Line-Bendingggg!

Summer comes and I disappear :P I'm getting to the point where I'm feeling like going back to school wouldn't be so bad, but I'm not sick of doing nothing yet, so... I haven't worked on any of my projects yet...which I feel bad about but don't at the same time because it still pisses me off that I have to redo projects that I already got decent grades on in classes that I already passed because some stuck up jerks running the design program decided they wanted to be ass holes and put us through hell.

In other news, I am thoroughly in love with Nickelodeon's Avatar series. I'm still in disbelief that they put out something so good. I watched some of the episodes when they originally aired, but I never really knew when it was on, so I never watched it but I'd always wanted to. I just recently watched the entire series and went to see the movie which was...meh. I know they have to cut a lot of stuff out to fit like 10 hours worth of content into 103 minutes, but some of the acting was pretty stale and there were little things they could have left in that would have made it so much better :P Even though there's serious stuff going on, they always included a lighthearted mood to balance it out. ...I wasn't entirely happy with some of the creative liberties they took with the look of the characters. How could Katara not have her little hair loopies!? :O ...Despite overwhelming bad reviews, I'm sure they're still going to make the two other movies (since it does seem to be making a decent amount of money) and I'll be on my merry way to the theater to see them when they come out @_@' until then, I'll rewatch the series to my heart's content. 

If you've never seen this show, I highly recommend you watch it :) It's great for all ages, it's got a great story, the characters are really unique and fascinating and it's very entertaining. Nothing bad to say about it. 

Summertime

I made it through my freshman year of college! Yay!

...I need to start screwing around with different mediums.

Stupid.

You know, you can be out of the house and not anywhere near either of them, and it still stresses you out when your parents start fighting.

Paranoia

It's funny how I still flinch when there are people laughing behind me. I get nervous, afraid they're laughing at me, for whatever reason they've dreamed up. If something happens often enough when you're young, it can be hard not to be wary of it when you're older.

When someone anonymously declares that an acquaintance has become an annoyance to them, I always worry that I'm the problem. It's not that I'm that self-centered, it's that I'm that self-conscious. I'm always worried I've done something wrong, to upset someone. I shouldn't want to please people so much.

I shouldn't worry, but I do. I can't help it.

BUT ANYWAY.

So the roof of our second newest building on campus caught fire on Saturday! It took them 24 hours to put it out! It was crazy. The whole campus was absolutely filled with smoke.

And today, the campus was filled up with smoke again~~ and it took them forever to send out an emai

l informing us that the roof was in fact not on fire again, but there was smoke wafting over from some controlled fire in Chester. How about that. It ruined my afternoon. I had to close the window before our whole room smelled like barbeque. I saw some pictures of the damage inside the building and it's insane. The fire was only in the roof but the damage from all the water they poured on it was pretty extensive. Even though no one got hurt, it's slightly disturbing and...ominous to look at something in such bad repair when the last time I saw it, it was perfectly fine.

I finally finished watching Cowboy Bebop and it was quite enjoyable. I wouldn't mind seeing a version of it with only the i

mportant bits pertaining to the main characters. I think the last three episodes were the most interesting. My cousin and I have agreed to become bounty hunters if we can't find jobs. I thought that might turn out something like this:

How We Do It

A la laaaa

The break of Spring is nigh!

Oh how I can't wait.

Bad Horse, Bad Horse! Bad Horse! He's Bad!

<-Fantastic movie

Dream Time

Well would you look at that,

I'm awake.

how ironic.

Not So Much An Epiphany As It Is A Rant.

So I was looking back through all of my stuff on deviantart.com when I noticed an Artistic Progress Contest they posted, just to see if I had any hardcore critique I could work from. (The rules of the contest are to take a piece you've recieved constructive criticism on and use it to re-make the picture) Sadly, there wasn't anything I could really do too much from, though there was plenty of positive feedback for which I was very thankful.

