how to have fun

it's "friday" night and what else is there to do? draw and paint, of course! as if i needed more work to do i decided to start some projects of my own. keep in mind its my first time painting in photoshop & its far from being done. the sketch is just for lining up purposes.

ill scan in project number 2 tomorrow.

i think it's bedtime now, waking up at 8 to head over to the lab tomorrow.

the road ahead

the copy still needs some tweaking but you get the idea. it's for an environmental poster for my imagery in design class. due thursday.

everything but....

...homework.

no classes yesterday, no work, no ice skating. and pretty much everyone and their brother went home for the weekend. so what did i do? nothing. just kidding that's only half true. i got some of my to-do list done. and went to IV. but every once in a while i just really need a day off. i realized that i had a paper due at midnight (realized this around 11:25) good thing i'm ahead of the game and had finished writing it a week ago. good thinking.

woke up at 6:30 this morning and got out of bed after only 15 minutes of snooze buttons. worked from 7:45-12:30 doing various things. made grilled cheese and carrots for lunch. well i didn't make the carrots but you know what i mean. washed them at least. now i need to take 2 tests for political science and write the paper due tuesday. that one i dont have written already but i finished the outline so yay.

i've decided to minor in art history. thoughts? i'm not sure. too indecisive for this declaring business.

hmm, what could i do instead of homework now? the possibilities are endless. i enjoy playing music and singing out loud. this activity is best when no one else around. also, good thinking. got some good stuff on my itunes, its fantastic. there will be no concerts anytime soon.

five weeks until this quarter is over. i've been here for eight already. this seems like a long time. what have i done? not sure. i should probably figure that out.

i just realized i'm still wearing my name tag. seeing as there is no one else around i think it's safe to take it off. i wonder if people even read all of this? maybe. maybe not. hi mom. i figured you'd make it this far ;)

oh yeah, it snowed two days ago. not enough to warrant a blog post but still. winter's here. it's like 32 degrees on a regular basis now.

the more

bak:

http://www.bakmagazine.com/index.php?sayfa=index&language=en



seriously worth checking out, it's a design magazine that runs on your computer just like an application. if you go to the site on the bottom left it says "mac or pc" and click on one of those. it's so, so cool in terms of graphic design.

ben showed me in class this morning and i just thought i'd pass it on.

it's written half in russian half in english just so you know. and some of the images are rather...graphic? just think of it as art guys, it's cool.

Every Second Counts

Goodness gracious, time goes by quickly. 

The title of this post was inspired by the Plain White T's 2006 album called... well... "Every Second Counts" I've been listening this CD on repeat pretty much all week. 

I look once and it's Sunday night then the next thing I know, it's almost Friday! I guess that is a mix of good and bad. School is good, i'm actually enjoying my classes for the most part. I am kind of ready for a break though. I'd like to just have a minute to breathe and fortunately Thanksgiving is right around the corner. We are currently in the midst of week seven which means that we only have 3 weeks left until finals week. Art majors are faced with the burden of 7 classes a quarter with 3 of those being studio classes.. however, we seem to be pretty lucky come finals week. Yay for only having 2 finals! It would be nice if they were on say.. Monday instead of thursday, just because then I could go home earlier and not have to wait around for a week but hey, no complaints here. 

I should probably quit wasting my time before dinner and go work on some homework. I'm meeting Ashley and Drake for dinner, working on some homework, going to volleyball practice and then going out to see a movie with Ash, Drake and some other fun kids. 

As long as I'm procrastinating on my homework... I'd like to thank people for actually putting up with my nonsense and coming to read my blog! It's kind of awesome to look at the map and see where everyone is coming from. 

Say Something

Busy, busy, busy. That pretty much sums up my life lately. I'm finally not sick anymore! Yay. We just made it through week 5 which means there are only 4 weeks left until finals... what a weird thought?! I'm currently working on a giant 30 by 40 inch self-portrait of my face, writing a paper on the democratic plan for the environment, working on a 2d project, making apples out of everyday objects for 3d and trying to have a life in there somewhere. 

