Hi all.
This will be a short blog entry. I am currently in VA, visiting with family. My wife is staying up here, while she works and I go to classes. It is good to see her again, but I hope we can get her to join me down south soon.
For now, I'll be working on spending time with everyone and relaxing. I will continue my blog next week, and I'll try to post some more of my artwork on my next post as well.
Look forward to more movie reviews as well.
(You might also note I have tweaked my blog's look, as well as activated the new Mobile feature on the site. Whenever you read this on your mobile device, be it phone or whatever, it will be in a mobile device friendly format.)
Ta ta!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Adding it all up
Well the school year is over, which means for me, my first quarter is finished, and it is summer vacation. Odd, every time I've started school at a college (3 different ones now), I've always started in the Spring. Anywho... I'm now taking a break for the summer not because I want to, but because there are no classes being offered that I can take. So with that in mind, this summer I plan to do a few things I've been needing to do, and prepare for my next quarter in the fall.
Today, I officially got back my grades for the quarter as well. My drawing teacher, Mr. Carl Linstrum, was very generous and very awesome. We gave me an A for my final, which, combined with my 100% on my final exam, got me an A for the class (but only just). He admitted I needed to do more work on my final drawing, which I am planning to do, since I want to submit it to the student exhibition, Beyond the Dot, next year, once it is completed. It shouldn't take too long, but now I don't have to feel pressured for time to get it done. I do have to make sure it is presentable, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. It was an Awesome class, and I'm glad I didn't try to transfer out of it.
My Public Speaking teacher, Dr. Todd Wirth, was great! He was really fun, and liked to tell jokes at the beginning of each class (most of them groaners). This teaching method involved a more hands-on approach, getting the class up and moving on the first day of class, and getting us used to the idea of standing in front of an audience and giving a speech. While it still only feels like we gave 2 actual speeches, he actually made us give 7 in the class, most of which he snuck in to show us what it is like to give a speech of some sort. The hardest part of the class wasn't actually the speech, but rather the final test. I ran out of energy studying, and there was so much to cover, with things you never thought about regarding speeches, that I ended up with my lowest grade for the class, a B. (I know, I know... I'm such a lazy bum for not staying up after 4 am studying after not sleeping the night before and only getting 3 hours the night before that). Regardless, I ended up finishing the class with an A! And if you haven't yet seen my last speech (which got an A), I'll post it at the bottom of this part.
Finally, there was my Color Theory class, with Ms. Marcia Cohen (easily recognized by her signature black and white checkered glasses). She was a very tough but fair teacher. She made sure we were professional in the classroom, and our projects were presented in a professional manner. She was not the easiest teacher, but she was nice, and I liked her. I consider her teaching style a type of tough love. Now this was totally my fault. I just couldn't get into this assignment, so I kept putting it off, and I ended up racing the clock to get it done. That pointillism thing I kept talking about was finished about 5 minutes before class, not my best idea. I really didn't want it to get that far, but I have no one but myself to blame. I was just starting to get burned out from all the work I had been doing and didn't apply myself enough. I ended up with a B on the project, which brought my final grade from a B... to a B. Yes, I didn't get an A. Oh well, it was still a B. And like I said, I could have had an A if I just applied myself on that last project.
So that leaves me with 2 A's and a B for my first quarter, not bad. Next I'll shoot for 3 A's. It has been a difficult quarter, but combining opening a Disney Store with a full schedule at college has been a challenge. I should be able to handle anything they throw at me, but for now, I get to work on some projects of my own. Later this summer, I will be taking some photography classes and a portraiture class, for fun. No grades involved, just a community education class to get in some practice and a little more know-how. I will also get to see my wife, and hopefully get in more hours at work. In the meantime, I have some books, games, and art projects that I want to work on.
I will of course continue to post here throughout the summer, with movie reviews, cool things I heard about, and just whatever else I feel like posting. To all my fellow SCAD students and classmates, congrats on finishing up the quarter, I hope you all did well.
So till next time, enjoy my persuasive speech on why you should get your kids vaccinated. (If you want to see the slideshow... just Google search the diseases in question).
