Baby’s On Fire

This semester is a turning out to be a a Jekyll/Hyde monstrosity of technology-heavy film-based work warring with traditional technical sessions of drawing and painting. I’m just happy that there’s barely any typography. It’s too early to really say much about the individual classes.  I am, however, steeped in nostalgia this week because of all the talk about narrative, film, and Citizen Kane. I  love Citizen Kane, not because of Citizen Kane, but because of Velvet Goldmine.

Velvet Goldmine, if you’ve never seen it or heard of it, is a glorious fanfiction fantasy from director Todd Haynes, who in short had the chutzpah to make a movie about David Bowie having a sexual affair with Iggy Pop set to the plot of Citizen Kane, drizzled thickly with Oscar Wilde references and topped with huge dollops of man candy in eyeliner and tight pants.

Looking back, it’s difficult to downplay the affect this movie had on me. I can’t count the number of books I’ve read, albums I’ve listened to, and movies I’ve seen that all somehow connect back to that initial mind-opening creative burst.  It drove me to discover entire planes of reality I didn’t know existed. There was something about its fantasy world where Victorian witticisms slipped as easily from everyone’s lips as their pants did down to their ankles that seized me. It was glamorous and raw all at once — inspirational, aspirational, and somehow comforting.

As a bored teenagers in the conservative suburbs, suffice to say my mind was blown. Kids these days have Lady Gaga. I had Velvet Goldmine. It’s recently been released on Blu-Ray, if you’re interested. Also, fair warning, you’re gonna see a few tits and dicks, so don’t say I never did anything for ya.

I would be the coolest kid in art school

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EVERLASTING GLORY

1 Down, 7 to Go

There are a million ways to go about my summary reflection of my first semester at Parsons. First, I’m going with the second installment of Excerpts of Awesomeness:

booyah

protips

What I’ve learned this semester about surviving design school:

 

 

Your first try is not your last try.

Drawing sucks? Do it again. Project going in the wrong direction? Recalculate. You are not a failure for making mistakes, but you are for not learning from them.

Other people may not know better, but they still know.

Taking suggestions, critique, and criticism is part of the game.  Just because you love a piece doesn’t mean it’s perfect. The opinions of your peers will also be the opinions of your clients. Learn to work with them.

Grow a thick skin and a level head.

Artists are nuts. College kids are nuts. People are nuts. Keep calm and carry on.

You’re in design school, not art school.

You’re here because you want a job, right? Well then your teachers are your clients and it’s your job to make them happy.

There is no academic credit for bitchassness.

You don’t get anything out of whining, making excuses, or blaming the world for your problems. Suck it up, man up, and show up.

Count your blessings. 

This is an amazing opportunity. Seize it.

Finals 2011

 

True dat, animation project, true dat.

Story of my life

This is the Story of Your Red Right Ankle

(Or, in which Sharon uses art school as an excuse to make fanart.)

One of my final projects is to make a book, or rather, the contents of a book. I’ve decided to go with the lyrics of “Red Right Ankle” by The Decemberists which is a lovely song that that Collin Meloy allegedly wrote about his then-girlfriend/now-wife/artist/illustrator/hand-draw-type-person Carson Ellis. It has some great imagery, and Collin & Co. always put music and lyrics together in a way that I like. In fact, I went through several of their songs before deciding on this one, because most of them have interesting, dense narratives that would make great books, but I certainly don’t have the time to make a book that would do the likes of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” any justice.

Anyhoo, I’m reading some metaphysical and imagist poetry to get in the mood, and doing some mental sketching (which for me is almost always more exciting than actual sketching). I’m also dusting off an old, aimless ink+watercolor illustration I did circa summer 2009, which is not great by any measure, but I like the way the hair turned out.

 

So it’s going to be a series of exaggerated, Romantic, Art Nouveau-type painted illustrations of a woman with tons of awesome hair and her lover. Because I have time for this. And because sleep is for pussies.

Lapses

I’m developing a bad habit of making silly photoshops. Sure, they’re for class, but art school’s supposed to be serious bizness.

 

Class registration! I got all the classes I wanted, minus art history, but a bunch of the art history classes listed aren’t even available to sign up for so I’ll fiddle with my schedule a bit when the semester starts. Oh New School, you cock tease, you.

Four more weeks in this semester! Holy crap I have so much to do. It feels like even when I’m doing exactly what I know I should be doing, that I’m still behind. BAH HUMBUG.

I even had a momentary mental collapse when I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for a class offered through the fashion design department. It seemed briefly perfect and perfectly hilarious to taking a freaking knitting class at my fancy schmancy design school and come out the other end with a snooty, pretentious view of knitting. Good thing the class’s time and location made signing up for it nigh-impossible, otherwise I might have started down the path to the dark side.

One of these days, I’m going to write extensively about my  love/hate-mostly-hate relationship with the fashion industry, but seeing as how I’ve blocked off an avenue of inspiration for the time being, that will just have to wait for some dim and distant day when I’ve had enough sleep. And cake. Please send cake.

Irresponsible Animation

NERD ALERT: Instead of taking notes in art history class, I sketched out the key poses of a short animation sequence that has nothing to do with the big animation project I should be working on.

My animation instructor is a fun character. You gotta love those teachers who make up a whole teacher persona, complete with catchphrases. Apparently one of this students in another one of his classes actually drew out a quick animation of him saying his catchphrase, which the instructor brought into our class and spent some time talking about how it could have captured his mannerisms better (not in a dickish way– the student’s animation was funny, but didn’t really capture the essence of the instructor).

So here are the beginnings of my version. Check out more of my shoddy cell phone pictures done in poor lighting:

“Was it done correctly?”

“The first time?”

“OF COURSE IT WAS!”

“I’m Rich Gorey fer chrissakes!”

Speaking of art history, the New School administration really needs to finalize their semester scheduling ahead of time. Registration has been going on for a week and a half now, and many of the instructors still don’t know their schedules yet, and we don’t know who’s teaching the sections for each class. I would very much like to keep my art history instructor for the second half of this 2-part course because he’s pretty awesome. Grumble grumble.

Big Animation Project Character Guides

Too many posts right now, I know I know, but seeing as how my life is going to get swallowed up by this ongoing animation project among other things very quickly, I’m getting things posted up while I still have time. Thanks to midterms, I’m not as far along with it as I’d like to be with it, but it’s heading in the right direction.

My instructor is wonderfully supportive. He told me as part of my mid-semester review that I don’t have to have it entirely finished this semester, and that if I’d like it to him as I keep working on my own next semester, he’d be happy to look at it and give me feedback. For practical purposes, I doubt I’ll be able to fully finish it with inked lines and color by mid-December, so I’m aiming for everything moving properly in pencil, because that’s the meat of what this introductory animation class is about.

There are lots of little odds and ends that will eventually get cobbled together into something presentable. In the mean time, these are some quick’n'dirty character guides of my two good guys, and the thugs that they get into a scuffle with at some bus stop late at night.

 

Four anatomically accurate characters fighting as my first real hand drawn animation? As if it wasn’t clear that I’m nuts before, well, uh, it should be now.