Yesterday's Tomorrow

    We've been focusing on perspective in out drawing class for the last couple weeks now and this time we were working on two-point perspective. So we weren't staring straight at everything this time, the objects we drew mostly receded into two different vanishing points.

    I was having trouble trying to figure our where the longer orthogonal lines should recede to as they were off of our page/outside of our picture plane, but I'll just keep an eye on it. I had started one in the student commons and realized I had spent too much time on something that ended up creating a problem. So the one I've got here is a little less developed than I'd have liked since it was a bit rushed.

[Cody's two-point perspective drawing]

    I also had Digital Imaging today, and I got some work done on my crustaceous themed environment concepts, but I forgot to save them as a file type that's compatible with my software at home, so I'll have to fix that tomorrow.

    I've got half of my costume done/repaired. So tomorrow I'll be half of the Master Chief. I'll get some good pictures finally if I can. Then I've got to finish him up for the 11th, when Halo: the Master Chief Collection comes out.

-Cody

[Allison's two-point perspective drawing]

    I've done this before, and it comes pretty easy to me, so I was happy with the results of my drawing. I feel better about this drawing class now because, I re-worked my homework assignment, and brought my grade up to a B+[on the homework].

    I am a terrible sewer... seamstress... Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'm trying to sew my own costume.

-Allison

"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." -ObiWan Kenobi

Tomorrow's Yesterday

    Today we started another 2 week painting, this time based on a still life that was set up generally using split-complimentary color schemes. Which means that instead of the color that is directly opposite it on the color wheel[a color's compliment] it uses the two on either side of that color. Creating a more varied yet still appealing color palette.

[Cody's split-complimentary still life in progress]

    My main goal for today was to get the entire canvas covered with colors/values that were at least some approximation of what they will look like in the finished painting. I was having trouble getting stuff up to the same level of polish as I had mentioned in the past, without working it all up at closer to the same time.

    I'm going to try and get some work done on my Halloween costume here tonight, I may not get much sleep the next couple days, but I'd like to get this thing done this year. I started it two years ago around this time... I'll have more to share on Friday.

-Cody

[Allison's split-complimentary still life in progress]

Today's Yesterday

    By the time I had gotten home, and completed the few tasks I needed to for school and whatnot last night it was a little late to write up a post. I do have photos from our sculpture class yesterday. so check 'em out.

 
[Cody's self-portrait in progress]

    This was the second to last week on these, and I've moved my eyes out a bit and I'm trying to keep nudging all of my features to be even more specifically like mine. The ears still need to be finished, and I have to decide what visual language I'm going to use for my hair, but at the end I think I'll be pretty satisfied with it. Once we're completely done, and we grab some classy photos I'll try and get some in progress compared to the finished ones to share.

[Allison's self-portrait in progress]

    We [Allison, my brother Clinton, and my Mom, and Clive] also carved our pumpkins last night after school for Halloween this year. I never plan in advance, so by default all of my pumpkins look very jack-o-lanterney. As opposed to something an art student would be doing, but that's okay. It's all for fun anyways.

[Cody's pumpkin]

[Clinton's pumpkin]

[Cody, Allison, and Clinton's pumpkins]

   
    I apparently forgot to get a shot of just Allison's, but that's hers is in the shot of all three. I chose to carve Kopaka, Toa of Ice from the original Bionicle toys. Allison made a simplified Super Mario hopping into a brick, I like it, it ended up looking like an Aztec wall carving of Mario. Clinton then carved a pumpkin head fro the game Destiny.

-Cody

"There is much talk, and I have listened, through rock and metal and time. Now I shall talk, and you shall listen." -The Gravemind

Apple Picking, The Hunt

    Cody and I went apple picking yesterday. There were barely any apples left... we walked around a lot to find some good apples or any apples at all.  I wish we had gone earlier in the season but I can never pin point when the best time to go apple picking is. I feel like Fall just started kicking. Our next thing we need to get off our list now is a corn maze. Cody wants to go to a scary corn maze where people jump out. I... would rather just enjoy getting lost in a maze.

    We collected 7 pounds of apples. I'm going to be eating apples for days and I'm totally okay with that. I'll just keep the doctor away, and not catch Ebola! Hurray! I'm suppose to take my niece apple picking this Saturday hopefully, but with the so few apples left on the trees I'm going to have to think of something better to do. Maybe we will just scavenge for the few apples on the trees and make caramel covered apples, or make something cool with leaves.

