I'm back in school

And that means I'm back to having reasons to post!

At risk of missing out on sharing everything I've done this summer, I'm going to jump right into my schedule for the year. I've only got two art classes this semester, shame shame... Oil painting (which is terrifying, but my teacher seems very determined to make it a learning experience at everyone's level) and character design! And so far, I LOVE Character design.
Here's the first warm-up we did for the year, a "Mark".

This Mark is a guy who we as a Character Design group spotted walking out on the Quad, watched for about a minute, and then drew from memory. The exercise is to make a character out of the person, using the most noticeable attributes…for this Mark, it was his heavy walk, skinny jeans, oversized backpack, and oversized hat.

Fun fun activity and I’m looking forward to more of these!

Besides my two art classes, I'm also taking Pearl of Great Price, Dinosaurs, and Art History. My PoGP professor is an Egyptologian as well as a scriptorian and so far, his desired balance of academic study with religious study is right up my alley. I'm VERY excited for that class. My Dinosaurs professor is a working paleontologist and every lecture we've had so far has been utterly fascinating. He's also a bit eccentric, as all paleontologists apparently are, and so it's really fun.

So far, I'm in for a good year! And I'm VERY glad that my backpack doesn't seem to ever be as heavy as poor Mark's.

Textures!

I'm in another Digital Illustration class this summer, working with Justin Kunz. He's a worked as a texture artist at Blizzard, working on the terrain and skies for World of Warcraft which is (obviously) a pretty big deal.

So, he assigned us to make some textures. Which sounded awful at first...I've tried to do things like textured backgrounds in pieces before and let's just say it's not my strong-point. Mainly because I don't have that kind of patience.

But the nice thing about doing texture-tiles, as Justin makes and as big video game companies ask, is that you're just doing a small square of details. Not an entire mountain range, just a few square feet that repeat and cover the mountain entirely. And I found out that I LOVED making textures!

Tree Bark

Snake Skin

Probably the best part of the assignment wasn't the work itself, however. It was definitely the critique afterwards. When I approach art assignments, I like to pretend I'm on a reality TV show- I need to try my best to win, and if I get in the bottom two, I sure better lip-sync for my life save myself with an awesome re-do. And lately, I've been...well, not performing as great as my fellow students. But with this assignment? Guys, I think I actually got the MOST praise out of everyone!

Justin LOVED them. And teh snake skin one particularly, he was going nuts over the color and texture, as far as asking me how I did it! He praised my color usage and said that was where my talent lies, that I can use my talent in color to propel my drawing abilities and support me. Which is both incredible advice, coaching, and SUCH a compliment. (Justin is also a Color Theorist, so he knows what he's talking about.)

Anyway, so that's that assignment. It was actually the second of the summer, but the first iiiisn't quite up to posting-on-the-internet scruff yet.

(By the way, these both totally tile North-South and East-West seamlessly!)

Never ever gonna stop, even if you get The Chop

I'm honestly not sure how many of you know this, but over the course of this school year I had an epiphany. I really want to be an elementary school art teacher. (I'm totally blaming this on my Expository Writing for Elementary Ed Teachers course. I just took it because it looked fun, okay?!) Obviously, as an Illustration major, that's not what I'm learning right now, so I've been looking at grad schools to get a masters in Art Ed at a program that also gives students their teaching certificate. I LOVE Illustration. I LOVE telling stories through art, getting callouses on my fingers from painting all day, making people laugh and smile and understand because of what I create, and I cannot wait for the day I hold a book in my hand that I illustrated. I cannot wait for children to pore over my work, for it to make them smile, for it to make them want to be better people. That's what I want to do. Art has power and it makes me happy. Illustration has, and continually will, change the world.

But Illustration as a career is fickle. It's a "feast or famine"  job, and if you don't have a family, you're working alone every day of the week. Many illustrators combat that by teaching.

The thing is, I don't just want to teach because I want a steady income and coworkers. If I wanted that, I could go back to working at Disney World, where I was incredibly happy regardless of the job. If I just wanted income and coworkers, I wouldn't be going to grad school and uprooting my life and spending more money.

In Becca's writing class, surrounded by future elementary ed teachers and taught by an incredibly gifted professor, teaching is a bug. The desire to change lives, to shape children, to offer them an education that says "Yes, you can. And you will."...that's something I want to do. I have ALWAYS loved children and I have ALWAYS loved teaching them. There was never any better moment in babysitting than when I connected with a child or taught them something that they remember. Even just presenting for a small project we had in Becca's class, when I looked out and saw a classmate's eyes get bigger and brighter and her mouth form the universal "o" of understanding, my heart leapt. Tiffanie and I volunteered at a local third grade classroom our freshman year for a class and those days were always my favorite days of the week. I know art has power, I know art classes have incredible merit and necessity, and I know I can bring that power to children. The way I want to change their lives through my artwork, I can change their lives through their own artwork, too. If Illustration has the power to change the world, think of what power art has when you're teaching an entire generation how to use it best!

