A man grows most tired while standing still.
– Chinese proverb (via zen-rocks-cowboyhats)
(via cloud10)
A man grows most tired while standing still.
– Chinese proverb (via zen-rocks-cowboyhats)
(via cloud10)
On a side note, someone purchased the original painting of the Hare’s Mask from me! It was a nice bit of income on a 8x10 watercolor! This was my favorite piece from this past school year. Currently hanging in the Manoogian Gallery at College for Creative Studies.
Teaching Little Ones
For the past few months I have been giving art lessons to a pair of 5 year old, twin boys. These little guys came into it with some already impressive skills. But over the past few lessons I have watched their comprehension of aesthetic and compositional value and hierarchy flourish! It is incredible to see another generation fall in love with the visual arts.
Two weeks ago, I taught these guys the rule Cezanne devised for breaking down all natural forms. Cezanne was the father of cubism. (Ask Picasso or Braque, they told me so!) Anyway, Cezanne theorized that every natural shape imaginable could be broken up into the three most basic shapes. Triangles, squares, and circles. From there, you can conceive any other object. You have a square? Visualize a building. You have a circle? A human head. Etc. I was amazed to find how easily these guys comprehended the concept.
Today is the first lesson in painting. I am about to immerse myself in a world of tempera monster trucks, dinosaurs and superheros.
Suck it up and DRAW.
This has been one strange year. I feel like using the term “stranger than fiction,” although that would be both a lie, and infringing on copyright. So I will stick with strange.
Had I not left my my initial first choice of higher education, School of Visual Arts, in the hustle and bustle of New York City, to come to College for Creative Studies, I would have graduated college this year along with the rest of my 2008 high school class. But as it is, I happened to add a minor in Product Design and coupled with a few jumbled credits in transition from SVA to CCS, I will be graduating next year. I watch from the sidelines as the rest of my highschool friends graduate from their “normal colleges”, Michigan State, Oakland University, UofM, Central.. etc. I stand by my decision 3 years ago to leave New York and come home to the mitten. Manhattan did wonders for a quiet, 18 year old white girl from south east Michigan. It turned me into the super hood 21 year old white ‘woman’ I am today. In all reality, NYC left me more confident, more outgoing, with a more established self worth, and to be frank, more bitchy. Thank you New York. I will be back. Next time maybe you can throw a few more trees, mountains and trails into the mix?
Detroit is .. gray and decaying, and beautiful all the same. It houses one of the most prestigious and accomplished private institutions of higher art education in the world. By the time I graduate, I will hopefully be as thankful for my education as I am at this moment. Anyone who goes to CCS knows full well how we all complain of the lack of sleep, the amount of work, and the tuition. Guess what? We chose to go here. Suck it up and DRAW.
The end of another year is here. Work is prepared for reviews, exacto accidents are imminent and impending, spray mount clouds the halls, and we as students, start to recover from a year of little sleep and much complaining.
So I bid you farewell for summer, CCS. I promise to complain about you to my friends as I have nightmares of you this summer. See you in the fall.
And this is why Hawaii is beautiful. I plan to go back and live there for a few years. If I can live in Manhattan, I can live in Hawaii. Running, Climbing, Hiking, Swimming, Surfing and DAILY pineapple? Tell me that isn’t heaven and show me what is..
It is 3:49 PM and I have gotten out of bed today only to get a bowl of cereal, use the bathroom, retrieve an apple from my fridge, reactive my Facebook after the great “Finals Boycott of 2012” and finally to convince myself to strap on my KSO’s and go for a run: in that order. Seeing as how I have gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 5 hours of sleep on average this year, due largely in part to the wonders of art making, I find today quite the accomplishment. The above is the view from my bed. It is warm and it is far away from the world of plethora of matte board, foam core, exacto knives and super 77 that await me in prep. for reviews.
Tomorrow will come soon enough. Ill prep then.
Let her down.
Winds down, sails down.
If plants could talk.