[Check out this Dragon tree!!!]

-Allison

Crustaceous Environment Designs

    Yesterday I had Intro to Digital Imaging again, and I've been trying to use the time to my advantage. I had done a quick sort of environment painting study/exploration that would work well with the crab-guy designs in my last class. For this "assignment" I'm going to explore some environment paintings in the same theme/style.

[crustaceous environment work in progress 1]

[crustaceous environment work in progress 2]

    I'm going to keep working on developing them, we'll see where they go. I think I'll get at least 3 pieces done for the "critique" of these in two weeks.

-Cody

That's Almost What We Look Like?

    I've finally got pictures of our self-portraits in progress so here they are.

[Cody's self-portrait in progress]

[Cody's self-portrait in progress]

[Cody's self-portrait in progress]

    

    My eyes are still in a state of "that looks funky", but I feel like my mouth and nose/nostril areas actually resemble my face. 

[Allison's self-portrait in progress]

[Allison's self-portrait in progress]

[Allison's self-portrait in progress]

    In our drawing class today we began to look at perspective through observation rather than through formulas/systems like in my perspective class. We did a drawing in one-point perspective, where all things parallel to each other and perpendicular to the spectator's eye recede into one vanishing point. It may not look too dynamic, but it ends up creating space, and looking visually "accurate".

[Cody's one-point perspective drawing]

    It looks pretty good in person, and you can see all of the line-weight variation and nuances up close, but from afar a lot of the lines look to be of the same importance.

-Cody

[Allison's one-point perspective drawing]

    My sculpture looks a little weird. It doesn't look like me yet, but it is better than the last update we had of our self-portraits. Cody's looks fantastic. So far it's the only one that looks like him. I found out I recieved a C+ on my homework assignment for Drawing, I cried. Not because I received a C+ but because I had been doing something a large portion of my life and had been getting A's then when you think you're "good" at something and they smack you with " you're average". I guess I have to figure this out. My stubbornness is going to put me behind. I need to punch it in the face and start from the beginning, and act like I suck so I can learn more.

-Allison

"I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are" -Mewtwo

Analogies For Life

    So on Tuesday we continued to work on our self-portrait sculptures, and I brought my camera, but I forgot my battery! So I made sure I had my battery today to get photos of out analogous color still lives that we were "finishing" up, and I planned on going into the sculpture studio and grab photos of our heads. Alas, I forgot.

    My analogous still life turned out alright, once again I feel like I could work on it for a few more hours, and I may. I was spending most of today laying in color, and trying to make all of the forms at least read as three dimensional.

[Cody's analogous still life]

    I need to push the value differences within each plane more often/earlier in my painting. I feel like the painting is mostly successful, even though some places need to be brought up to the same level. In the end it's all a learning experience and I do feel like I learn something, and hopefully improve with each one as well.

    I'll have photos of those sculptures tomorrow for sure.

-Cody

[Allison's analogous still life]

    This was the hardest still life I've had to do this semester. Yet my teacher says this was my best painting so far. It looks like poop. Do all my paintings look like garbage? And the one that seems the most garbage to me, "my best yet?" That totally boosts my confidence. It feels unfinished, and too flat. I'm not a fan of this, I seem to be getting really frustrated with my work recently, and it's stressing me out.

    I have an exam on Friday, and I'm not prepared. I'm not going to pass because I have to memorize 70 images, and 70 dates when each piece was made. How am I going to remember that? He has a website set up where it is easy to study, I'll know the names of the pieces but that's it. It's just numbers to me for the dates, I could get them all wrong. I'm probably going to have to take this class again next year. Just the first half, my first midterm and I'm going to fail. 

Send help.

-Allison

"I don’t think there’s any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they’re doing." -Francis Ford Coppola

Midterm Drawing

    Today we had our midterm evaluation, and drawing assignment which was a still life that our instructor had set up with all sorts of different shapes, and objects to see how well we could incorporate all the ideas, and techniques that we've learned so far. The assignment isn't really graded, but it was more of a benchmark to see where we're at right now, and how we've improved theoretically from the beginning of the semester.

