Signing away my soul...

So it's totally almost 4 in the morning, and instead of going to sleep, I'm blogging. Awesome! 

So, I JUST got finished with two of my art projects. One, a large pastel drawing in Drawing 2 and making a chair out of cardboard for 3D design. 

No, let me just get up on my soap box for a sec. Being an art major is HARD CORE. You give up you're own personal needs for your art. Hungry? Too bad. Sleepy, nope. Gotta pee? ... well, alright, but only if you make it quick. 

Each art project takes a minimum of 30 hours to complete--3 hours on the sketches alone. 6 to 10 on the preliminary drawings and 20+ on the actual drawing itself. Same concept goes for designing. With two studio classes, I put in over 60 hours of homework every three weeks. And then when we're done... we start the process all over again. Good thing I didn't take that third studio class. 

Now, that said. Here's my latest works! 

Drawing 2: 

My first two preliminary drawings (done several weeks ago). 

It's Charcoal with blue acrylic. It's about 12x24 inches. 

And the second...

It's cool because Adam suggested going with the first composition. So I did, but for my second piece I decided to do something a little different. I was really intrigued by the arch in the little finger peg...things. I thought that just added a really fine curve to such a straight object and it was kind of visually stimulating. Turns out, I was right and ended up going with this idea for my large piece.

Here's the finished product:
It's about 24x40 inches (massive)

And here's mine and every one els's in the display case. Adam was REALLY adamant about getting mine in there. That feels good.

At the same time I had a 3D project.
The idea was to make a handle. Hair brush handle, door handle, bike handle. A handle, and it had to be made out of wood. While others molded their handles to comfortably fit in their hand I went with a little different approach...

It's a lizard!!! He turned out FLAWLESSLY. Brad had only one thing to say about it and it was that he could find issue with fitting his finger in it if it were attached to a drawer or something. Other than that... perfect. :)

Just as soon as we get one project done it's immediately into the next...

Ordinary becomes extraordinary 
My 2 preliminary drawings.

 

I never actually finished both of these... 

I was REALLY nervous about getting into color because all I had been doing for about a year was working in black and white. These were more of an expirament is all. They're the same detentions as my clarinet.

And the final piece:

All done in pastel with an acrylic wash. Doesn't that just come right off the page??

This is Maren. She's amazing and has been riding my tail all year. It takes all I've got to try and keep in head of her. This piece might have finally beaten me.

 Oh, and this is how big the pieces are.

Last but not least on the agenda(for now at least) was the cardboard chair....

The only restrictions that we had was that it had to be made out of cardboard. We only got 5 ply(out of the cardboard he provided), and we could only use Elmer's glue.

So here's my mackett.

I absolutely love this guy. The first one didn't turn out very well at all. But this little booger is super resilient(and I only used glue on one piece). By the time I had finished making it I tried to see how much weight it could hold. This little guy could hold ME standing on top of it. 

The end product... I can't say the same...

I sat on it at about 9 o'clock when the cardboard gave under my weight. I had made an error earlier with the underlying structure of the cardboard which I fixed with an additional structural piece. That error probably saved me from a pretty nasty concussion. The cardboard bent but the structure under neither held still, so I only feel a few inches. Dismayed, I glued the pieces down and tried to shave off the ragged places where the cardboard had torn. 

There wasn't anything I could do about it, really, so I decided that it was what it was went home. 

I had handled it pretty well until I got in the shower and my mind got away from me. Brad had come in earlier that day and told us how harshly he had critiqued his other class. One of the older students, Rob, who's a carpenter and  made a flawless chair the could hold five 200+ pound teachers watched their critique. He came back wanting to fix bits and pieces of his chair(which was absolutely flawless by the way).

I knew Brad was going to rip me a new one for coming with a broken chair and it was REALLY getting to me. If there's one thing that I can't stand is knowing that I've failed in the eyes of someone who I really respect and admire. Not only that, I have a scholarship that I'm working for and this could break all my chances of being in the running for that.

So, while in the shower balling my eyes out, I get an appifany. 

I figured it was only 10 o'clock and I had a good 8 hours before my class in the morning began. I had spent three weeks on my chair, but I knew I could make another one if I went over and got started right away. I figured I'd bring both chairs with me and even though one didn't work out, I'd at least have a second, more simple one that did to show that I was serious about making something presentable.

