Late Night Adventures in Snow, Painting

Okay, so I had a pretty busy day today. First I had class which I croaked my way through (this damn cold just won't leave!) until 2:15. Then I was starting work today at 2:30 like, eight blocks away. I was going to take the bus, but it was leaving just as I got outside of the Architecture building so I had to walk and I didn't wind up getting there until 2:45 because I am slow and I had to go to the bathroom. Anyway, the first day went well, the atmosphere is really causal, and I learned how to rip out and rebind books. I fixed two! It was pretty exciting. I think this job will be a very good learning experience and will provide a lot of practice for when I make my own hardcover book in several months time.

I worked until 6 and then took a nap and woke up at 8 but suddenly realized that I had to have dinner and that there was an episode of 30 Rock I'd not seen yet so I lolled around until 9:30 when I finally got my ass over to studio at which time I stepped outside and was like, why the hell is it snowing???? Dammit I want spring already. Then I didn't even work and Vivian and I went to get coffee but her car, who was wearing a spare tire because she'd gotten a flat, suddenly started making weird noises so then we checked it out in the Dunkin' Doughnuts parking lot only to find that her freaking spare was now flat. So we drove back to her apartment and watched half an episode of Project Runway while she was on hold with AAA, who said they don't bring tires to people which I totally think they should. I mean, come on! Get a deal with a specific tire place and sell the tires to people who really need them. She's going to have to have her freaking car towed tomorrow. Man, I have to learn how to change a tire and the oil and so much stuff when I get a car. Anyway, we called Saferides and they brought us back to studio and then I wound up working until 2 am. I actually really like working late. There's just something about late night that makes me want to produce.

So. What I've been working on? I'm building up a background for this Joan of Arc painting I'm doing. Kelly's posing for me tomorrow. She says her middle name is Joan after Joan of Arc so she's perfect for it. Here it is process wise:



Layer 2



Layer 4

These are pretty horrible pictures. I need to get some clamp lights. I'm pretty psyched about this painting. I'm working on a whole post that talks about what I'm doing with the icons and my whole thought process on this thing.

Finally, really cool book artist/painter I found: Ghada Jamal.










She works in many different and very interesting styles. It kind of makes me want to produce some poems that go together and make a little beautiful book for them. Maybe I'll do that this summer. I don't know. So much to do, so little time!

Agnes Ma makes my life

Quote of the day: "I must say, my last few lungs have been quite pleasing to the eye."

Yay Agnes! I'm so excited for you!

Also of note: Today I got a real job with real hours! I will be working at the Oak St. Library Facility fixing up and rebinding torn, wet, and mistreated books from the libraries around campus. Supposedly UIUC has the largest library in the United States aside from Harvard. They recently acquired their 10 millionth book. They have amazing facilities and I'm really excited. Thanks to Christine who helped get me the job. I start Tuesday.

I have a headache

Also? Liquin kicks Galkyd's ass. Layer two of the architectural space painting for Ros' adv. painting class. It's not done by my normal standards, but I won't get reamed in crit tomorrow, either? A) it's hella bigger than everyone elses and B) it's evident that I put more time into it than a lot of people did. Hopefully it will be dry tomorrow morning so I work on it a bit more before the class at 1.

Production

The view of the nuclear power plant outside of my apartment.

The last couple of days have been odd to say the least. First I found out that the writer's strike is done with and that many shows will be returning in a couple of months. That was good. Then I get a call from Maddi about the horror at NIU. Fortunately, my father is all right, but it was really scary, especially when I found out that the shooting happened in a geology lecture. And then there is the fact that the gunman was a grad student at here, at UIUC. It's horrifying. I thought then, well I guess I'm safer because I'm not and won't be taking any more huge lecture courses. But I shouldn't have to think about that. Something needs to change.

Then I found out my brother is getting married! Obviously I'm happy, but it's really weird, too. I mean, he's only three years older than me and I haven't even met his girlfriend, Laura, yet because 99% of their relationship has taken place in foreign countries. I think I started hyperventilating a little when I found out. Evidently it's going to happen this summer. I've started an engagement present for them:

It's Nick's favorite mythological character, Bacchus, drinking and pissing at the same time. It obviously isn't finished yet, but I'll probably get it done today. They can have a nice decoration for their foyer and Laura can see what her future will be like at the same time.

