Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

All good things must come to an end, as they say, and I believe a blog is no different. It is the natural cycle of things to be born, grow to maturity, wilt and die. For the last few posts, I have felt that the purpose of this blog has been declining and nearing the end of its shelf life. That is not to say that there will never be another post from your dear Lucky here again, but I feel that this period has run its course and it is time to move on to bigger and better things.

In the last year, I have made tremendous strides to reintegrate art back into my life. So much so that I have changed my major and redefined what the future of my education and life holds. It has been a wonderful journey of self exploration and I have enjoyed the time I have had posting here. It has given me experience in expressing myself via art and words and I believe the tools I have gained will serve me well in my future endeavors.

Ah yes, the future. Given the rantiness of a few of my more recent posts, it has become apparent that the tone of my narrative has changed from a fun loving art student to a young woman wishing to impart some wisdom and perspective on social and political issues. This does not feel like the correct venue for such thoughts and thus I have begun a new blog which can be viewed here. There will still be art, but more political satire and comic strips poking at social issues.

For this last, regular post, I’ll leave you with my most recent portrait piece and the time lapse video of its creation. This is Ada, whom I have not yet had the chance to meet in person but is extremely adorable and, from what I hear, wicked smart.

It has been a great journey here in the Right Brain Retrain and I hope the few of you that read regularly will follow me on to my new endeavors. Thank you all for your continued support!

Until we meet again, this is Lucky signing out.

Where the @%*# are your Parents?!

Spring Break has FINALLY arrived! Remarkably enough, I evaded pulling any all-nighters this last week. This was shocking since I somehow managed to put myself in the position to pull three during the month of February, but I digress...

The dear boyfriend and I have been watching a bunch of "Dose of Buckley" videos on YouTube lately and, as such, have been having some philosophical conversations about life, young people and the evolution of 'fame'. I feel like I must be getting old because my tolerance for the idiotic youth of America seems to lessen more and more with each passing year. It's not really their fault, what with being raised by a generation that uses TV and techno gadgets as a replacement for babysitters and parenting in general. However, I can't take a tour of the country to slap every slacker parent in the mouth. I'd never have time for anything else and probably wouldn't reach even a fraction of the offenders.

So, what's my beef with young people, you might ask? Self entitlement, mainly. I don't think it's a new concept, but getting on in years has gained me some perspective on the human condition. The problem that arises in this ever advancing technological age is the over saturation of the Internet and media with content from these unintelligent, ego-inflated, selfish little bastards.

Everyone wants attention, but few really deserve it. Okay, not everyone wants attention, but there seems to be an ongoing fixation with the concept of 'fame' in our society. Uncreative American welps want to be the next Brad Pitt, or Charleze Theron, or (insert some current icon that I don't care enough about to remember their name here). Memes are a perfect example. One idiot makes a video, five other idiots see it and say "Hey, that's popular. I can do that, too!" Then those idiots each make a similar video and the cycle continues as stupidity replicates at an exponential rate (to the fifth power in this specific example). Instead of developing talents and creating their own content, young people jump on the meme band wagon and replicate viral media in the hopes of getting views or likes.

No one lives forever and it's part of the human drive to want to leave an impression that will last passed our own existence (some people have kids, some people start a charity and some people just give every guy they meet a blow job). However, popularity does NOT equal immortality. Do you know how many popular kids from high school whose names I can actually remember? Maybe three, at best. The rest are mostly filed away as "rich douchebag".

Well, that was a fun little rant, but some of you may be thinking "Hey Lucky, you have a DeviantArt account, post your work on social media and you blog. Aren't you just trying to get attention like these idiotic kids you're talking about?" (and if you weren't thinking that, you should be). The answer is "yes".

I don't want to be famous in the sense that people would recognize me on the street. I do, however, hope to gain recognition for my artwork (and perhaps get a job). A great deal of my life has been spent honing my talents and, while I do it for the simple joy of creating art, I do hope that one day my work will be known (again, at least enough to get me a job). There is a big difference in perfecting your own skill set and gaining notoriety by creating original content than to simple get a few thousand subscribers or views because you filmed your own rendition of the Harlem Shake. Lets face it, do those subscribers really know who you are or give a shit if you croak next week? No, they don't. They won't even notice or care that you're gone because they didn't give a fuck about you in the first place.

