. Then we went back up the the Pearl Room (where the talk had taken place) and got in the back of the line again. When we came up the second time (as the last people) we (by which I mean Karen) asked if he wouldn't mind having a beer with us at Deschutes. He said yes, gave us his card and said he'd meet us there because he had to do some stuff. AWESOME!! Yeah! We went to Deschutes and got a table and had a beer and chatted and waited. How cool is it that you go to a book signing and then ask the signer out for a drink and then he comes out for a drink!? Anyway, he came and we chatted for a bit. Then went to Low Brow Lounge to get some food. It was a good long hangout. Talked about this and that. About book tours and comics and fancy Japanese toilets. We parted ways at a little after midnight.

AHHH! After a hundreds strong book signing, he went out with US and had a beer. SO FREAKING COOL. And now I have a signed book. And now I should stop spending money on stuff. Going to conserve. Sandwich time. I think I have peanut butter stuffed away somewhere.

Todays Portrait Is: Dean Norris.

making my friends like me even more

Hurray! I woke up and my eye was significantly less swollen. And it didn't hurt. Yay! There is still a sty and the inside is red and there was white stuff, but it didn't hurt. Getting up was hard. I was tired. Showered. Got my tea and tiger's milk bar. Scanned and threw some color into my Behemoth label. Really liked how it turned out. Had a nice little critique. Our next assignment is to design something to go on something 3D. But if we have done shirts, we can't do a shirt. So I'll design a glass. We are also trying to make some contact with a local artist. Some sort of networking assignment. Hmmm.

For lunch I got a sandwich from Quizno's. Back in class Martin gave us a run down of how the upcoming midterm meeting will go and what to expect. Well not how it will GO but how it will unfold. We will be getting a panel of people in to give us a fresh perspective. We will talk about our work for 15 minutes and then there will be a talk. He rattled off some names of people they are trying to get in for the panels and he said Tyler Stout. TYLER STOUT!! Gahhh I don't know what I'll do if he not only shows up but is ON MY FREAKING PANEL. That would be awesome.

For the rest of class, it was open time. I'm really behind on my website. I don't even have a domain name bought. My art only looks good on the internet about twenty percent of the time. I don't put the effort into documentation. But I gotta do this for class. Hrrmmmn.

I worked on my thesis pieces. Filling in color and the like. At 3:30 I went to print them out. I chatted to Karen in the print studio a bit. Then I met with Martin....

...and it went really well! He really liked some of the drawings and the way they fit as a set. It felt good to place seven concepts down and really look at them. It will take no time at all to print that side. I just have to resolve what the hell I'm doing with the other side. I just need to draw and design more. I should set a goal to get the half of the posters that I have ready to print printed within the next two weeks. Just get them ready to go, so once I have the other sides finished, I just print and distribute that sucker. Just over SIX WEEKS till focus week. Holy CRAP. Ahhg.

Anyway, with that done I went to the studios and hung out with Karen and BT and Robin and made some comments that were taken in a way that I didn't think they would be. Normally about how when we hang out with people we get influenced by their personality. I called Arvey paper and my paper is IN!! Karen will be taking me to Arvey tomorrow at noon. I can't wait to get my case. At around 6, we parted ways. I chatted to the boys in the studio. Then yoga! It was a lot of lunges and the like. Not my favorite.

Back home I took out the recycling and had some udon and egg. Watched some stuff. Chilled out.

I grossed out a bunch of people with my eye. Mainly because the sty was draining, so there was tons of gross white goop in my eye. Totally nasty, but it didn't hurt at all and the puffyness was receding. Having an illness is such a novelty to me. Once I stop hurting. It has healed so much in the past 24 hours. I can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring. Now I shall put some more drops in and go to bed. Paper! Printing! Yoga! Drawing! Powells!

Todays Portrait Is: Anna Gunn.

don't touch your eyes trillian!

The Internet has been coming and going, and I have just been able to get into blogger to update now. And I'm tired. Blaaah. And I've spent the last hour and a half redrawing my Behemoth wine label. I screwed up the first one with sloppy inking. I need to put brush and ink away for a while. So I started over at half the scale and used a pen. Tomorrow I'll get up early and go to school and scan it and throw in some digital color and stuff. Yup. I'll be tired tomorrow.

Today I went to the hospital. At about 1 in the afternoon I ventured out. I walked to Legacy something something Hospital. I asked at the front desk where to go to see about my eye, and the lady was all "oh my! that would be the emergency center" so I went there and checked in. I got seated in the little blood pressure checking station. They checked my blood pressure and my temperature. I gave the nice nurse a run down of my symptoms and how long my eyes have been screwed up. Then I was moved to another room. Another nurse came and gave me an eye exam. My vision in my right eye, the one with the sty on the bottom that won't heal, is considerably more blurry. Left eye is perfect. Then the doctor came and checked out my eyes. Lots of opinions on my eyes. She managed to flip my other eyelid and confirmed that it was indeed a sty in there as well. Everyone was pretty decidedly "yup your eye is pretty darn iffy looking". But thankfully no one gave the inkling that it was more than stys. And the doctor showed me some neat excerpts from a medical text. I liked her. She gave me a prescription for some drops to help along with the healing, as well as a contact for an optotholomotompetrist or whatever, in case my eyes didn't improve. So it was a nice visit. An expensive one. But I was in pain and not getting any better. I got my prescription filled. Grabbed a burrito. And got to nursing my eye back to health. I went to Fred Meyer's for soap and sponges and hair conditioner and other stuff. Went to school and scanned my sketches. Worked on filling in the sketches for poster layouts. Did that till the surprising hour of 10pm. Went home. Worked on Behemoth. Watched tellie. Put in drops.

