I haven't posted in so long. I've been so busy that I've gotten out of the habit of writing on here. Also, after my last blog post I wasn't quite sure what to say. Sometimes when you write something that has an impact on others, you get scared of writing something else because it won't be as prominent.
I've done so much lately, but sadly I'm still behind in my schedule for my portfolio. I really only have about three and a half weeks left, which is terrifying. I'm not close to being done everything. There is so much going on in my life I've been feeling incredibly overwhelmed. So, of course, I get sick. Sometimes I work myself to this point of being susceptible to illness. Sadly, even though I feel like crap I still need to work.
I've promised myself that after spring break is done, that I will photograph all of my current work and post it for everyones input. I'm nervous because I don't know what everyone will think of my stuff, especially since it's all tailored to my portfolio, and virtually none of it is the style I'd really like to work in. Powering through all of this work is proving challenging. I feel bad for Peter sometimes because he has to deal with my frustrations constantly. I'm always doubting myself, no matter the quality I produce.
Anyways. I just wanted to start posting again. I know I'll post more frequently when my portfolio is done, but until then, I'll post when I can.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
little bits.
Tonight I was watching some of my boyfriend's families home videos. They were short little clips from 2001, and they were all of Christmas of that year. In them, there were snippets of a grandfather who had passed away before I'd come into the picture. It was an odd thing to see, in a pulling-on-the-heartstrings sort of way. I saw little bits of a man who influenced the life of someone I love in inalterable ways. Ever since I had heard of 'Grandad' (What the family called him), I really regretted never getting the chance to meet him. He loved to paint, and built the coolest toys out of wood for his grandchildren. There are still quite a few of these planes and boats in Peter's (my boyfriend's) room. Things like these, little bits of someone's life who is now no longer here, make me incredibly sad. As I watched these tiny clips of video (as the early 2000's couldn't do long clips) I was able to see tiny things that Grandad did. I saw him strolling on a dock with the rest of his family, one of his old film cameras hanging from his neck. The clip is only about 7 seconds long, but just seeing how he took things in, walked around, interacted with his family... Its a bittersweet thing to watch. Almost two years ago I started dating Peter, and the first time that he talked about his Grandad I realized how much this man meant to him, and still means to him. Ever since that day I've been taking in little bits of information about this man to try to piecemeal my way to understanding what he was like. Sadly I'll never truly know everything because I will never get to meet him. But seeing the videos of him just doing the simplest of things helped me understand just a little more.
I wish that my parents had documented my childhood more. There were lots of pictures of me from birth to about three. After that, pictures of me became few and far between. There's no video of me, but there were some tape recordings that my dad and I unearthed years ago- sadly those most likely were thrown out. They were nothing special, I had only gotten ahold of a microphone and I was just babbling away about nonsense and pancakes. But that tape was extremely important to me, because it was from a time where life seemed so easy. It was most likely less than a year before my dad declared bankruptcy, and I would've been no older than four years old. But at that moment, I was so happy and I had no worries. I miss those times. Obviously you can't go back to that once you know the things you do, but there are days where I wish I could look back at my childhood, and everything would be documented. There are so many holes in the time periods between pictures. My mother, when I was born, bought a baby book for me and never wrote in it. I don't blame her, it's hard to raise a child. But now, when I ask her things like what my first word was or when I first learned to walk, she can't answer me. She tells me, "Your first word was something like 'Dada' or 'Mama'. Something really typical like that." That's something that I will never know now for sure. All of my infancy nothing besides pictures were recorded, and now all of that information is lost. Peter is so lucky that his mom thought that that information was important, because now we will always remember things like that Peter went through a phase where he wouldn't believe anything anyone told him. He knows his first words, when he learned to walk, and what he did for the first 12 months of his life. I wish I could've known things like that about myself. When I have kids one day, I'll do that for them. I'll take boxes and boxes of pictures and keep small things and put everything all together so that when they grow up, they'll be able to reconnect with their childhood.
These tiny little pieces of information are so valuable, and sometimes they are the only things that we have left of the people that are gone. Things like a twenty second video of Grandad basting a turkey or Peter talking about guinea pigs... Those are things that allow people to remember the small things forever. Memories fade so quickly, but these little bits can last a lifetime.
