let is snow, let it snow, let it snow

It started snowing Saturday afternoon!!!

We were plagued with crazy rainfall the previous week and a half resulting in high water turbidity levels. (This led to a health advisory notice telling everyone to stop drinking tap water... which actually resulted in mad dashes and long lineups at for example- Costcos for the purchase of bottled water. Apparently it got quite aggressive at some places.) But nooow it appears that instead of rain, we are getting snow!

I love snow for many reasons, but I'm not sure how I feel about it at the moment. It is such a hassle when you have to get to places. Also, there's the possibility that there may be a school closure. This rarely happens in Vancouver, but it's definitely snowing a lot this time. Normally I'm praying for no school, but this year, it's like I can't miss school! We have a yearbook deadline to meet, I have a couple of tests to take, and- many other things!

This past school week was pretty intense though! I was very relieved to have finished and presented my History project on Hitler Youth (my group got 23/25), completed my English terminology test, wrote my compare and contrast in-class essay for English, and completed my 3 hour history exam! The history exam definitely did not go all too well because I crammed everything the night before until 3-something AM as well as the fact that I didn't prepare for the essay questions. What I wrote for the two short answer questions were pretty good, what I wrote for the evidence questions was mediocre, and what I wrote for the essay was terrible. Ironically, the essay is worth the most and the short answers the least. Atleast it's over now!

National Portfolio Day is on December 2nd- this upcoming Saturday. I'll put something together... I need to do more personal work, everything I have right now consists mostly of life drawings.

I wanted to go outside and take some pictures in the snow, but it was too dark by the time I was able to... I did take some pictures of Duck-Chick though! :)

And about them... Duck-Chick aka D-C is fashioning a scarf and some converse shoes! (they belong to my pullip dolls- I never mentioned my dolls ever so I suppose I'll make a post about them next time) one of the pictures illustrates how thick the snow has become in 24 hours!

Bookmark

Here is a bookmark I made today for the public library's bookmark contest. It looks almost identical to my sketchbook inside cover.

It's supposed to be a representation of the theme "Teens & Libraries"- but for some reason I think I totally missed it. I definitely had other ideas going in my head because the only way this is could possibly be library related is because of the text and the fact that the birdy is holding onto a book. Not quite sure about the teen part... They'll probably think this looks too childish and crazy which means I won't win. So much for the $250! It was fun doing this though.

My grad photos order was messed up! They replaced a photo I ordered with one I didn't order. It just so happened to be one that I ordered the most of and now they want me to go to the studio and fix it up. Being the type of person I am... I'll probably be exceptionally nice (without meaning to) when sorting this situation out. SOMETIMES I wish I could be one of those people that are so good at complaining.

Good-bye long weekend!

Today is the last day of my four day long weekend. I admit I didn't work as hard as I should have. I really should have taken advantage of all this time, but I gave in to being lazy. Tomorrow I get to miss school to go see Mysteries of Egypt at the Imax downtown for my comparitive civilizations class. Too bad I have to go back to school afterwards to pick up my grad photos. I can't wait to get them though.

I watched Sunset Boulevard last night. It was very good, very scary, and very modern.

I'm still very much worried about THE portfolio and school related things. (english/history projects, history term exam) I can't wait until all of this is over... which would mean sometime in December. It will be such a relief!

My sentences in this post have been so short and choppy! Something must be wrong with me...

Here's some stuff from September/Early October

School assignment. 1) Final 2) Sketch

DC's pictures and Body Worlds

DC (Duck-Chick) has some pictures for his girlfriend... AMELIA.

As you can see he is rather upset that Amelia is not sitting across from him to enjoy these little cakes with him. So below are some more pictures of DC with his guitar, sitting on a wooden Emily Carr Institute Pencil, and just being himself.
I did end up going to see the Body Worlds 3 Exhibit at Science World and did a bit of drawing. They made me sign a contract-ish form stating that I would not make profit from the work I did... me profit? No way!

Here's a spread!
It was a rather interesting exhibit and I did buy a few postcards (for some reason they look kind of scary now) and I am eternally thankful to one of my friends that actually went through the whole exhibit with me and put up with my constant and slow drawing. (Everyone else just zipped right through it)

One highlight is the spleen that was enlarged due to leukemia. Its weight increased from 80-120 grams to 22 pounds. wow.

I've been going to a life drawing class on wednesday nights for four weeks now (still have four more left) and am really needing to stop skipping drop-in life drawing sessions on fridays and weekends because time is running out! I am going to apply to CalArts. I will... just to see. just to try. just to take action for a dream. The question right now is... am I going to have enough work that is good enough by the time I need to submit it? (I've decided to skip the early deadline and just send it in two weeks before the actual deadline) Ahhhhhh. School is definitely not helping because I have a history term exam in a few weeks, an english project, and and... just a lot. :(

I'll make another post soon since I recently took pictures of some artwork.

September

So it's September, and I'm at the end of the second week of school. I'm taking two art classes at school and am possibly going to be submitting stuff to the college board for AP Art.

Last friday I went to my first nude and my first post csssa figure drawing session at Emily Carr Institute (eciad.ca). It's different... in the sense that I don't feel the energy I felt when I was at csssa- so it's going to be a bit of a challenge. I think I'll continue to go and I'm also thinking of finding other places to go to.

