WAITING

All my life I have been waiting for the next big thing. I have heard from numerous people that waiting for saturday, or summer, or next year so my life will actually start is the wrong way to go about it, because, hello, life has already started. I'm already living it. And you know what? I always knew they were right, but I still kept waiting.

This year my word of focus has been "authentic" and when I chose that word, I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. I sort of knew what direction I wanted to take with that, but at the same time I wasn't sure how "authenticity" was going to present itself.

I believe that being present in your moments is the best thing you can do for yourself - and yet I would still find myself waiting for something to change in order for me to be who I am. When I was a child I kept waiting to be an adult. When I was in college I kept waiting for next year, or for graduation, or for my new job to start. I kept wondering when I was actually just going to be myself and be living my life. I kept focusing on the next and not the now, and what I realized is that it makes it hard to be present in my moments. It makes it hard for me to be myself.

Last summer I had a brief epiphany while standing in the Albertson's building on the University of Idaho campus, which apparently I worded all wrong and made my dad think I was going to quit trying to be a teacher and move back to Moscow for school which wasn't really my intention at all.

And then, this year I lost my position as an art teacher due to budget cuts and there I was, feeling a little directionless and also, waiting. I was having a total identity crisis - like, who even do I think I am, if I'm not a teacher?

I'm not sure when it started to click for me, but I'm beginning to see that THIS IS MY LIFE. You guys, I'm already here. I'm already in it. I don't know how to say in more words that this is it. And I'm not upset about it. I'll find more employment. I'll continue to grow as a person, in my faith, in my relationships.

I work as a night manager at a restaurant and I do odd art jobs for people and businesses. Speaking of which, telling people that yes, I'm the artist, will probably never not be weird. And at the same time, I absolutely love it. Yes, I am the artist. I feel the most at home when I am creating something.

So, I think that authenticity word is actually coming to fruition this year. I am living more in my moments - while still maintaining a healthy dose of concern for the future. I used to live only for the weekends, but now I think it's okay that it's Monday or Tuesday. Does that make any sense?

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that it's also summer time and that helps. It's weird to not be starting to gear up for the fall, no classes to take or to teach. It's just like, here is life. Go and live it.

And that's exactly what I'm going to do.

///

I worked as an artist for a local business this past weekend. I've never done a commercial piece of art before but I have to tell you, after this experience, I definitely want to do more. So, from start to finish this was probably a good 20 hours worth of work and at the end of it my arms and upper torso were so sore and the tips of my fingers had indents in them from holding the chalk - but it was totally worth it.

concept sketch using chalk pastel on paper 

 concept sketches of sizes and colors. 

the finished product! (the in-between photos are still on my phone and i'm too lazy to pull them off)

(hashtag sorry not sorry)

and now, detail shots!

i'm particularly proud of this beet.

This Painting Took Forever And I'm Glad I'm Finally Done With It

My latest project.

I have been thinking of selling my artwork. My mom said the other day that someone asked her if I was selling what I made and sent me into "what if" mode. My printmaking instructor last semester even suggested that I sell some of my prints.

I don't know exactly how Etsy works, or really anything about it other than you can sell your handmade products on its website. Also, I have no idea how much money I would list my work for anyway. I mean, I have paintings and prints and drawings that I could potentially sell, but how much do those things go for anyway? 

Besides, I get attached to some of my work and I don't want to let it go! I don't know if I could bring myself to part with some of my artwork, but I suppose maybe if the price was high enough? Who knows. Unless I make it with the idea in mind of giving it away or I end up hating it, generally I don't like to part with my stuff. 

Giving things to family is different though, because I know I'll see it again and that it's going to a good home and that it's loved and cherished and cared for. Not that someone who pays money for it would be any less careful about how they handle my artwork, but really, I would be parting with it forever. 

Who knows what will happen, but maybe someday I will sell my work. Maybe it will be sooner rather than later. At least I'm considering it, right? 

Pictures! Life! Coffee Drunkenness!

Here is my life lately - a story told through mostly pictures...and I guess some words are thrown around in there too.

