oh bed, why are you so lovely?

Uhg. Gosh. It was horribly waking up. I was exhausted and sore. I even had my cell phone alarm set to 10am, and still that felt too early. I kept resetting the alarm at random amounts for an hour and a half and then I finally got up, showered, ate some breakfast. Drew my portrait.

I got to my meeting with Martin right on time. I just took my bag of posters and dumped it out on his table. He said "these look great". We set aside each of the nine and looked at them as a set. He was mighty impressed. Sort of a "yeah, you have the visuals down and it works" meeting. It felt really good. Didn't talk about much, just sort of established where I am, and where I am is "I have a bunch of posters done, HUZZAH". He said he will wait to have a complete set of posters, but that he wanted a Samala one for now, as that is his obvious favorite of the lot.

After the meeting, I wandered and gave out posters. Then yoga. I think I like the Friday classes the best. I slow down the most and it really resets my state of mind. It was a small group as the weather in Portland today was GORGEOUS. Sunny and warm enough to not need an oppressive coat.

I swung by the studio where Karen was stressed and finishing her print.

Oh also, I got a nice print from Dom in thanks for the print I gave him, that is to say the print of him that is a part of my thesis that I finished. Glad he dug it.

Back home I chilled and relaxed. Then 7pm rolled around and I left for the print exchange shindig. I didn't have time to make something, well okay I totally had time I just couldn't think of anything, so I just bought some booze on the way there.

Liz, BT, Phil, Morgan B, Jalissa, Lacey, Asha, Heather, Daniel, Karen, Mel, DeAnne, Diana, Me, Beth, Heather, and some others were there. Some stayed various amounts of time. I drank. I ate. I exchanged. The prints look pretty darn awesome. I even drew some people, and as I sobered up the drawings got better. I may have got art for two to three more posters! Hurray! Asha made a delicious pasta salad that I gorged on. Not all the prints were actually turned in, so I left my edition there to be picked up later when the rest of the prints are in. We didn't play any games or watch any movie, mostly just talked and consumed.

It was a rainy but inconsequential ride home. Now I'm pretty tired and I have a lot of work to do on my paper over the next couple days. Whee.

Oh and it is UK Month at Portraitoday. Whoo!

Todays Portrait Is: James May.

time tables

6:00am: First alarm goes off.

7:05am: Get out of bed.

7:25am: get dressed after shower.

7:45am: enjoy a scramble

8:20am: head to school

8:45-10:40am: print the final two layers of my spirit animal print. Unfortunately all of the pink layers were misregistered so my whole print is off. All in all, I'm not totally satisfied with the result. It isn't my best piece of printmaking. If I had another week, I would redo it. But I don't have another week. Oh well.

11:00am: CLASS! We went through our websites. The websites are looking good. Lots of different looking sites. We are doing another art director assignment. I was the odd one out, so Kristin Rogers Brown art directed me. I am to illustrate a word or term in three different ways. Color. Detail. No faces.

12:30pm: lunch! I got a sandwich and accidentally ate the whole thing instead of saving half for later.

1:30pm: back to class. Worked on stuff. I folded and editioned my prints. Finally finished up my text sides.

3:05pm: scanned the text. edited the text. printed out the text.

3:somethingpm: went to the print lab. Emulsified screens. Laid out supplies. Exposed three screens. Chatted with people. Printed the color text layer on Leah and Robin's prints. Did the reductive drawing fluid to get them ready for the next layer.

6:30pm: yoga! Leg work! Lots of great fitness stuff. Felt good to work out all the kinks that are forming. Lots and lots of kinks.

8:00pm: gave away posters to people after yoga.

8:15pm: back to printing. Emulsion. Exposure. Wash out. Drawing fluid. Printing printing printing. Folding. Washing out. Lots of Sherlock Holmes.

9:30pm: walked with Daniel to Safeway to get a snack. Chips, Perrier, sweets.

10:00pm: back to printing.

1:00am: finish printing the final poster of the day. Fold it.

1:45am: leave the print studios with three complete posters, which brings my thesis total up to 9 posters.
2:14am: leave the Stevens Studios after talking with Jon for a bit.

2:49am: finish blogging. Very tired.

Todays Portrait Is: Joely Richardson.

spring, I'm going to pretend that it is here

Same old same old "I'm bad, I didn't do jack what I ought" entry. Being hard on myself isn't willing myself into working harder so I think I'll stop it.

It was a beautiful day so I rolled up my pant legs and pretended it was spring. Not a freezing cold day either, so it wasn't too off base.

