jai guru deva om

Duchamp has a work entitled, "L.H.O.O.Q." When each letter is read individually in French, it sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul," or roughly, "She has a hot ass."

Ha. So many French puns in my Art History class.

That is one sexy camera. It might be slightly more affordable than a XSi right now, maybe even more so if I opt for the G9. Plus, I won't look like a creepy pedo by carrying around a huge body and lens everywhere.

Is this real life?? Seriously, I need to know because I'm running on four hours of sleep.

So I FINALLY finished my photorealistic drawing at 7:00am, and got to school. When it was time to put up our work, I was feeling self-conscious about mine because I thought it was rushed and not very good, especially since so many of the other drawings were impressive. The girl next to mine had a ridiculously detailed and photorealistic drawing, one of the best, so I was pretty intimidated. But people started to pass by mine, and started talking about how good it was. I kind of brushed it off because I thought they were just being nice. But someone even took a picture of mine, which is flattering.

Then it was time for critiques. The first words out of my instructor's mouth when we came to mine were, "Now this is the one that blows my mind." I'm still in shock. She raved about the texture and somehow got on the topic of Thomas Kinkade, but she praised my work. She even said she would be willing to excuse the subtle creases in my paper (one thing she is super picky about) because she liked my drawing so much. The TA even said he had trouble telling the photo and the drawing apart. (LIES I SAY!) And when they were going around after assigning grades, I overheard excited whispering and "I KNOW, RIGHT?"s. It's a good feeling knowing you impressed your experienced drawing instructor.

While I'm still kind of confused as to why so many people liked my drawing (and I swear I'm not just being modest), it's nice to know that art is something I can be fairly successful at. It's not something I just decided to major in because it's "easy," but maybe something I've always had potential for. Ever since I was little I knew I wanted to do something art-related when I grew up, and things like this reassure me that this is where my heart and passion truly lie.

Of course I had to end my emotional high by losing my original photo that I worked off of! It's just a couple black and white photos printed and taped together and it's better than losing the drawing, but still. How careless of me :( I went back and looked for it, but couldn't find it. I like to think that someone found it and kept it, a way for me to share my art with a stranger. On a completely unrelated note, my momma bought me a herringbone jacket at Macy's yay. Also, Starbucks' Peppermint Hot Chocolate is dangerously delicious. Overall, not a bad day at all. Time for leftover blueberry cream pie, then bed. :)

I am really starting to resent this piece of shit drawing that ruined my Thanksgiving weekend. I poured countless hours into it, couldn't go black friday shopping because of it, left the house once all weekend because of it, and it still looks far from photorealistic. At this point I'm BSing... I honestly don't care how accurate it is because I know I'm not going to get an A. It's already ridiculous that she made us by 32" paper for a drawing that's about five inches wide (and wants us to keep the rest of the paper pristine), and even more ridiculous that she expects us to draw photorealistically after ten weeks in a basic drawing class. I've spent easily 20+ hours on this damn thing and now I'm stuck doing the hardest part: cement. I need to try and replicate every single goddamn speck. I'm at the end of my rope and ready to give up. I'm already tired as hell from a long day of work and class, have to go to the car dealer early in the morning, and now this.

LSDKFJLSKDJFLSDKJFWOIERLDSKNLSKDJRLKSDF. NOT HAPPY.

For the next drawing assignment, we have to do a photorealist drawing of.. well, a photo. And it's the biggest pain in the ass. Each section of the drawing is done in quarter inch squares, and to make matters worse, today it took me three hours to almost finish two columns (maybe 20ish squares total). And I barely made a dent in the drawing. I'm about to PULL MY HAIR OUT. My instructor also said the only way to get an A on this assignment is if she can't tell the difference between the photo and the drawing. Psh, talk about high expectations for beginner students.

Anyways, I got my free(!) Star Trek art book from wired.com today and it is GLOOOORIOUS. I'm going to go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving right now but I can't wait to flip through it when I get back. <3 SO AMAZING.