Being known and securing a legacy that will live on after you have died are two different things. I have reached neither, so, given my lack of empirical knowledge, I suppose I should go ahead and wrap this up. Today's picture is a charcoal portrait of a gentleman named Steve. He's retired and going to school for art because, well, he loves it. Steve has made more of an impact on the world by creating a positive effect in ONE person's life than some 14 year old  with 150k views could ever hope to.

So, without further a due, here it is:

Until next time!

Almost taken down by, of all things, a MIRROR!

Oh my, is Lucky going to start posting regularly again? Shh! Don't jinx it.

Today was the final day of class as I have known it for the duration of this semester. Finals are next week and, if all goes as expected, I'll be taking in a 3.75 GPA for the semester. Not bad for my first round of art courses. Yeah, there's a B in there, but it can't be helped. Metalworking ended up being much more difficult than anticipated, and I'm not holding out hope that this last assignment will be enough to pull me up to 90%.

All an all it's been a great semester and I already feel like I've learned so much. Even in drawing, a subject I have been practicing independently since I possessed the fine motor skills to hold a pencil in my hand. So many great tools and techniques have been added to my artistic tool kit.

It seemed fitting that the final project in drawing should be a self portrait. I've spent so much time looking at everything around me and taking in so much outside information that initially the assignment proved to be a struggle. I've never drawn myself from a mirror before and I've never done a large scale portrait in charcoal... Actually, I'm not sure I've ever done a large scale portrait in any medium.

So, after having a minor freak out the first day and leaving class early out of frustration, I took some time to examine what was going wrong. There were a couple major things.

First off, I wasn't using my powdered charcoal which has become my new favorite drawing material. You sprinkle it on the paper and spread it around to give your canvas a nice middle grey. This allows you to add not only shadows with charcoal pencils, but also highlights using an eraser. It also didn't help that the mirror was a bit wonky and squished or stretched my appearance depending on where I was.

The second mental block was a fear that it was too soon to 'immortalized' myself. I was afraid that I would mess it up and forever be ashamed to try again. This is silly, I know, but I'm curious if other artists have had the same problem.

Last Thursday I left early and mulled all these things over in my head. After bolstering my confidence (and practicing drawing myself in the dark), I returned to class on Tuesday to give the self portrait another try. I moved to a darker side of the room because practicing in extremely low light had shown me that if my face were not as well lit, I wasn't as afraid of making the picture too dark too quickly. I also moved to a smaller drawing pad so the task didn't seem so monumental. Once I prepped my paper with powdered charcoal, I dropped all insecurities and began to go to work...

After two full class periods, this is the fruit of my labor:

 

It's not an exact likeness, but then again a reflection can't be. Seriously. I don't have a perfectly symmetrical face or hair line, so any drawing of a reflection is going to be backwards! All technicalities aside, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out... And I'll probably never do it again willingly.

My instructor is actually keeping this one for the foundations show next semester along with the fish painting from last week's post (different class, same instructor). He even went do far as to make sure that I signed up for the Drawing II course that was being taught be the best drawing instructor. It's cool to have teachers looking out for you and I'm mildly curious if my reputation will precede me in that class... Mustn't... Get... Big... HEAD!!

Seriously, though, I have done my best to keep my humility intact. As I said before, even in a subject that ie been practicing since I can remember did I learn something new.

I have got a lot of projects that I have been wanting to work on, so when the break is here, I plan to take a mini-vacation from the Internet... Or at least social networking. After all, I do need to find a job. The idea is to remove as many distractions as possible so that I can use the momentum I have gained this semester to work on things that are for my own enjoyment and not a grade. Either way, I won't be gone for too long. Maybe a week or two at most. I'll be sure to post before I go on break as well.

Speaking of projects done for fun... For anyone who hasn't had a chance to see this yet, this is the finished Thor drawing (WIP was in the last post) for my dear friend Shawnee.

Not bad for ten hours of work... Not bad at all. Until next time!

And then she found an amazing book...

