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

fabric and ricfaab

I was up and ready to go for Fabric Depot at 10am. Then Karen never called or picked up. I was on the Red Max line headed to 122nd street when Karen called and told me how her phone had died, etc. She said she would meet me at the place and give me a ride back and that she was sorry.

Shouldn't have bought the all day pass.

Turns out the Blue Line takes me from three blocks from my apartment to within three blocks of Fabric Depot! How exciting, I can pick up quality fabric with ease now. Whee!

Fabric Depot is epic! Huge! Hugely epic! Bolts of fabric as far as the eye can see and it doesn't skimp. It's got fabric worthy of mermaid costumes. Just so much...fabric. And it was all 20% off! I just wanted enough to make a skirt, shirt, and a couple berets. In the jersey section I got a cute white fuity print, in the other section I got a dark gingham print for a tulip skirt, and in the fleece section I got some green stuff to make a beret out of! I also got some scissors especially for fabric cutting. The lady who cut our fabric studied calligraphy. As we were checking out I saw some Violet Crumble. Best candy ever! I literally stopped right in the middle of what I was saying and bounded over to get some. Mmm!!

Fabric Depot was everything it lived up to be Grandma, and more!

After there, we went to Ikea for lunch. Meatballs ahoy! So delicious. Then I picked up some smaller bowls and an alarm clock. Not for me, it was a gift for Karen who has often had issues with relying on her phone. Then we were homeward bound.

A box of fabric was waiting for me. Auntie Joyce sent me some stuff, and it was a jam packed box of stuff. It is mostly quilty fabric so I don't know what I am going to do with it...yet.

Then I made a hat! I used this pattern making thing that came with one of the books I ordered, it has a program and you put in your measurements and it generates the pattern for you to print out, and I transcribed it, but something must have happened where I redrew it too small...anyway the hat ended up being a bit small. It's cute but not really my style...I wanted a beret. I have enough fabric to make a second one. Still, it is nice to become more confident with my machine. And I used interfacing for the first time!

Ate pasta. Watched QI. Made a to do list, not as much to do as I thought, just a lot of stuff to get done by Wednesday.

the other vinyl culture

I have this twinge in my back and I have no clue where it came from.

Anyway, slow morning with again no eggs or bacon. Still got to school in good time. Ink day isn't as fun as I thought it would be. It is a lot of awkward sitting and horrible paper and not good drawings. It got a little better near the end, but it was still tough. Probably because of my back.

For the first chunk of class Ryan Bubnis came in to talk. He graduate from PNCA in 2006 when the illustration program was about 5 people strong. He does a lot of toy design and readily accessible graphics for use on things like cellphones and what not. He gave a talk about other illustrators who do such a thing and how they are rolling in cash. He passed around some of the things he has designed. Toys and a $50 Kid Robot tee shirt. I could design fancy shirts.

Then it was work time. The assignment for the day was one part artists statement, two parts working on the final project due next week and four parts work on product development using our art. I whipped up a couple shirt designs. I wasn't really thinking about it as I wasn't fully aware it was assigned in the first place. I was relatively productive through the whole class. Even stayed till about 6pm working on things. Not yet sure where I want to take the Fanny final image. Bold and graphic? Most likely...

I ate a burrito in the library by myself. Sort of. Wayne Bund and Heather Zinger were also in the couch area. Chatted a little. It was a good burrito.

It was nicely drizzling but I said "screw you, I have rain pants" to the sky and rode off into the night in my bright yellow pants.

Finished the burrito for dinner. And ate bacon and eggs. Ate some celery and peanut butter and raisins. Watched Nip/Tuck. Generally relaxed. My back is seizing up.

You know where I'm going tomorrow morning? Fabric Depot.

Fanny Drazier - work in progress

Digital work in progress image of Fanny Drazier. 11x17" in its full version.

Photoshop.

tees

some ideas for tshirts

labor day labor day hey everyone its labor day

My back feels all twisted like...uhg.

Had a nice sleep in. Got up early. Made myself a big bacon and eggs breakfast. Read what was remaining of the reading. It is nice to take a longer morning, but when 6:30 rolls around tomorrow, like hell I'm leaving bed till 7.

In Homeland, Hannah presented on the Sublime. Well a couple sublime artists. One of them did this field of metal poles, it was called Lightning Field. Another slide show from Duford followed. More Thomas Cole and other Hudson River School painters.

During lunch I had a meeting of sorts. It was a focus group of Goose Hollow students and we were giving some feedback about what we liked and didn't like about student housing, and what we would like to see. The purpose of the meeting was to generate a starting point for a potential residence facility near school and exclusively for PNCA. We all strongly vouched for keeping kitchens in each room and having an open studio space. The school also fed us tons of pizza and free soda. Robin, Jaymee, and I all had the special limited edition apple lemon soda. SO GOOD!!

