Summer

Well, school is over and summer has arrived!  Thank goodness.
I was swamped last month with projects and didn't have time to post anything.  I am excited to say that I have completed two oil paintings since the last time I posted.  Oil painting is a new thing for me, so I am proud of myself for being so ambitious.
One of the paintings was for a project at school and the other is for my church, however, when I started painting it today, I didn't know what it was for.  I am happy to say that I received an A on the one at school and am hoping that church will accept my piece for display.  We are having a series called "God Is __________" and each week we will fill in the blank.  The painting I did was for the week "God Is Creator."
This is how it all started:  I was babysitting this morning and needless to say, the little man was not having any of my ideas of "fun."  I decided that in order for the little munchkin to calm down and stop bouncing off the walls - going outside would be a good idea.  For there are no walls outside for children to bounce off of.  So, a walk around the neighborhood it was.  After a half hour of walking, he started asking me about a giant rubber ball that is in the garage along with my brother's motorcycle and an assortment of other manly interests.  It was time to go back home.  When we returned, he saw the box of crayons I had set out an hour earlier in attempts to distract him for the infamous outlet that he thinks is cute to try and tamper with.  I asked him if he wanted to color and he grinned and screamed (literally) "YES!"  I had made a commitment to myself to create a painting every 1-2 weeks over the summer.  Painting inside with a two year old is not advised, so I opted for the outdoors again.  In the late morning chilliness, I started to carry arm loads of painting supplies outside along with a folding chair and a table.  Little Jackson traipsed after me carrying handfuls of crayons and boxes of pencils...saying "Jackson gonna kuh-wer wif Wibby."  I brought some rubber balls for him to play with and sadly, those were vehemently rejected.  Between 8:00 and 10:00, he had already been in time-out 5 times.  His enthusiastic rejection (accompanied by a couple mischievous infractions of rules about climbing on grown-up bikes) ended with his bottom on the seat of a lawn chair and his head hung.  He needed his space.
I started painting over an acrylic painting that I had attempted to create for a friend over the last month.  I hated every stroke of that painting and I wanted to do something useful with the canvas.  I didn't have a plan when I started swiping a brown color that I mixed in my palette.  I just painted.  I was frustrated about 10 minutes in because I still had no idea what I was painting.  Over the next two hours, everything started coming together and I realized that this was something that I could submit to church.  It's funny how creativity works.  You can't plan it.  It just happens.
I decided that I needed to let the oil dry a little before splattering white paint for stars over it, so I brought Jack in for lunch.  He was in rare form today and was unusually frustrated with my rules.  He had visited "the chair" 3 times since being outside and had even placed himself there once on his own after I called to him to stop trying to climb on the bikes for the 106th time.
Lunch for Jack was an egg, two pieces of cinnamon toast, a piece of banana bread, a cup of juice, and most of a cup of milk.  That boy can pack it in.  I was tidying up the kitchen when I looked over at him and his head was swaying and his eyes drooping with exhaustion.  His nap came quickly after that and he (literally) went down without a peep.  He really is a good boy.


Here are the pictures of the two oil paintings. :)

Hello, and welcome to Hell Week

     Why is it so hard to stay on top of my work? Why is it hard to stay on top of my schedule? After all, it is my schedule. I know that I am not the first person to have a bad week, nor will I be the last person, but why,oh why, did my bad week happen on midterms week? Fellow students are rushing around, trying to keep their cool about all the projects, presentations, papers, bibliographies, outlines, thumbnails, sketches, and reading assignments that are all due within a matter of 5 days. Not to mention the endless hours of studying terms and concepts that teachers need you to know for their 15 page-long test. Concepts that you didn't understand when they were introduced in class, that you didn't understand when you read-over them in the quietude of your apartment later that day, the same concepts that the 67 people that you asked to explain it to you didn't understand either. And your test is tomorrow morning at 7:30. Wonderful. While on the inside you are crying and rocking yourself in a corner saying, "A mitochondria processes sugars. A mitochondria processes sugars. A mitochondria processes sugars..." over and over and over and over and over again. Not knowing that the few things that you actually do understand about the processes of the human body are not even going to be on that test. But, I digress.

      On the other end of the spectrum, the teachers are having a perfectly easy time keeping their sanity by watching all the little students carry 110 pound backpacks around campus because fellow professors mark students absent when they don't bring their 25 pound book to class everyday. They don't feel the need to email you back promptly. They don't feel the need to try to schedule a meeting with you to help you understand just what exactly they rambled about for 50 minutes the other day. They don't feel the need to push the test back even though they are 5 lessons behind because they talked about their dog too long for three class periods. Oh the joy of forgetting what it's like to be a student.

      Anyways, all of that to say that I had a pretty hard week. Well, I exaggerate when I say "hard." In fact, I've exaggerated this whole time, but again, I digress.

     My friend Sarah and I had this ingenious idea of getting up before the sunrise (6:20) to work out for an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Super, right? Right.

      Monday: Wake up, hop out of bed, work out, go to class, finish project in class, eat breakfast, go back to apartment, class in 2 hours, get work done, go to class, eat lunch, go to homework the rest of the day. Good day.

      Tuesday: Wake up, freeze while going to class, be crabby and antsy in class because you are still cold, freeze on the walk to the next class, be crabby and antsy in that class too because you are still cold, teacher changes the assignment for the project that you are turning, improvise and turn in a badly hand-written note along with project, eat lunch with a friend, go to next class, go back to apartment and try and study - meanwhile you are still crabby and tired and just want to quit school. Okay day.