Yes, I am one. I need this sign. Since I met Prince Charming, he's introduced me to lots of new things - Zombies being one of them - and now, well, I like them. I play Plants vs. Zombies on my phone a lot. The cartoony zombies are my favorite kind. They're kind of cute.

This is my mostly finished painting. I still really kind of hate it a lot, but that's because I just get easily frustrated with the whole trying to figure out how to use a palette knife...I still don't really get it.

Sunsets! They are beautiful - I don't care who you are. I love pictures of them. Anytime I see sunrises/sets I snap a kajillion photos just to make sure I got a good one in there somewhere.

This is a painting/inking that one of my art 100 students did. My kids are amazing, can I just tell you! I'd like to brag that I'm a really great teacher, but I think this is just a case of natural talent. Whatever, whatever. I'm still impressed with what my students can do!

Baby octopus, anyone? Yeah, I didn't think so. But can you believe we have them in Moscow??

And these are drawings that I did today. I'm really on the fence about this drawing class. I go back and forth between loving it and loathing it. But today was nice, since we just got to focus on the face. The second one is my favorite :)

Also, it's the beginning of spring break. My mind has left me. And it doesn't help that I got coffee drunk at work...I'm awake! I'm awake! I'm awake! And also very sleepy. How does that work?

Traveling Time

This is an intaglio print. It's a piece of plexiglass that I cut down to 5x7 inches and scratched into with an Xacto knife.

The trick is that you have to etch the image in mirror form, because when you print it you get the reverse of whatever you etched.

Our theme was time-travel. Brainstorming, I thought about Calvin and Hobbes' cardboard box, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, wormholes, clocks, etc. I really wanted to draw Calvin and Hobbes because they are not only hilarious, but you can play off the concept of time travel with them even more than the literal interpretation of their time machine adventures of the cardboard variety.

Calvin and Hobbes can represent child hood. Imagination. Time goes by slowly when you are a little kid. I remember that summers used to last forever, and now they just zoom right passed me at light speed. The more I thought about Calvin and Hobbes, the more I wanted to do it. But then when I put pencil to paper for preliminary sketching purposes, nothing flowed right.

So I went back to the drawing board. (Heh.)

I revisited my initial ideas, Doc Brown would be too difficult to etch his face, the same with Mr. McFly. And I'm just not all that interested in trying to draw a wormhole, truth be told. I still really liked that idea of childhood and going back to being little. There's something so timeless about the imaginations of little kids, something that transcends the ages. All little kids play pretend.

And you know when you're a little kid and lots of things are funny? I thought about jokes. This one joke, that is just too cheesy for me to love in a way that it should be loved goes like this:

Why did the boy throw the clock out the window?

Because he wanted to see time fly.

Oooooh boy. I'll give you a second to recover from the lameness of that last punch line. Well, actually just the whole joke. Ooh man.

Anyway, I thought about that literally. It's time "flying." Well, I pictured an alarm clock in an airplane. Flying, airplanes, yeah I'm really creative, I know. But then I thought instead of fly, to go back to the idea of traveling and wouldn't it be just so cool if the numbers were actually traveling off the clock?

I included the Polaroid picture, doily cloth, and broken beaded necklace to represent objects of "timelessness" and I crafted the clocks to appear somewhat as pocket watches. I just kind of went for a vintage feel since time has traveled so far from that era.

This print is just an artist's proof and I'll print my edition on Thursday on Stonehenge paper instead of sketchbook paper. And then I'll move on to a copper plate instead of a plexiglass one.

Some Artsy Fartsy Stuffs For You

You may be wondering what I've been up to lately. I feel as though I haven't anything good to post about these days. I've been pretty swamped with work and school and free time. And unfortunately free time has included doing things post-worthy and then not posting about them.

Like painting ceramics and cooking at Zelda's apartment. I also found this awesome new game to play that would be more fun than what would happen if Twitter and Facebook had a child. Click the link. You know you want to. It's especially fun if you very much enjoy words. I promise.

