ToChu

This is about as far as I can take it until I get ink for my printer and can find a good background picture. I had my pre-switzerland classes last week. To a certain degree they were something of a waste of time, just going over the very basics of digital photography, though Thursday we did the drawing portion and Friday we went over Swiss culture and posters which was pretty interesting.

I don't feel like I have much to write right now. While this break from real school work has been nice, I'm starting to miss going into Printmaking and working on a block. Aside from just the work that I enjoy (I've been told I smile while I'm carving), there is a real sense of community in the studio. Also my internet has been down really hit and miss since the small power outage we had Wednesday or Thursday and that has kept me from being able to do much.

There's Always Money in the Banana Stand.

Here's something I'm working on just to play around with using Illustrator to do colors. I drew this picture of my friend Chewie six months to a year ago and finally pulled it out to do something with. He went vegan so I had him in a banana stand selling chocolate dipped tofu. Mmmm.

Advents in photo and printmaking

Well, today the government gave us some money. How nice of them. So we decided to do our part and try to stimulate the local economy by buying a new camera. We can call it my Finally-out-of-the-woods-and-can-breathe-again (aka: end of the semester) Present. While the lady at Inkleys was extremely helpful and I feel like the price was right, buying it reminded me why I prefer to buy things online. It's the social recluse in me. I don't like the small talk and when I'm online they won't try to pressure me into buying more than I really want or try to give me a guilt-trip when I don't buy the extended warranty on the spot, assuring me that the second I walk out the door the camera will spontaneously combust if I don't. It's like how she talked me into a memory card and as soon as I got home I found a better memory card online for half the price plus I can finally replace that quick-release plate for my tripod that Inkleys doesn't ever keep in stock.

On a slightly different but still related subject, the USU Bookstore put on clearance the Holgas that were required of all the Photo students taking an Independent Projects class. Thanks to Mark Dungan who structured the class that way and enabled me to pick one up for 10 bucks.

Soon enough I will post pictures of the portraits I did in woodcut for my Advanced Printmaking class, including the answer to the one-entry contest (but does it count as an entry if the guess was "I have no idea?" I'll have to look that up). Sadly, due to focusing most of my time on my other class I was only able to complete 3 portraits, including my self-portrait. But shortly I will finish 2 more, including Matt who was actually the second one I started, now that I don't have much to distract me.

I'm not sure if I've posted about it before but in a couple weeks I'll be taking a silk screen poster workshop. The big assignment is to do a rock poster. I'm thinking I'll probably do a Flight of the Conchords poster, but there is still some debate.

"05-09"

Well, I'm done with this print. Here's a crappy camera phone picture of a crappy newsprint print of it. I'm not out of the woods yet but at least I'm feeling like I can breathe again.

Making progress.

Here's a crappy camera-phone picture of what my print is looking like right now. It's due Tuesday at noon so I've still got a couple late nights left. Anywho, I'm tired and off to bed.
P.S. This was my layout for my Visual Continuity class. There are some obvious things that need to be touched up but considering I did it in two days I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

The Sportsman [detail]

Big Block

I just got home from school a couple minutes ago. My fingers are getting pretty sore from carving but overall I feel like it was a pretty successful Print Jam. Just as I was leaving I snapped a picture with my phone of the block I'm working on. I'm really excited about it until I remember that it's mostly due in less than a week.

As a bit of a challenge, here is the first print for one of the portraits I'm working on. Any guesses who it is? If anyone figures it out I'll let them choose one of my prints to have or something of equal value (so maybe just a combo meal from Wendy's).

Anger Management

Well, I didn't get it loaded last night because the ink was still wet, so here it is. I'm glad to have it done. Now I can get started on my 25x37" print and work on my other portraits. I also found out that I won't be starting any more books until all my projects are done since my lack of self-control led me to finish The Subtle Knife in 3 days instead of concentrating on what really needs to get finished. Later.

Sticks & Stones

Today I printed my edition for our print exchange titled "Sticks & Stones." Later I will scan one in and post a detail of it. Now the hard part: writing an artist's statement.

Kathy Puzey

I was really excited to find out this morning that my incredibly talented teacher Kathy Puzey got her job! I don't know all the details of how the process works but she was a temporary assistant professor and now I think she's on tenure track. All I know is that she'll be back next year. She's one of those teachers that really make a difference in their student's lives so I'm glad that the administration was able to see that and do what was necessary to keep her here.

THRILLER

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

I hate when I fall asleep on the couch. Without fail after doing so I can't fall asleep when I finally wake up and drag myself to bed. So here I am at midnight doing some "electronic scrapbooking." I had two critiques today and they successfully wore me out. My Thriller print is finally done and I'll get it scanned in and posted tomorrow morning. With that done I only have my magazine layout, a print for a print exchange, my 29x37" final print for relief prints and a bunch more portraits to do for my advanced class. I get a bit overwhelmed just thinking about that I only have 3 weeks to get it all done.

Anywho, one of my sibling-in-laws gave us the movie Once for Christmas (I thought it was Bree, but Whit says it was Trevor). It sat happily in our movie case for 3-4 months without us ever touching it until one day a friend recommended it to us and I thought "Hey, we have that movie. Maybe we should watch it?" And so glad that we did. It really was a good movie. I've found that I like those more Indie films lately, and this definitely falls under that category. The story is pretty simple, this guy plays guitar on the street but wants to make it big so he enlists the help of a fan who sells flowers and other street performers to make a demo album. Probably 60% of it is music and it's amazing. Promptly after watching the movie we acquired the soundtrack and bought the remaining songs off their album. Sadly, I cannot recommend the movie without a disclaimer: It is rated R. As far as I can tell this is basically all due to the opening scene where, thanks to Clearplay, two people's heated discussion is almost completely muted. Whit and I looked at each other with that look that says, "I hope the whole movie isn't like this otherwise we'll have no clue what's going on," I'm sure you know the look. Anyway, if you don't check out the movie at least check out the music.