Had lunch with Karen, Mel, Lacey, and Phil at Yur's and loitered about with Karen and Lacey afterwards. Went back home and worked at the text side of my posters. Worked on portrait. Going to get back to the poster text side and the portraits. I want to get another poster finished tomorrow. So I'll be getting to school before my 11am class, and get my screens set up. And maybe print a layer on my spirit animal print. Then class. Then printing. Then yoga. Then more printing. Then slumping home.

Todays Portrait Is: Julian McMahon.

a year later, can't think of anything to really reflect on though

It's been a year since that certain specific day. A lot has changed. Place, people, stuff. It is weird to think that it has been a whole year. Time moves forward impossibly fast.

Anyway. Didn't get as much reading done as I would have liked. Ate a scramble. Got the portrait up. Went to school and got the third layer on my Spirit Animal print done right on time. A CE class came in, but I had yoga at the same time so it wasn't like I was planning to print curing the Continuing Education class. Yoga had some good stretches. It went by relatively fast.

After that I went over to see Rollyn. He has been living it up in Hawaii for the past two weeks. And before that he was in Vegas. So I haven't seen a whole lot of him. Plus I'm all busy with my thesis. We watched The Thomas Crown Affair, the one with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Good little movie, except the music was annoyingly loud and didn't correspond too well to the mood of the scene. Also some of the composite shots were grating. But still, I enjoyed it.

On the way back, I stopped by the walk up McDonald's window (for those who can't go through drive through because they don't have cars, and the front of McDonald's is closed for the night). I've been craving cheap burgers lately, so I sated my craving.

Tomorrow is my wide open day. No obligations except my own effort iPublish Postnto accomplishing something.

Todays Portrait Is: Dylan Walsh.

teal and orange

I've yet to get ahead on portraits. Once I break free of some sort of assignment or requirement, I sort of go into a slack mode. This productivity stasis. Where I know there is a lot of stuff due soon, but it isn't due soon enough so I don't quite jump on it.

Anyway, spring break is over. Four weeks left.

In class we mainly talked about editing and different ways to cite this and that. I talked to Joan and she advised me on my paper. I need a lot more research but the writing is good. Need to read up on portraiture and the history of portraiture.

After class I went home. Went to Trader Joe's and stocked up on the basic carbs and apples and onions and meat. Had pasta for dinner. Mmm.

But yeah, like I said, project stasis. ALL THOUGH, I did work a bunch on my website. Got into the CSS programming and made the website block wider, so now my art has more content space. That is good. So I guess I was productive with practical stuff. I would say I'd almost call my website done. I just need to put more art work on it, and make some custom graphics. My website is trilliantrillian.com, in case you had forgotten.

Tomorrow is yoga day. I think I'll spend the time before it reading. I have a lot of reading that needs getting done. I showed Joan the Marc Quinn portrait that he does that is a mold of his head that is filled with his own blood, frozen, and the mold peeled away. The work has to be kept refrigerated. It is a really disturbing piece. Anyway, I need to make a longer list of portraits and portrait artists to research. The main body of my paper will be portraiture. Joan mentioned that the gift part of my project is what really sets it apart, so I will be keeping those other chapters.

There is an hour and a half block of time in the silk screen studio during which I may squeeze in some printing. Just one layer. And afterwards do the yoga thing.

I should get up early. All though I should stop saying that.

Todays Portrait Is: Laura Allen.

doing it twice

Cripes, it is 1:48am already? Time flies.

The alarm went off and I awoke to being very very sore. My arms hurt and my chest muscles that connect to my arms hurt. And my stomach hurt. So much muscle activity yesterday. But that at least means that I was pushing my body.

Had a slow start due to being so sore. I decided to spend the day with my print for the Spirit Animal Print Portfolio. Needed a break from thesis. So I went to Utrecht and bought paper and went so school and scanned. Finished listening to Hunger Games. The last book was very depressing, but a good end I think. Moved on to Sherlock Holmes for the time being. A Study in Scarlet took me through printing images, cutting paper, another walk to Utrecht because I didn't buy enough paper, to Cha Cha Cha for a burrito, to exposing my screen, to emulsifying a second screen because the exposure didn't work out on the first one as it turns out. I didn't notice that it had washed out more that it should have till I started printing. The set backs made it so I only got two layers done. Because between layers I had to do the drawing fluid emulsion resist stuff. My print will be three drawing fluid reductive layers, one spot color layer, and one line art layer. I'm really excited for the print.