So anyway, I feel like my brain is nine ways from Sunday and I can see the light at the end of this school work tunnel made of fail, but it might just be a train waiting to flatten me out. On the plus side, I got accepted into our Teacher Ed program, so that's one less thing to worry about. It's conditional admittance, so I have to get my GPA up where it needs to be by the end of Fall 2010 or I'm out. 

I'm not really worried. I'm in a good place and I'm sure that I will be just fine. Besides, if I'm where God wants me to be, then really, how could it not work out? You know?

But I still have to finish everything to do this semester, and thankfully I'm over halfway done with the last week of classes and lucky, lucky me has no finals during finals week. Yay! 

And remember that mug I was telling you about that I painted in memory of my grandfather? Well, I thought maybe, just maybe, y'all would like to see what it looked like. I think it turned out absolutely fabulous and I'm pretty pleased with the aesthetics of the piece.

I've also been hard at work in my drawing II class creating beautiful works of art such as this:

Don't you just love it? I really like the body and the fabric. I love the richness of the orange/gold color of the background. Not so nuts about the swirls, I think they need a little work, but honestly? It came together in a better way than I could have imagined. 

The assignment was to blend the styles of two different artists. I came to class completely unprepared. Uh oh. But fortunately for me, there's a girl in my class who is an extreme know it all and just looooooves creating works of art and telling you how she felt about it, why she did it, why she loves it, why she hates it, and how she went about doing it all, and she brought in two books on two different artists and sat right in front of me. I spied on her drawing a little bit to see what she was doing, and then I looked at her books. 

I figured beggers can't be choosers so I went ahead and used her books as references for my own drawing. I knew one of her artists was Edvard Munch because he has very distinct style, but I had to ask her who the other artist was. It turned out to be Alphonse Mucha - an artist who worked on posters when Art Nouveau was becoming popular. He was one of the leading artists and his style is very different from Munch's. 

I choose to believe that you can see the influence of both artists in my drawing - as well as my own little flair. I pulled most of the body and fabric from Munch, and left the background to Mucha. But the fabric is a little of both artists melded together. What do you think?

In other news, my dad will be here on Friday to take a few things out of my room so I don't have to worry about moving them in a week when Finals are over. It's weird the semester is coming to an end so quickly. But I mostly figured out why exactly it doesn't feel like the end of the year. In previous ends of prior spring semesters and all through public school the end of the year was ungodly hot. The sun was always shining and the days were absolutely wonderfully beautiful. That's not so this week. The weather is nasty and raining, windy and freezing.

Does that say summertime to you? I didn't think so. 

Close But No Cigar Young Grasshopper

(If you haven't voted yet read about it here and then go here to support Prince-y in his quest for Monster Hunter domination! You only have until Monday to cast your vote, so the sooner the better! Please and Thank you so much, so very much to those of you who have already voted! We both really appreciate it!)


I spent all weekend on my Master Imitation for my drawing II class. We were supposed to pick an artist and draw a figure in their style. 

So since I did my presentation on Chuck Close, I figured I might as well imitate his style since I didn't really want to do any of the other artists. 

Chuck Close's work looks like this: 

So my self portrait had to be in a similar style. It looks easy enough, right? But it take for freaking ever!

Here's what I came up with:

My teacher told me to draw a grid and go from there. So that's basically what I did. Then I used different colors and geometric shapes to build my figure. 


It definitely looks better from farther away than it does close up, but that's all in the style. 

Prince Charming says he can tell it's based off of me. But I never think anything I do really looks like me. At all. 

What do you think?

Monday Madness

Mondays make me want to puke. I hate them. They are awful. If I could find out a way to successfully off Mondays without making Tuesday the new Suckday I totally would. 

I woke up this morning and by the gut feeling I received of 'I-just-want-to-stay-in-bed-all-day' I could just tell that it was not going to be my favorite of all favorite days either. But I examined myself in the mirror before I left for class and was impressed with what I saw. 

Because I'm narcissistic and I know it.