Also being worked on:



An imagined architectural space for Ros' advanced painting class. First layer. Hopefully it will dry by Sunday so I can do another layer in time for it to dry by Tuesday so I can get at least three layers in. We didn't get nearly enough time to work on it. I think part of the problem is that Ros works with Galkyd which dries sometimes in the same die. I have discovered a real distaste for Galkyd because it's too thick and it often dries into a gross gloop in the bottle once you've opened it so I work with Eco-House Citrus Cleaner (a turpentine substitute), refined linseed oil, and stand oil. These all take a lot more time to dry. Oh well. It doesn't matter too much.

Also, Friday morning we went to visit another artist studio. It was Steve Hudson. I really liked his use of color and technique. He used a lot of impasto and it was very old master-y. It reminded me a lot of Rembrandt and Odd Nerdrum, but with more saturated colors. He was really funny, too. Quite dorky in an adorable sort of way. He said he used Winton for underpainting, Windsor & Newton's student brand that Ros spent about ten years telling us not to use the class before. I thought a vein was going to pop in her head. It was funny because he just seemed really unaware of what materials he used though it was really obvious that he knew how to use them. Unfortunately, he hasn't got a website. The three paintings on his Parkland aren't what I saw in his studio, but I couldn't find any other images. It's really frustrating when you want to look up an artist but can't find any of their work online. Artists, get good websites! That's what I'm going to do this summer. I'm pretty sure no one else has claimed SophieLoubere.com.

listening to: Belle & Sebastian--The Boy with the Arab Strap

New Semester, New Projects

Okay, so technically the semesters been on for about four weeks, but I've been doing loads. I'm quite caught up in several projects: one the illustrated book version of the short story I wrote last semester, My God, another a painting of Joan of Arc, and the last various paintings for Ros' advanced painting class.

Anyway, I came back from break and the girl next to me, Jess, had dropped so I moved things about and now I've got a huge studio. It's pretty exciting because now I've a space for oil painting and a space for watercolor. Here are some lovely pictures.





So I've got everything all nice and cleaned up and pretty. I've also made a new nametag for myself.



It's all ideal for creating. So about my first project, the book. I've basically decided to plan it all out like a good girl. Considering that I want it to look really professional (I'm aiming for it to look like a really cool hardcover children's book) I've set all the type in Indesign and Photoshop and am having my graphic design friends who have taken typography go over it and help me out with that. I'm also doing little watercolor studies for every page on computer paper. Examples for pages 1-2 and 3-4:



1-2



3-4

These are 8"x10", though the book is going to be 22"x30". I know it's nuts, I know it's huge, but if I do it well it should have the effect of making the person read it feel very small, like a child. This is the idea. Plus it gives me loads of room to paint.

I've been doing stuff for the cover, as well. As the protagonist's hero is Joan of Arc, I found an old engraving of her burning at the stake online. I put the image into the laser cutter we have here at school in the Art & Design building and it cut out an etch of it into plexiglass. Then I took it over to the press in Noble Hall. I mixed up two colors of ink: gold and grey. I wiped the plate down with the ink while my paper was floating in a water bath for about half an hour. Then I put the plate down on the press, put the wet paper on the plate, smoothed felt over them both, and rolled over them. There were only two that came out all right, though I did six.





I think I'm going to go with the gold and have the cover of the book (the fabric part) be that color grey. The stamping will be white. This paper will be the inside bit that's glued to the covers.



By the way, it's here that I'm going to send accolades to my good friends at The Paper Studio. They've got the greatest paper choices and they always send a lovely little hand letter pressed thank you postcard. They're a good example of a small company with great selection and service and they were a great find.

At any rate, that's what I've been up to. Still so much to do! I would go on about the Joan of Arc painting, but I've not really any images yet and that's for another post entirely.

Phew!

Also of note: exactly two months until I turn 21. Woohoo!

No Country For Old Men

So I finally saw this masterpiece. Kelly and I had planned to see Guillermo Del Toro's (Pan's Labyrinth) latest, The Orphanage, but it stopped playing this weekend so I was like, have you seen No Country For Old Men? She hadn't and it was exciting because I'd just about given up on seeing it in theatres.