No really, I've been pretty good about setting aside certain time for homework and then making sure that i'm getting out too. It definitely helps that my floor is awesome so I can just walk right outside my room and find a ton of people to hang out with. Funny thing is that the other night when Ash and I were hanging out with a bunch of people we looked around and realized they were all deaf. It never occurred to me that the majority of my friends now are hard of hearing or completely deaf. I think it's kind of awesome, really. I've been picking up a lot more sign and I can actually hold an entire conversation without really awkward pauses. My finger spelling is still pretty slow but eh, that'll improve with time. 

greg and ash

drake dancing like always

he wanted me to teach him to draw so i said "here draw tigger" 

then he got frustrated so i just drew tigger... 

i got bored and drew on a bunch of people's whiteboards

Wednesday Drake, Ashley and I went to the girls volleyball game. Thursday after classes I met up with Ashley, Drake, Andrew and a couple of other people to see 21 at Ingle Aud. RIT has this thing Friday night after classes, I went to dinner with Ash and Drake (at Gracie's of course...). We came back to the dorms and ended up running around our floor until nearly 4 am. We did make an attempt to go out to Ritchie's, a free game room in the tunnels but the couches smelled really bad so we just came back here. Saturday morning we woke up around noon and then went out shopping. Ashley needed some ink for her printers and a couple of other things and I needed to pick up some board from Home Depot and some rag paper and more charcoal for my art project. It's super nice and super convenient that I have a roommate with a car :) Today looks like it's going to be very homework filled. I can't remember if there is anything else that needed to get done today. The huge, creepy drawing of my face needs to get done as well as the paper for writing. Since my parents are coming next weekend (well, thursday..) I'm trying to get as much done now as I can. 

We're going to be signing up for classes for winter quarter here in a few weeks (Oct 22nd). I met with my academic advisor the other day to go over which classes i'm going to be taking...  

Monday

8-10:50am ASL 1

2:00-4:50am 2d Design

Tuesday 

9:00-11:50am 3d design

12:00-1:00pm FYE

2:00-4:50pm drawing

Wednesday

8:00-10:00am ASL 1

2:00-4:50pm 2d Design

6:00-7:50pm Design Survey

Thursday 

9:00-11:50am 3d Design

2:00-4:50pm drawing

Friday

10:00-11:50am Vector Imaging 

So it'll be about the same course load as this quarter except slightly more challenging. We'll see how that goes, I'm taking the maximum number of credits they allow you to take without getting special permission. I've decided to "minor" or "concentrate" in american sign language. I'm still going to pick another thing to minor in but I'll probably wait to declare that until sophomore year. 

Maybe i'll see if I can get Ash out of bed now so we can go get some brunch :) 

Busy Beaver

It's been one full weekend.. and it's only 8:00pm on Saturday. Friday night after classes Ashley and I went over to Gracie's and picked up waffles for Wonderful Waffle Wednesday! We came back and watched two episodes of the OC until Ashley fell asleep and I had to throw a cow at her. Worked on some homework in the lounge. I didn't want to paint in our room because it gets too messy. I'm working on this project for 2d design. We had to come up with a recognizable object and then make a pattern with it.. I chose pretzels because they're yummy. I think it turned out pretty neat? It looks a little funny on the computer.


After a few hours of homework we watched the last two episodes of the OC! We finished season one, yay! That took forever, there was never enough free time to fit a whole episode in. Went to bed around 3 after talking for a while. This morning I set my alarm for 10 am although i guess I kept pushing snooze because next thing I knew it was noon and my phone was ringing. Turns out it was Nicole.. she's from Columbia too and her family was up here for the RIT Open House. She's looking at the school for graphic design too so I said I'd meet up with her and show her around. Kicked Ashley out of bed and we got ready in 10 minutes or less and made it over to Gracie's to meet up with them. After lunch we came back here and I worked on some more homework until Nicole was done with her portfolio review and then I could show her around the dorm rooms and such. Went to dinner with Ashley at 5 and then Drake came in here and bugged us so much that we told him we'd hang out.. just kidding, we wanted to :) Walked over to Park Point for an outdoor concert they have going on. It was pretty decent, the music wasn't that good but it's really nice outside so it didn't much matter. All of the restaurants are finally open so people were giving out lots of free stuff, yay again! Met up with some of Drake's friends from elementary school back in St. Louis and hung around. Walked back and now we're waiting until 9 for Drake to come back and come to a comedy show at Ingle Auditorium with us. Tomorrow is homework, homework, homework. I have 240 gesture drawings to finish by Tuesday as well as another project for 3d and a paper for writing. Tomorrow night there is an ice cream social in the Sol activity room, wherever that is. It's one busyyy weekend!

