Remember When I Used To Blog?

Some times I remember those fond memories of blogging and I think to myself: "Why did I ever stop?" The answer to that? Laziness. 

Anyways, I have so much to write about I don't know where to start. . .

I guess I will start with school. 

I have the greatest classes ever this semester. My favorite of them all is Figurative Illustration. This is my first actual illustration class I have ever taken, and I am enjoying it immensely. It's a lot different then I thought it would be though. We have and will be working on the same project all semester. Our project is creating characters for an adaptation of The Little Mermaid that we came up with. 

Here is my "Elevator Pitch" for the projects: 

What would you give to be considered normal? For Adrian Arielle, a struggling musician, he would give up almost anything, including his talent. Although Adrian's music captivates it listeners, he himself is outcasted from society. Nobody understands Adrian's madness, but the voices he hears and the visions he sees are his inspiration. When he falls in love with a woman from a respectable family, he knows that she will never accept him with his madness. Adrian visits a doctor to try and cure his illness. Miraculously, he is cured. He soon finds that he can no longer write music like he did before, but he doesn't care as long as he can be with the one he loves. Soon, however, he realizes that maybe he shouldn't have given up what he had for what he wanted.

So yeah that is my story, and here are some sketches I have done for the story:

I am also really improving  my figure drawing. In fact, the other day my teacher told me my drawing was absolutely beautiful. Which made me feel really good.

As I was browsing around on the internet the other day I found an amazing illustrator. His name is Frank Stockton, and I spent hours looking at his blog. Here is the link if you would like to see for yourself: http://frankstocktonart.blogspot.com/ 

One last little thing, it is currently time for my annual reading of Poison.

My English teacher in High School made us read this in class and it has been one of my favorite books since then. For the past three years I have re-read it around Halloween time because it is so creepy and awesome that it fits the season perfectly. I was then reminded of another book by Chris Wooding that I really wanted to read ever since this summer but I could never find. It is called Malice, and it is half novel, half graphic novel. The only problem is that nobody has this book! So I finally gave in and bought it off Amazon for $4. It should be here in a few days, and I am super stoked for when it arrives!

Update

 I finally finished my next silkscreen project. My inspiration for this one came from Spencer Russell's song - One Man Show. The lyrics from it were, "The mouth of a fool is a well without water, and I'm getting thirsty." I just love that song so much!

I have come to the conclusion that as an art major I don't draw nearly enough. I realized this when I tried to go through my sketchbook for an idea for a project and I had absolutely nothing to work with. I remember when I was a kid me and my friend Kelsey would sit and draw all day long. I decided to make a goal to draw at least one picture every day, even if it is just a little sketch. So far it has been pretty good. (I did miss a few days but that's ok.)

Here are some of the sketches I drew:

 

On a side note, many of you may know that Pottermore, the Harry Potter website made by J.K. Rowling herself is now officially open. So there has been a lot of Harry Potter going around the apartment. On my way to FHE the other night I happened upon the perfect wand stick. I polished it up a bit, and now it is the perfect wand!

Art Update

It's been a while since I have posted my work, but here is what I have been working on:

My still life painting

I finally finished my relief carving!

and my two silkscreens

Avacado!

So you all remember my collage I was going to paint? This one: 

Well I finally finished it. And I've got to say I'm pretty proud of it for being my first oil painting ever.

I think I will hang it up somewhere in my apartment for the world to see.

Photoshop Fun. (pun intended)

I was bored today and decided to play around in photoshop. I downloaded the free trial version on my computer and I might as well use it while I have it right? Anyways this is what I came up with:

Yes, we all should know by now that I have a new "Boyfriend", Nate Ruess from the band Fun.

The reason why I got photoshop on my computer is so that I could put together a picture for my relief carving class. This is what I should look like when I am done.

Also I was playing around with a design I was working on for the band The Brocks:

In conclusion, photoshop has kept me very entertained the last couple days.

Beginning of a New Semester

Wow, it's been over a month since I last posted on here, so this post is going to have to cover a lot of ground.

First off I would just like to say that I am loving this semester so far. I absolutely love all of my classes. I would have to say that my favorite class, though, is silkscreen and relief. Right now we are working on relief carving. We are carving pictures out of linoleum sheets which will then be used as giant stamps to be printed on paper. Here is what I am working on at the moment:

Yes there is a giant white line going through it now, but that wont matter for printing.

My other art class I am taking right now is painting. So far we aren't doing anything to exciting. We are working on a color mixing study where we made an image out of magazine clippings and are now trying to replicate the colors exactly and painting it on a canvas. Here is what I have so far:

As I promised a long time ago, I will now put up pictures of Mary Ann Kimchi (my marionette I made in  3D design last semester)

I didn't think you could get the full effect just from some still photos, so I did a little demonstration as well.

Yeah I know she is kind of creepy, but you've got to admit she is pretty cool too.

Also, I finally finished that dolphin picture I started forever ago. For my art insights class I was required to bring a piece of work, and I had absolutely nothing I could bring except for that. I'm not the biggest fan of it, but I figured I would put it up here anyways.