I've been long overdue for a new blog post, so I guess I’ll go ahead and get on it now. Quite a few things have happened in the last… Wow, has it really been 3 weeks? Jeez, I’m horrible about keeping a schedule, huh? Anyway…

One of the coolest things that happened was that I got to mean a guest speaker named Rafal Olbinski when he visited MSU earlier this month. He’s a painter/illustrator from Warsaw Poland and he’s pretty much awesome. Part of why I was so excited to visit his lecture was because he himself actually started off doing engineering architecture but switched to painting at a later date. Beyond that, he gave me hope that as an artist getting a late start on my education, nothing is lost. Olbinski didn’t actual come to America, where he gained notoriety, until he was 37. And here I am freaking out about being just barely over 30 when I plan to graduate.

I actually got to meet him and gushed a bit to him about how he is my inspiration. How does he react? With graciousness and humility, that’s how he reacts. I want to be all these things when I’m older!! Basically what I’m trying to say is that if you have some time, you should really go check out his work which you can view here!

What else happened in the last three weeks? Well, I had a dog for about 72 hours, and then sent him back. He didn’t misbehave or anything, I just didn’t have the time or dedication to train an adult dog. Uuuum, I finished my second project for Metalworking. I started looking for a part time job (because I have WAAAAY too much time on my hands). Oh! And I offered to do a collaborative work with another user on deviant art!

I always find myself trying to give my own creative input when working with others. This can be good, but I also wanted to have a stab at not creative input (at least story wise) and strictly creating a visual experience of another person’s tale. She’s written a clever little short story and seems to be incredibly honored that I would like to do a black and white manga of it. I’m nervous, but it will be a great learning experience and hopefully prepare me for potential commissions in the future.

So, on to the art… I bought an AMAZING book last weekend. After a brief failed attempt to find tasteful nude photos to use as drawing reference, and by the way, where they hell are all these children on Deviantart parents at?! Anyway, I gave up rather quickly on Deviantart, ran to Barnes and Noble and found “Anatomy for the Artist” by Sarah Simblet.

The problem I have always had with anatomy books is that there are too many words! Even the artistic anatomy books have so much jabbering. This book, while still filled with good information and diagrams of the inner anatomy, is filled to the brim with human figure photos in color and black and white. So, I chose my favorite photo as my first self-study practice session tonight:

Actually, I’ve been drawing a lot of male head figures lately. It’s not entirely intentional, I don’t get to choose the subject our Drawing instructor puts in front of us. This image just jumped out at me when I was flipping through the pages. It’s a great lighting choice and one I was excited to work on. I didn’t really finish the finer detail because I was working with charcoal on a smaller surface than I’m used to. Regardless, I’m pretty happy about the outcome. I’m really looking forward to doing more drawings from this book.

Until next time!

Holy Hornbeam, we're SHADING!!!

Well, I managed to make it over 24 since my last post! I'm so sporadic with this darned thing. Anyway, there's not a whole lot new to say except that my drawing class has gotten way more interesting. The reigns have been released and we are now SHADING!!! As some of you may have noticed, I have already been shading a lot of my pieces, but I've been timid about it since we have been trying to focus on our line work up to this point.

This new approach is actually challenging my ability, so I'm super excited about it. Until this week, I have been finishing at least two drawings per class period. However, since we began shading, I have yet to really complete a drawing in class. I'm not complaining, though, because this means I am outside my comfort zone which means I am learning. Before this week I was getting kind of bored in class, but now I'm actually excited to begin my next piece.

These are the two pieces I have completed this week:

Plaster Cast Head Drawing 2

Plaster Leg Muscle Group Drawing

 
Another piece of information that is new is that I just upgraded my deviantart subscription and am once again a premium member. You should really go check it out at some point. It still looks about the same at this very second, but this evening will be spent updating and fancifying all the nifty stuff that you can when your have a premium membership.

That's all for now, back to watching Cloverfield and fiddling with my DA account. Until next time!

Nobody's perfect... But some things I just can't let go.

This will be a brief post since I’ve already don’t this once tonight. So, my last post was about how there were so many things wrong with the last piece. Well, since I knew I couldn’t turn it in to my instructor since it didn’t demonstrate proper techniques to be used in drawing, I saw it as an opportunity to play around with what I had.