    There are a lot of things that I like about mine, and a few things I don't. It's not perfect, I would barely call it complete at this point, but it has to be, and now it's hanging on the wall in the school.

[Cody's midterm still life]

    The picture isn't dark, my drawing just has a lot of graphite on it. I spent a lot of time laying everything out, and drawing everything as well as I thought I could within the day. I think it was successful. I'm happy with where I am in the class and where I'm going with my drawings, I look forward to pushing myself even more.

    I also had Intro to Digital Imaging today, which was our "midterm" as well, which was just turning in our latest digital project, and talking about them for a bit. I was doing one thing in class, then decided to scrap it and do/finish up some thumbnails, and bring them up to a presentable level as a character design sheet.

[crustacean character designs]

    I'm heading to bed myself here now so we can get up bright and early to get on a bus and head to New York, New York. Hopefully we don't get lost or mugged.

-Cody

[Allison's midterm still life]

    My ellipse's are getting better, but they are not the angles they should be at. I feel like this was a successful drawing, I'm cleaner than I used to be with my lines, but now they want me to not clean up anymore? Every teacher I had said to clean up my line work, and now I need to show everything. I erase often. Art school is what its worth.

-Allison



"It's not luck, it's what you do that makes a hero" -Kopaka

I Couldn't Think Of An Analogy

    Not much time for a long post tonight, I'm trying to get this done so I can head to bed. Today we started our next painting, which was an analogous color scheme still life. Analogous meaning color next to a color on the color wheel, Allison and I are working on a red based still life.

[Cody's analogous still life in progress]

    I like where it's headed at the moment, hopefully I can get the rest of the painting up to a presentable point by the end of class next week. Here's Allison's below here, she's already asleep. She fell asleep texting me I think, sweet dreams Allisonnn.

[Allison's analogous still life in progress]

    So that's it for tonight really. We'll be going to New York city on Friday with school to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a few other places. We'll make sure to take lots of pictures.

-Cody

"Exaggerate the unimportant, and forget the obvious" or something along those lines. -Nancy[our painting teacher]

Is That What We Look Like? Part 1

    So now we've moved past our great being or whatever he's called and begun to extract our own head/likeness out of the clay. My head is pretty small, so I had to hunk a lot of clay off of that guy to get it down to my size. We had taken a whole bunch of measurements with a pair of calipers so once I got to hackin' it was all just matching the sizes.

[Cody's self-portrait in progress]

    It's just barely starting to resemble me, but as I get the individual features more accurate to my photos/myself it will come together hopefully. We have some small skulls that we had started for homework for an ongoing project over the semester here, but I don't have any photos of those guys yet. So I'll share those later.

-Cody

     It's self-portrait time again. We have to create portraits of ourselves in sculpture. I love the idea, and all I want to do is work on it. On the other hand, it makes me want to cry. I'm so lost with out a 3d model in front of me. I might do better with a mirror instead of some photographs to go off of. My bust looks... nothing like me right now. I'm frustrated with it, I want to make it a good piece but this is my first sculpture class. Which makes this my first self-portrait sculpture. Cody's sculpture is looking like him. It's my motivation for mine to do the same...[continued in Is That What We Look Like? Part 2/Allison Edition]

[Allison's self-portrait in progress]

    I was mostly working on the right, it's left, side of the face. I'm eager for better results next week. 

-Allison

"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one." -Charles Horton Cooley

Is That What We Look Like? Part 2 Allison Edition

[This is more of a "personal life" post. I took this out of the original post to make them shorter,  It is part 2 of the post that will be posted later about sculpture class today]

   (continued)..... I never want to be behind Cody in art, I wanna be at the same level. I'd hate to be less skilled at something art related than him, because I don't want to be looked down on. For instance, you're great at art, and your partner isn't. They show you art and you just nod and say that's great because you don't expect much from them. It's nothing compared to what you could do. Don't crush their hopes and dreams, just say it's nice and move along. I don't want that. 
 
    I think that's why me and Cody have a hard time talking to each other about our work. I want to help him because I know if he just looked at it with different eyes he would see something if it was off. Just like when he helps me with my stuff. Wow I should take my own advice. I get frustrated some times, because we are together, I don't want the first words out of his mouth to be "fix this". Even though I do the same thing to him, we both want to hear good things from each other about our pieces. About how impressed or proud we are of this great creation. Yet we both want each other to succeed and we both think just a little push of help is okay, because our eyes are not perfect."seeing" with another set of eyes might make things more accurate.