I figured it would take me all night, but I actually got done sooner than I had anticipated. I figured I could get this guy blown in in about three hours, but I wanted to be really precise so I got him done in five.

Three in the morning poses. So cute. 

Day of the critique:

I hadn't expected that I'd be going home, but I had enough time that I figured I should probably get some shut in before class. I got a good two and a half hours of sleep before I got up and headed off to class. 

My day was hard. I did good through institute, but had to just walk for my circuit training class. Then convocations came around and I fell asleep through most of that. Math was awful, at that point.  I could not concentrate. 

So then the critique came along. I got out of math early so I went and got myself a caffeinated drink before heading off to class. 

I was still really nervous about presenting my chairs, in fact, I was kind of shaking(i'm not sure if the drink had anything to do with that or not). 

So wen my turn came up, I dragged my monstrosity into the middle of the floor and began to explain what happened and how I proceeded to fix it. Then I pulled my back up over and sat on it, telling every one how I decided to make another one. 

Funny story, I had done a lamp earlier in the year. Brad actually really likes it when his students encounter failures because of the learning experience we gain from it. Well he knew that with the materials I had chosen to use for my lamp that it would be REALLY difficult to accomplish with the accuracy it would need.  He chose not to tell me until the critique. For a good two or three weeks after that, I couldn't look at him streight on. I always gave him a sort of "stink" eye sideways look because I was so mad at him(jokingly of coarse). 

 I was SO frustrated with my lamp and experiencing that failuer is what really drove me to put in that extra mile for this one. 

I knew, after my chair broke, that Brad knew that that was going to happen and again, chose not to tell me. So as I sat on my chair in the critique, I shot him a glare and said, "You knew". 

His eyes got really wide, and took a generous circle around me to go sit behind all the other chairs with the other students, which is funny because he's a BIG guy(scared for his life haha). And he asked if he was that obvious, which he wasn't--i just read people well and sort of knew myself that that may be the case. 

 

I was surprised. I had literally prepared myself mentally to take a beating even though I had made the extra effort of making another chair. Brad recognized my effort, however, he didn't think the broken chair was a failure, in fact he really liked the design which is a super pat-on-the back for me. I came away feeling SO good about what had happened. He had only two minor suggestions to make and that was it. 

Awesome.

So I went home. I was exhausted, hungry, shaky and pretty sure I was getting tunnel vision. So I went up to my room and went to bed for the night(it was like six o-clock).

College is CRAZY!

<3 <3

Los Angeles

Best trip EVER!
Day 1: Wednesday before spring break began I spent the night in the art building.

Normally I can blow off all-nighters no problem. Just blast a little music, eat some chocolate and work work work, however, that night, I was ready to crash at 9. Hardest thing EVER to stay up until four when all you want to do is lay down and dream of the warm beaches you'll soon be standing on.
The picture above is of the station I was working at that night. I got a good third of my picture done (of which you cannot see 'cause the light is washing it out).
I made it till about two before I couldn't go any more. I took a good hour nap on the couch before going back to work.

At four we piled into the cars.

The trip went fast thanks to my all-nighter. I slept in three hour intervals, sitting in the back seat of one of two suburbans.
The only real exciting thing that happened was when a hood of a person's car almost went through our windshield.
I had slept for three hours and was awake for about one. I was just dozing off when I hear, "Woah!" and feel the car swerve. I sat up just in time to see a the car in front of us swerve to the other side of the road as we jerked around it. Adam and Ron (the two teachers who were driving with us) were freaking out, Adam talking about how he saw the car passing us, noticing that the guy's hood was shaking and the next thing he knew debris was flying at them and the hood of his car popped up, blinding him which caused him to swerve to the left. He was pretty certain that if the hood had come off, they'd have a face full of glass, for sure.

When we got to the hotel, the rooms were still being cleaned, so we broke off on our own to find some lunch. Me and the girls, whom I had rode with, save one, were all together, and even eventually ended up rooming together.
There was, Maren from lacrosse, and her roommate Lacy, Lacy's little sister Brae, whom I happened to be friends with before, and Serena, who was in my 3D design class.
After wandering the streets trying to find a place where we all wanted to eat, we finally settled on Carls Jr. before returning to the hotel where we all passed out for about an hour.

Then we went to the Santa Monica beach.