As many of you may know, I am now pursuing a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design and Illustration. It seemed like the safest bet as the graphic design aspect of the education could help me get a more practical job in a field like Advertisement. The Illustration classes are more to nurture my love of telling stories. However, the true, deep down secret about why I’m pursuing this degree is this: My life long dream is to make comic books.

So, I took the liberty of turning my wonky head drawing into a more graphic piece of art like you might see in a comic. Sure, it’s still not perfect, but it was a fun learning experience and helped me get introduced to some unfamiliar pieces of my art supplies. So, without further a due, here it is:

It kind of looks like a poster I’ve seen of Bob Marley, but that is purely coincidental. And, to wrap it up, I would like to say that I am in love with the deep, velvety black created by my Char-Kole sticks… They are too awesome.

Until next time!

Nobody is perfect...

Today’s blog is to demonstrate that while we may all have talents of our own, or excel in certain fields, no matter how good you think you are, there is always room for improvement. I was left with this thought after a particularly trying day in Drawing I class. We still have yet to begin shading, but I have been doing it anyway out of boredom. No to toot my own horn, but I am at the head of the class (toot toot). If I did not use shading to slow myself down I would run laps around my classmates as far as quantity of drawings.

This week we began drawing plaster casts of faces. As some of you may have read in the last post, we aren’t supposed to actually think of them as faces, but simple ‘draw what we see.’ Last week’s post showed what I think is one of my best drawing pieces. Aside from being very naturalistic, I also managed to frame it perfectly on the page. However, I will admit, it was not an exact replica of how the plaster head looked in class. Sometimes I will ‘fib’ in my drawings to make them appear more idealistic.

However, my ability to do this was utterly shattered today. We were still drawing the same batch of plaster heads, but today, many of them were turned upside down, or on their sides, or laid at angles to where foreshortening ruled the image. I got agitated with the first set up which actually had me drawing the same exact head from last time, but upside down. I gave it three shots and got extremely frustrated with the results.

After a quick break, we came back and had the set up rearranged. This time, I was looking at a head turned to three quarters view and tilted back drastically. I spent a good 30 to 45 minutes attempting to capture the cast’s likeness, but upon my third attempt, I gave up on making it look like the head in front of my and just drew the shadows but on a more ideal face.

The end result of my efforts was this:

 Now, I hear objections from others whenever I say this, but there are a multitude of things wrong with this picture. That is not to say that I hate it, in fact, I quite like it. For only spending about 30 minutes on it, it didn’t turn out too bad. Regardless, that is not what the plaster head looked like (apart from the shadows), and even so, the eye is off, the nose was haphazardly done and the lights were turned on and class dismissed before I had a chance to really rework all the issues I’m seeing with it now.

I’m still posting it, though. Not because I have nothing else to post. I mean, I still have a few days to find something better anyway. I’m posting it because it shows my own imperfections. Pride goeth before the fall and to hide your weaknesses is to deny yourself a chance to overcome them.

So, that’s it for now. I’ll be busy for a while catching up on projects, organizing the new apartment and, beginning sometime next week, training a new dog. Which reminds me, any suggestions on names for a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix with an under bite that makes him look a bit like an Ewok? His name’s currently ‘Duke,’ but that doesn’t fit. Oh, and before you flood in with a bunch of actual Ewok names, we decided Wicket is too abrasive and no other Ewok names really stood out.

Until next time!

So much room for activities!!

We finally have a REAL apartment! Sure, we paid rent and utilities on the studio and lived there for nearly 2 years. However, when you cram two adults into one 200 sq ft room for an extended period of time, it starts to feel more like a jail cell than a humble abode. The irony of the situation is that I end up spending a lot of time in the living room with Josh anyway. I guess the CHOICE makes all the difference.

Furnishing the joint was fun (that's sarcasm). Even though it took around 2 hours, I did enjoy putting together my new art desk (which can be viewed at the end of this blog). Unfortunately, in a rush to get a couch (because there is something fundamentally incomplete about a living room without a couch) I managed to pick the world's heaviest one. Seriously, the thing weights a MINIMUM of 250 lbs. I'm pretty sure whenever we decide to move out of here, we will be doing it without the couch that I suspect may be made of dark matter. Moving on...

