Mmm...Photoshop. Tasty, tasty Photoshop.

I may or may not have aquired a copy of cs4. Thus, I obviously needed an excuse to use it:



For this week's 2D assignment, Jack gave us something, as he later told us, he had never done before. He had written something on a piece of brown paper, hung it up on the wall, and told us to interpret it in a way of our choosing. The only catch was that we were not allowed to ask any questions. None. Nada. Not even small inquiries. Written was as follows:

"My dreamholder is broken and it cannot be repaired"

I'll spare you from my ramblings about the personal significance of why I chose to do something along this vein, but, I had a great time doing it; it was both restricting and free at the same time, and I came to the conclusion that this had the potential to be a somewhat illustrative project. Yay, illustration!

My only regret is not inserting a background--even something simple would have been fine-- as opposed to leaving it a straight up flat color. That's definitely something I need to work on the coming months. That...and painting. And color. And composition. And heavens know what else. Oh gosh.

But in other news: Spring break! Woohoo!

Suprisingly I was not thrown into a panic/shock this break around (unlike winter break, where coming home from college from the first time was...wierd), so I've been able to fully relish the comforts of home, good food, and sleep (which is overrated, but still). A few rad folk from college are coming down from NY to visit tomorrow, so it'll be like RISD away from RISD! Good times, good times.

Maybe I'll get some work done over the break.

Maybe.

Mooncake Mail!

The title of this post has little to do with the actual content of this post, except for the fact that I got package with a superb amount of little moon cakes (that I will consume at an alarming rate in the next few days) in a cute heart shaped box. But I digress.

The past week or two has been treating me really well, in particular due to my unusually light workload in both my 2D and Drawing classes (which is a big change from first semester), so I've been able to pursue a few goals of mine without any sacrifice to my studio classes. Granted, I do feel a little guilty indulging in the exuberant freedom and my new found "free" time, as I'm constantly under the impression that I should be working a little harder; I'm attempting to solve that dilemma but setting my goals a little higher and pushing myself a little bit more in regards to both class and personal projects.

So, I get to the exciting part of my post: actual art! Hurray!



Our current 2D project turned out to be really open-ended, courtesy of my professor Jack Massey. Essentially, the premise of the assignment is that is has to be related to some kind of environmental issue in our society (or our world as a whole) which is important to us...which was a challenge within itself since there's a lot of potential in both the idea and the means of execution. After a week of pondering and discussing this matter, a small group of us decided making individual comics (and putting together an anthology) about endangered monkeys seemed like a pretty solid idea. There was one of us in the group that had some experience in the art of comic-bookery, so we were pretty much set.

But this is where I go back to the "pushing myself" part: I really wanted it to be feasible to complete the project in a week, but after organizing the layouts, story, and (minimal) dialogue...the total length reached 7 pages! I'm aiming to manage my time more efficiently with the coming pages, but I foresee some long nights ahead of me; hopefully all goes well.

Finally, on a totally unrelated note: fencing tonight! I talked to the coach last week about the possibility of joining the Brown team, but it turned out to be a big no-no with thanks to the NCAA (silliness!). Maybe in the near future I'll find something in or near Providence, as I'm beginning to regret ever leaving the sport. If not, there's always post-college...but I don't really want to think about that for now.

On the bright side, though: full gear bouts! Full gear bouts! Super exciting!