Something that I'm really wanting to see is Body World 3 which is opening at Science World tomorrow. It's an exhibit with plastinated bodies (method developed by Gunther von Hagen) and body parts of once-living people. I'm hoping it will allow me to be more knowledgeable in terms of anatomy and I'm also wanting to do some drawing there... I have a feeling that it's going to be crowded though.

I haven't really watched any animation or movies for quite a while now, which is very strange because I usually watch atleast one movie a week. And ever since school started, I find myself with very little free time. That is also very odd because I really am not taking a lot of academic courses this year- in fact I have dropped both Literature and History (very tragic!).

I'm kind of glad that this is my last year of high school, but at the same time I'm woried about how little time I have to prepare for portfolios and applications... :( I really can't wait to escape the way high school functions though. The whole social structure, popularity, cliques, and so on. Though at the same time, who says that post-high school wouldn't contain some hint of that? Well- atleast I think it'll be better. I think.

Hopefully my next post will be far more exciting in terms of content and artwork!

Special Day!

It is Amelia's birthday today! Hoorah!

Coming to the end of Summer & Mister Goat!

Sometime last week I went to UBC for the four day yearbook camp since I'll be editor this upcoming school year. Let me tell you ... I had a terrible time. Especially since it was after csssa! It was good only because it made me sort of get into the whole yearbook making mood, it refreshed my memory on the subject, and it made me want to go home a lot. So it was this pretty low point in the summer but I think it balanced things out quite nicely. So I'm pretty normal now. I think.

I started working again starting last week at the PNE and will be until school starts. This is my second year working there... and it's been slightly better than the first- which is somewhat comforting. I think it takes some real good will power to be able to work somewhere where commuting by bus requires an ample amount of time (1 hour), forces you to pass through a pretty rough area of the city, and sometimes you only work an hour more than the total time it takes to commute to and from work. I guess what is motivating me right now is the fact that the money I earn, although not much- could go towards something fun. For example- cool art books (Claire Wendling's Drawers 2.0!? *drool* Flight...Afterworks...etc.), supplies, or maybe even... a plane ticket?

So there are two books that I'm supposed to read for Literature 12... Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by James Winny. I went through A LOT to get Sir Gawain since it pretty much does not exist in stores or online in Canada. Pretty much. Pretty much I went to Barnes and Noble in Bellingham Washington and placed an order there. (Since this book doesn't seem to exist in stores in the states either) And then I picked it up when it arrived. And now... school is starting in 9 days and I sort of have to read those books. Oh dear. I've already read Beowulf, but it's been far too long so I really need to refresh my memory. And I'm also thinking of dropping History 12... hum.

And now some art. Old art though because I'm too lazy to set up my new scanner or to take pictures with my camera.

This is Mister Goat. A clay project I did for art class in grade 9. To this day I still think he is very cool. Infact, I think I should try drawin ghim again. I liked him so much then that I even drew a picture of him a few months later that same year.

Tomorrow is a very special day! And I will make ANOTHER post tomorrow just to mark the occassion. :D

Back from CSSSA

CSSSA ended on Saturday. I got home at midnight due to a three hour flight delay.

The picture was taken yesterday.

Home is the same- but it's not. I miss everyone and everything that was at CalArts this past month. I really did have the best four weeks of my life.

The end is near...

Tomorrow is the last day...
I am about 80% packed (hence the fact that it is so late now).

Today we returned our drawing boards and animation boards, cleaned the rooms up a bit and proceeded to watching Sin City and an assortment of other animated shorts. (Including Mr.Smile (FLOOOVDE!), Birthday, Brigette's Duck&Robot, Sub, and more.)

Then after class and dinner the "animation club" headed to the film library in hopes of watching BLT (Not Bacon Lettuce Tomato- but Brave Little Toaster!) but we ended up watching Iron Giant.)

Clean up! I thought that Amelia deserved a gold star for being super helpful (she is pictured here carrying a large box)while many of us sat on the sidelines doodling or signing sketchbooks.

CSSSA is ending

CSSSA is wrapping up and in two/three days it'll be over. Exciting things recently include the completion of the final project which was to create a 30 to 45 second animated film and the visit from Sanjay Patel! July 31st was a good day... which included all of the above and free ice cream from the visual arts department.

I never ended up adding sound to my animation... but oh well- perhaps I could add it on in the future.

Our Pixelation project was... interesting. Atleast I did get a good part in it! (The picture is the outline of my body) It was very strange to have people walk up every couple of seconds to dump leaves near me... especially when I was lying down- it was an experience on its own, really.




Amelia has turned into a Shark. Or maybe Jason the Shark has turned into Amelia.

Some more Janno Poldma's "Birthday" inspired work- pencil and watercolours on a postcard.

Amelia and I are really duelling it out with straw antlers. And I have "curly swirly" hair on this particular day. funfunfun.

Cut-out Puppet Animation

Cut out puppet animation is super fun! After completing our self portraits or additional characters we had a little animating party in the shooting room...



(Left to Right) Rachel's, Amelia's, Mine, Jackie's (pirate&Uni-Llama)



My puppet of self, Jordan's Robot, Jackie's Uni-Llama




Ahhh- this is the life at CalArts-CSSSA for us hardcore animators. hehe. :) good times!

First Official Post

This is a compilation of the work of myself, Amelia, Jeff, and Jordan done on Paint last night after playing a very intense game of 3D pinball.

I did the eye on the right (of course) due to being recently influenced by the animated short "Birthday" by Janno Poldma, an Estonian animator. Everyone should watch that short.

Below are more drawings inspired by "Birthday."

:)