Anyway, I was all hippity hoppity down the stairs with my portfolio and pink backpack in tow, and then I looked outside, sighed, and pulled my hood over my head. So much for my straightened hair and shoes that matched my belt. Welcome soaked pant legs and disgruntled wavy strands of stringy fine hair. 

I was starving because I'm all sorts of cool and don't eat breakfast in morning. My half thought out plan was that of heading to the coffee shop in the Commons, but the line was like DisneyLand the day after Christmas and I thought "No way in heck am I waiting here."

So I jetted myself all the way over to the Admin building where I work because I know that the lines are never near as long and the coffee is way better. I ordered a croissant that I promptly stuffed in my face and slurped down my 24 oz iced white chocolate blackberry mocha with four shots so that I would wake up. 

I was late to class by a few minutes, but no one noticed. We listened to some presentations (I have to give one on Wednesday!) and then we drew.

I produced these:

They're not so bad, eh? I actually like the last one. His face pleases me. And it reaffirmed my love of drawing fabric with charcoal. I got it all over myself again though. So this time I was black and white and red all over, not unlike that bad joke that either ends with the punch line of a zebra with a rash or a newspaper. Whatever, I'm still awesome.

Design Processing II is a class I would love to just ditch, except that I need to go because I can't risk the absences and if I don't go then I would never do the work because I hate it so much that having homework is just not an option unless absolutely necessary. 

We are painting. I loathe painting. I mean, it would be fun if I wasn't out to recreate something exactly to every minute detail like we're doing here:

The one on the left is my painted version of the one on the right. One of the hardest, most time consuming things I've done in my life. I'm pretty sure I could have baked three cakes in the time it's taken me to mix every color just so. And they don't even all match! It drives me crazy. Absolutely bonkers. And I'm most of the way there on a good day, so it just pushes me farther over the edge. 

Besides that, the stools in that class make your poor little butt cheeks so sore. Every so often you have to stand up and stretch your back from being hunched over while trying to nonchalantly massage your buttocks because they've decided to fall asleep and refuse to wake up. 

It makes for some pretty good times. I had to work to keep from falling asleep. 

I left class at 5:20 so I could come home and eat dinner. I got in line to get a pretzel and an Italian sausage because it just sounded so delicious and Prince Charming was working, so my pretzel would be handed to me with love. 

Bob's keeps their silverware in these round black cylinders next to the food stations for easy grabability and convenience. I was in dire need of a fork and a knife, so while I attempted to balance my tray full of food on one hand and grab the important utensils with the other, an impatient young lad came up behind me. He seemed to be in all sorts of a hurry, as if maybe he was on fire or something was on fire or flooding and he desperately needed to grab a fork to help pry open a container housing an extinguisher or maybe the book with all the answers to life's big questions in it and his timer was running dangerously low. 

I'm not exactly sure. 

But whatever the reason behind his maddened speed, he knocked my tray out of my hand and before I could successfully utilize my mad agility skills yo the tray had fallen on the ground food side down of course, because landing food side up would have been too much to ask entirely.

Mustard and liquid cheese splash on the floor. The boy just huffed and kind of rolled his eyes. He looked conflicted, like maybe he should help me out, but then he remembered the fire or flood or time emergency and darted off. 

Snarky remarks flowed in my head, but who was I going to say them to? Then I just looked around with that all too familiar deer in the headlights look on my face as I knelt down to pick up the fallen food. Managers stopped and told me not to worry about it. They were super nice, and saw what happened so they didn't speak to me with blame filled voices which I greatly appreciated. 

I hopped back in line and was redistributed my allotment of dietary sustenance. Prince Charming was confused why I was back in front of him, so I had to quickly explain myself. I took the wasted food to the trash can and proceeded to nom my deliciously tasty Italian sausage dipped in mustard.

I do love mustard. It's yummy.

The rest of my night has been filled with homework like this:

And I'm working on my presentation for Wednesday on the artist Chuck Close. His stuff is pretty awesome, and when I learned that he can still paint after becoming a quadriplegic his awesome factor went through the roof. It's dangling somewhere around the outer atmosphere. It would be higher, but I have to present him to my class, which I will hate doing.

