The Seaflower

______I have the same art teacher for two of the three art classes I'm taking this semester back to back: Figure Drawing and Drawing Concepts. Let me just describe how much I already adore the man who teaches it: he does yoga, he radiates vitality and an old-world coolness, he's very articulate, and he just seems like a very open, very present kind of human being. On the first day of Figure Drawing, we did some very, herm, particular warm-ups to loosen ourselves.




______One of these warmups was drawing like we were dinosaurs. He instructed us to put our best tiny T-rex arms on and get super intimate with the paper whilst drawing a model in quick bursts of anywhere from 5 to 60 seconds. "You're going to draw with tiny T-rex arms," he elucidated, brows furrowed, "and pretend you are ferociously protecting your dinosaur eggs. This is not just for my amusement, but it mostly is." He suddenly blasted his iPod music, an eclectic mix of sick rap beats and electronic instrumentals, and we drew with fierce, scraggly dino-arms, our faces so close to the paper we were practically slobbering on it.




______Next, we did "combat drawing," where you tried to draw the model again in swift, gestural bursts, but this time, someone was trying to prevent you from drawing. I suffered a few bruises and a blister from this set of gesture drawings (ha, more like scribble drawings), which is pretty dang rad. How many people can say they got bruises from art class? Some kids were shoving each other into the desks, rubbing charcoal on their opponent's faces with blackened hands, and smashing their wrists fiercely at their opponent's charcoal sticks until they broke.

______Me? I'm pretty sure I grabbed some my partner's boob a few times. Meanwhile, my at teacher was sauntering about these fierce drawing battles, laughing, shouting, "I love art class!"

______Me too, Mr. Art Teacher. Me too.

______Onward.




______"You guys have seen Harry Potter, right?" he inquired, searching the room. We all nodded and smiled, our hair in tangles and our arms stained up to our elbows in charcoal. "You know that part where the bludger is cursed and it beats him off his broom, and that weird professor tries to fix his arm, but it just goes all bone-less? I want you guys do draw like that." And so we had to stomp and jiggle and wiggle and even make weird sounds, all whilst scribbling madly on newsprint. I adored how nobody thought this was odd and we all began wobbling about as soon as the music began without a moment's hesitation. Even my art teacher was waltzing about the room.

______This. Man. Is everything I have ever wanted in an art teacher.



______"There. Now you don't have to go do yoga," he said at the end of the class. "This class was for bonding, exercise, and drawing."



Dress: via Urban Outfitters
Floral blazer: Forever 21
Red booties: Charlotte Russe
Necklace: Charming Charlie
Bling earrings: c/o Jojo Loves You

Hexagons in Burnt Hase

Hexagons in Burnt Hase

[printing] ink and colored pencil, September 2013

______One of the three art classes I'm taking this semester is Monoprinting, and it's just that: a printing class where you end up with, well, one print opposed to being able to create many with something like a linoleum block cutout. I got an override for the basic printmaking course and jumped Mario-style up to the Monoprinting class. I've realized two very important things about this class: one, that even two one-fourth of the way into the semester, I still have yet to make a decent print, and two, that you can't really screw anything up even if you do screw it up. Because even if the printing press is too tight, thus smooshing the ink into each other like lovers cramped in a tiny janitor's closet, you can always wait for the print to dry and work back into it. 

______That being said, this print was initially pretty darn blobtastic and definitely needed a little rehab. A few hearty strokes of white colored pencil and black conte did just the trick! Even that awful scratching where I tried to scrumble two unscumbleable inks together looks almost intentional after I touched it up. How 'bout that?

______On a side note, I'm totally attempting to title my artsies with more exotic and sensational names. Misspellings and alliterations? Synonyms that you didn't know existed until you checked the thesaurus? Yeah, son. We're gettin' serious now.

______Have a good one, folks.

White Collar, Navy Sleeves

______I received this dainty little navy dress in the mail from Fiigirl last week. Other than being about two inches too short in the leg region, it fits perfectly, which is surprising for me considering it has sleeves; I think that in the winter it'll be much easier to wear this dress, perhaps with some thick white leggings and tall boots. I especially like the white lace collar and the fact that the dress is lined underneath. And it's navy, duh! Navy is my favorite color to wear. I almost like wearing navy as much as I like creepily drawing people and their legging-enshrouded booties from the darkest, shadiest corner of our campus Starbucks. And man, do I enjoy a good creep session.





______I feel like this semester is gonna fly by faster than a piece of toast wrapped around a speeding bullet (clearly, I'm running low on my supply of excellent metaphors). It's already happening in a, "Help, I'm drowning, but not enough to actually drown" kind of way. It's as if a windowless, doorless room has been slowly filling with water (or blue kool-aid, to spice things up) and I'm shoving my face to the ceiling with less than half an inch of air to breathe from; sometimes the water level will lower, but more than often it will rise centimeter by centimeter as it attempts to brush the ceiling tiles with furious little ripples. Does that even make sense?



______I hope that makes sense. It took me a whole four minutes to think of such an extended comparison.



______On the brighter, sheep-infested grassy green side of life, my art teacher has nodded a "yes" to my fairy circle-esque idea from last week's post. All I've gotta do is tie the sticks together with some hemp string for portability purposes, or so that as my art teacher said, it'll become "a portable meditation station."



Dress: c/o Fiigirl
Heels: Chelsea Crew
Necklace: Altr'd State, pressie from brother
Earrings: Charming Charlie

(like Fiigirl on Facebook, or check out Fiigirl's blog)

Fairy Circle

______Hello, my precious and darling citizens! It feels as if I've been gone for decades; alas, I have apparently only been missing for half a fortnight!

______I've been bustling with activity this past week, and thus my days have blended into nights and back into days again. I've even been (gasp) staying up past my bedtime of ten o' clock. Yeah, when my bedtime is interrupted, shit gets real. I've practically been living in the art buildings on campus. There's even a couch nested against a vending machine on the third floor in case I ever feel the need to have a one-man slumber party. Let's hope that never becomes a conclusion to my pitiful artist lifestyle.