My Friends Are Models

A few of my friends visited from New Jersey this weekend. We somehow wandered over to the College of Fine Arts building, so I decided to take them inside and show them my drawing classroom. They had a lot of fun. Here is proof:

It's so sunny in these pictures, it makes me sad to look outside and see all of the disgusting rain. It's so rainy that I actually can't see outside my window. I get to carry my cardboard dinosaur to class in this monsoon later. But for now, I must draw Gregory and start a variety of other assignments. I have five hours to be productive, I need to make the best of it!

Mosaics and Dinos

I've taken a bunch of photos of the projects we've been doing in drawing class lately, and I must say they are pretty neat to look at. There are two mosaics, where our teacher would give each of us a tiny scrap of paper that was part of a bigger piece, and we would have to enlarge our piece to 18x24 and then connect all the pieces together to make a larger version of it. We weren't allowed to see the completed piece before figuring it out on our own. The other project is a room full of dinos! And my new dino.

This first picture is from Tuesday, with everyone's successful and unsuccessful dinos. We had to draw them. My dino, along with many others, were so complex that they couldn't be put together in under three minutes. Thursday we had to return with a successful dino.

This is Gregory. On Tuesday night I had to come home, take apart the amazing Alfonso, who took me DAYS to complete, and put Gregory together in like 20 minutes time. I guess the lesson I learned from this is that sometimes going over the top is not beneficial. Sometimes you have to keep things simple to get the job done. I'm not sure if that's what I was supposed to learn, but that's all I got. I guess Gregory is still kinda cute, and he's my height and stands for three hours and can be put together in like 2 minutes.

This is a mosaic we did of a VanGogh painting. It was a major pain in the ass because the whole thing is basically shading. It's funny because we were told not to do any shading in the entire class, but here we are shading entire pieces of paper. Whatever. I guess it looks cool. My drawing is on the bottom left.

This one is a Durer drawing, it looks much cooler hung up on the wall now, but there's a lot going on it it, I still can't figure it all out. My drawing is the second one from the bottom with words on it. I had no idea what I was drawing at the time, but it turns out I spent about 3 hours of my time drawing what turned out to be an old man's foot. Funny.

Well, that's what I got for now. I am sure I will have plenty of other ridiculous things to show you before the semester is over.

The Boring Adventures of Dinosaur Construction Part Dos

This is Alfonso.

He is a vegetarian horse/rhinoceros mix.

he is not quite my height, but close enough.

After several revisions, a pulled muscle in my right hand and hours and hours of cutting, taping, and wiring things together, he has been assembled, and taken apart into pieces to be reassembled in class tomorrow, in under 3 minutes. ain't gonna happen. but i think he will be able to stand up the full three hours. that's what she said. heehee.

now me and karen are watching new moon and having celebratory ice cream.

Hooray it's Spring Break!

So it's Spring Break! I'm out of class until the 15th and am in New Jersey. Though I'm not in class it doesn't mean that I don't have lots to do. For a couple days, however, I'm just trying to chill out, and I'm pacing myself for all the things I must get accomplished, such as:

1) Writing my 6 page magazine anaylsis (No biggie)

2) Create a replica of my dino skeleton that is MY HEIGHT: (5'4" ish) out of cardboard, string, wire and tape, and it must fit in an 18X24X16 box, and it must be reassembled in class in under 3 minutes and it must stand for 3 hours. BIGGIE. I have no freaking clue how I'm going to accomplish this.

3) Also, I have various yearly doctors appointments that I must go to, and get poked and prodded in many lovely places,

4) As well as cleaning out an ENTIRE room of various knick knacks and pieces of crap that I've collected throughout my life.

5) Also, I am going to try to work out/do yoga most days, if not every day. I don't know how feasible/realistic this is

6) I also want to finish reading the Wild Things

And through all this, I must also make time for some activities! Just writing this has exhausted me. I think I'll make myself some tea.

Ps. It's getting prettier outside!

PPs. I'm sorry I don't remember where I found this picture. But it's really lovely.

Coffee and Art Supplies

Few things please me more than a delicious latte accompanied by an art supply shopping spree.