…But it's kind of interesting... There's not much of it on there, but when I first decided I wanted to start getting good at drawing in like the sixth grade, I would straight up find other people's drawings on the internet or pause an anime and try to recreate what I was looking at. After that, I graduated to drawing from photographs, trying to translate whatever I was looking at into line. Once I got the basic feeling for the shapes I should be making, I tried to branch out and draw my own stuff, which...well none of it is on here, but it's pretty humorous to look at now. You know, while I am far, far, FAR from doing anything perfectly (which is another discussion in itself...), friends and other people who really don't practice art are just like "Oh my god, you're sooo good! I wish I could draw like that!" Well, I wished I could draw like this too when I was thirteen and moody sitting in my Language Arts class with Mr. Genois. It’s nice to hear those compliments, but what I really love to hear is good, constructive criticism. It’s just like in any good conversation; if someone’s telling you a story, you need to respond with good feedback that shows you were listening. If you’re giving me criticism, I know you’re really looking at it. I like it when a teacher or someone more familiar with art looks at my stuff and gives me in-depth feedback. You can’t grow on compliments alone. Criticism is essential to learning what you need to do better, even if you recognize that things are wrong. There may be some things you’re overlooking. Especially if you’re going to college for art, I can now say that you will most definitely have professors pointing things out very bluntly, and even if I’ve had some things pointed out to me that I don’t agree with, they stick in my head all the more and make me change what I’m doing, usually for the better (though I'm hard pressed to admit it).

After I got a decent grip on drawing things from my head, I moved away from drawing people in awkward poses with whatever Asian twang I gave them, to drawing things with a little more feeling that I had more to say about. If I look back at all of my older art on deviantart from like 2006, there is absolutely nothing in the artist's comment or key words sections. I don't think I was trying to be all cool and not say anything about them because I look back at them now and I still have nothing to say. I just drew to draw. When I look at the latter half of 2006, I start making some comments, but they're all really negative. It was partially what I still do now and partially me being a stupid angry teenager. I'll still point things out that are wrong and say "eh, i don't like this" (and okay, obviously I like it if it's up here) ...and a lot of times, people will say “don't point out the bad things and just be really confident”, but I like to point those things out so people don't think I'm just an oblivious idiot. It's kind of a defense mechanism, like if I hurt myself first, then someone else can't do it. I mean, don't want to seem like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l693NzVcPy ...and I know that's extreme, but that's what it makes me think of (Like…I guess people who get mad when you give them criticism…”Hey this is good, but that arm is kind of short compared to everything else.” “NO IT’S NOT, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU STUPIDHEAD!?”). I don't know if this seems obnoxious, but I really hate it when people do something, show it off and act like there's nothing wrong with it when there obviously is. There's nothing wrong with being proud, but...do it constructively? "Hey, this needs improvement, but I'm proud I did it anyway" kind of thing? …Maybe that’s just me. I try to be really humble (and it’s not all ‘acting’; most of the time when someone’s like ‘ooh! I like this’ and I respond ‘eh, I don’t like it’, I’m not lying, I really just don’t like it) and it’s not because I’m fishing for compliments, it’s because I don’t want to be a total jackass who’s full of themselves.

Anyway, after all that good stuff, I guess I started to move into a direction where I had a definite story in my head to go with whatever I was drawing. By that time, I’d started writing a few stories after I got over my Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction phase. I’m actually still writing them today – granted, they’ve changed drastically and they’re still really cheesy, but they're still my muse. Like these ; definitely a character who I have a back story for.

And this…this was pretty

much me fantasizing about some senior I saw my first day of high school . I had a story for that too but we won’t get into that because then I’ll just come off as really creepy if I haven’t already. It was kind of funny because some people looked at that and were pretty much immediately like “Hey! That looks like --!” Aside from my ongoing obsession with mermaids and fairies that sprouted up around this time, my art has generally stayed in that realm of telling a story. It’s just been a matter of me improving my skills of perception and general control of a mark-making instrument >_> I could probably write multiple pages on each piece of art from there to now if I was asked to (I have for a few of them, actually… #1 way to slack off in creative writing x3 rewrite stuff that’s already done!).

There's a reason I chose Illustration as my major. I didn't choose graphic design or fine arts (painting/drawing whatever), I chose Illustration. And I chose it because to me, with illustration, there is always a story behind what you're drawing and I need that. I need the feeling and the atmosphere. Drawing just for the sake of drawing isn't enough. I need a story and some reason to draw. When I have a story, there is something very specific to convey (probably a main reason for my distaste in abstract art...). In kindergarten, we always used to go to 'centers' during class. There was a writing center, a house keeping center, a blocks center, a painting center...you get the idea. I remember saying once that my favorite one was writing because I got to make up stories. As cheesy as they are, I still really like to make up stories, but I pretty much fail as a writer sooo~ I draw my stories instead! Whether anyone sees it or not, when I have a story or a moment I'm trying to convey, there is a lot more passion that goes into it.