Anyway, it was effing amazing. The Coen Brothers have made some of my favorite movies (Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski) and they keep getting better. Everyone keeps talking about how it's so violent, but honestly it's not much in comparison to say, a Tarantino flick in which the director obviously finds a great deal of beauty in violence. The most violent bit was at the beginning but after that the violence is relegated to either the discovery of what was a violent scene or shooting scenes. There are some scenes of cleaning of gunshot wounds as well.

Really what got me was the way the story was told. I'm sure a lot of this rests on the Cormac McCarthy novel it's based on, but it was just amazing the way it took all of these storytelling conventions and flipped them on their head. It's steeped in ideas of folklore, in western heroes and villains, and yet the way it handles these conventions and expectations makes the theme of changing times--at least in the view of the protagonists--all the more potent and evident. It was somewhat meta. Not as nearly in self aware a way Atonement, but it was still there.

Also, this guy?


Awesomely creepy.

Go see it. Now.

Reading: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Crafts & Politics

So I got my absentee ballots a couple of days ago and thus have been gnawing down my fingernails over who I should vote for for the Democratic presidential primary. Thankfully, my mother sent me this very in depth quiz you can take to find out which candidate suits you best based on issues at Glassbooth. The results didn't surprise me terribly--of course its Dennis Kucinich, the candidate least likely to win. The candidate who runs every time just to make a point. Oh well. I found a compromise. It's John Edwards that I agree with on the most important issues, which are health care and education. I wonder if a democrat gets elected they'll take care of health care right away so I won't have to pay for health insurance when I leave school. Anyway, it's a cool quiz and I guess that as an Illinois resident it doesn't matter too much who I vote for because Obama is sure to take the state he's senator to and Illinois is sure to go blue in the overall election because of Chicago. Thanks for the link, mom!

Also, here are some pics of the table I painted and decoupaged for my parents for Christmas. It was a week late because the paper on top was all warped and bubbly for a long time but it settled down and turned out pretty well I think. The watercolor painting took too long to do normally, but I think I'm going to get these tables ($9.00 at Target) paint them and bang them up (the funnest part! Finally an excuse to hit something with a hatchet!) and decoupage some pretty paper on top and sell them on Etsy.




Listening to: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood--Neko Case

Maine and RISD

Well, school's started up again but whatever about that. I'm making a book this semester, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, the last seven days of my break were occupied with going to the beautiful state of Maine to visit my auntie Caroline and Tish and their four dogs (Rosie, Sky, Strider, Molly) and their two cats (Little Bit, Sandy Bit). My mother has always claimed these animals as my cousins in lieu of human cousins. Anyway, we first stopped off in Providence, Rhode Island to check out Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). There was a graduate studies lecture at 8:45 that I went to that was somewhat informative but also ridiculously boring so I skipped out a little early and we explored the campus on our own. The area of Providence it's in is actually pretty cool, it reminded me of a smaller, more compact Chicago. They have a trolley system and there are hills (that was a little San Fran, actually) and it's right next to Brown University which is, you know, all ivy league and such. There are nice little houses with apartments right on campus, and best of all? Their logo is pretty kickass.
Imagine that on sweatshirts and mugs in pretty colors. The plus side of an all art school is that the artist is on the forefront of the school's thoughts. We don't get the Mad Max building with bats and ceiling tiles falling all over the place and a wireless plan never. We get nice big facilities that are very secure and pretty. There is also a printmaking MAJOR which I'm psyched about because you KNOW that means their printing lab is stocked. I might even get to *gasp* take another class and fully figure out photo emulsion silk screening. They also have this year long program which teaches you how to be a better teacher without actually getting a teaching degree, which I would take advantage of because one way I can make good money before I become published and wildly successful is by being a professor. It's not my ultimate goal, but if I do it I want to help kids out in the best way I can and be the best I can be. There's nothing worse than a shitty teacher. I'm pretty generally stoked about it, actually. The only major downside is a price tag of $32,000 a year. I'm not planning on going for another five years at least, so I think I'll apply a year ahead of time so I can find out what sort of scholarship and assistanships a poor white girl like me can expect. I'm not getting $60,000 dollars in debt, that's for sure.
Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, but here is the reason I didn't want to leave Providence until after January:

Who can resist Liza?? Someday I will put on a musical of Caberet at Ol' Gaffers and I will get Liza Minelli to play the part of Sally Bowles if it's the last thing I do. I don't care if she's got vertigo and she's 90.