So this epiphany, this life-changing decision, came a few months back.  Over the past few weeks, I have been applying for BYU's BFA program. We've got the Illustration program, which I'm in, and the BFA program, which is for the Best of the Best. Great void, I am - according to the illustration professors at BYU - not the best of the best. Basically, they said, "We don't think you have the aptitude to make it with the big boys, so get out of our hair and graduate faster." This news crushed me. I wasn't very hopeful, if I'm being honest. I knew the kind of talent I was up against, I knew the skills I lacked...what I didn't know was that, due to it being so late in the game for me as a junior in college, I wouldn't get a second chance. My plan to get into that elite BFA and study closely with teachers and colleagues for an extra year of school has been destroyed. This plan that I've had since I started school, the eternal joke with my friends that I would never graduate from BYU, this chance to take classes that groom me artistically and professionally as an illustrator have been stolen from underneath me. These teachers as a whole don't have faith in me. According to my "Plan B" major map, I am poised to graduate in exactly one year, far earlier than I ever expected and technically a semester earlier than BYU expected, since I went to Disney for a semester.

What I realized yesterday, after hours of listening to my "Eat it and Gag" playlist and half a tub of Ben & Jerry's (that's a Shakespeare and Drag Queen reference...you'd be surprised how often those two go hand-in-hand), was that all this has happened happened at exactly the right time. My epiphany was crucial to my acceptance of my rejection! If I didn't have plans to further my education already, being thrown out into the Big Blue World and trying to survive as an Illustrator without even teacher support would be absolutely petrifying!

At least now I know that even IF they're right (which they're not...you'll see, you'll all see!), I'm going to get more education to improve my art AND improve my career options. I'll leave this school next year and sure, never live in a pretty townhome with Tiffanie or have a BFA show all to myself in the HFAC, but I'll get out of here. I'll find a school that appreciates me individually. That grooms me to be the best darn professional ever. And when I get my teaching job, I am going to make every single student know that I believe they CAN succeed if they try hard enough. I'm going to be living proof of that to them, with published illustrated books on my teachers' desk.

Who knows, maybe I'll even frame that dumb rejection letter next to my teaching certificate and Caldecott medal.

I don't need to spend an additional year being artistically groomed by professors that don't respect me and with classmates that don't know my name. I can choose to leave and choose to find additional education with a new group of professors and a new group of colleagues. I can choose to start over. Let me be very clear: BYU is an AMAZING art program with INCREDIBLE teachers. But I took too long to figure out how to love and improve myself. BYU is an efficient, degree-giving machine and I fell by the wayside out of my own laziness. I can choose to pick myself up from the floor with my Bachelor of Arts in Illustration and have the New Alaina be accepted and honored at her New school.

Here's what I'm getting at, through sharing this. If I discovered that I wanted to teach NOW, I think the idea of "those who can't; teach" would be haunting me much more than it is. Illustration is what I love, and I'm going to do it and use it to improve my classroom. I'm already in contact with the art teachers from the elementary school down the block from my apartment. They are thrilled to have me volunteer to help and learn from them, already giving me chances to prove my worth and help change lives. After months of rejection after rejection after rejection, I'm being told "Yes, we want you". Even if they just want me for my free labor, they want me. And I want this. It feels so good to read those emails from those excited art teachers. I can't wait for the day I'm the excited art teacher, getting emails from parents who have seen a change in their students as they find passion in art. I'm going to believe in those kids and give them a confidence to take with them through every rejection adulthood throws at them. I want that life more than I want an additional year at BYU and another letter on my diploma.

Look, Ma! It moves!

Suzy wanted us to try animating in photoshop (so we can make e-books or whatever) before the semester and gave us a little over 2 hours to work on it as an exercise. I haven’t animated in photoshop (…or at all) for about five years, so it was FUN to realize what I do and don’t remember.

(And yes. It’s choppy. I realize. But I also was getting kicked out of the classroom soooo)

I've always enjoyed doing little things like this on Dad's palm pilot, but I can safely say animation is just a hobby. E-Books would be the extent of my professional use. ;)

General Conference Notes

If I were an excellent person, I would fill this post with actual notes about conference. I LOVED this past conference session and felt that every talk had some great merit, many talks were crucial to my life, and some just pierced me right to the soul.

However, I am kind of really pressed for time right now (Finals are quickly approaching, my BFA portfolio is almost due, finals again are quickly approaching, and edits on every single art piece I've done this year so far are also due...uh...today), so I can't spend my Wednesday afternoon writing a long-winded post about Conference. And honestly, if I DID have time to devote to this blog right now, I'd give my header a makeover. I look at it and all I can hear in my head is Meg from Hercules, saying "weak ankles".