      Wednesday: Wake up at 3:30am and say to yourself, "you still have three hours to sleep, Libby. Go back to bed." Wake up 4.5 hours later and say to yourself, "holy crap, I missed my workout with Sarah." And then, "holy crap. My class started almost an hour ago and a project was due and critiques are the most important thing to this professor and he just chewed someone out last week for being late and he will make a scene if I go in there now I can't go to that class because I will be embarrassed oh my gosh this has never happened to me before I can't believe I did this this was so stupid of me what will happen I bet I will get marked down for not being there this stinks." And then after all that, you think, "I need to shower." And then proceed to run out of the room, crazy-haired, wide-eyed and say to your roommate in a weak and panicked voice, "WHAT TIME IS IT?" Even though you already know what time it is, you just want further confirmation that you did, indeed, just sleep almost two hours past when you should have. The rest of the day goes strangely quickly, you turn in a project in the next class, go back to the apartment and realize that you have not studied at all for the midterm test that you have tomorrow morning and so you spend hours doing that, you ditch talking to your boyfriend in order to study, you eat too much because you are emotional and you don't go to the gym in the evening like you swore to yourself that you would because you slacked that morning. Not so good day.

      Thursday: Wake up, work out half the amount of time that you promised you would to punish your body for yesterday, eat breakfast, ace your midterm, freeze on your way back to the apartment, pack for home, freeze on your way to your next class, watch a boring movie in class, eat lunch with a friend and have a really good conversation about predestination, go to class, go back to the apartment to find my car door hanging wide open (nothing is gone, but you are still ticked), forget that you left your pillows in your friends' room and realize that it is locked and none of them will be back for a couple hours and you have a hair appointment in an hour and you have at least an hour drive back home so you ditch your pillows, get home, get hair done, and run on the treadmill for the second time that day and end up burning about 700 calories and feeling like you're going to die. 

      But everything is okay now because you are on Spring Break. I think someone should make t-shirts that say, "I survived the week before Spring Break '11."

     Anyways, here are the two projects that I turned in this week.

"Freedom" Cut paper.

"Thanks" Screenprint.

I am hoping to be able to sell the thank-you cards if anyone is interested.

News! News for the Deaf Ear!

      I still have yet to find the courage to post regularly.  I'm not even sure that anyone has seen my page.  I don't even want to look at my page views, for fear that the total will only be equal to my own views.  So, I will blindly keep pecking away at this keyboard - hoping that one day, someday, I will be known.  Well, not really.  I don't really care if I'm "known."  I just want people to see my work and say, "Wow.  That's nice. I wonder how she does that."  I can dream.  And until that happens, I will dream.

     I am taking three studio classes this semester.  Illustration for Publication, Printmaking II, and Graphics.  For Illustration, we were told to copy three artistic styles in a self-portrait.  Here are my attempts to be like the masters.

Style:  Henri Matisse

"Red Stripes" Self-Portrait - Oil Pastel

Style:  Kathe Kollwitz

"Laugh"  Self-Portrait - Charcoal and Ebony Graphite

Style:  Brittany Barclay (found on a blog)

"Pensive" Self-Portrait - Graphite and Watercolor

     

     In Printmaking, we were told to use three layers of color in our composition.  I was an over-achiever and did 4 layers.  (Little did I know the hell it would put me through because of my complete naïveté of screenprinting).  Here is my first attempt at screenprinting.

"Back Against the Wall"  Screenprint

     Just this morning, as I was sipping coffee and writing a letter to my boyfriend, I began to daydream about the times when I will be able to draw what I want to draw and when I want to draw it.  I will be able to be as minimalistic, or as crazy as I want to be.  No more due dates, or assignments.  No more "I want to see a little bit more here" or "hold back there" or "start over"s.  Not to say that I will not have to work with those as an illustrator, but I (hopefully) will have times in-between clients to do what I want.  I want to convert a barn into an art studio and thrive as an artist in my creative climate with the smell of old wood, paint, chalk, and outside air sweeping through the atmosphere and creeping up my nostrils.  The thought of it thrills me.  I can imagine why Jackson Pollock found so much freedom after he moved to the countryside.

One day.

Until then, I will keep painting and drawing for grades, trying to figure out who I am in this gigantic world of artists that are better than me.

Who Do I Think I Am?

Ever since watching the motion picture Julie and Julia, I have wanted to create a blog.  But, I could never really find a reason to, and all of the semi-decent reasons I thought of were quickly pushed away as I thought to myself, "and who would want to read about that?" 

Well, here I am, attempting to prove to myself that I, Libby, do in fact, have a good reason to blog.

To put it simply:  my art.

I'm an art student (and always will be).  I like to think of myself as a mini Michelangelo who wisely said, "Ancora imparo," or "I am still learning" at age 87.  I know that I will never be totally satisfied with the amount of knowledge I will obtain about art and artists and techniques.  It honestly makes me feel quite overwhelmed when I think of all that I don't know.  

I don't know a lot.  

But I know a little.  

And that little bit is what drives me to draw.  I love to draw.  I love to explore different mediums.  I love how oil pastel feels when little chunks of it are stuck in the crevices of my fingerprint as I smudge the colors together.  I love the grittiness of charcoal as you push it onto your paper.  I love the smell of graphite and the noise it makes on clean paper.  Being an artist is exhilarating.  

My mom has always told me (as many mothers have told their daughters), "Do what you love and you will love what you do."

I love creating.  I love being an artist.

And that is where my life begins.