I think it's time for bed now. Tomorrow better be awesome or I might just cry.

It's Been A Long Day

Today was ridiculously cold. I woke up to a rain and snow mix. Winter is a frigid woman. This year she's finicky and heck and can't decide whether or not she actually wants to be winter or change in her identity for that of spring. Perhaps she's still stuck in autumn too.

But besides the outside weather being made of stabby ice windy death, I got to do a lot of art today. Mondays and Wednesdays are art days. I woke up, booked it to class, painted a color wheel and started on my portion of our combined class project of painting American Gothic. You know, it's that one painting with the two disgruntled people wearing dark cloths and the dude is holding a pitchfork.

It's supposed to be optimistic, but it doesn't appear that way until you really analyze the picture. Whatever. 

And then I was off to Drawing II to create this beautiful picture: 

I drew some portraits too, but trust me - you don't really want to see those. One has a saggy right eye, and the other one makes the model look really tired with coon eyes.We've been working primarily with compressed charcoal and hard white erasers. 

And everyday, it never fails, I bathe myself in charcoal. I get it not only all over my finger tips on both hands, but also clear up to my elbows. And then, inevitably, I touch my face. My nose, my cheeks, my forehead, and my chin. Black. Maybe I'm really supposed to be an alternate race and this is the universe's way of conveying that to me? 

Who knows. 

But on a different note, I don't post a lot of my artwork on here anymore. Mostly that's because we are drawing nude models, and I don't know how comfortable you all would be seeing naked people on my blog, but here are some pictures that don't show any junk: 

I tried to document the charcoal that was on my face, but you can't see it in the picture, which is highly unfortunate because I remind myself of 101 Dalmatians when they all roll in the soot to become Labradors to evade Cruella DeVill.

 

See? You totally can't tell that my face has charcoal splotches on it, and I didn't even edit this picture in photoshop! 

After I finished covering myself in charcoal, I went my Design Processing class. I only like going to that class because I have TheProf as my instructor. We've been working with acrylic paints. Remember that color wheel I was talking about in a previous post? Here's what it looks like:

It's pretty except for all the ugly poop brown colors in the middle. But when you mix complementary colors, that what you get. 

We also experimented with color interaction. What the heck is that? Well I'll show you: 

I like this picture. It's a mirror in case you were confused. The two purple squares are the same color, but on the different colors they should look different. I had trouble capturing that with my camera, because to me the two colors look the same. But you be the judge. 

On a completely unrelated note,  I went to WinCo last night and bought gummi bears and chocolate chips. You melt the chocolate chips in the microwave and then dip the gummi bears in it. If you haven't tried it before, you definitely should. 

The One Where I Draw A Baby

In my Drawing II class we're learning to draw figures. Our outside assignment is to draw a figure from real life or from a picture, but we have to spend a lot of time on it to make it detailed. It doesn't have to look exactly like the person, but it has to look like we tried.

 So I found a picture that I really wanted to mimic, and I think I have a good start on it:

I'm using charcoal - vine and compressed to draw this adorably little baby. But I'm totally not even done yet. All I have so far (obviously) is the figure. But I need to work on making his forehead longer and sloping the his little bottom slightly different, not to mention adding in the texture of the blanket he's laying on.

I have my work cut out for me!



Especially because this is my studio! Fully equipped with game watching neighbors who scream loudly that the members of whatever team they are rooting for are stupid. And blaring base from across the hallway! Woohoo!

I can't wait until I'm out of here.

Seriously.

Anyway, make sure you come by tomorrow because they're going to feature my blog on BlogTrotting. If you don't know what that is, go check it out. Right now! What are you waiting for?

My Papa

So I've written about my mom before, plenty of times. But I don't really feel like my dad gets enough attention. And that's really too bad because he's the one that religiously checks my blog for new posts.