Got home at 10. Ate some popcorn and cocoa. Watched tellie. Did my nails. Da Vinci's Inquest is on Hulu. I watched so much of that show back in Seabeck when I couldn't sleep. Okay not "so much" but it was always on at weird late night hours. It's a crime show set in Vancouver Canada. Sort of gritty and lacks the technology glamor that CSI and the like have. Which is why I dig it. So I've been watching it in order. I've only seen the odd episode here and there (and the same episode three times, which seems statistically unlikely for a show you don't watch regularly because it comes on at odd hours).

Spring break is over. Now it is final countdown time. DUH DUH DUH. FOUR WEEKS LEFT. CRAP.

Todays Portrait Is: Rockmond Dunbar.

way up high, two feet off the ground

Oh man, what a busy full exhausting day!

I got up at the magic impossible hour of 7:30am. Had a light breakfast. Showered. Got to the print lab at about 8:30. Got right to printing. Finished the Mel poster. I was three fourths of the way through the Beth poster when I was informed that there would be a Continuing Education class in the lab. BOOO. So I finished up the poster right quick and folded and editioned the two posters in the other lab. Robin was there as well. I was hoping to finish all four but it was for the best as I was starving.

It was one of those days that was both sunny and rainy. It came and went. Home from school it was sunny. I had some pasta. Home to the east side, it started to rain as I crossed Broadway. A thick mist of rain. The type that gets you damp all over, but you never really feel like you are being pelted. I am incapable of finding the Multnomah street turn off of Broadway. I've missed it about three times now, so I always overshoot and then have to get my way over towards Lloyd. It is weird to think that Lloyd is within a reasonable bikeable distance. Like 10 minutes off the bridge. I biked in a circle and eventually got onto 12th and rode that miserable, shoulder shaking, teeth chattering from the road construction road down to Burnside. I locked my bike up and spied Toon approaching. We exchanged an enthusiastic hug and got to catching up, but still had the same level of closeness like it hasn't been ages since our last hang out.

She invited me to a beginning drop in class for aerial gymnastic fitness stuff. You know, that stuff where there are large silk ribbons hanging and people climb up them and spin and stuff? Yeah. The class was her treat. I signed a lengthy health waiver and got my exercise clothes on. We did 30 minutes of stretches. Lots of leg work. I'm glad yoga has kept me spry. Still, this was a lot of core building stuff that...well I have no core. No arm strength, no abs. I have strong legs though, probably. Strong enough that I can bike a few miles and not have wobble leg.

Not being able to really lift my own body weight really hampered my learning, but I soldiered on. There were a couple ladies in their 40's who casually mentioned that they did parkour. It was about half and half beginners and experienced people. I didn't feel so self conscious about being bad. It takes a lot of strength and finesse. It is a lot of taking slack and wrapping feet around lengths of suspended silk and clamping. I would love to try it again, but only if I had arm strength. I did get the hip lock. And after lots of failure, I got the foot lock as well. There was this stuff that we sprayed on our hands to get a better grip on the silk as well.

The class totally...just wiped me out. And I was only really on the silk a third or forth of the time. I don't think I could take any more though. Needed the breaks. Much respect to the dancers who make it look so effortless.

Toon and I went to Fire on the Mountain for a celebratory wings lunch. We gabbed and caught up. I got on my bike and had only a slightly better time getting to Broadway. It is weird how I'm just now figuring out Portland on bike, after I've been here for nearly four years.

I decided to go to school and print instead of passing out at home. I was pretty exhausted but I got into the rhythm of it. Callouses are starting to form! I finished up Samala and Acey, but didn't have the energy to fold and edition them. I'll do that tomorrow. I finally went home and slumped into a chair and chilled and hydrated and enjoyed me some Advil. I watched this great documentary called Yank Tanks, about the lengths that people with go to in Cuba to keep cars from the 50's running. I also worked on my spirit animal for the spirit animal print exchange. Since I've been going full out on thesis printing, I think I'll just print the spirit animal and work on the text. Edition and fold, but no thesis printing. Thesis drawing, yes. Thesis reading, yes.

It feels good to accomplish something before noon. "Think of what you can get done if you didn't sleep so much, Trillian" my mind says. "zzzzzzzz" logic says.

Ma and Pa, I'll let you know when I get my Focus Week time slot. I requested early in the week though, so I can get it over with. But who knows.

Todays Portrait Is: Michael-Raymond James.