TA TA
Today, I officially got back my grades for the quarter as well. My drawing teacher, Mr. Carl Linstrum, was very generous and very awesome. We gave me an A for my final, which, combined with my 100% on my final exam, got me an A for the class (but only just). He admitted I needed to do more work on my final drawing, which I am planning to do, since I want to submit it to the student exhibition, Beyond the Dot, next year, once it is completed. It shouldn't take too long, but now I don't have to feel pressured for time to get it done. I do have to make sure it is presentable, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. It was an Awesome class, and I'm glad I didn't try to transfer out of it.
My Public Speaking teacher, Dr. Todd Wirth, was great! He was really fun, and liked to tell jokes at the beginning of each class (most of them groaners). This teaching method involved a more hands-on approach, getting the class up and moving on the first day of class, and getting us used to the idea of standing in front of an audience and giving a speech. While it still only feels like we gave 2 actual speeches, he actually made us give 7 in the class, most of which he snuck in to show us what it is like to give a speech of some sort. The hardest part of the class wasn't actually the speech, but rather the final test. I ran out of energy studying, and there was so much to cover, with things you never thought about regarding speeches, that I ended up with my lowest grade for the class, a B. (I know, I know... I'm such a lazy bum for not staying up after 4 am studying after not sleeping the night before and only getting 3 hours the night before that). Regardless, I ended up finishing the class with an A! And if you haven't yet seen my last speech (which got an A), I'll post it at the bottom of this part.
Finally, there was my Color Theory class, with Ms. Marcia Cohen (easily recognized by her signature black and white checkered glasses). She was a very tough but fair teacher. She made sure we were professional in the classroom, and our projects were presented in a professional manner. She was not the easiest teacher, but she was nice, and I liked her. I consider her teaching style a type of tough love. Now this was totally my fault. I just couldn't get into this assignment, so I kept putting it off, and I ended up racing the clock to get it done. That pointillism thing I kept talking about was finished about 5 minutes before class, not my best idea. I really didn't want it to get that far, but I have no one but myself to blame. I was just starting to get burned out from all the work I had been doing and didn't apply myself enough. I ended up with a B on the project, which brought my final grade from a B... to a B. Yes, I didn't get an A. Oh well, it was still a B. And like I said, I could have had an A if I just applied myself on that last project.
So that leaves me with 2 A's and a B for my first quarter, not bad. Next I'll shoot for 3 A's. It has been a difficult quarter, but combining opening a Disney Store with a full schedule at college has been a challenge. I should be able to handle anything they throw at me, but for now, I get to work on some projects of my own. Later this summer, I will be taking some photography classes and a portraiture class, for fun. No grades involved, just a community education class to get in some practice and a little more know-how. I will also get to see my wife, and hopefully get in more hours at work. In the meantime, I have some books, games, and art projects that I want to work on.
I will of course continue to post here throughout the summer, with movie reviews, cool things I heard about, and just whatever else I feel like posting. To all my fellow SCAD students and classmates, congrats on finishing up the quarter, I hope you all did well.
So till next time, enjoy my persuasive speech on why you should get your kids vaccinated. (If you want to see the slideshow... just Google search the diseases in question).
TA TA
Saturday, May 28, 2011
"Finally..."
This week is Finals Week at SCAD. To all those fellow students out there, Good Luck!
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!
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!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Not dead yet...
As the famous phrase from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail states... I'm not dead yet.
I am tired though.
Problem is, there are only a few weeks of classes left, and that means all my classes are focusing on our finals. I need to finish up one project in Color Theory that involves color matching Andy Warhol images to other examples of art (commercial, pop, classic, modern, whatever), and then it is off to crunch time.
Right now I have a speech about why you should vaccinate your children (persuasive argument speech) to prepare and make by the end of the month, I have an 11x60 drawing with a self-portrait, landscape, and still life objects portrayed in pastels to make, and a pointillism (think Seurat's La Grande Jatte) project involving creating an artist's book. Sleep is a luxury few can afford right now, it's finals time!
And what was it that I was spending so much time on last week that made me miss 2 nights of sleep? Well, one was an installation of a collection of drawings (I may post a picture later). The other was a Monogram cutout initiating a Bezold effect. Sound confusing? Well just know it took me 14 hours just to cut the pieces out for this, and several more hours to simplify the pattern, pick out the colors, make studies and tests, and complain about the amount of work I had to do.
Want to see it? Sure:
What do you mean who is CH? My wife!