    I see everything "wrong" with my face when I looked at the photographs, why are faces so weird. I see everything I thought was perfectly fine. I've had a lot of self-image issues in my past, and now I'm concerned again, I also stopped running because of school. I should get back into that. I've been freaking out lately, I had a breakdown about why I'm going to art school. If it was the right choice because I feel like once you're done with school what left is there to do? You're thrown into the world with nothing but a degree, some paints, and your poor knowledge of the "real world". I still don't understand taxes...I barely understand grammar. I feel so mediocre sometimes, I'm just another kid in art school. I'm not great at a specific type of art. I'm not known for anything. I'm just. Here. These are the questions that keep me up at night. I've been very stressed between stupid little things, family life, physical health, and my education choices. I thought being an illustrator might be cool. But painting or drawing might be cool as a BFA.

   This is why I haven't been writing on the blog. I don't feel pushed to do much. I'm dragging my feet to do things constantly. You might notice I only write long blog posts when I have to write papers.... Hint hint hint. I might be depressed again. I'm not sure why I feel the need to make a blog post about this. To keep you in the loop?


I need to do my homework now.

-Allison

Ps. I chose quotes as motivation for the blog posts recently. Each quote has something to do with what I'm having trouble with. Unless they aren't related at all, then that's Cody's quote choices.

Gourd Times, Gourd Times...

   The title sounded more clever in my head before I typed it, anyways, if you couldn't already guess after a while of working on rigid structural forms we finally switched it up and drew some gourds.

    We were encouraged to continue to think, and work constructively as we built our drawings. So you can see some structural marks in my drawing. In a drawing without any value[we were strictly forbidden to use any] lineweight plays a huge part in how the form turns in space, and holds it's integrity. I think for the most part my drawing is pretty successful.

[Cody's gourd drawing]

   
    Gourd is such a weird word, every time I write it it looks misspelled. Drawing is definitely my favorite class right now, every Thursday I look forward to whatever thing we'll have in front of us to draw next. It's my comfort zone, I can do alright no matter what we do.

    I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing about the show on Saturday, who knows. I'll share a small preview of some designs I was working on yesterday.

[crab guy work in progress]

    Look at that sweet mushroom. I notice I don't care to draw such simple things anymore. I want challenges. I rush right thought everything because I feel like it's wasting my time. These structural techniques make me focus more on the technique and less on the object itself. So what ever I'm drawing might be way off from what I'm actually looking at, but it looks right on paper. I rushed this gourd drawing. I was happy to draw an organic object, but I was so excited I wanted to finish it and prove to someone/the teacher that I can draw quickly. I have no patience for anything. All of my professors keep telling me to slow down. My body does not want to slow down. It wants to draw quickly and semi-accurately. I'm stubborn. 

    My gourd looks funny. I know the angle of the large plump part is wrong. I didn't use value one the mushroom, I put in small circles. I have the patience for that, but I don't have the patience for accuracy.  

[Allison's gourd drawing]

-Allison

"Take your time and concentrate on the humming bird" -Unknown(I know but I can't remember) 

1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red painting, Blue Painting

    Today was the second class that we worked on our still lives with the three primary colors, so my painting is "done" for now. I ran out of time to do what I wanted within class, once I got a hang of mixing colors and laying them in correctly I wanted to get very meticulous/accurate with where/how I applied them to the piece. I may come back to it over the next week here while the still life is still set up. Or work from a photo to get more of the nuanced colors, and reflected light into the painting.

    Here's where it's at right now though.

[Cody's three color still life]

    There are some parts that I feel are more successful than others, the small blue glass bottle, and most of the drapery in the background for example. I realized that my painting was very vibrant compared to a lot of other people's including Allison's, but I like it. The objects were bright primary colors though. I ran out of time to refine the blue vase, and the yellow kettle forms, but they have paint on them at least.

    After looking through and editing some of the shots of my skull I also decided to get a little more "creative" and paint it into Skeletor for fun tonight. 