...We artists are sneaky ones. Art is really just all about trying to manipulate people. Whenever you create a piece of art for someone to look at, you have control over the feelings of your viewer, for either the fleeting seconds they look at it or the cumulative hours they spend looking at it. Any piece of art you find in my favorites section on here is there because I need to know where to find it, because I keep remembering it when I'm somewhere else and want to go back and experience it.

You can have friends who love you and still feel like a reject, I promise. The reason I decided to start drawing that day in the sixth grade can be summed up by a quote from David Barringer: "We were ugly, so we made beautiful things." (It's funny, I heard that in a lecture class for design students I didn't really want to take...and when David Barringer (he was a guest lecturer) pointed that out as one of the names of the literary magazine sort of things he'd helped design, I was just like, 'wow. I didn't know other people felt that way too." and it basically just summed up everything I'd felt for a long time.)

That's how I felt then. I wasn't ever the pretty girl. My best friend told me I was fat multiple times when I was still just in elementary school (No, I was not a skinny little kid, but I wasn't a walking twinkie) so, you know, that went over well with my self-esteem. People most definitely made fun of me in school. I remember someone saying something about me because I had some strange-looking cheese with my lunch one day. It's called port wine, it's delicious and I still eat it. Who gives a shit if it's red? There was this girl in fifth grade who just... bothered me for no reason! When we played jump rope at recess and she would always pull the rope so it would hit me and I'd have to step out. There were even people I didn't even know who teased me about the way I looked. It was around then I decided that if people weren't going to like me for who I was or what I looked like, then I would create things that they did like. All this time, art has been acting as a facade for me. If I could create beautiful things that people would associate with me, I could get them to like me.

Now this mentality was only applying to people who didn’t know me. I’d always had good friends who liked me for me and I think I made some good moves there because, you know what, I’m still friends with them today and I couldn’t ask for better people in my life.

I said all that to say this: That idea that I could get people to like me by creating something they wanted to see was reflected in what I drew. I tried to draw people with idealized features because that’s what people want to look at. They don’t want to see anyone with pimply skin, fat arms or short legs. (Since I’m inclined to drawing women as I am quite familiar with what that form happens to look like) I drew girls with pretty long hair, long torsos, big boobs and long, thin legs (Okay, this is what I attempted to draw, but my skill at the time couldn’t keep up with what my brain wanted). As time has passed, I don’t want things to look perfect anymore. It’s an artists job to make something appealing, but that doesn’t mean the subject matter has to be perfect. Now, I could draw a woman with sagging boobs, a fat belly who is bald and it would still look pretty. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with myself, and have stopped caring so much about what others think of me. I may have begun doodling in my sketchbook on a quest to make people like me, but now I use these skills I’ve gained as they should be: a means for expression. I’ve stopped drawing for other people and I’ve started drawing for myself. When I have something in my head and I go at it with a pencil, it's like I'm in a trance. That’s me sitting there, bringing my imagination to life so I can look at it later and go back to that place I was in before.

I log onto deviantart every day and it’s both incredibly intimidating and incredibly inspiring. There are so many wonderful artists out there who I know far surpass my ability and imagination and I envy them, but it gives me something to work toward. I can say, “I want to be like that” and hopefully, six years from now, I can do this again, look back and say that I achieved that goal and then some. You know, I still look to art I admire on the internet and elsewhere as a learning tool. Usually, I’ll try something I see someone else do and then change it and work with it to fit my needs. That’s the way I’ve been doing this for most of my life (even before I discovered the internet and all of its wonders) and it’s the only way I know how to improve without someone looking over my shoulder. I don’t have money for private art lessons and I’m not exactly being taught the things I want to learn in my classes at the university (yet), so this is how I work. When I look at the drawings I did six years ago, look at what I admired back then and then look at where I am now, I can certainly say that I’ve come a long way.

It took a while, but at least I’m getting somewhere.