So instead, I'm going to share some of my doodles, or how art kids needing to work on their faces/positive feature exaggeration take notes.
These were all done within the time of the talk, so roughly 5-10 minute sketches. I posted a few on Instagram, but not all of them. I'm not even sharing all of them HERE, just nine of my favorites. Because I really believe that all the readers of this blog saw conference, so you guys might be amused.

 

Older people are the BEST KIND OF PEOPLE to draw, by the way. So much character in their faces, so many important lines, and such great expressions! And best of all, I seem to remember the talks of those I drew better than of those I didn’t. Which is kind of the opposite of what I thought would happen, goooo figure.

The Creation of Ganesh

This here is “Creation of Ganesh”, for a gallery show on “Tales from India” in BYU’s library. It’s photoshop, and it was suuuuch a fun piece to do. I had so many learning experiences, too!

Quick summary of the story behind this piece: Parvati (not shown) wanted to take a bath, so she created a little man out of white mud to protect her. He (Ganesh) was instructed to not let ANYONE into the bathhouse. So along comes Shiva (blue god), wanting to see Parvati, and Ganesh wouldn't let him through. Angry, Shiva cut off Ganesh's head. Parvati was FURIOUS, as any woman who just basically created a son would be if her husband chopped off his head, and demanded Shiva find a worthy replacement. To be worthy, the head had to be facing north, and the first individual facing north that Shiva found was an elephant. So in this scene, we see Shiva, attaching the elephant head to Ganesh's body, thus creating the God Ganesh.

A lot of my best friends from high school are Hindu, so I was thrilled to hear about this show and do a piece from it. Ganesh was always my favorite Hindu god, so I knew I wanted to do his story right away. And I showed this to one of said Hindu friends, by the way: she LOVED it. She said that Shiva is never portrayed this way, but it totally makes sense. Parvati totally wore the pants in the relationship, so of course he'd be terrified to see if it would work! And that is exaaactly what I was going for. Not commonly portrayed, but still respectful and still super accurate.

If you happen to be at BYU anytime in the next few weeks, come check this out! This is the first time I'm in a specific gallery show at school besides the "Freshman Core Show", where I had a whopping 3 pieces. But since this one was themed, it feels a little more...elite.

(which is totally silly, because EVERYONE in my class "got in" to this show, since my teacher's the one hosting it, and that freshman show was actually competitive.)

Anywaaay, the show's on the second floor of the Harold B. Lee Library, down the hall towards the family history center. There are two classes participating and a whole breadth of talents displayed. It's a fun, iiitty bitty show! And you can see this same piece, but behind glass and a frame instead of a computer screen!

Chicken a la Chicken Comp Sketch

Yes, I know, it’s a terrible camera phone picture. But I’m only showing off a WIP of a sketch comp anyway, so I think we can all forgive this little faux-pas.

I love comp review days. The journey between thumbnail and comp is one of my favorite parts of a piece and with this project, I loved it even more than usual. I mean, what’s more fun than drawing a chicken putting on a chicken suit, huh? There’s not much!

But even after creating my comp, I got to show it off to Chris, and he really loved it. Most important to me, he laughed. And that, great void, is what I LOVE. Making people laugh or smile or that magical combination of the two with an art piece of mine.

It’s moments like today that just remind me, yeah. This is what I want to do. I want to make fun art that brightens days and makes children giggle, reading under their bed sheets with a flashlight.

(and her right wing looks a little dink, now that I’ve been staring at this, writing up my meta. Ooops.)

And almost one year later...

I'm posting again. Would you look at that??

I'm actually cheating on Blogspot. In our Digital Illustration class, we have to create a portfolio website (mine is still being tweaked to perfection: I'll post a link once it's satisfactory) and an art blog to go alongside. So, looking at it professionally, I decided to host my art blog on tumblr. It's a blogging system that really works better for artists than blogspot does, because along with following, it's a very VISUAL display. The search function is easy, the audience is wide, and artists can repost eachother's work with complete credit.

I'm not supposed to be advertising tumblr right now, so I'll stop talking about that.

The important thing is that while I made my first post on that blog, I thought, "hey, I should cross-post to Blogspot! My family might care about this stuff, too!" And if I'm getting myself in the habit of blogging again, I can come here to post non-artsy things as well.

I know, I know, I missed an entire year of living in Disney World. But realistically, I've always preferred blogging about daily life anyway. Things we can all relate to. I like to find the Extra in the Ordinary, because that is how you make your life extraordinary.

or at least that's gonna be my excuse.

And I'll fix my header to something a little less Disney soon enough- my mind is still in Epcot half the time, so I'm not in a rush ;)