I wish that my parents had documented my childhood more. There were lots of pictures of me from birth to about three. After that, pictures of me became few and far between. There's no video of me, but there were some tape recordings that my dad and I unearthed years ago- sadly those most likely were thrown out. They were nothing special, I had only gotten ahold of a microphone and I was just babbling away about nonsense and pancakes. But that tape was extremely important to me, because it was from a time where life seemed so easy. It was most likely less than a year before my dad declared bankruptcy, and I would've been no older than four years old. But at that moment, I was so happy and I had no worries. I miss those times. Obviously you can't go back to that once you know the things you do, but there are days where I wish I could look back at my childhood, and everything would be documented. There are so many holes in the time periods between pictures. My mother, when I was born, bought a baby book for me and never wrote in it. I don't blame her, it's hard to raise a child. But now, when I ask her things like what my first word was or when I first learned to walk, she can't answer me. She tells me, "Your first word was something like 'Dada' or 'Mama'. Something really typical like that." That's something that I will never know now for sure. All of my infancy nothing besides pictures were recorded, and now all of that information is lost. Peter is so lucky that his mom thought that that information was important, because now we will always remember things like that Peter went through a phase where he wouldn't believe anything anyone told him. He knows his first words, when he learned to walk, and what he did for the first 12 months of his life. I wish I could've known things like that about myself. When I have kids one day, I'll do that for them. I'll take boxes and boxes of pictures and keep small things and put everything all together so that when they grow up, they'll be able to reconnect with their childhood.
These tiny little pieces of information are so valuable, and sometimes they are the only things that we have left of the people that are gone. Things like a twenty second video of Grandad basting a turkey or Peter talking about guinea pigs... Those are things that allow people to remember the small things forever. Memories fade so quickly, but these little bits can last a lifetime.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
$
Sorry for the lack of update for the past few days. Even though I know that no one really reads this, I can't let myself stop posting. Otherwise I'll get back into my non-existant routine of... Not doing anything.
Money. It's a pretty powerful thing. And right now, I have none. It's a frustrating situation to be in. I really want to get a job, but all of the work I do on my portfolio along with my school work makes it near impossible to really get a job and make money. And, because I'm working on my portfolio, I can't take on any commissions. I can't think of anything else I could do besides try to sell my crap that really isn't worth much or interesting to anyone.
I've also been really unmotivated. After finishing my big piece, I'm just so tired and I really don't want to touch anything art-related. I just want to relax, sleep, an hang out with my friends. I kind of miss being a normal teenager. Because of how much work I have, it's hard to maintain everything. There's this picture that exists on the internet that most modern-day students know about. It's a triangle with one thing in each corner: Sleep, Good Grades, and Social Life are the choices. Above the triangle it says, 'You can only pick two.' For me, sadly, I've picked Good Grades and Sleep. However, there's this invisible, nagging choice that many don't have to deal with: a Portfolio. It's extremely time consuming, exhausting, and drains you of almost every creative and non-creative juices from your body. The physical Portfolio itself just sits there passively in the corner, silently saying, "I should be filled with amazing creations... Why haven't you created anything?" I feel guilty because of my laziness. I know that my wisdom teeth set me back a little, but now I just want to relax and sleep and not worry about my portfolio. It's a bad cycle I've gotten myself into, and now I regret doing so. This week I need to get my Art Nouveau piece done. No more hesitation. It's not exactly a hard thing to do, and I am really excited to work with gouache and watercolour and acrylic ink, but I'm just a slow starter.
I also need to take pictures of all of my pieces I have currently done and post them to my deviantart. Once done, I'll connect my deviantart to here for all to see.
Anyways, I'm going to think about what I should do this week, and then I'll post a list to remind myself. :)
Money. It's a pretty powerful thing. And right now, I have none. It's a frustrating situation to be in. I really want to get a job, but all of the work I do on my portfolio along with my school work makes it near impossible to really get a job and make money. And, because I'm working on my portfolio, I can't take on any commissions. I can't think of anything else I could do besides try to sell my crap that really isn't worth much or interesting to anyone.
