Inside the Junk Drawer

Just another Blogs.cas.suffolk.edu weblog

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Piece of Cake

Drawing: I have no idea what’s gotten into me this week. The drawing I finished on Monday, I sketched with a neutral gray. I thought I was playing it safe because it was neutral; instead I pretty much made picking my color palette much, much harder. Gabe thought this was extremely unusual and helped me through it by pretty much picking my colors. I figured out what color to use on the model’s hair by myself, but Gabe really held my hand through it.
Then, yesterday, we did two studies before proceeding with the long pose. We did studies because this is the first time we’ve had a model with this kind of chocolate skin tone. Usually, we get a lot of Caucasian models, so we end up using a lot of red, pale pinks, and tans. This time, we were using two reddish browns to sketch with, which was really cool.
But it took us forever to warm up. We spent most of the class sketching, so when we had to do more sketching for the long pose, I was already tired and really messed up my paper. This is where I get strange again. I started sketching in the dark brown, which was extremely stupid, and really smudged up everything on my sheet. Gabe came over, looked it, and then had me smudge the entire sheet so it would at least be uniform. I started my under drawing, using orange, yellow of the highlights, and this dark pink for the shadows.

Social Ethics: I have a midterm I have to study for. I also have to write a paper on what moral virtue I’m going to work on. Aristotle writes that moral virtues are created out of habit: basically courageous people are courageous because they have decided to be in the past. So, our lab experiment consists of picking a virtue we feel need to work on and how we’re going to change our habits to conform to it. Needlessly to say, I picked courage for my experiment.

Literature II: I also have a midterm for this as well that’s on the same day as my Social Ethics. So, this weekend I will be studying for the both of them (after my sister and her boyfriend visit on Saturday, lol). Class was canceled today, so this should give me extra time to study.

Western Art II: I was also relieved that my literature class was canceled today because now I’m free to go to the assigned museum trip without having to leave twenty minutes early. I hate missing class. I forgot about it when I was registering for classes in the fall that my art history class was going to have to do that because the museum doesn’t open at 8:30. Last semester it wasn’t as much as a problem because it was social ethics.
Now it’s worse because my English teacher is pretty zealous and doesn’t like it when his students leave in the middle of class. He said I could, but was a bit grumpy about it. Also, I was thinking about minoring in creative writing, so now my major requirements are messing with my minor’s, lol. Obviously, I’m going to go to the lecture-I don’t really have a choice-but I won’t deny that it’s stressful.

Anyway, the trip went without a hitch. Now all I have to do is write the two page paper. Piece of cake.

Advanced Painting: I’ve completed my collages. The ones I liked the most were the bits that used some of my scraps from printmaking. I also tried dripping paint, but these felt weak in comparison. We’ll be looking at them Friday, so I should get some feedback. I also primed three canvases, so I’m ready to go.

Library Work Study: I’m surprised at how comfortable I’m with it. I think its because I’ve already worked for the front desk for a year and the skills are pretty much the same when it comes to customer service and answering the phone. Checking in the books and the equipment is different, that still trips me up a bit, but I feel very at home with Ellen and my other coworkers.

Front Desk: Still scanning Brus’ slides. Also helped Josh out with midterm evaluations.

Weekend: The plan is to go see the Harry Potter Exhibit before it closes on Saturday with my sister and her boyfriend, then study my brains out in preparation for Tuesday. The latter will be difficult because I don’t want to go back to poetry and Aristotle’s virtues, but such is life.

Side note: I also have to figure out what is going on with my alarm clock. This is the second time it hasn’t woken me up. It’ll ring for fifteen minutes before I wake up and shut it off. I sleep with earplugs but I haven’t had this problem before. I’m wondering if the ringer in the alarm has become softer or something? Or maybe I just need to turn the ringer on my phone as well…? I’m hoping that I don’t need to find another alarm clock. I’m a bit strapped for cash as of late.

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Madien Voyage

Yup, first post and near the end of October too…I have no idea where the time goes anymore.

Here’s the quick explanation: I’m a sophomore (fine arts) attending New England School of Art and Design, Suffolk University. The university is located in Boston and its campus is pretty much the boston common. Unless you’re an art junkie like me-then you pretty much live in NESAD. They’re pretty much my second family now. ^_^

I’ve got five classes a week and a ten-hour work study, so I’m pretty busy. My classes this term are Drawing: Structure and Expression, Printmaking, Ideas of Western Art 1 (Art History), Imaging, and Intro to Sociology. For my work study, I’m working in two departments: the front desk and the NESAD library. I’m familiar with the front desk because I worked there during my freshman year. It helped introduce me to everyone, peers and professors, so I’d recomend that for incoming freshmen with work study.

Class wise, I have Drawing with Gabe at 9am and Printmaking with Randal at 2pm on Mondays and Wednesdays; Tuesday and Thursday is Art History with Afshan at 8:30am, Sociology at 11:30am, and Imaging at 6pm with Matt.

What’s going on right now:

In Drawing, I have a crit to prepare for. Crits (critics) are pretty much review sessions. You put your work up and review with the class, talk about your strengths and weakness. Drawing is mainly a studio class, so I’ve produced most of the work during class time. Gabe gave us a list of work to show, so I have to locate those out of storage drawer.

Printmaking: Randal is also having a crit (It’s almost mid term, so I guess its review time). We’re exploring transfer prints with gum arabic, so we’ll be taking a look at the pieces we’ve produced using that technique. I did a couple which were alright. The last one was probably the best-the black microscope with the purple text background. That took me practically no time at all and got the best results. If only everything came that easy.

Western Art 1: We’ve run through Stone age to Greece. Pretty much Stone age, Near East, Ancient Egyptian, and Greek art from 54000BCE- to about 31 BCE. Unlike the Drawing and Printmaking which are both studio classes, Western Art is a lot of lecture and note taking. You’re still oscillating from the left side of your brain to the right however doing analysis. My midterm is on the 27th so I made flash cards for that. There’s also an analytical paper due Thursday, which I had to fix. There’s still some editing that needs to be done on that…

Sociology: It’s another lecture that takes place on the Hill (Beacon Hill). I leave school and it takes about fifteen minutes on the T to ride up to Government Center and get to class. The subject matter is pretty interesting. Class attendance is crucial because he doesn’t give homework or require a text. If you miss class, you pretty much fail unless you can understand second hand notes. Attendance is never a problem for me (unless Afshan set up a trip to the Museum of Fine Art-then I miss the last fifteen minutes trying to get there for one). Even when it is, Alison, a girl in my class, lets me borrow her notes.

Imaging: For some reason this class is taking a forefront in my mind, hence why I saved it for last. Matt is being unorthodox this term. I had him before for Design Issues and Process in the Spring, but this class is different. Usually, all the classes focus on product instead of the process behind it. Matt’s decided it was more important for us, as students, to learn about ourselves, and therefore track our process. Our projects are not worth as much on the syllabus, but our Process Folio will be the main grade. It’s good because you learn about yourself, but it still makes me kind of nervous because you have to share it with other people and that’s a bit personal.

Right now Matt’s assigned a couple of different things. Due next Thursday are two pieces: one having to do with symmetry and the other merging two pictures together. The one due this Thursday is replicating a duck image with nothing but the eyedropper tool and paintbrush in Photoshop. His class in general has a lot to do with Photoshop. I’m generally a hands-on kind of person that gets confused with software easily, so its been educational to say the least.

Other than that, tomorrow night I’ve got Self Defense training. I meant to take it Freshman year, but never got a chance because I had two night classes and the homework was a bit heavy. This year, I actually have time, lol, so I’m looking forward to that.

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