Hello Internet

Whoops, it's been quite awhile hasn't it. I should feel sheepish, but I don't. There's been a lot going on. I graduated from JWU in May on the same day as my cousin K (Rhody Dreaming). That was pretty cool, considering that our graduations were on opposite coasts. I won a couple of awards from the school, and did my very first paid graphic work. This is my first summer of official adulthood (or at least I think of it this way).

I had originally planned to save money and be out of my house by the end of July, but this hasn't happened for a number of reasons. The job market here in RI is terrible right now, and I've been focused on paying off what's left on my credit cards in order to save/be able to start paying my student loans come November. I have one card left to pay off, thanks to a refund check from JWU (which I'll have to pay off later anyway, as it came out of my loan money, but I would rather pay all my bills to one place). I recently got a second job doing data entry for a marketing research company. I work from home (and I should be working now but I'm taking a quick break to play catch-up while I remember) and at Showcase when they remember to give me hours. I may be getting a new job to replace the theater, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this new job comes through. I'll refrain from elaborating until I find out whether or not I get it.

Things with D are going pretty well. He's really busy now that the Theatre by the Sea season has started. Some of the girls that he works with have been really terrible lately, taking flirting and suggestive comments far over the line. D is a friendly and flirty person by nature, he's a people person. I know this and enjoy it, but at present it's more of a curse for him. Work is very stressful for him right now, because these girls (one in particular) keep taking things too far. The one who steps the farthest over the line got put in her place yesterday, because D finally told her to just fucking stop it before he lost his patience. (I think she said something along the lines of "forget your gf for just one night" and then grabbed his arse). Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, but I feel bad that these people are ruining work for him. He used to love his job, and now he just feels burnt out. He's going away to England in September to see some friends, possibly for a month or so. I'm going to miss him, but he needs time away from everyone to put his head back on straight. He applied for a job at Marvel comics, and they may have something for him in a couple of months! I'm excited for him, it's a huge honor :)

Beyond working, I just try to see my friends and enjoy the summer while I can. I finally finished the Munny for my dad, I'll take decent pictures of it soon so I can upload them here. I've only done a little bit of drawing, which isn't too surprising I suppose since I don't do it much at all anymore. I'm experimenting with drawing one-panel diary comics just to keep in practice. So here we go, enough blathering, have some arts.



Was having a bloody terrible night at work yesterday. D's text cheered me up immensely though. It's the little things, you know?

Stress, stress, and more stress

So I just wrote a gigantic blog post that disappeared. Adding to my stress. Awesome. Instead of elaborating, and retyping EVERYTHING and for the life of me I cannot get my draft to restore (and if it saved the blank then I'm fucked anyway) SO. Have some pictures of stuff I'm working on with no explanation to go along with it whatsoever.

Enjoy.




Plus one terribly photographed (used my cellphone, too lazy to scan) and equally terribly inked pose experiment.

LVL +

I haven't gotten to my dad's Munny in weeks. It's a very disappointing feeling, and frustrating too, to have a project literally at your fingertips but the free time with which to do said project is just ohhey! nonexistent.

In the mean time, I have devoted my time to making logos for a non-profit client (which they rejected, ugh...and after all that work! oh well), a typography class label project, and a t-shirt design for Kristen of Rhody Dreaming. I haven't finished the t-shirt, unfortunately that's gotten backburnered until I finish this typography thing (due tomorrow, of course).

I'll spare you all having to read about my adventures carrying a giant bit of matte board (3'x4' I kid you not) from Utrecht to Academic (about 1.5 miles) in the great gusting wind and rain (which was not as gusty but irritating nonetheless). I honestly felt like I was walking with a giant kite.

Instead, have a peek at the labels I just finished. They're fruit drinks for gamers as a healthy alternative to 5hr energy shots or whatever they are. The commercials are nasty and portray gamers as drooling shut-ins who never sleep (while this may hold true for some, it most certainly does not hold true for most) and it makes me angry. So here you go, 3 flavors:

God Mode Cherry
Bossfight Blueberry

Grindfest Grape

At some point you shall get to see them in their final form stuck to these neat little glass bottles that I found at Michael's. Until then, enjoy the juicy fruits, haha.

Secret project update

So! That project I hinted at recently, that I'm making my dad for his birthday (which was yesterday, oops) is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I had a definite setback after the Munny Night with Maria (Museum Musings). The clay I purchased, that was advertised as "dry hard, no bake" clay, was a dud. It worked well with Maria's Howl Munny, as his entire coat was made from it and stayed in one piece. It did separate from the Munny's back, but I see this as a plus as it is much easier to paint this way. My Munny, however, did not fare so well. It was supposed to be a miniature of my father when he was a bit younger, with his hair blowing in the wind as he drove his Avanti (we will get to that). This clay I used (called Laguna), well, it shrank. As it dried, it lost moisture, and naturally shrank. Not so bad at first, when his hairline crept back a few inches.

"Well," I thought, "that's closer to his actual hairline anyway." When his face sculpting fell off completely and I could remove his hair as a single, helmet-type creation, well, that was a problem. Glue could fix it, maybe. And then the hair just broke apart. Huh. Perhaps not so fixable after all. After cursing and howling and whining about it for a few days to those who knew of the project, I pulled it together and trekked back to the craft store, bought some Super Sculpey (for the Munny) and some Delight (for the car), and called it a night.

