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