I've not mentioned that the day I drove home from Rathdrum in Death Fog my dad waited up for me to make sure I got home safe. He misses me when I'm away at school, although to the untrained eye it just looks like he gives me endless crap. I've been told that I look a lot like him, we have similar smiles because our teeth are shaped the same way. I'm the only kid that got that. I'm also the only kid that got his hair. Really fine strands of hair and even though it doesn't look that way, it's really thick.

He taught me to love traveling. He taught me how to drive (even though I drive like my mother). He taught me how to fish and how to shoot a gun. He taught me that its not okay to lie and my relationship with him is an honest one.

He's my daddy and he will always be my daddy even though whenever I come home he picks on me and teases me about DP loving him better because at least she hasn't left him like her older sister did. :)

So yesterday I decided to draw with charcoal pencils instead of charcoal sticks. I wanted to work on contrasting dark with light and drawing the human figure. I came up with the idea of actually putting my charcoal pencils to good use while I was still in my drawing two class and I immediately knew which picture I wanted to use.

Unfortunately I still had another three hour class before I could go and attempt my new project, but when I finally got home I was on a one track mind. And this is what I came up with:

Now to be perfectly honest, I don't really like it all the much. Mostly because I hate how the tree bark looks and the placement of the objects in the background. I love, love, love the figure of my dad though. I think I did a good job on that.

Being a lover and hater of all things facebook, I promptly took a picture of said drawing and uploaded it for all to see. What surprised me was the awesome response I get from my friends and family.

Mostly my dear oma. She is my father's mother. She said she printed it out and is going to frame it. She also linked to it on her facebook page. My mother has already claimed the original, and I don't even know for sure if my dad has seen it yet or not. But I know he'll love it for the plain and simple reason that I did it.

And he loves me.

This is the original picture. I snapped it on his DSLR when we were camping. It just goes to show that even though he may look intimidating occasionally and some people think he looks like Hulk Hogan (it's really only the mustache though), he's still just a big kid at heart.

Four Days Off

I don't have school on Fridays this semester. And today is MLK day, so that means no school either. This turned my usual three day holiday into a four day one - and let me just say right now, I really have no complaints.

Not only did I order a new-to-me cell phone because my current one decides that sometimes it would just rather shut off than work properly, but I also ordered my textbooks. I went with Zelda and Belle to the movies, and we dressed up. Blackmail picture here:



I finished one portion of my homework for Art 112. We were supposed to draw either our hand or our foot. I chose my hand, but it looks slightly disproportionate and more like maybe Frankenstein's hand than my own. For whatever reason, I can't really draw myself. I can draw other people. I can draw still lifes. I've even been known to draw a skull or two.

But for whatever reason, this hand looks for like a mental patient was turned loose with a lump of coal and a sheet of paper and told to go nuts.


Finally, yesterday morning I went to a church across the border in the nearby town of Pullman. I have to admit, I'm completely biased towards my own home church of Lake City in Hayden. I mean, yesterday morning all I really came away with was "it's better to give than to receive." Not a bad message, but perhaps a message meant for someone who is just finding their way into church doors? I don't know. Maybe I was just uncomfortable because Prince and I were sitting in the back and the door behind us were open, so I felt really exposed. And I'm short, so I couldn't hardly see over all the tall giants who decided it fit their agenda to stand in front of me and block my view from all angles.

On the plus side, the pastor was funny and his voice wasn't at all painful to my little ears. And he talked about a book he was given in Hawaii. It's called Da Jesus Book and it's a translation of the Bible into the Hawaiian language. You know like: "Da man dat give is mo good den da man dat got." It's kinda interesting.

So I'm sorry this post couldn't be more interesting, but this weekend was really just a lazy kind of relaxing watch a lot of TV and movies kind of a weekend. And needless to say, it's just what I needed.

How was your weekend?

Final Drawing

This is my final drawing for Art 111. Next semester I will be taking Art 112, so I'll still be creating things, but I'm still sad to see 111 go.

TheProf was a good instructor and I won't have him for 112 unfortunately. I'll just have to make do without my awesome posse of those weird people who seem to always sit in the same corner of the room I do....

But anyways, the drawing:


For whatever reason, I think it's my favorite so far.