In Homeland once again, we listed to a chunk of an episode of This American Life. It was about these people, Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar, who polled people. First they used the data from several countries and painted pictures based on what concepts were most favored by everyone. In every polled country, except for Holland, landscapes were preferred. The second poll was about music and they composed a song based on what people liked (it was 3 minutes long) and a song featuring what people hated (20 minutes long). The Most Unwanted Songs song featured operatic rapping about cowboys. Seriously. The episode the segment was a part of can be found here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1277

After that we watched Touching the Void, a documentary about Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who are two British climbers who scaled the face of Siula Grande in Peru. No one had done it before, and no one has done it since. The movie was narrated by the pair of them, so you know you make it from the start, but watching it and knowing that Joe survives breaking his leg, falling into a crevice, being left for dead by Simon (who cut the cord thus plummeting Joe to his most probable death, but if he hadn't cut the rope they most likely would have both died), scaling down further into the crevice, crawling along the bottom towards a break in the ceiling, scaling up towards the opening, and crawling down the glacier and through the rocks. He survived about 4 days of severe dehydration by himself, with the broken leg and no food. He crawled all the way to about twenty feet from the base camp (which was still a ways from the bottom of the mountain). AMAZING!

Then for an hour and a half we talked about the sublime and how mountain climbing is such a "privileged" thing to do (I disagreed) and other stuff.

It was misting rain on the way back home, nothing worth wearing rain pants for though.

I put on the new episodes of Lost (oh my god so GOOD) and then White Collar and then about three episodes of Weeds. Ate udon and egg, a cucumber, some ants on a log, and then I churned out some sketches for Martin. Used reference like a mad woman.

deep fry it! makes everything better

I woke up at 2:30am in a delirium in knocked on the bathroom door and demanded Katie emerge so I can shower and get ready for school. I then came to my sense. Two hours later, I awoke again convinced it was time to go to school.

Needless to say, getting started and getting going today was rough. No breakfast. I did manage to make a limp sandwich and grab a granola bar.

Another technical drawing day. We talked about the puppets we plan to make for the puppet fashion show. Lots of figure studies. Lots of proportion. It is slowly coming back to me.

In screenprinting we had an hour and a half demo from JP on using the printers to make things like stencils and transfers. Then lunch. Yoga got approved! Chilled with Karen, BT, Jay, Urusla, and Bryan out on the loading dock. Made some zine sales. Whoo!

The rest of class was a work day. I finished my image for printing, but because it was a toner wash on duralar I had to burn a step test onto the emulsion to see what it would look like with different amounts of exposure. I don't feel like explaining any of the technical stuff in that last sentence. It has to do with light and whatever. Anyway, first I expose it for 30 units, then another 30, then 60, then 120, then 240, then 480, and finally 960. Each unit is roughly a second, so add all that up and it is a long time to sit around. Thankfully I brought my assigned reading with me, so I knocked that out while waiting. The step test worked perfectly, but getting to that point took all damn class.

Chilled with Karen while she got a late lunch. Went home. Read more.

Katie, Karen, BT, and I met at Fire on the Mountain for delicious wings and beer. I ordered six Vietnam barbecue flavor and six honey BBQ. The Vietnam was far spicier than the sample I had. My mouth went numb eventually and I finished it all off. Leah K. also joined us for delicious munchies. MMM. BT ordered us two deep friend twinkies and deep fried oreos for dessert. The frying process makes the oreos entirely soft and all delicious. I was supremely gorged.

I went home with Karen and BT, they now live together, and chilled there for an hour. BT informed me that Hercule Poirot's mustache is fake. Karen worked on putting together an Ikea desk. On Saturday they are having a "come as your high school self" party. Should be fun.

BT drove me home and now I am going to sit and read for a few hours. Whhooo!

brunettes all around

Amazing morning. I was washed and dressed and had bacon and eggs on a plate...and all of that was done by 7:30! Gobbled it down, got all my stuff together, and left right on time. I was so productive I thought I must have been an hour late.

But I wasn't.

Class was another brain killer power hour. Talked about the tain of windows, and how it is something we can only perceive when it reflects and what we perceive isn't a tangible thing, only a reflection. I was first to speak when he asked us our general thoughts. I brought up the idea of how we are meant to both perceive ourselves as a small part of the world AND how the entire world is our perception of it. Go me.

After class I loaned Samala a few comics for her class. Then I picked up some 1920's reference material for my illustration project. Making a character based in that time so I have to get good reference for it.

It was misting rain, still I departed. Got some miracle grow for my jade. No dirt. Trader Joe's for a weeks worth of apples and celery and eggs. Key Bank to deposit the money I earned from the holiday art sale.

Then I went back home and sat and drew for hours and read some Homeland reading. Watched all of the second season of Weeds. It is fun to just draw costumes and not worry about composition or anything. Ate a cheese steak. Ate some salad. Ate some ants on a log.

Katie dyed her hair.

read a page, relax a little

Today was a long effort of getting through some required reading. My system is I'll read a page or half a page, depending how the books are broken up, and then relax a little on the Internet, then I'll read some more. It is really easy to put off blocks of time devoted to reading, but not so hard to read a small chunk knowing there will be a break soon. Took a while to get through, but I had a good time doing it.