So today in photo we had lab time for the full class. Near the end I went to pick up the photos that some other students had dried and found my 11x14 all crinkled (apparently someone managed to get the huge ass piece of photo paper stuck in the dryer... I couldn't even do that if I tried) and another one of my photos inside of the dryer. Whenever I dry photos I always fish out the ones that get stuck, and I know that people usually offer to replace photo paper when they ruin photos while drying them, it's just common courtesy. Especially since the large photo paper is so damn expensive. I heat pressed it though, and managed to get it fixed somewhat, but still. Also, 20 minutes before class ended, almost everyone else had left, leaving the 3 remaining students (myself included) stuck with drying all of the photos in the water bath. They didn't even ask or tell us they were leaving. I felt really bad for my photo instructor because everyone just kind of left, and I could tell that she was a bit offended and hurt. I felt really bad because she's so ridiculously sweet and approachable. :(

I have the answer to my DSi dilemma: bye bye DSi.

A 50 count box of 11x14 photo paper? $60.
EFF. I opted for the $13 10 sheet pack today, but damn. Photo and drawing are sucking my bank account dry. It doesn't help that I will probably need to go back for more.

But on the bright side, I went to Target and Bath and Body Works and ironically shopped my sorrows away. I wanted so many things in Target but I just had to keep walking. *tear*

It's expensive (and well... and relatively "unnecessary") seeing as I could put the money toward much better things, but I WANT. I've been drooling over the metallic blue for the longest time, and I couldn't get the ice blue bundle last black friday. Hm.

John Mayer + quiet mornings + overcast, contemplative skies = the perfect peaceful saturday.



Luckily this weekend I don't have much to do (except for a couple art projects but nothing major) so I can spend it shopping, and planning for next weekend. The calm before the storm. 8) ... Actually I don't know what I'm doing for my birthday, so um, if you have any ideas throw them my way kthx.

So guess who decided to put her photographs next to mine on the wall today for critiques? I mean, of all the places of the room, they were RIGHT next to mine. The balls, I tell you! I was there easily five minutes before her. And to make things worse, her photos got critiqued before mine, so during hers everyone talked about the theme of "no" and prohibition, and when we got to my photos, there wasn't much left to say. At the end of my critique, my instructor was like, "Funny how we had two in a row." She even asked at the beginning if we did this on purpose. HELL NO. UUUUGH WTF.

PS. What the flying eff keeps going on with my LJ layout? It's driving me nuts. One of these days I'll upload the images myself, but damn. All I see are hundreds of "bandwith exceeded"s.

I'm tempted to hang my work from my drawing class up on the walls.

And it's most definitely not because I'm egotistical, because I'm far from. I'm just amazed at how much progress I've made in a mere five weeks, which is roughly ten classes because we only meet twice a week. I went from struggling to make accurate negative space shapes, to learning how to cite for accurate proportions, to creating still lives with depth and volume. The one thing I am struggling with, however, is keeping myself from comparing my work to others'. Whenever we walk around and take a look at our peers' work, I always freak out that mine is different and therefore "wrong" or "bad." Gotta work on giving myself more credit, especially since this is my first time in a drawing class and I'm definitely improving, which is what matters.

Anyways, I still don't know what to do about my photo project and the deadline is approaching. What should I do? :(

I have a dilemma.

Today in photo I was happily making prints, when all of a sudden I see a photo like mine in the developer bath. My theme is "repetitive act," and I was going for repetition of "no" - no parking signs, no u-turn signs, no skateboarding, etc. Later on in the day I was drying photos and looked on the racks and saw a contact sheet that also looked eerily like one of mine. They belong to this girl in my class who kind of gets on my nerves and doesn't understand personal space. Anyways, I'm not going to point fingers because it could just be some happy coincidence, but I still find the whole thing suspicious. Regardless, I don't know if I should:

1) Stick to my idea and deal with the fact that someone in my class has essentially the exact same concept as me. Keep in mind that these are going to be critiqued.

OR

2) Finish my third (and possibly fourth) roll with a new theme. I still want to stick with repetitive act, but maybe go around shooting houses in Irvine (a la Bernd and Hilla Becher). The idea of repetitive act is that by looking at them you get the point (hence why I wanted to repeat the word "no"), but I'm not sure if a bunch of houses would really add up to one idea. I guess it kind of stems from the idea that Irvine is so suburban and everything starts to look the same, but I'm not sure if that would come across clearly.

The project is due one week from now so I have time if I push it. I don't know though, I would hate to waste all the time I spent shooting and developing the other two rolls.