Wonderful Waffle Wednesday

I think I'm going to have to do something about this having 4 hours of classes on Fridays for next quarter, it's really a drag. Currently I'm sitting outside of Webb Auditorium after my noon lecture class, creative sources. I like these little breaks between classes where I can just chill on a couch in the art building or library but then again it's an hour wasted because I could be painting or working on some other homework. 

Yesterday was one long day. I'm not exactly sure why it felt so long but by the time I got back at 11pm, I was exhausted-- and then proceeded to stay awake until 3 am. Okay, so I'm not the smartest person ever. But after 6 hours of intense classes sometimes it's nice to just sit around and relax. Last night I tried something new...after my 6-9pm 3d class I met up with my friend, Evan, and we went swing dancing! It was actually a lot more fun and a lot easier than I expected. I don't think we'll be going to any competitions or anything anytime soon, but it's fun anyway.  

Tonight is Wonderful Waffle Wednesday!! Yes, it is Friday but who wants to say Wonderful Waffle Friday??! Ashley and I have made it a routine that we get a waffle once a week on Friday and we bring it back to our room at watch an episode of the OC. It's nice to have a break before getting right back into homework. I never really feel like there are "weekends" here since there is always something else that needs to get done. Sure, I get to sleep in a little later, but I probably end up staying up until 4 am anyway so it doesn't make a difference. 

It's so hard to believe that next week is WEEK FIVE. How in the world did that happen?! We're halfway done with 1st quarter. You know the odd thing? Someone just told me today that we only have 11 more quarters until we graduate. I don't even want to think that far in advance, I hardly even know what i'm doing tonight! 

Let's Kill the Misconception

I can't even count the number of conversations I've had within the past week that go something like this...

---------------------------

other person: so you're an art major, huh?

me: yep.

other person: awesome! so you don't have any homework and have like 3 classes and can hang out all of the time! that must be really cool. 

me: *stares blankly* actually I drew tinfoil for 30 hours last weekend and then got my piece ripped to shreds and did it again! oh yeah... and I have 7 classes.  how many do you have?

other person: four.... 

---------------------------

I mean, whatever, people can believe what they want. After talking to a bunch of art kids yesterday we've all been dealing with the same conversation. Definitely not saying art is easier than engineering because I have NO clue about any of that stuff but it's frustrating to be seen as being in a "slacker" major when it's really not at all. At least I don't think it is.. 

Time to go draw more tinfoil! 

Arts & Crafts

"Look Mom, I can balance a water bottle on my head!" ... So this is what our Saturday nights look like...

This is what happens when you have to work on an art project in a 10 by 15 room. Luckily, I just finished so i'll be able to sleep on my bed tonight, yay! This is a project i'm working on for 2d design. We had to take wires, bend them, photograph them, manipulate the photographs, cut them out, and then glue them all together on a 10 in by 40 in piece of paper. I'll post a final picture tomorrow.

Ashley and I went to NRH on Saturday afternoon to paint bricks to hold our door open.

Noise Level

Lately, the noise level around here has been insane. Between people running up and down the hallways at 2 in the morning (drunk...) and banging on all of the dorms and pushing the stupid flashing doorbells and the greek bids that happened today (the sororities ran around the halls singing at the top of their lungs and banging on doors to congratulate the new members). 

Then there is the issue of police cars. I've seen more police cars, ambulances, firetrucks in the past 3 weeks than I can count. There were the three firetrucks last week that surrounded our building with no explanation and then just last night (well, technically this morning) at 3 am there was a firetruck outside our building and a bunch of people were just hanging around outside. 

I've been doing a ridiculous amount of work lately.  Last weekend aside from a 2 hour game of volleyball on Saturday night I pretty much worked from Friday night after 5 until Monday morning at noon on homework. Every night after class, I generally work from 5 (or 9pm on tuesdays and thursdays) until 2 or 3 am. I mean, it's all art stuff but it's really overwhelming.  This weekend I have 3 projects (well, i had a forth but i finished it yesterday), as well as 2 papers all due on Monday or Tuesday. Woke up at 8:30 this morning and went over to the art studios for an hour, came back had lunch with Ashley and then went back until 3. Since then i've pretty much been doing... homework. Ashley's over at a friends house today so I'm lonely :( It's so weird having the room all to myself. You'd think after being in really close quarters with people ALL of the time i'd get sick of it, but i actually prefer being around people. Got some more stuff to work on tonight which I can hopefully finish before Sunday night (probably not happening...)