[Skeletor from Cody's skull]

    Everytime I had looked through the classroom I had seen a sea of many different permutations of Skeletor already, so I figured, why not?

-Cody

     I only had an hour and a half of sleep last night, I went to bed at 4:30 am. I felt awful, so I went back to bed and decided not to go to class. I figured that I would get more sleep before going to class. I slept till 11:20, got dressed and got to school by 1:15. I didn't really get to finish my painting like I wish I could have. I just realized there is a huge chunk I forgot to fix , the brown on the bottom box should be duller. Now it's going to bother me.

[Allison's three color still life]

-Allison

"Art is never finished, only abandoned" -Leonardo da Vinci 

Beginning to Construct a God/Self-Portrait...

    Photographing and documenting work is something I try to be good at, as evidenced by our blog here. Some people aren't as used to it though so our instructors have to go over photo graphing techniques and things. So today in sculpture we took photos of our skulls that we had done for our last assignment.

[Cody's skull]

We also have started working on our base sculpture of a large planar head based off of a model call "the supreme being". Which is just a big huge head made of geometric shapes, which we will then extract our own heads out of for our self-portrait assignment which is a multi-week project. This dude takes a lot of clay to put together, and I didn't have enough to give him a back of a head yet, so I was just working on blocking out his face.

[Cody's supreme being]

    We then started taking a whole slew of photos from all sorts of angles to set up a photo array to work from while sculpting our own heads/faces. I'll be sure to get a shot of one while we're working on our heads for next time.

[Allison's supreme being]

    I also have a few pieces of work in a show during the  City Wide Open Studio[CWOS] event in New Haven this weekend. Two of my digital paintings were accepted pretty much without my notice to the show. I had hung them up one day, and they were gone the next! I have work all day Saturday when the school has a bus heading out there though. So do I call out of work to see my own pieces in the show, or go to work?....

[future building]

[mech approach]

    You can check out the CWOS website if you want, we weren't told too much about it, all I know is my work is there somewhere this weekend, I think.

-Cody

"I'm probably going to call out of work" -Cody

Procrastination Station

    My computer, is a procrastination station. I built it for high quality game graphics and to handle my abuse of higher quality videos and editing software. I use it for my homework of course. I have two 3 page essays due today and I had to deactivate my Facebook last night because I would get on to do my financial aid/write on the blog/homework and spend more than an hour catching up on everyone's posts. I deactivate my Facebook often because it's too time consuming. I finally finished my financial aid entrance counseling, my " think about it " course for school boring because they don't want us to get raped or do drugs and drink to much. I felt most of the information was common sense, I know what a " hook up " is, but apparently they had to teach me regardless. It was designed well, but the information in the first half was common knowledge. I learned more about how to keep a buzz though with out getting drunk. Hooray!!  During the course, they say that if your BAC is below a .02 you can drive legally but you might be impaired. Which is weird because I was taught as a kid that if you even have one drink that's light on alcohol you can't/shouldn't drive.

Anyhow, I'm writing an essay about this image right now:

[ Ad for reporting child abuse] 

"Some people look at a child and don't see a child"

   I'm not having a hard time because there is so much to talk about this image even though the content is so simple. Here is my intro paragraph, I thought it was clever :  

       A young female walks into the restaurant, she is wearing eye catching colors and her strawberry blonde hair is long and soft. You make eye contact and she smiles directly at you. Her lips are moist and they shimmer in the light with a cherry red glow, your favorite color. She sits next to you at the diner bar and tells you her name, she seems to be interested, are you?  You place your hand softly on her back and introduce yourself by offering a hand shake and a drink. A women with a stern voice approaches you, she takes her daughter by the hand as the child hops off the bar stool. The mother is disgusted with you, how far could you have gone if she hadn't shown up.

            The disgusting thought of being tricked into thinking this passage was about a young attractive adult women looking for attention is embarrassing. The truth is, some people look at a child and don't see a child.  Just like the ad, this passage captures the audience’s attention immediately.

   My prologue seems powerful, it grabs you in and then throws you under the bus for " assuming" she was of age in the first sentence. Gotcha, shes like 6. Which reminds me, my essay is due at 6 pm and I'm not done. One page left, then I have to write another essay about a statue.



-Allison

Ps. I'm currently drowning a stink bug because I don't wanna kill and get the smell everywhere. Is that cruel? 