What my project is actually trying to accomplish is quite simple. I am modifying a model car to look like a Studebaker Avanti (which you can see at the bottom of this post). In this model car I am going to place a replica of my dad. The car model I decided to customize is a 1965 Mustang. The body style is quite close, and with a small bit of front-end modification I can easily replicate the nose of an Avanti. I also cut off most of the roof to make the model a convertible; the Munny is pretty big in comparison to the car itself. It's been a long time since I actually put together a car model (I did it a lot as a kid, I loved that sort of thing), but it was fun getting reacquainted with an old hobby. So much so that I might actually make another car later on.

The car is about 99% assembled, and about 85% complete. I have only to attach the tires and front bumper at this point for assembly to be complete. I still have to sand down the mods to the nose and paint this bugger, though. For that I have acquired a metallic flaked sparkly bright limey kind of green modeling spray paint for the body, and I picked up cream and orange oil-based modeling paints for the interior detailing. That part will be fun, I love the crazy color scheme and dad and I are always joking about painting our cars obnoxious colors like that to begin with.

The car is much closer to being done than the Munny is; presently I still have to sand the Sculpey (it's been baked already), cut off the lower half to seat him in the car, and paint the bugger. Looootta work left. With the hectic trimester I have approaching I have no idea when this will get finished. Dad doesn't mind waiting (not that he knows what I'm doing) til it's done, so that's okay, I guess, but I still want to finish it soon.

We'll see! In the meantime, take a peek at the finished (re)sculpt and the mods to the front of the car. Rough, but pretty okay, I think!

New Term, New Expectations

The new trimester has started, and (for me at least) it is the last trimester. Finally! I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop Personality Psychology, mostly because I don't need it and if this tri is going to involve as much work as I think it is, then this class is only going to get in the way of progress.

I don't have much else to update, except perhaps that progress on my dad's present has pretty much come to a standstill with the start of classes. Since his birthday is this sunday, I'm going to have to give him an I.O.U. Crud. In the interim, enjoy these t-shirts I had to design as homework using only type. If I could remember where the templates came from, I'd tell you.

Huzzah

I love that word, Huzzah! It makes me feel as though I'm in the middle of a Renaissance faire. No artwork to update once again, but I'm making progress with the my plans for my second customized Munny. My best friend (Maria of Museum Musings) and I are getting together tomorrow afternoon to start a customizing marathon of sorts. This will be her first Munny and she's as excited as I am.

On a random scholarly note, finals are over and I am trying to enjoy my week off between the trimesters. So far, it's okay. Aside from a bit of a snow-shoveling debacle at D's house on Monday it's been a decent vacation. Grades are in too, and I scored awesome. 2 A+s, 3 As, and a S for Satisfactory (typically identified as a pass/fail class at most universities) as that was only a 1 credit course. I was terrified that trying to balance 6 classes, a part time job, 2 club memberships and a social life was going to end horrifically. I got very, very lucky. Didn't sleep much though! But that's to be expected.

So far getting my life in order is going okay, too. I've been able to put some money away in the bank and still make decent payments to some of my bills. It helps that I've been working more hours. I've also been reading the book I bought about freelancing in depth; it's definitely going to be a great resource for any future business endeavours I make. It's already pointed out a few things I never thought about and I've only just begun the 4th chapter. An excellent investment, that.

I know none of you are interested (ha who am I talking to no one reads this) in what I personally am doing, so I'll leave you with a teaser involving my latest custom undertaking. It involves one of these:

Plans!

I have plans, now. (Oh yes, scary I know). As I mentioned in the last post, I am working on entering the real world and finally acknowledging that at 22, I am supposed to be an adult. I've already taken some steps to get my life under control.

Yesterday, I gave my mother all 3 of my credit cards and told her to keep them for me. She won't use them, she has her own. But this limits me to only having the money I can make in a week, and I will be forced to budget myself now. I dropped an unecessary sociology class for next trimester (I just liked the prof) and decided to take an entry level business accounting class instead. If I'm going to start up a freelance company it will help if I know how to do the books. To that effect also, I bought a book last night about how to begin your own freelance graphic design/illustration business, and so far it's been very informative and helpful.

My final exams for this crazy trimester are next week. I can honestly say that I enjoyed 90% of my classes these past 11 weeks. I took Abnormal Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Deviant Behavior (sociology), Career Capstone (required), Environmental Science, and Introduction to the Art of Film (which I hated, thanks to the professor). My major is Computer Graphics, and my concentrations are Desktop Publishing and Psychology. Interesting mix, yeah, but they're fun to know about. Weirdly, one of my customers at work was a computer programmer with a concentration in psych. I didn't think many people mixed them up at such far ends of the spectrum like me, but it was a cool coincidence.

As far as design work goes, my father's 52nd birthday is in March (the 15). I am planning to make him a custom Munny figure, another of the 4" minis. I have some grandiose plans for what I would like to do, but I don't have much time to do it in. I have a feeling the week of my break is going to be filled with a lot of sculpting and painting. I would like to model the Munny after my dad, and have it riding in an Avanti (a model of Studebaker he has coveted for many years).

I have plans for other custom Munnys as well, but they have been backburnered for now as this is a priority. I bought some dry-hard air drying clay to avoid having to bake this time around. I did some reading and found that Sculpey and Super Sculpey (as well as Fimo) tend to give off fumes while they are baking and should not be baked in ovens that food is also prepared in. My family has one oven, and I don't want to poison them with my projects, so this will be an experiment to see how effective this is. I also bought a put-together model of a 69 mustang that I am going to cannibalize for car parts. Mostly I just need the undercarriage and wheels, as I would like this contraption to roll. I bought spray primer this time round as well, to see if I have to apply fewer coats of acrylic paint/can prevent the paint chipping off. No sewing required this time around either, which is nice.

Since I shouldn't post without at least giving you something art-related to look at, I give you two photoshop doodles done over the last couple of weeks to keep me from getting too out of practice.