 

Me and Brae. We're cute. (this is what a 10 hour car ride will do to you :P)

To get to the beach we all piled into our same suburbans. While backing out, Ron commented about not hitting his mirrors on any polls. As you can imagine, suburbans are rather big, and kinda hard to navigate in tiny hotel parking lots. Next thing we know, we all hear a CRACK, and the backward motion of the car jerks to a haul.
Laughter. Then, good old Ron says, "Shhhhh! Can I say something?" and proceeds to swear.
Just a second before the mirror hit the large cylindrical beam, Ron saw it and was able to stop fast enough so he didn't take the entire mirror off. It was very unstable, we noticed, as he continued driving towards the pier.
The Joke, kept going and going and going, as we would periodically warn Ron to "watch out for pols" or, "we'll just even them out and hit the other mirror."
He felt SO bad, and Adam, laughing right along with the rest of us, reassured him that it wasn't anything bad, that we had insurgence. Ron decided that we should secretly switch cars with Brad(the third teacher in the other suburban), so that when the mirror fell off, we could act totally surprised. He made us swear not to tell anyone about it, while Adam joked about taking a picture of it to remember it by.
Then, to add to the experience, Brad did something hilarious.
We drove around the parking lot until we reached about the fifth floor before we found parking spots. We all hopped out, still snickering about the incident. It had mostly blown over by then, and we were all ready to go to the beach. We had parked right next to the parking lot sign which indicated which level and garage we were in.  Brad, being all technical with his cool iphone, proceeds to pull it out and take a picture of the sign(to remember where we were parked), unintentionally catching the broken mirror in the picture.
Every one exploded in fits of hysterical laughter.
"I want in on the joke," Brad said, as we were all tripping over each other, practically peeing our pants. Ron's expression was priceless.

While walking to the pier were stopped by a random guy dressed in a pirate getup. Before we knew it he pulled Maren aside and stuck a live parrot in her hand. We spent a good 10 minutes or so taking pictures as me, Brae, and Lacy all took turns holding the parrots and taking pictures of each other. We gave him six dollars in return. Pretty good scam; the guy probably earns $5 per five minutes with each person he lets hold his birds.

We all ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, taking pictures of everything and anything that we thought would be cool.

Maren, Lacy, Me and Brae!!

After we were done at the beach, every one went to the Third Street Promenade where we all split up again, to get something to eat.
We ended up going to a FABULOUS Italian restaurant. 

 We all decided to just order two small bowls of Fedichini Alfredo and Spegettie and share. As you can see by that bowl size... it was a good idea. Between the five of us, we still had left overs. SOOO good, though. Quality stuff.

Afterwards he decided to share a brownie Sunday.
If there were any part of this trip that I would want to re-live it would taking my first bit of this:

It was ENORMOUS!! and SOOO GOOOD!

And then it was gone. :'(

So then it was time to head back....
In the Suburbans again, Ron in the drivers seat(Yikes), we took the long way to get out of the garage, driving all the way to the top. The little detour put us four or five cars behind Brad who had our parking ticket that we needed to pay to get out of the garage.
A very ornery parking attendant waved us over, for what ever reason. Ron pulled up to him, and tried to explain that he needed to go in head. The attendant wouldn't hear any of it. He obviously wanted us to do something, however, never explained himself. Instead he merely stalked off. Adam leaned out the window calling out to him, but was ignored.
We were hoping Brad would realize that he had our ticket and send some one from his car over to give it to us. Sure enough, Brenton came sauntering(very slowly) over, however, instead of the ticket, he gave Ron his credit card back, which wasn't what we needed to get out.
It took a few minutes, but again, Brenton sauntered on over handing us out ticket. At that point we were already at the front of the line.
The attendant must've thought Ron was a complete and utter idiot, because he came back over and started helping him put his ticket into the machine as though Ron had never used one before. He then, extremely pissed, proceeded to leave. Unsure of how else to handle the situation, and taking off of the attendants assumption that he'd never used a parking(thing) before, Ron leans out the window and calls, "I'm from the country!" using that as a comical excuse for his idiocy.
Needless to say, that also became a running joke along with every other thing on the road trying to hit Ron's other mirror. 


Day 2:  The second day we went to the LACMA.

Awesome picture of all of us standing in the sculpture yard before the museum opened. That glare on Ron's face is priceless as Brad goes off on another one of his speeches (which he did every time we gathered together).