:P
The Bezold effect is not as strong as I'd like it to be, but we had to pick out a color palette based on an ancient culture, and I chose Arabian. I didn't see the red as an option until it was too late, but these were 2 common colors, combined with black, and it seemed to have a strong Bezold effect during testing. I think it is lost a bit with the massive amount of intricate details, but I think you can still see it. If you are wondering what i am talking about, it is related to the Albers thing I mentioned in a previous post. In short, the C and H are the same color, but the idea is to make the background different enough that the surrounding spacial color makes the letters seem different colors (or shades).
Weird thing about Bezold... he created one of the fundamental color theory effects/illusions, and yet... he was a physicist and meteorologist.
That being said, take a look at the new TinTin movie trailer. Curse their decision to show such limited faces in the trailer... the uncanny valley calls but is TinTin diving in? No TinTin, it's a trap, don't jump!
I am tired though.
Problem is, there are only a few weeks of classes left, and that means all my classes are focusing on our finals. I need to finish up one project in Color Theory that involves color matching Andy Warhol images to other examples of art (commercial, pop, classic, modern, whatever), and then it is off to crunch time.
Right now I have a speech about why you should vaccinate your children (persuasive argument speech) to prepare and make by the end of the month, I have an 11x60 drawing with a self-portrait, landscape, and still life objects portrayed in pastels to make, and a pointillism (think Seurat's La Grande Jatte) project involving creating an artist's book. Sleep is a luxury few can afford right now, it's finals time!
And what was it that I was spending so much time on last week that made me miss 2 nights of sleep? Well, one was an installation of a collection of drawings (I may post a picture later). The other was a Monogram cutout initiating a Bezold effect. Sound confusing? Well just know it took me 14 hours just to cut the pieces out for this, and several more hours to simplify the pattern, pick out the colors, make studies and tests, and complain about the amount of work I had to do.
Want to see it? Sure:
:P
The Bezold effect is not as strong as I'd like it to be, but we had to pick out a color palette based on an ancient culture, and I chose Arabian. I didn't see the red as an option until it was too late, but these were 2 common colors, combined with black, and it seemed to have a strong Bezold effect during testing. I think it is lost a bit with the massive amount of intricate details, but I think you can still see it. If you are wondering what i am talking about, it is related to the Albers thing I mentioned in a previous post. In short, the C and H are the same color, but the idea is to make the background different enough that the surrounding spacial color makes the letters seem different colors (or shades).
Weird thing about Bezold... he created one of the fundamental color theory effects/illusions, and yet... he was a physicist and meteorologist.
That being said, take a look at the new TinTin movie trailer. Curse their decision to show such limited faces in the trailer... the uncanny valley calls but is TinTin diving in? No TinTin, it's a trap, don't jump!
Monday, May 16, 2011
Murder Most Foul
I think SCAD is trying to kill me. No, really.
First, I have to jump through a zillion hoops just so I can sign up for classes in the fall (it appears I transferred out of all the classes they are offering that I can take), then I had to take a math competency exam (in a crowded room of me and the empty desks), now I have a paper (just turned in), 5 drawings (none finished, only 3 close), a complicated Monogram to design and cut out (taking forever to adjust the pattern) and paste together, and an outline for my next speech, OH! and a paper about my color choices in the Monogram project, all due Tuesday or Wednesday.
Now I'm not complaining, they are working me hard. Problem is, there are not physically enough hours to complete all this work between now and the due dates. SO... I am going to have to cut corners where I can, and turn something in. Getting a B or C is better than an F.
I need sleep =.=
First, I have to jump through a zillion hoops just so I can sign up for classes in the fall (it appears I transferred out of all the classes they are offering that I can take), then I had to take a math competency exam (in a crowded room of me and the empty desks), now I have a paper (just turned in), 5 drawings (none finished, only 3 close), a complicated Monogram to design and cut out (taking forever to adjust the pattern) and paste together, and an outline for my next speech, OH! and a paper about my color choices in the Monogram project, all due Tuesday or Wednesday.
Now I'm not complaining, they are working me hard. Problem is, there are not physically enough hours to complete all this work between now and the due dates. SO... I am going to have to cut corners where I can, and turn something in. Getting a B or C is better than an F.
I need sleep =.=
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