I've also been really unmotivated. After finishing my big piece, I'm just so tired and I really don't want to touch anything art-related. I just want to relax, sleep, an hang out with my friends. I kind of miss being a normal teenager. Because of how much work I have, it's hard to maintain everything. There's this picture that exists on the internet that most modern-day students know about. It's a triangle with one thing in each corner: Sleep, Good Grades, and Social Life are the choices. Above the triangle it says, 'You can only pick two.' For me, sadly, I've picked Good Grades and Sleep. However, there's this invisible, nagging choice that many don't have to deal with: a Portfolio. It's extremely time consuming, exhausting, and drains you of almost every creative and non-creative juices from your body. The physical Portfolio itself just sits there passively in the corner, silently saying, "I should be filled with amazing creations... Why haven't you created anything?" I feel guilty because of my laziness. I know that my wisdom teeth set me back a little, but now I just want to relax and sleep and not worry about my portfolio. It's a bad cycle I've gotten myself into, and now I regret doing so. This week I need to get my Art Nouveau piece done. No more hesitation. It's not exactly a hard thing to do, and I am really excited to work with gouache and watercolour and acrylic ink, but I'm just a slow starter.
I also need to take pictures of all of my pieces I have currently done and post them to my deviantart. Once done, I'll connect my deviantart to here for all to see.
Anyways, I'm going to think about what I should do this week, and then I'll post a list to remind myself. :)
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Gouache.
I just got a starter set of Gouache yesterday. I've never used it before, but it looks like a fantastic medium to work with. I'll hopefully post some of my experiments with the medium soon. :)
Yesterday Alex Fong came into our art class to giv us a demonstration. I was really excited for it because he's a fantastic watercolour artist and some of the stuff he does is really cool. Watercolour is a medium that I'm not particularly good at but I love the way it looks and the texture you can create with it. I've never had the patience or forgiving nature to deal with watercolour, I always want to be able to perfect the outcome and create exactly what I envision. Alex's techniques were really interesting, I loved his palette that he used, he left all of his colour dried on it to allow it to meld with eer other colour. He explained something that I have always known, but never put into use. Colours in real life are never vibrant. They always have some sort of greyish tinge to them. If you were to try to purposely mix a certain colour, even if you were to try to add some sort of grey to it it would simply look unnatural.
Why? Because most greys are made up of other colours blending together. I was really inspired by Alex's palettes and decided to get one of my own. I'm going to play around with watercolour and gouache this week to try to get some sort of handle on the techniques in watercolour.
Currently I'm at the college relaxing because in about half an hour I get to go sand and paint the bag of my big piece and put some supports onto the back of it. Hopefully, when Greedy takes it to the art gallery tomorrow he'll be able to convince Renee to hang my piece in the main room and not in some secluded area. I'm worried about the specific area that they want to hang it, it will bleach the wood and wreck the piece altogether. It'll be something to think about for sure.
Yesterday Alex Fong came into our art class to giv us a demonstration. I was really excited for it because he's a fantastic watercolour artist and some of the stuff he does is really cool. Watercolour is a medium that I'm not particularly good at but I love the way it looks and the texture you can create with it. I've never had the patience or forgiving nature to deal with watercolour, I always want to be able to perfect the outcome and create exactly what I envision. Alex's techniques were really interesting, I loved his palette that he used, he left all of his colour dried on it to allow it to meld with eer other colour. He explained something that I have always known, but never put into use. Colours in real life are never vibrant. They always have some sort of greyish tinge to them. If you were to try to purposely mix a certain colour, even if you were to try to add some sort of grey to it it would simply look unnatural.
Why? Because most greys are made up of other colours blending together. I was really inspired by Alex's palettes and decided to get one of my own. I'm going to play around with watercolour and gouache this week to try to get some sort of handle on the techniques in watercolour.
Currently I'm at the college relaxing because in about half an hour I get to go sand and paint the bag of my big piece and put some supports onto the back of it. Hopefully, when Greedy takes it to the art gallery tomorrow he'll be able to convince Renee to hang my piece in the main room and not in some secluded area. I'm worried about the specific area that they want to hang it, it will bleach the wood and wreck the piece altogether. It'll be something to think about for sure.
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