Didn't understand a word of it though. I have Skynet written in the margins and a couple things underlined but by and large, existentialist phenomenology is hard and way over my head.

Got through some of my homeland readings as well. Flipped over the calendar and realized I have to present Gardens in a week and a half.

Speaking of gardens, my lucky jade's stem broke! I stuck the surviving stalk in the dirt and watered it. I think I'm going to try and track down some quality potting soil and some nutritious plant growing stuff tomorrow. Pearl Hardware probably has something. I don't want my plant to die! It just doesn't seem to be taking root in the dirt it has.

I've really taken to watching Weeds this weekend. It is a fun show with some good casting. Helps the majority of it is on Netflix instant watch.

Hung out at a little R.A. glitter party thing.

Oh, I made myself a real breakfast this morning. I almost never do this. Fried up two slices of bacon and using that grease I made scrambled eggs. Finished with toast. Delicious way to start the day.

Now time to try to hit the hay early. School starts at 8am on Monday now.

a fridge is a terrible thing to waste

Did more shopping today. I need to break out of my pasta + sauce habit. Bought meat and veggies (not just apples, I got lettuce and celery and cucumbers). Bought some cheese and hoagie rolls. Bought lots of tasty things that are not pasta and sauce.

When I got home and prepared to put away my haul, I observed that the refrigerator was in an awful shape. It had a lot of little things in plastic bag and I noticed some expired things in tupperware. Also the meat drawer was a sticky mess. So I unloaded every piece of food from it and set about cleaning! I filled the tub with hot soapy water and soaked all the drawers in it. I scrubbed them and set them aside to dry. Then I wiped down and cleaned up the interior of the fridge. Lysol and soap and all that. There was a big pool of something red and sticky that had been there for a long long time. It was gross. I tossed quite a few things but now the fridge is neat and in order and looking clean as can be. Real proud of all that work.

Bit by bit, the apartment comes together. A little bit cleaner every day.

After all that labor, I celebrated with ants on a log! Celery, peanut butter, and raisins oh my! Fast on track to becoming a new favorite snack. MMMmmm.

Then I made myself a cheesesteak sandwich. Had to make sure I had not forgotten how. It came out allright. I should have used more onion and tried to slice the meat a little thinner. Still, it was tasty and filling. Followed that up with a meager salad. Mmm.

Watched a Bill Plympton DVD and followed that up with Magnolia. That was long and dramatic and...long. Great performances across the board no doubt.

It feels good to get major cleaning done. It is the type of accomplishment that you can really see the difference for a long time with.

milestonearrific

1000th blog entry! Whooo!
That is a lot of writing. Hundreds of thousands of words.

Slept in. It is Friday so that is what I do on Friday. And Saturday. I'll probably try to set the alarm on Sunday so that getting up on Monday won't be such a pain.

Ate toast. The fire alarm went off so I had to stuff Luna in her cat carrier. Katie came back during the alarm so we chilled in her borrowed car a little while waiting for it to end. After that was all over we went for three dollar burgers! Shelly even remembered us after all these months we have been gone.

After dinner, I joined Katie in her errands and she also agreed to take me to this fabric place she knows, Fabrics for Less. We went to Camera World, but they didn't have the thing for her tripod that she needs. Fabrics for Less had a lot of silks, but not enough in the stretch jersey type that I want. I bought a couple zippers and we went to Goodwill to see if they had a handbag. They didn't.

Made myself a bowl of popcorn. Watched the last episode of New Amsterdam. Now to sip hot apple cider and point my eyes at some existentialist reading. Yay.

end of week

999th blog post!

We did wet media in The Figure. That is ink and brush and bamboo pen. I couldn't find my pen so I just used a brush, but Moran whittled the other end of my brush down and made it double ended! I wasn't too enthused by the things I did. The poses were very short so by the time a layer of ink wash had dried, it would be time to start over with a new pose. Oh well.

Illustration was an In Design demo and meet with Martin day. Mia gave us a demo about In Design, the program used for layout and book design. We made mock source book pages. They are pages that go into illustration books that are used for reference for hiring artists. So we made them for ourselves just to have practice. I only had the images on hand to make mine, but I am pretty happy with it. Large, bold and cropped.

I bought some lean cuisine and a root beer for lunch. Mmm. My semester plan meeting with Martin went really fast. Even though I finished my work early, I still hung around till 5. Chatted with Karen for a bit.

I'm working on another zine. Gave my classmates bits of paper to draw on, and once I get enough I will put them together in a silkscreened zine! Whoo!

I have shin splints real bad, probably from yesterdays hill filled day.

Got home. Ate food. Watched TV. Poured through my sewing patterns book. Started drawing designs. Getting ahead of myself a bit though. Need to get fabric.

Sent out some thank you cards as well. Yay!

Oh and did laundry. Tomorrow I shall rest and read. Yay!