 Ron and Brad in front of one of my favorite pieces in the museum.

And Adam....

This trip was for the specific purpose of going to these art museums. We spent a good 3-6 hours looking around at all the different works of art, of which would be EXTREMELY boring to talk about. So, I'll skip all the mumbo jumbo about that.

Oh, but this is me standing in front of the ever-so-famous Tomato Soup can by Andy Warhol.  Rad.

 Haha. Maren's awesome!

 Life was hard...


We basically spent the entire day there, which doesn't give me much of a story to tell, considering it was all boring staring at art and considering the meaning of life. O-o
Afterwords, I'm pretty sure we headed back and ended the day there.




Day 3: The third day started off at the MOCA

We got to ride this funny little tram thing up the hill to reach the museum. Fun, rickety, and cramped.

All of us outside the MOCA in front of a GIANT sculpture held together by wire.

 I have a strong new found respect for Rothko and his paintings. Very cool in real life Nothing like the photos.

And Pollock too!! <3

Brad in front of the Disney Theater. Awesome building!!

 After we all went to Ron's brother's office(of which is located in the tallest building west of the east coast), and changed into our "fancy" clothes. We were invited by Ron's brother, who is a rich Lawyer, to eat dinner with him in the California Country Club.

This is the view from his office, 36 floors up!

The pointed top of the building in this first picture is the top of the building in the second.... so you can see where we were looking from.

 SICK!

We weren't allowed photography in the California Country Club, but I got a few pics in. :)

Back in the day the woman weren't allowed to be down stairs with the men while they had their meetings, so upstairs there was an entire section for the women called the fainting room(because women fainted a lot back then). There were also several powder rooms(of which are sown in the pics.) that all of us girls just had a BLAST in.

3 coarse, $100 a plate meal. Best dinner I've had in my LIFE!

Afterwords, Brae was extremely hyper for what ever reason and it was rubbing off on me. Me her and Lacy decided that we wanted to take the stairs instead of the tram down the hill (mostly because I didn't have a quarter to ride the tram). At that point it was about 9:00 and pretty dark. We all book it down the stairs and reach the bottom as the tram full of the rest of our group get there. To out utter dismay there's a gate at the very bottom of the stairs and it's LOCKED! We idiotically pull at it for about half a minute before Lacy and I look at each other, then book it back up the stairs, leaving Brae still tugging uselessly at the locked bars. Then, realizing we had left, gave up her futile efforts and came scurrying after us.
It took a good ten minutes to get back up the stairs, onto the tram, and ride it down to the bottom.
I was SO embarrassed to make every one wait for us. Luckily, Maren saw that we weren't there, or I'm sure they would have just kept on walking to the suburbans.

Day 4: Oh, and then the trip was nearly over. But not quite... We spent a good portion of the morning at the different galleries in the slummy streets of LA. My group actually ended up following the teachers around, which was probably a good thing--I was totally lost.

Norton Simon:

Picasso! Very nice. :)

More galleries:

This lady's stuff was absolutely fabulouss!!!


Now, look closely. Pretty plane picture, right. Just some scotch tape on a chock board, right?

WRONG! That's paint! It's not chalk. It's not scotch tape. It's PAINT!
SICKKK!!! <3

After all the art was said and done, we got to party on the streets of LA. We were going to go to the beach with the teachers, but the traffic was like a parking lot. Instead, we ended up shopping on Third Street Promenade.

It's just blocks and blocks of this same scene. People EVERY where, and stores on both sides. There were a whole bunch of performers that we'd stop to listen too. I've seriously never seen so many people in one place. Crazy. It was way fun, though. 

 That night I decided I wanted one of Maren's awesome drawings on my hand, so we stayed up and she drew this. Way nice.


Day 5: It was Sunday, so we took a trip to the Getty.

Here's us fulfilling my life long dream of riding on a train... accept this one only went about five mph. Sigh. Oh well. I was happy just to be there.

The Getty is a Million dollar establishment with fantastic, beautiful architecture, beautiful grounds and a great view. AND, it was completely free.

Vincent Vangou. :D SOOO FAMOUUSSS

The very last exciting thing(worth taking pictures of any way) was the Holly Wood sign!

All and all, super awesome! It's been a really long time since I've had that much fun. I literally walked in the door and would've hopped back in the car for the 10 hour car ride back. Awesome trip with some fabulous people! So memorable.