The strange thing about art students is that we don't often get huge terrible nightmarish exams at the end of the quarter like other fields do (I'm looking at you science and math), instead, we get huge terrible nightmarish projects, which end up being more work than the tests. Not to mention, we still have tests. Maybe they aren't as hard or important as those final exams from other fields, but they still have to be done, and still affect our grade. I know my Public Speaking class makes the final test more of the grade than many of the other classes, so it is really up to each class to decide how they will handle it, but usually the art classes want us to complete some big final masterpiece to show off everything we've learned so far, and often incorporate something new as well.
That is the case for my Drawing II class. Right now we have to complete a very long drawing... 11" x 60". Yes... 60 inches! That's 5 feet. 1.5 meters for all you metric users. And that's about 28cm high. We have to incorporate perceptive drawings, still life drawings, textures, and self portraits while paying close attention to the ratio of the objects and the layout of the image. Oh, and we are finally being introduced to Pastels (dry, not oil). So half the image (or more) will be in color, the rest in black and white charcoal. This is the first and only pastel project we are doing, and I'm sure some people will struggle with it. However, we are all familiar with color pencil, and while they are drastically different, parts of them are very similar, especially the way you mix colors to get different hues, shades, tones, etc. I am glad I've done a lot of pastel work in the past, but I guess this is just one more of those things that happens when you are in a quarter system.
Not only that, but I also have a project in optical mixing to do. Think pointillism. La Grande Jatte. Seurat. By using individual colors in a close arrangement to each other, you can create an optical mix of the colors, and instead of seeing yellow and blue dots, you see green, when there is actually no green at all in the image. I am NOT looking forward to this project. I am already behind on it, but I blame the fake bomb scare guy for that. Regardless, I have to finish this, and I have barely started. So I have tons of work to do, plus a speech to complete and give, as well as 3 tests... all due this week. Thursday is my last class, and then I am relatively free for the summer. I plan on attending some community education classes (cheap and for my own knowledge and not graded) on digital photography and portraiture, but I still have to arrange things with my wife and visiting her. However I can't think of things after Thursday, I have to finish these projects and start studying for tests. Wish me luck!
Oh, and as far as my grades from the last big projects go... while I am still waiting to get them back for one project (Andy Warhol color palette comparison), my speech outline got an A (94%), my Bezold Monogram (see previous posts) got an A+ (100%) and will be displayed in the hallways throughout the summer and into the fall, and my drawings and installation got a B (89%), so all that hard work paid off! With all A's in my speech class, I am totally going to "phone in" the speech itself. While I am passionate about the topic (vaccinations and why you should get them for your kids), I can't dedicate too much time to it. So I will present the data I have, I will make it far more loose and ad libbed than my last speech, and much much shorter. I want to convince them that vaccines are good, using real evidence and science and the like, but I can't dedicate that much time to it. The drawing final is worth more of my grade than the other assignments, 20% of the total, so it has to be awesome. The Color theory optical mixing assignment is worth the same as any large project (same as the Bezold) so I have to do well, but there is less pressure to make it an A+, and the lowest grade in the speech class will be dropped. So if my "phoned in" speech does well, awesome, if not, who cares?
Oh, and as far as animation goes... I start classes in the fall (all animation classes), I am still interested in seeing Tin Tin despite the possibility of a visit to an uncanny valley, there is going to be a trailer to Pixar's next movie "Brave" when Cars 2 comes out in a few weeks (from what I've read it reminds me of studio Ghibli stuff), and I saw Kung Fu Panda 2. Awesome movie. See it. I'll review it later.
That's all for now. Ta ta!