Aside from homework and class, school's good. There isn't a whole lot of time for socializing and what not. I go to lunch/dinner with people sometimes. I've been hanging out with some people on our floor too. Most of the time it's just Ashley and I hanging around. Everyone else is so busy it's hard to fit stuff in. Earlier this week Andrew took Ashley and I out to dinner to Ruby Tuesdays which was a welcomed break from Gracie's salad everyday. Wow, this is pathetic, I need to get out more. Maybe after Tuesday when everything is due. 

8 am Laundry

Alarm went off at 7 am this morning. That was not a very pleasant sound. 

I actually don't even have class until noon but I have so much nonsense to do.  Spent 13 hours so far on a drawing for one of my classes-- i'm 25% done and it's due Tuesday. Just ask Ashley, i've been eating, sleeping, breathing art. Basically didn't do anything except homework and sleeping all weekend and because of this my laundry did not get done.. so solution is to wake up at 7 am, draw for an hour and then go do laundry. To my surprise there was no one else who had that idea so I had the ENTIRE laundry room to myself. I thought about putting one shirt in each washer just because I could but then decided that sounded like a bad idea. 

Now I'm headed over to NRH to print out some stuff in the computer lab (doesn't cost anything, so why use your own?). Probably spend another hour or so drawing and then get breakfast/lunch before class at noon. Classes until 5 then drawing for an hour, dinner, working on my clay duck and then more drawing... you get the idea.. 

I'll try updating something longer and more meaningful on Wednesday once I finish the drawing. Of course, then I'll have three papers to write and another project to do. So hope you all have a happy thanksgiving, a merry christmas and I'll see you when I come out of the cave in four years at graduation! 

Clay Ducks, Wire and Stuffed Mooses

white board right ouside of our dorm room-- greg drew us some pretty pictures

tinfoil that i'm drawing for one of my classes

clay duck i'm working on for my 3d class

this is greg. he put on a puppet show for us with this moose he found in the stairwell. he's also been teaching us a lot of sign language.

this is a wire piece i'm working on for my 2d class. 

Firetrucks, Tinfoil and Uncle Plum

I've had far more adventures in this past two weeks than I have ever had before. Anyway, so yesterday morning I woke up around 7:30 and after a shower and breakfast I headed off to barnes and noble to pick up some clay. The store is only about 1/2 mile away so I just walked over. On the way down the elevator it started smelling really funny and I was on there alone so I pushed the nearest floor and got off and walked the rest of the way down. I was probably 200 feet from the building when I start to hear firetrucks and then 3 of them drive up and surround my dorm building. I was going to turn around and go back in (dumb, I know) but I just decided to keep on walking because I really needed that clay. I still have absolutely no idea what they were doing here-- but at least the building wasn't on fire :)

After coming back with the clay I headed over to the art building to go sculpt some clay for two hours. We have this project in 3D to make a banana out of clay (ironic? i think so). I went up to the professor and I was like dude uhmm, I'm not touching that. So he gave me a duck. Worked on the project for a while and then I had to go to Creative Sources. That class is basically just a lecture that happens once a week. They bring in some artist and they talk for an hour. Yesterday's artist just happened to be my drawing professor, Clifford Wun. It was pretty cool to see some of the stuff that he's done in the past. It's pretty nice to be able to bring your computer into that class-- i just recorded the entire lecture on it! I haven't checked to see if it worked yet though.

Last night Ashley, Drake and I went to a CCC meeting just to check it out. It was alright, we all agreed that we didn't really fit in all that well, although the people there were super nice and inviting. It wasn't really that overly pushy either which was good. Walking back from the meeting we came upon a concert, Uncle Plum. Ended up staying and watching that for over two hours and then watching the fireworks afterwards. Came back and watched a few episodes of the OC before people started bombarding our room. Talked with a few of the deaf guys on our floor which is kind of neat, it's a great way to pick up sign language quickly. They stayed until nearly 5 am, although I fell asleep at 3 so I missed most of it.. oops :P 