I did a bad thing last week and skipped my drawing class. Actually I blew everything off that took place after I left Brick City at 4:00pm. It couldn't be helped. When a girl is in go-go-go mode for over a week straight, something has got to give eventually. I have to make up for it now, but at least a majority of the move is done with, so that won't be filling up every free moment of my schedule. Of course, we're adopting a dog from my mom, so training him will soon be taking up a decent chunk of my time.

And dear GOD what did I do before Internet?! AT&T had to set me up with new service that was SUPPOSED to start last night, was ACTUALLY connected last Saturday and DOESN'T work so we have to wait for the technician to come by tomorrow. I'm redoing all these mobile posted blogs once I have access to the full website again.

Blah, that's all boring stuff. Let's just wrap this up and get to the pictures. Today we finally got to draw something other than boxes and box-like objects. We got to draw plaster heads on sticks. Well, we weren't supposed to identify them as heads in our minds, otherwise we would not truly draw what we saw and would recall memory of what a head looks like instead (which is what I STARTED to do on the first one). Anyway, the product of about and hour and a half of work can be seen somewhere below... Darn blogger app not letting me place pictures where I want them.

Oh well, until next time!

Plaster Cast Head on a Stick

 

Snazzy Desk that can be purchased HERE!

Wait for it...

SHAZAM!!

And then The Collegiate Gods said, "There shall be NO rest!"

Man, it has been a busy week... Or has it been weeks? Projects have been keeping my hands full, but I have enjoy all aspects of my new homework.

I did, however, manage to find the time in the late hours of Saturday evening to order myself a snazzy work desk. I'm completely serious when I say this is the most handsome thing I have ever laid eyes on... After Josh, of course, but I'm still in love with this desk.

It has a glass top, so a simple lamp on the floor turns it into a light table for tracing. The table can lay flat or tilt up to a 25 degree angle, so no more hunchback drawing for me. It's got a lot of other cool features, but if you're interested in one, you can check it out at the following link:

http://www.dickblick.com/products/studio-designs-futura-craft-station/

Anyway, while I'm waiting for that to arrive, I will share a piece from a couple weeks ago. This was done at a friend's house the night that I FINALLY quit my soul sucking job. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I don't seem to be alone in my thoughts on the place.

I had actually intended to work on a homework assignment, but forgot some key elements needed to start it. I ended up drawing anyway.

I didn't NEED to draw the coffee table covered in various trinkets, but I really WANTED to. This is further encouragement that I am on the right path.

Oh yeah, and we begin moving this week. We are going to have a whole 650 sq ft to ourselves! It may not sound like a lot to some one else, but when you've had two people living in a tin can of a studio together for 2 years, having the living room, kitchen and bedroom actually be separate rooms sounds like a mansion!

I think that's all for now. Until next time!

Week Two Under Way

Sooo, I should probably be doing homework, but I've only been awake for about an hour now. Week two has been off to a relatively good start. I'm still not entirely enjoying my metalworking class, but I think if I can just bring in a pair of ear plugs with me, I'll be okay. Nothing but hammers banging against steel for the first hour of class yesterday, it would be a very bad place to get a migraine.

Regardless of the alarmingly loud noises to be dealt with, the day went pretty smoothly. My Black Square project is not due until the beginning of class on Thursday, so I will be finishing that up tonight and posting it in here as soon as I can get a good picture of the finished work. Drawing is still by far my favorite class, though.

Last night we were working on the concept of mapping out a figure with lines and geometrical shapes before adding the fine and organic details. This is not a concept that I am unfamiliar with, but it was nice to get back to the roots and remind myself of the techniques that helped me to become better at drawing. So without further a due, here are the two pieces completed in class last night:

Don't worry, it's just pieces of a mannequin. The legs gave me a bit of trouble on the first one as you can see by the copious amounts of rubbed away charcoal (not included the intentional shading) and, a known problem I've had with figure drawing for years, her head was too large. I had more fun playing with geometric shapes and shadows on the second one. Of course, I bypassed drawing any toes per my own limitations at this time. No big fret, though, there are months left to hone my abilities and next semester I have Drawing II, so they'll only get better.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. I must get ready for my interview at the library center, so wish me luck! Until next time.