The rest of Maine was great. I always love visiting Auntie Caroline and Tish. We hung out with the dogs, went to the L.L. Bean headquarters in Freeport that's open 24 hours a day in case you need a flannel shirt at three in the morning, and Auntie Caroline and I went to see Atonement which was playing everywhere there even though it was playing nowhere in Illinois. I'll write up a review on it later, but it was brill. We also went to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit in I forget where, but there was this irritating lady who followed us round and kept telling us we had to stay two feet away from the paintings even though we weren't touching them and they were under glass. The whole point of going to see artwork in person is so you can look at the details, lady! That was cool, though, he had some really stunning watercolors that were pretty inspirational. It was funny, there was this painting that I recognized as one that had always been in the Hillside, a restaurant that my family frequented during my childhood. I had always quite liked it but only then realized that it was a Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth, Braids, tempra on paper

His paintings work best when they are haunting and dry, dark and subdued. When you can see how he painted in some parts and not at all in others. This is why I particular like his watercolors more than his temperas. Even still, there is something about this painting. She is a Nordic woman, a little rough but full hipped and fertile. She lives in snowy lands.

Anyway, that was fun. I really like it out there. It's near the ocean (they're twenty minutes from a great rocky beach) and the landscape is so different from the midwest. There are hills and marshes and forest everywhere. It's rugged and beautiful. I talked to them and it looks like I may move out there for eight months or so and save up some money working before I travel and head to grad school. I'm training right now for a career, not a job. There is no job for me to fall into like and education student falls into teaching or a med student falls into being a doctor. I have to work my way up there and find out exactly what I want. To do that I need more school. I think I have a strange path in comparison to a lot of people who will be looking for real jobs where they have a ladder to climb instead of schilling coffee to save up for more school. I'll figure it out.

listening to: Pride and Prejudice Soundtrack--Dario Marianelli

Earliest Memories

I was looking for writing exercises to practice with while I'm between projects (I could do a rewrite of my latest, "Father Fox", but I need to think some more about what I really want the story to be about) and I came across a website called Earliest Memory where people have posted their earliest memory in a couple of sentences. For some reason my breath catches when I read these. They are succinct, raw, and very real. It also takes me back to when I wrote about my earliest memory a couple of years ago:

"A pink room (gray magenta). Panic. My little brother has fallen again. He’s small, small enough so he can’t walk, small enough so that his hair is still wispy golden white. He’s been cut on the head and they need to give him stitches. We were visiting a museum. Or a planetarium. Or an aquarium."

I wrote that slightly over two years ago. I would have been two months into my first year of college. It just shows that even though I didn't really feel it as much then, I knew that I wanted to write and I did it on my own. I tried to get into a creative writing class the next semester, but they filled up too fast. I think it was good that I didn't. There was a gradual build up over the next year and a half of me realizing exactly how much writing meant to me and that I wanted to make it part of my career. This desire is what gave me the confidence to pull through the rough patches of my first semester in narrative writing. I know what I want and I know what I have to do to get there. Constant reading, constant writing, and constant thought.

Now if only I knew exactly what I wanted out of "Father Fox".

Creeper of the Year

Creepers are everywhere, guys. Some are easy to spot: they lack any social niceties whatsoever and so get hitched with the nickname "Creepy Joe" or "Creepy Tom". The worst, however, are the ones who manage to come of as charming to the otherwise unaware. They permeate society and try to make their brand of creepiness acceptable.

And so, I award Joe Francis, the entrepreneur behind the Girls Gone Wild videos who commercials haunt my viewings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report with Creeper of the Year. While I certainly protect his first amendment right to videotape girls with low self-esteem, he is also misogynistic, completely unstable, and most likely a rapist. It also doesn't help that he made a website for himself in order to give himself a new family friendly image. His take on the situation? "It seems that my chief sins have been 1) having way too much fun and 2) having discovered a way to make money doing it." It also features a FAQ section where he is asked questions like, "Would you consider yourself the new Hugh Hefner?"

An extremely interesting and perverse article on the matter here: "Joe Francis: 'Baby, Give Me a Kiss'" by Claire Hoffman of the LA Times.

Coming in a ridiculously close second? A blog post calling itself a parable by the name of "Just Love on Her" and its myriad of comments. *Shudders*