The Kettle Is On

     In our foundation classes, Drawing I, and Painting I, we've been slowly working on building up to drawing/painting more complex objects, and groups of objects in perspective. Yesterday we were drawing piles and piles of ellipses in perspective, then we drew some tea kettles. There were some crazy looking tea kettles in there.

[Cody's kettle drawing]

[Allison's kettle drawing]

Outside of class lately I've been trying to take time to work on my own "studies", so I've been drawing more ideas and concepts of my own. These crab guys were inspired by a friend at school's project for printmaking.

[crab guy designs]

    I was trying to take into account the presentation of my ideas, regardless of how finished or good they are, they definitely look better arranged purposefully as opposed to just randomly thrown out there.

-Cody

"Stay classy San Diego" -Ron Burgandy

The Slow Clap, a Not-So-Serious-About-Art Post.

    Today I dropped my drawing board in class, making a loud noise.
    Then everyone started a slow clap.
    My whole class... clapping sarcastically at my clumsiness.

    This is definitely the right school to go to.

    I apologize for not writing much on the blog. I have nothing to write when I'm very busy. We are still drawing ellipses, painting still lives, and adding clay to toilet floats. Today I kinda started a puzzle in the common ( a room where people hangout) and other people in the school finished it when they had time. It was a wizard, and he looks like Dumbledore.

 

[the puzzle]

    It's funny because the puzzle had a missing piece as well...Yet I grabbed this from Google. 

This puzzle is actually a painting done by a man named Adrian Chesterman, If the puzzle pieces distract you from seeing the glory that is this jigsaw puzzle here is the original painting.

[painting by Adrian Chesterman]

     I also picked up more hours working at the New London store, setting up the schedule and paychecks for people like Cody. I'm happy I have an income again, even if it is very little. It's better than my job calling me every week saying it's too slow to pay for me to work. I enjoy it, but I will soon feel closed off from social interaction because the room has no windows and I'm the only one there for a while. I'll have to learn some songs to sing...

     Other notes, I seem to have injured my heel. I was doing some intense dancing for a video I made spontaneously. Its a bitter sweet thing, lots of people love the video, but the pain makes me regret it. At least I regret going so hardcore. It took me three takes before I decided to use one of them. If you would like to watch that. Here it is [Don't judge me]

-Allison

Red, Yellow, and Blue Versions

    So as I had mentioned before our next still life for Painting I would "allow" us to use the three Primary Colors red, blue, and yellow. Which in theory allows us to create a multitude of colors we couldn't produce before today. With the ability to create many more colors come many more problems. I've always had trouble mixing paint to create the colors that I want, I can see and understand color, but I have trouble putting them together correctly.

[Cody's still life in progress]

    Looking at it again after having stared at it for hours now the more developed areas, which would be the cloth behind the shelf, and the banana to some extant actually look alright. Even with the three colors we have access to now though we are still limited. For example I don't have a cool red, so I cannot create the EXACT maroon/red color of the cloth behind the shelf. I didn't really think about it until my instructor saw me struggling to mix the values.

    We'll see how it ends up by the end of next week.

-Cody

       When I mix paint, I'm great at it. Although the process requires me to use a lot of paint before I get the correct color. I'm bad at portion control, in life all together, so I'll use more paint than I should to create a color. At least I get the end result some how. It's not very efficient, but it works.  My painting is coming out alright. My teacher tells me to slow down, so do a lot of my teachers... I'm very ahead of everyone already and I've only worked on it for 3 hours. I know I work fast, but I also pay close attention to details, so I'm not sure if it is a bad thing. It is not like I'm rushing and not looking at things. I'm surprised I'm  the one who is rushing, compared to Cody. The way he works his sketches and his digital pieces it always seems like he is the one rushing. I guess the tables have turned.

[Allison's still life in progress]

    I'm not used to doing still lives zoomed out. I always crop the image so much so I get a close and intimate piece. The more I see "professional" still lifes I notice that they aren't so cropped, or zoomed in. You see a good portion of the still life in the frame. I had to change my composition to this one (above) because my last one focused too much on the negative space in the center. 

-Allison"

"Even if you polish a turd, it's still a turd" -someone our sculpture teacher quoted