[Insert Epic Title Here]

       On Wednesday, I pretty much ruined my structural drawing. Gabe says it’s going to be okay, but I don’t really believe her right now. I’m extremely frustrated and panicky when I think about it. I took out three pastel books from the library and did a small self portrait to try and boost my confidence level. I just felt incredibly lost with the colors and type of mark making…part of me wishes she’d write all the colors down instead of just showing us for a couple of minutes. The self portrait needs a bit of work (my clothing seems to be floating), but I think I can fix it. The next one I’ll do on larger paper.

        I’d have probably gone to the model session we’re having on Saturday, but my sister ‘wanted to get away from Western Mass’. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but part of me thinks it’s to make me feel better. It hasn’t been a good week at all and I guess she can tell. She also keeps referring to herself in the singular, so I think she’s leaving her boyfriend at home. This, in itself is bizarre; the two of them are normally joined at the hip.

Randal wanted to test how neat we could be, so he gave us specific requirements for printing our etchings. One had to be printed in just black ink and the other had to be altered on specific sized paper and borders. I used my oil pencils my second print. Since the prints due at the end of class on Monday, I think I’m going to print a third in either different ink or bring in my water colors. Though, a lot of people are using watercolors. I’ll try to think of something else.

            Yesterday, I got my Western Art 1 test back. I did pretty well so there was no reason to worry. Afsan did say she was pretty lenient on us though, so next time I have to make sure to memorize centuries. Our second trip to the Museum of Fine Arts is scheduled on the same day I have to register of spring and summer classes (they assign the day and time you register for classes). During trip days you don’t have to come to class at 8:30 in the morning, but meet at the museum at 1. I thought that was great because my registration time is at 8am, which is when I would normally leave for my morning class to get there on time.

         I thought everything would be fine.

        However, on this trip we were supposed to look at Islamic art. Considering that’s a section ahead of where we are, I have a feeling we’re going to reschedule and I’ll be in trouble again. It’s not a big deal, but I’ve been going through so many ill-timed events lately that I’m sick of it. Still, worse comes to worse, I’ll just tell her I’ll be a couple minutes late.

       We passed in our texture projects in last night and had a crit. Matt decided we needed to be very critical with each other on our work, so not a lot of praise went around. All of us have revisions to do. I was last again, so I got to be the guinea pig for rapid fire criticism. There was a similar experiment done in Bebe’s class last year, so I went with the usual response: all grins and invitations for people to do their worst. In crits, you generally learn how to defend your work; in this you couldn’t. It forces the subject to listen to what their peers are saying: sometimes their completely right despite how much you want to argue.

          Anyway, the negative feedback is only going to help me in the end. Going in, I knew there was something wrong with each one but didn’t know what. Now I do. Most of them were quick fixes, which was better than the three extra hours I spent trying to figure out what. Brutal honesty has its place.

As for the roommate situation, the girl from Paris signed a two month loan with somebody else. I’m toying with the idea of trying to rent the room to an international student that’s also interested, but I don’t know if I want to go through the trouble anymore.

          And Friday morning (or afternoon now, I was typing this earlier :P), here I am. I talked to Tim and he made sure to stop by the window to do a force smile by pushing the corners of his lips up. That got me to laugh. Just when I think nobody can surprise me anymore, I get one of those moments. I have to clean up my room and have some kind of event planned before my sister arrives tomorrow morning (actually, it would be cool to go out shopping or go out to dinner I also need to work on the structure of my process folio. The idea is for it to be a box with a lot of different compartments for journals, schedules, finished works, etc. I need to start to assemble it before the end of term-see if there are any major problems. Talking to Riana has also lifted my spirits somewhat. I’ll try to stay hopeful.