Ahh it's so hard not to take constructive criticism personally sometimes. When you spend hours and hours on a simple charcoal still life, you want people to like it, but when the shadows and highlights aren't all that accurate it kind of sucks. It also sucks when your pictures get used as the class example for what not to do. Definitely killed the high I got from doing well on my Art History midterm. 8( I am, however, loving working with charcoal because it's my favorite.. I just hate how ridiculously messy it is, especially at larger scales.

I hate hate hate being told what to photograph. I wish at this stage I could just experiment with black and white film and have fun with it. I absolutely love film and the whole developing and enlarging process, but I don't like that I have to take certain types of photos. I suppose it's to ~expand my horizons~ or whatever, but I'm dreading having to take self-portraits. I'm also not sure how to shoot a theme of "intimate life," when the only examples given included naked people having sex. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it's definitely not my style. I need more direction when it comes to assignments like this. 8[ If only we could shoot whatever the hell we wanted... then I wouldn't be so stressed, ugh.

The kind of sucky part though about B&W film is that it's, well.. black and white. I'm so used to considering various colors and palettes in my photos, but that's no longer be the case. Since the viewfinder is also in color (duh, but you know what I mean), I often forget that I'm in B&W until I print and realize the shot doesn't look as cool. :(

Me: “Welcome, how can I be of assistance?”

Patient: “I think my son has Liza Minnelli!”

Me: “Liza Minnelli?”

Patient: “Yes! I think he has Liza Minnelli!”

Me: “Um…how did he contract it?”

Patient: “He ate the raw chicken on the counter! I’m telling you, it’s Liza Minnelli!”

Me: “Oh, you must mean salmonella.”

Patient: “No, I mean Liza Minnelli!”

Me: “Right, then. The doctor will see you now.”

(The doctor sees the patient’s child and tells her that it is salmonella and not Liza Minnelli. On her way out…)

Patient: “I still think it’s called Liza Minnelli.”

Today's drawing assignment was the first one I actually struggled with.

The first was just a gesture and contour drawing of a pile of shoes, the second was a negative space drawing of flowers in a vase, but today was cross contour of a plate of fruit. And it took me a decent amount of time to finish. I don't know what it is, but I just couldn't find the lines to make the fruit look three dimensional. I did my best and it looks alright, but man. I do not like cross contouring. :\

On a brighter note, we developed our rolls of film in photo today! We had to put our film onto the spool things in complete darkness, which was not fun because 1) I'm not a big fan of the dark, and 2) it's hard to use a can opener and cut film straight across when you can't see anything, even though your eyes are open. It takes a while to get used to. On wednesday we're going to make contact sheets and start enlarging from our negatives... exciting :)

I have band rehearsal tomorrow and no work until friday. Hopefully this week is a lot better than the last.

Screw homework, I think I'm going to be making gifs out of this epic video all night long.

I LOVE THIS CAST SO MUCH OH MY GOD. <3

Pinhole cameras are a bitch to deal with. Every time you take a picture you have to go back to the dark room and develop, then re-load and walk back and take it again if it didn't come out right. (Not to mention the fact that you look a little suspicious placing shoeboxes all over campus) After 1.5 hours today though, I managed to get a really nice negative of a bike tire. There's surprisingly a lot of detail and texture that got picked up, considering my camera is made out of a cardboard box. So on sunday I'm excited to see how that positive is going to turn out, and I also need to whip out 7 photograms (which are easy, thankfully) and a couple more pinholes. I also need to pick up more supplies for drawing. Busy, busy weekend! "Busy busy bee, yep, that's me!"

So I just found out our dark room is open on sunday, which is perfect for me because my days always consist of class, work, barely any time in between, then when I come home it's dinner, homework, then sleep! This year is far more exhausting than last year, which is good in a sense because it keeps me busy and productive.

I'm probably going to spend most of sunday at school work on photograms and photos from the pinhole camera I made (out of a simple shoebox, metal material - I forget what it's called, tape, and black paint). I'm actually excited, even though it's technically homework I feel like it's going to be relaxing and fun to spend an entire afternoon developing photos and experimenting. I love film because you never really know how your photo's going to turn out until you stick it into that first bath of developer. The whole process is more hands on than digital, and as a result I appreciate the photos I take more because of the time that goes into composing, focusing, and developing one single photo (on fairly pricey paper too!).

Today in my Media, Art, and Technology class, my professor said "It's just a fact" twice.

Both times I instantly thought of this. Yeah, I need to stay away from ONTD. But it's just so priceless!