Tonight is gonna be spent designing 21ish pages of inner matter for my book. I thought that it was a lot, but then I realized that it's all due by the end of class tomorrow. So that gives me more time. And also, I just have to 'place' the images on each page and then figure out how I'm going to incorporate design elements into it. Once I figure that out, things should go faster. I just need a solid, good visual style first.
I've decided on using the font Janson because I really liked it when we did the Pi dvd cover. And now I just hope that all the technical brushes I have are transferable over to macs because I really really need those brushes for the style I've decided to do - a technical line-oriented style, with gradients and horizontal lines. And the fact that the book is going to be bound and be an actual tangible book that I can hold and page through means that I have to do a good job. Oh, sigh.




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"We've got eyes that leave us in places we don't see."
- Handjobs for the Holidays Broken Social Scene

Kicia:





Is it weird that all the pictures I post are of the cat?

What better way to celebrate the first snow then by chasing your crazy cat outside.

I added links to people who also have blogs [on the right]. If anyone else out there in internet world has a blog and doesn't mind me advertising it, drop me a line and I'll add you. This just makes it easier for me to check people's blogs. Now I don't have to type it in or anything! Hooray for laziness.

Mr. Alan has kept asking me to update, and so I shall. But first I must reply to what Alan wrote in his blog; "I hope Maria will let me use her portfolio to apply, and in return, I might even buy her cleaning supplies for her when she starts out working for me and Patty." Of course I'll let Alan use my porfolio and put his name on work that I've spend countless hours on! After all, he's supplying me with cleaning supplies!
Hah!

Anyways. Saturday, I took a trip downtown, rode the L, and met up with my sister at the Art Institute. It was great! I've only been back home from Chambana for under a day and I already got to go downtown. Being out of the cornfields is awesome. And I got to act like a pretencious art student.
Picture time:


This is one of my favorite paintings. I mainly love it because of the painting underneath it that Picasso never finished. For those who don't know, it's a woman. Her face is right above the old man's ear and neck. You can't tell that well in my picture, but it's there.


This is titled "Odalisque" by Belololov Pavel. An Odalisque is a female concubine or harem. It's really beautiful and I wish that they didn't stick it up all the way on the wall. It should be eye level. And not up by the ceiling where there's always glare on it.


Claesz's still life. Still lifes rock! So beautiful. I love it.


This is one of my favorites in the contemporary paintings section. I really like this style of drawing.


My sister in the asian pottery.


Something new in the contemporary stuff.


Another one of my favorites. It says "Taken from here to where it came from and taken to a place and used in such a manner that it can only remain as a representation of what it was where it came from."


A new piece by Dali - "Venus de Milo With Drawers" It's great. [Those are pompons if you can't tell] His paintings are in the background.




The second picture is the view from the Cumberland L stop.

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My fat cat, doing the only thing she's ever doing [besides eating and running around outside]:



Monday night we had a sleepover after seeing Harry Potter, which was reallly damn good. The best one so far. I got a bit teary eyed at the end. And I never cry at movies.


We ate Darin's homemade thai food at 2. And then we ate more of Darin's thai food at 9. And it was delicious.

I'm finally done!! DONENDONEE. Yay! And I'm actually happy with it! I like my concept and I like my image integration. Go me. Oh, in case I was unclear: this is a magazine layout of a short story.

Page 1:


Page 2:


So here's the scoop. The only images that are not mine: the front page one of the mirrors and then the textures. I took the picture of that crazy drill and used my own handwriting for everything else. I'm really glad how this semester I've used alot of my own brushes and images for assignments. I'm so proud.

Nate found this in some magazine.

Well, tonight, instead of going to sleep like my body was telling me to, I was inspired.
And this is what happened in under 20 minutes of me throwing around images and brushes:



I love messing around with things like this. I usually do it when I think too much and have a lot of conflicting thoughts on my mind. And then I just bust out photoshop and don't think about what I'm doing or if it makes sense or if it's working or if it's balanced or any of that design bullshit.