So that is my current artwork for now.

So far this semester has been awesome. My friend Ethan came home from his mission and has started hanging out with me and Amanda all the time. We decided we would start our own to show. We decided to call it Suu. (Pronounced like Sue) After many hours of hard work, we finally finished the first episode

(I couldn't get it to work on here, so if you want to see it, which you should, go look at my videos on facebook)

Yeah I know, it's not quite up to a professional level, but we are getting there.

Me, Ethan, and Amanda also wanted to start a band. We will hopefully be working on that this weekend, but I can't make any promises.

The Zombie Project: Stage 2

So I finished my zombie project a while ago, but I have just been way to lazy to update my blog. Here it is now, though. The finished product of my zombie project.

I kind of liked how in my first shoot, the photos were a lot darker. But everyone in my class said that they wanted to see more background, plus it the photos turned out a lot sharper with more light.

On a side note, my professor loved my old man picture so much that he had me e-mail him a copy to use in his lecture for next year. I was kind of proud of that. Oh, and my 3D design teacher loved my marionette (I will blog about that soon) so much that he took it home with him to take pictures of it in his studio.

Side side note, I found out while I was trying to send my picture to my photo teacher that I had lost all the pictures that had been on my camera. I had to delete them off my memory card when I used Gratten's camera to take photos but I thought I saved them all on my computer, guess not. I am just so thankful for this blog and facebook or else I would have completely lost all of them.

The Zombie Project: Stage 1

For my final in photography, i thought it would be fun to stage a zombie invasion. Last light I did some shots just to turn in as my progress check. We didn't have much time, so they weren't as good as I would have hoped. We went down into the "zombie tunnels" AKA the "sheep tunnels" where it was super dark. We didn't have many lights or a tripod, so a lot of them turned out pretty blurry. However, when I go out again to get more shots, Gratten is going to set me up with some better equipment and help me out, so hopefully it will turn out better.

Here is what I have for now:

Not as good as they could/ will be, but for a start, they are pretty freakin' awesome!

Dec Your Door

So this post is kind of late, due to the fact that I have been super busy. (Playing zelda and such) But I'm posting it now.

Last week was our schools dec your door Halloween competition. First prize was Howl tickets (the Halloween party) and 2nd and 3rd got pizza for the room, so of course we wanted to win. It started out that we wanted to win just for the prize, but then after we walked through and looked at everybody else's we wanted to win just for competitions sake. The hall that I live on is Harry Potter themed, so my roommates and I thought it would be a great idea to make our door match.

After 2 whole days of work, and agonizing hours spent kneeling on the floor painting (My knees were quite sore afterwords) this is what we came up with:

After all this hard work, we were judged, and the scores came in. We had placed. . . 4th!? I couldn't believe it! After looking at everybody's I was sure we would have came in 3rd at the very least. And we were sure we had put way more effort into it then most people did. Furious, we decided we would look up who had won the top three spots. 

Now this is where I get really mad. I wouldn't have been so upset if the doors we had lost to had been really cool, and there were some really cool ones out there. But no, the ones that won were all pretty lame I must say. Not to mention that 2 of them were a "fire hazard" which we were told that you couldn't have anything stick out past the door frame or else you would get disqualified. Hence why we move our snake's head up out of the door where it used to be. (and looked a lot cooler) I was mad. But you know, it was still a lot of fun to make even though we didn't win. 

Zelda

What does one pen, one sketch pad, an obsession for Zelda, and way to much time on your hands equal?

THIS!

Tattoo!

Before I start I just want to clarify, I will NEVER get a tattoo. Despite how cool some of them may look, the absolute permanence thing is a turn off. That and I am absolutely terrified of needles.

However, lately I've been kind of obsessing over tattoo designs. I think it all started when we were watching L.A. Ink (due to the fact that nothing else was on T.V.) and I was asked the question: "If you were to ever get a tattoo what would it be?" Everybody else had a good answer, even though most of us would never actually get a tattoo, but I couldn't think of anything.

The other day, Amanda and I went to the multicultural club meeting and they were doing henna tattoos.
So of course we got some.

This says "Laugh" in Korean

This one you can't really see very well, and it ends up just looking like a bunch on freckles on my hand, but it was supposed to be a a cool flower.

How cool was this, I could now have a tattoo that would wash off in about a week so I would never have to worry about getting sick of it. So of course I become obsessed with looking up tattoo designs.

These were some of my favorite I found.

I love this one! Except for the fact that it is huge.

This is probably the coolest tattoo I have ever seen in my life. For those of you who don't understand the awesomeness of this tattoo, the lyrics are to a song by Muse (My favorite band) and inside the flowers is the design from their latest album cover. Freakin' awesome, right?

My other obsession at the moment is Zelda. I have been playing it all the time lately. So two obsessions at the same time, what do I do with them? Combine them! I started designing my own zelda tattoos! And they turned out pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

Behold:

Design 1: Pretty cool, I'm proud of it.

Design 2: I can't get over how cool this one is, I love it!

So once again, I just want to say that I'm not getting a tattoo. I am just enjoying designing them.