What a rare mood I'm in!

I'm so H A P P Y !!!

Why, you ask? Well, I found out (unofficially) that I got accepted into the Graduate Art Education program at UF last night! And the Professor told me I was one of their strongest applicants, so that served as the veritable orange marmalade on the coconut shrimp. :D

The Juried show went very well last night, I had a pretty fabulous time. Did lots of relaxing afterward, too. I've been sketching a bit and working on painting, a lot more of which I must, must, MUST get done today. And especially drawing--I haven't done nearly as much as I should be doing...in the past two weeks, I've only knocked out one of the thirty heads I need to finish (see below) and it's my own.

Hm. Changed the layout of this blog in order to celebrate newly-admitted status as a UF grad student. Paid for graduation regalia (although personally, I'd be perfectly satisfied just getting my diploma in the mail), and treated myself to a UFARTED shirt, now that I can really wear one.

This morning, I volunteered at the second monthly art camp for kids, working on sketchbooks. I had a lot of fun! Luckily, I got to work with the older kids (10-12+), which is what I LARGELY prefer. Had a few of the same ones we had last month--this one kid, Bernie, is my favorite. He's so funny! And talented--in January, he did this blind contour drawing of a steer skull that just blew me away. And this time, we worked with comic book themes and narratives. What happened was everybody came up with a name/character and wrote it down on a little strip of paper. They were then shuffled around and passed out again. Bernie got a strip this other little girl made, with a character named "Blush Bloom." Instead of following through and making it into a fey little fairy tale, he turned it into this crazy looking terminator flower-type that anything and everything, bombing national treasures and destroying important country officials. I affectionately refer to it as "Weed-Killa."

So I had a much better, more relaxed time than last month. Last time, I was just way too nervous and high-strung. I was better able to go with the flow and stay encouraging this time...but I still couldn't have done it without Lauren. She's such a big help, and she's on top of things. I'm not quite at that stage where I can take complete charge and know what's going on, but I hope to get better at it through more experience.

Alright, must go grocery shopping and geet to vork!

Ha-cha-chaa!

Good news! You know those foul paintings I was forcing myself to finish way back when? I got an A on them!!! And not because my hard work paid off, or that they suddenly became wonderful--they were still awful. I mean, it was as if I bought a little pot of liquid ass and smeared it all over the canvas. But JC liked them! And that means a lot, as he is my faaaaaaavorite professor, and he knows his stuff. Even if I don't understand what that stuff is. I'm just glad that apparently my terrible paintings had a little of that in them.

Unfortunately, I've already rested (oh, how I've rested) on those laurels, and critique for our other batch of paintings is one week from tomorrow. And in addition to that, there's also a sketchbook check on Tuesday. But it's all good, I've been sketching a little tonight, TBC (and ideally finished) tomorrow. I plan on shooting out the other paintings and getting them to a "finished" place by Tuesday, so he can tell me what's wrong and what I need to fix for Thursday.

That leaves drawing. I really have to work on that. I've been doing precious little work these days...got an serious case of the senioritus.

Well, juried show is Friday, and I have an art camp I need to volunteer for Saturday morning. Stupid me, I missed the prep meeting tonight...that certainly doesn't bode well for my Grad school apps. Oy!

Okeedokee. Must sleep (as if the 14 hours I had last night wasn't enough). Night!

Happy Chocolate Appreciation Day

Okay, so I'm working on getting my butt in gear for Drawing. Good news is, I got into the Juried show! YEEEEAH! And I finished framing my work (it's the horizontal vomiting picture), so that's done. Successfully applied for Grad school AND the position of a Graduate Hall Director (but I need to turn in my final letter of Recommendation for that), and I am soon to apply for financial aid.

Back to Drawing--I have an idea! That sprung from all the little dumb photoshop things I do for fun (recently, it was drawing myself as a Disney-fied princess). I'm making paper dolls! But instead of changing the clothes, I'm changing heads (ala Princess Langwidere). The base will be me, and the heads will be very generic versions of people I know (the Mother, the Scholar, the Model, etc) I think. Initially, it was going to be people I knew, but Julia asked me how people were supposed to know my relationship with them, and I wondered at that, too. So I'm not too sure what I'm going to do or how I'm going to go about...whatever I'm doing...but I'm thinking of coming up with 30 distinct "identities" and try and capture as much of that on one head as I can.

The size and scale are two troublesome factors I'm working on...initially, I had planned to draw them directly-proportional and life-sized, but now I'm leaning heavily towards the "Super-Deformed," extra-large heads (that make me look like a UFO doll). But I'm not sure how big I'd really want them to be...I think I'd like to make the heads about twice the size of a normal head, but the body about half the size of a normal body (or at least 2/3).

Well, I'm exhausted. Hopefully I'll get some work done tomorrow!