Fall Semester Week 1... And so it BEGINS!!

Week one of my new scholarly endeavors has already proven to be a blast. I'm taking a very interesting art history class on non-western art in Africa, Oceania and the Americas. I haven't learned a whole lot yet, but I've only had two class periods so far. After that, I have a quick trot over to Ellis Hall where I'm taking my Metalworking & Jewelry class. So far, this is proving to be one of the more tedious classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love to make jewelry (I've actually been doing it for almost a decade now) so it's very nice to learn about techniques and medium I have very little experience with. However, think about it as if you were independently wealthy and owned 4 high end sports cars. Sure, you don't really dislike any of them (otherwise you'd be an idiot for spending so much on them), but you have your favorites. Hence, one of those awesome cars is going to be at the bottom of the list.

Right now we're working on a small layered project with brass, copper and nickel. It's mainly been tedious because we have to take 10 different magazine clippings and do 4 design evolutions (each) on top of the simplified tracing of the image itself. If you add that up, it's 10 tracings and 40 drawings. I get the idea of practicing and trying a bunch of different things, but I've already picked the one I want to do, so it's been difficult making myself complete the other 20+ evolutions I have left. No biggy, I plan to make quick work of them tonight.

Once I've completed the first half of my day, I then have to trek back to the car and take a little trip downtown for my two studio classes. The third class of the day is Two Dimensional Design. To my understanding, we will only be working with abstract images (hence the word 'design' in the class name). For example: our first project is the classic 'Black Square Problem'. We were given a list of 6 adjectives and our job is to creatively use 4 black squares to convey the emotion the word evokes. I'm happy with 2 or 3 of my designs so far, but I need to pay that project some extra attention tonight and tomorrow as we are turning it in at the end of class Tuesday.

And finally, once I take a brief one hour break following 2D Design, there is what is already my favorite class. I took a drawing class or two in high school, but it has been so long that I forgot how much I enjoyed honing my talent. Drawing I one is the last class of the day for me and is by far the most enjoyable class. No homework. No Tests. No wordy BS assignments. We are just drawing from life. As my instructor put it, we are learning the art of 'seeing'.

I'll admit I got really annoyed about half way through the blind draw (where you only look at the subject and not at what you are drawing), but that's because I like feedback that comes from looking at what I have done. Not too big of a deal, though, since we only did that for 30 minutes and the class is 2.5 hours long. After that, we were pretty much given free reign to draw anything we wanted in the room. I started by drawing my shoe:

Now, for anyone who might aspire to do still life work, I highly suggest that if your subject is an article of clothing make sure that it is not currently on your body. I had my leg stretched out at this angle for at least one hour before I couldn't take it anymore. My entire ass had fallen asleep and my lower back kind of felt like it was burning.

However, even with the numb butt, I was pretty proud of the improvement you see from one drawing to the other. The shoe on the left was the first attempt. With this one I sort of haphazardly started drawing. Of course I was becoming annoyed with the inaccurate proportions I could see and it is very difficult to effectively remove charcoal from newsprint. So, I started again and did quite a bit more planning before adding detail. Gently sketching out the prominent shapes I saw first allowed for a better skeleton for which to add the shoe details on later.

That's one hour I spent on drawing my foot, but what did I do with the last hour of class? Well, the instructor had set up a still life for the blind draw that consisted of a couple plants, animal skulls and a tussled table cloth. I decided to have some fun with the table cloth:

Now, he only wanted us to do line work, but I, again, was getting bored so I disregarded such instructions and let loose with some shading. I haven't used charcoal in so long that I had forgotten how dynamic the lines and shading can be. Sure, you can't keep a charcoal pencil as needle sharp as a graphite pencil, but when use effectively, charcoal can do what graphite cannot.

To wrap this up I will go ahead and say that I can tell this is going to be an amazing semester. I know this because I have only had two days of class and I'm already chomping at the bit to get back on Tuesday. I guess that means that I might be addicted to art...

That's right, I'm addicted to art. Say what you will, but I need it and there's nothing you can do to keep us apart. Now, hand me a tourniquet so I can shoot up with creativity, 'kay?