Oh, and Whit started her own blog. She said she felt weird posting on here after I was the only one to do so since it was created in December, so check hers out here.

Hyoung Seok Kim

Well, I haven't had much time to post lately but I promise that within the next couple days I'll have some more work posted. I got nominated for a scholarship so I've been trying to put together the application that includes a mini portfolio of my work. Also, my Thriller print that I had hoped would be done by now needs to have the last layer reapplied because it didn't come out as rich as I had hoped. So first thing tomorrow I'll be doing that.

Now, if you ever get the chance to see the work of Hyoung Seok Kim, do it. Really, really cool stuff. He's been a graduate student up here for a couple years and I guess he's finally finishing up so this past week he had a solo exhibition in our crappy little gallery. I picked up a small pamphlet that had some studio shots of some of his work but it excluded my favorite pieces so here are my fantastic camera phone shots.


If you push this last one you find that it is balanced like one of those blow up clowns that we all used to have and always finds its way right side up, but unlike the blow up clowns it has a gong inside that resonates as it swings back and forth.

Scott Fife

In celebration of having turned in my catalog and also having been accepted officially into the Printmaking program, this morning I decided to take a breather from school work and spend some time searching the internet. Whit says I'm lucky that I'm an art major and can use that as an excuse, calling it research and I like to roll with that. Anywho, I was checking a couple blogs that my brother showed me and following some of their links when I came across this artist Scott Fife. He does these sculptural heads that are generally about 24 inches high and all he uses is archival cardboard, glue and screws. It's really amazing the level of detail he gets using the bare resources he does. If you want to check out more of his work you can do so here. The closest thing I've been able to find is this gallery's profile on him. I always love when people find these innovative ways to use materials, especially when they're somewhat uncommon materials to use as fine art.

Another thing I've discovered lately are Gestalten's design books. I was perusing the books at our library when I came across Illusive, a book on contemporary illustration. Come to find out the company that made the book, Gestalten, has a whole series of books that are beautifully designed and full of inspirational images. 4 or 5 of them quickly made their way onto my Amazon wishlist to sit until summertime when I make enough money to actually add them to my slowly growing family of resources to turn to when suffering from Artist's Block (I guess that would be the proper terminology).

The Whitest Boy Alive

The more I hear this band the more I like them. I've had one of their songs for a while now and just downloaded another last night, but I need to just get the CD because it's so good. I don't know if this is an official music video or not, but I do love Op Art and these little brain teasers.



Well, I'm finally done with my catalog. Done might not be the right word but at least it's turned in so I don't have to worry about it anymore. It does need a lot of refining but it's at least a good concept, I think. My whole idea was to bring a level of interactivity into the catalog. I wanted to keep things feeling very loose and casual so it would encourage the viewer to take part in the design of it to a certain degree. If I did something like this for real I would try to include a contest where you would send in your colored catalog and there would be prizes. Just like that coloring contest at Arctic Circle I won when I had the chicken pox. Anywho, I did all these coloring book page illustrations but I didn't incorporate the boards into them, instead just throwing the boards on top of the illustrations. It gave it a disjointed feel that I will have to address before it goes into my final portfolio. So, as a treat I'm throwing on the Connect-the-dots page I did.

BE KIND REWIND

Be Kind Rewind finally came out in Logan.

Anti-relaxing Spring Break

Well, it's been quite a spring break. Last night my hard drive crashed and left me with what little I've got backed up on my external hard drive from a couple months ago. Yeah, I haven't been really diligent about backing stuff up, that including the 4 songs I bought off iTunes yesterday. Anywho, I had hopes of at least getting some of the information off the old hard drive but it wasn't in the cards. So I've spent the night reinstalling what programs I've got and updating the files that I've got backed up. Sadly, my snowboard and the files for my catalog were not backed up so I'm back to square one with that. Luckily though I did this poster for a friend of mine and was able to send it off yesterday so that let me retrieve it today.


After having lost one laptop to theft and now one hard drive to Murphy's Law I'm really starting to look at updating my operating system to Leopard. That Time Machine feature really is the cherry on top.

Food Fight

SPRING BREAK!!

It's been a busy weekend. My sister-in-law is getting married this weekend and they had her bachelorette party and shower, and they went through the temple for the first time. I was finally able to play Rockband and quickly discovered that I'm not coordinated enough to play the drums. It's the foot pedal that kills me. Anywho, I've got this huge list of crap I've got to get done over the break and sadly I also have to go to work for a while. I just wanted to show you the shirt my brother got me at this show at Mode Boutique in Provo. I was pretty stoked about it.

Oh, and if you're interested in Illustration and Graphic Design, check out the book Illusive, which is huge and full of inspiration. I checked it out from our library but I'm trying to figure out how to raise enough money to purchase it.

Movie Poster

I really like this movie poster. The whole retro-style of it is great. Too bad the trailer doesn't look as good. On the subject of movies, I'm pretty upset that Be Kind Rewind hasn't come out up here yet.

Just found out that while in Switzerland we're going to have to share a room with another couple. Bummer. Not that that makes me regret having signed up to go in any way, I'll just have to invest in a pair of pajamas.

Not a whole lot to write. I'm kind of in the middle of a bunch of projects. I need to go talk to the printer about doing my catalog and see what their capabilities are. I'm thinking about doing one long panoramic illustration that will fold like an accordion, just to make it stand out a little bit more. I'm also doing a portrait of my good friend Matt, but I don't think I'm going to post anything on here until it's done.

Oh, the book for Jumper is A LOT better than the movie.