Love these drops. Hate the way I look with a puffy eye. Can't wait to get better. Tomorrow is busy and all over the place and I'm not looking forward to it, but it will come.

Todays Portrait Is: Aaron Paul.

I want to claw at my eyelid till it gets better

Started the day with a portrait. I need to get ahead once again. I'm not happy with the style of today's. Need to work more on making it not look...goofy. I think its the eyes.

Tomorrow I'm going to head to the clinic and get my eye checked. It isn't improving like it ought and there is a bump remaining from the other sty. I'm bad about getting stuff checked. I normally have a "wait and get healthy" attitude. But it isn't getting better. I need to get it looked at. It is distracting and I need my vision to be not compromised. So tomorrow I'll get up, eat some food, and go to the hospital. I think the one near me takes the insurance I got. I'll ask.

I worked on sketches for Odd Owl. They are looking good...I think. I dunno. I'll scan and send them off tomorrow. Provided I don't end up in double eye patches or something.

Yoga was good, but I wasn't really in the mood for it.

I need to go shopping for more food as well. Plus side of buying just enough is that I don't end up with spoiled left overs hardly ever.

Hospital, shopping, scanning, drawing. Hurray. Oh also have to finish the Behemoth label. Fun fun. A lot to tend to, so I'll have to get up early. Today was a waste. It shouldn't have been such a waste. I just can't get my head in the game.

Todays Portrait Is: Bryan Cranston (thus begins the departure from friend portraits to those of actors and musicians and general celebrities).

my soul is null

Been such in the dumps lately. Unmotivated. Confused. Stressed. Worried. Just this big void of thesis staring at me. I know I have to fill it but drawing isn't just what I have to fill it with. I have to speak to a bigger picture and make the case FOR my art work. It's hard to do it honestly.

At 11, Robin called me asking if I would be willing to switch my 2:30 spot with her 5:00pm one. I agreed, because five seemed a much better deal to someone who was feeling anxious and lethargic.

My eye is doing much better. It only hurts when I squint it majorly. And it barely needs any tending to its swelling. Maybe another day or two and it will be healed!

I realized that there are only 28 days in February, so I ended up with an extra portrait for the month. So a special bonus to end the month with. Now I move on to drawing actors. Hmmm.

Ate some pasta and went to school. Drew Acey for a bit and talked about politics and school and how PNCA really needs to advertise itself as a conceptual school.

Then I met with Joan about my paper. AND HAD A WONDERFUL MEETING! It went so well and she gave me so many great thoughts and ways to encourage myself. I need to free write a bunch about these different topics and I have such a great direction. I felt so much better afterwards.

So much better that I decided to take the rest of the night off and go to the movies with Rollyn. We saw Drive Angry, which was just what I needed this soggy Monday night. The action scenes were shot in an understandable way (that is to say, they were not over edited). The cars were fast. Amber Heard was a babe. Fichtner was amazing, but he always is. Cage phoned it in, but I didn't really care. It was fun and my brain was suspended for two hours. Afterwards Rollyn and I had a fight about the artistic relevance of Duchamp's work during his readymake period. Okay not really a fight, but it was pretty heated. Hahaha. Ohh the problems two artistic oriented people have, one being a visual artist the other a performer.

The weather sucks, but I can always get dry. I think I should have more spare clothes in my studio...

Todays Portraits Are: Elnora Turner AND Blaire Stapp.

ILLUSTRAQUACIOUS

Woke up with my eye same as yesterday. Spent the hour in bed, waiting till the "must get up" time, holding a wet cloth to my eye to encourage the swelling to go down. It was actually kind of soothing. The video I was helping Abbie with was delayed till a 2pm meeting, so that was nice. Then I remembered I hadn't done todays portrait so I bolted from bed and got that done. Gotta get them up before 3pm! Showered, ate finished that up and got it online with time to spare. My role in the video was a spirit or something. I just had to dress in flowy clothes. I put on tights and a nice black top and put my silk skirt in a bag. Packed some snacks. Rode my bike to the Goose Hollow max stop. Caught the max to Washington Park stop. And there I waited. Listened to my audio book for a bit. Abbie was delayed because something got in her eye. And then that thing stuck and she had to cancel. Also the weather sucked. So I went back home. Changed. Rode my bike down to school and found Samala in the print lab and tailed her for two hours. Drew her. Hung with her, Dom, and Jon. Going to school and finding someone to hang with seems a bit easier than having to schedule stuff. Even two hours gets a lot of drawing in.

Returned home. Made myself some mac and cheese. Popped open a beer. Set my laptop in front of the TV and watched the Oscars. And drew. I'm a multitasker like that. Oscars were pretty good, a little rushed near the end as usual. I was surprised that Kings Speech won picture AND director. I thought Fincher or Aronofsky would get director. There were so many good films too. I ended up redrawing one portrait THREE TIMES before I was satisfied. I'm still not actually satisfied with it. But I guess it looks more like the person now...yeah. And I'm now done with all the friend portraits. March brings the start of a trend of actors and stuff. People who will be easier to get references for.

Me and the pals came up with a new word: Illustraquacious. Basically it refers to the quality of possessing a visage that is easy to represent through art. Some people are very difficult to draw, and some people are really easy to represent. Some people just have easy to caricaturization features. Samala is one of these people. Morgaine is not. We came up with the word because we liked the suffix -quacious, and combined that with chopping off the front bit of illustration. Technically the suffix that indicates being full of something is -acious, but whatever.

Now I'm really tired. And tomorrow I'm meeting with Joan to learn the, what I assume to be, hard truth about my thesis paper.

WHY IS THE NEW TOP GEAR SERIES OVER ALREADY? THIS IS CRAP!

Todays Portrait Is: Jackie Barg.