Woke up this morning at 8 and drew for a few hours. Waited for Ashley to get up and then we went out to breakfast/lunch around 1:30 with Andrew. Went to the art studio and worked on my clay duck for about 3 hours. Tried to do my 2D homework but the stupid printer in the lab wasn't working, oh well that's what tomorrow is for. Ashley and I went to dinner (at gracies...) and had some... SALAD! Who woulda thought. About halfway through two guys came up to us and asked if we wanted to come join them for dinner. It's college and we're supposed to be social so we accepted and it turns out that they were sitting at a table with 8 other guys (yeah, the ratio is obvious around here). After dinner two of them invited us to go back to their dorm and play wii and rockband with them. Hung out for a while and then we ended up going to the Gordon Field house and playing volleyball with 10 other guys. They all seem pretty cool and it was nice to play volleyball again. We played against some guys from the club team and almost beat them. Came back here, watched an episode of the OC and then we ended up just talking for the past two hours. I think it's bedtime though! Got a ton of work to do tomorrow. I'll try and post some pictures later of my project, I took some today but I'm too lazy to upload them at the moment.

Tough Times

There are times when it's hard being the only art kid on the floor. 

Example:

It's currently Thursday night (well, technically friday at 12:42 am but whatever).  Everyone on my floor has either gone out once already and is getting ready to go out again or is going out now for the first time. By "going out" i mean to parties and stuff.  It's THURSDAY night guys, come on, can't you wait for a weekend?? Everyone else on my floor is a liberal arts major and that particular college doesn't schedule classes on Fridays so this is technically everyone's Friday. And then there's me: I have class from 12-5 tomorrow and then the thought of three large projects due next Tuesday as well as two papers and about 50 pages to read in a book which all needs to get done this weekend. According to the teachers time estimate, the three projects together should take anywhere from 30-35 hours to complete. This is wonderful. 

Now, of course, don't get me wrong. I'm absolutely loving the classes. I got to mold a duck out of clay today in 3d! I'm really happy with my new 2D design professor and drawing is amazing as always. It's just kind of frustrating because I feel like if I had a Friday off I could get so much more done on my homework before Saturday rolls around but oh well. I am still looking forward to the classes tomorrow. 

Guess it's bedtime for me. Need to go to Barnes and Noble tomorrow morning for some more clay and then I think i'm going to work on homework until my noon class. I'll try to post some pictures of my current projects tomorrow if I remember/get a chance. 

College Day

Okay, so i'm really sucking at this whole updating thing. It's orientation week which means they pack our days from about 7 am until midnight or one with things and then everyone always wants to hang out afterwards so there is really no sleep/blogging time. 

Anyway, Friday was "College Day" which meant that each specific college (college of art, college of business, etc) went on a field trip or something fun. The college of art and design (CIAS) went to this place called Artisans Workshop which is basically a giant warehouse full of art. The place was literally jam packed with stuff, it was pretty awesome. We spent from 10 am until 3 pm just wandering around looking at stuff. I felt like we were in kindergarten again, we all piled on the big yellow school buses with our matching purple shirts and name tags.

awesome wheel made entirely out of wood...

i actually stopped and talked to the artist that created this piece for a while. he was pretty awesome. (in case you couldn't tell in the picture it's a 16 ft by 16 ft painting.)

Came back from the museum and Ashley and I crashed on our beds for an hour and a half. This week is really exhausting! After sleeping for a bit we met up with Eric for dinner at gracies (yumm, more salad-- i'll explain that later...). Ended up meeting up with Phil at dinner two and the four of us went back to the lounge on our floor to play Disney trivia and Uno (yes, we really are lame enough to do that on a Friday night). Decided to go roam the tunnels and find some ice cream. By then Phil had left and Andrew met up with us  and since he's a 3rd year he took us on a "tour" to see the large unrecognizable statue in the main quad. Had an interesting experience while we were standing there... about 6 guys jumped out of bushes and ran as fast as they could around the quad chasing each other and throwing things (Don't worry Mom and Dad, it's perfectly safe here! And we've found ourselves some body guards just in case) 

Artist of the Day: Kevin Connolly

The Washington Post today had an interesting article on a photographer named Kevin Connolly that I'd heard about a while back. The thing that makes his work so interesting is the fact that he has no legs.. well that's not the part that makes it interesting but all of his photographs are based off a stare. Imagine living with no legs at all, you'd definitely get quite a few stares. He rides around on a skateboard and tries to hide a camera near his waist..this is so he can get a good picture of the people staring at him without making them feel uncomfortable and making them change their first reaction. His stuff is pretty awesome, you can look at it here:
The Rolling Exhibition