But throw in a 1 day only, 40% off coupon to Blick Art Supply and I might as well be soaring through the clouds. Very few things make me feel so satisfied. I bought 55 dollars worth of art supplies, and only had to pay 32! And not only that, but they validated my parking so it was free for the first hour! So I got free parking. In Boston. Never happens.

It was all just a wonderful sequence of events.

I am now caffeinated and ready to get my creative juices flowing! Yay!

Our next assignment for art class is to construct a box 18x24x16, with a lid, out of cardboard and tape. Therefore I had to scrounge around in the recycling room for some people's leftover boxes and such. The security guard walked down just as I was walking out with a huge box and seemed rather confused as to why I was actually removing garbage from the garbage room.

I am so happy I decided to take this drawing class. Everything about it is amusing, even the ridiculous things I have to do, like taking other people's garbage.

Paper Sculptures

After our assignment to go to the Museum and draw a skeleton, we had to switch drawings with someone in our class and make a "sculpture" of their drawing out of paper and tape. It must be the same size as the drawing and have the same number of ribs, verterbrae, etc. And then, once our partner gives us their sculpture of our drawing, we must draw the sculpture. exhausting, no?

This drawing is my attempt at drawing the sculpture that my partner, Hector, made of my original drawing, posted in my last drawing post.

This is the sculpture Hector made resembling my drawing.

This is Hector's original drawing that I had to make a sculpture of.

This is the sculpture! Kinda cool! Took me forever.

Anyway, this assignment has been super frustrating and I still have to finish that drawing, as you can see, and then draw another one of it at a different angle. I'm tired.

My Day at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

For my drawing class, my homework was go to the Harvard Museum of Natural History and pick a skeleton to draw, rib for rib, vertebrae for vertebrae, everything had to be specific.

I loved this museum! I thought it was really cool to see all of the animals they had, many of which I had never seen before, and certainly not as up close! sure, they were all stuffed orskeletons but it was crazy some of the stuff they had! Not only did they have all this cool stuff, but there were not a lot of people there at all! It was very quiet, a very good environment for drawing. It had all the cool stuff that the New York Museum of Natural History has, but 100 times less tourists.

Also, the lighting in there was just fantastic. I took A LOT of pictures, and I'll show you a bunch here!

The Moropus, a descendent of the horse and rhinoceros.

(PS. this skeleton is 42 feet long.) Could you imagine if this creature was still around to this day. No one would ever want to swim in the ocean, that's for damn sure.

Good Morning!

Good morning, friends!

I don't really have much of anything to say right now, but I wanted to check in and say something, because though I've been checking on your posts regularly, I've been so busy I've been at a loss of things to write about.

I just wanted to let you guys know all of my classes are great so far, but since I am taking a drawing class and a writing class and two other interesting classes, my brain is fried most of the time! But I am sure that I will get back in the groove soon. This is the first semester that I've truly fully enjoyed (as of now). I like all of my classes.

It's also gotten to the point where I am dying for some warm weather.

I just found out my parents rented a 3 bedroom apartment in Florence for a week in June, and I am so excited! When I see pictures I will be posting them to show you guys! I can't wait to go there and explore and eat and take pictures.

But for now, I'm in Boston, and it's January, and it's flipping freezing.

We'll get through.

(photo via girlinlondon.tumblr.com)

My First Drawing Assignment

Our first assignment in drawing class was to draw 3 self-portraits on 3 different days.

We completed those and critiqued them in class.

The teacher taught us about proportion, line weight, etc.

Our next assigment (due tomorrow) was to do one more self portrait, taking into account everything we learned in class.

Heres the sequence:

First day, first time drawing in a long time

Started out awful, I actually cheated and went back and tweaked it the next day

Third drawing. This is my least favorite, and my teacher asked if I was high when I drew this because my pupils look so dilated.

This is the one I just drew, after the lesson. All in all, I think this one actually looks kind of like me, as opposed to just a cartoon of some girl with dark hair. I think this kind of makes me look like a man but... it resembles me. It kinda looks better in person too. But yeah, this one also has a facial expression of some kind, which is something I failed to capture in the last ones. All in all, I think I'm making progress!

This stuff is hard. Harder than I thought. I thought I was already good! HA! I was mostly delirious.