Oh man, that was one of the best critiques we've had so far this year.
What I had in class today was pretty shitty and wasn't integrated properly and everyone's comments helped so much. It was great. I'm excited to fix things up.

Now I just need to bust out some paper and start re-drawing my 'grungy' line work.

This project is finally becoming fun.

I spent 4 fucking hours in front of a computer screen in the lab. And I got basically nothing done.
I hate InDesign. I HATE ITTTTTT. UGH. It pisses me off. I can't get any of the images to paste in properly. arghghghg.

WHYYY!??!
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My concept also makes no sense. The only good thing about what I have so far is the image I'm using.

I used that crazy contraption that Daniel brought to class. I erased the background and here it is. Though it may not be 'rough' or 'decayed' enough.
Also, we should not have taken those caffeine pills because now I'm going crazy and my legs and hands are shaking.

I'm finally done!! Here's the finished product:



I've worked on it for far too long, but I'm sticking with what I just came up with at the end - that squiggled circle thing. It just seemed to tie in those passages better. If you can't read, the smaller one says "12:50 Press Return" and the other larger one says "12:45 restate my assumptions" and has the 3 rules Max always voiced over during the movie. Eh, it works. I'm content with it.

And the art building needs a good smack in the face. [rant]
- when it was hot, they had the AC on. And it was fucking cold as hell.
- when it's cold outside, like now, the AC is still on in the computer lab. And my fingers are currently freezing off.
- the stupid old macs in the other rooms stink and are slow and die a lot. Or don't want to log me off. Or take like 5 minutes to register that my iPod is connected.
- and why in the world are the printers so uncalibrated! I waste so much money because I keep having to change levels.
- also, I hate paying for everything we print. I wish there was a way we could make that cheaper.
- GD kids deserve to have studio space. [at least we have pretty sweet chairs in the classroom] or at least a room in the computer lab devoted just to us - with the nice pretty new macs.
- and why isn't there a list of all the crazy stuff that the checkout window has! They apparantly have sewing machines and drills. Who knows what other useful/cool things they have.

Pictures from the weekend:


A bush by ISR.


Before the rain, when all you could see was the amazing lightening.


First signs of rain.


raaainn

His name is Mr. Franks. At the sight of the yellow vinyl chair, Franks starts a giggle that never goes away. It is to be a straight root canal -- drill, cut, file, melt, pack -- though nothing today will be straight, Boyden realizes. Once in the chair, Franks clamps his hands onto his belt buckle as if it were a signal mirror, then snickers at everything from the lidocaine needles to the endo files. Cammy installs the dental dam with a crisp snap.

Boyden flashes her one last smile, just to see if sex is out of the question.

That's what tends to happen after the last patient. They take turns reclining in the vinyl chair, and at their disposal are the air and water pistol, the saliva suction pump, the swing-arm grips -- like pommel holds, those things. The No. 7 nozzle is his favorite, and the Thompson L-handle Extruder, with the worm-drive extension, makes her speak in tongues. There's the pink numbing gel, the sonic gun, the rubber molding kit. They don green- and-blue scrub garb and tie their knots with yellow hose. Sometimes, for kicks, they chew the old-fashioned tartar pills that leave their mouths a foamy pink.

Right now, though, that feels a thousand miles away.

On the radio, Bobby Darrin sings, "Wear My Sweater."
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excerpt; from "Denti-Vision Satellite" by Adam Johnson. The short story we are doing a magazine spread layout for.
I wrote out a bunch of words and ideas from the story and should use that crazy visual thesaurus website to get more words out so finding images for those said words will be easier.

Here's my DVD cover for the movie Pi.



I'm going to change a few things based on Thursday's crit. But then again, the crit really wasn't that helpful because 3 people were picked to talk about everyone's respective work. And I know that it can be time consuming, but I just wish that everyone could say something about every piece. Because I didn't agree with some of the things they said. Sometimes we all just talk out of our asses.
But one thing mentioned was that I should do circles instead of squares for the text box and pictures, but that would be overkill - I already have a circle on the front and circle gradients. More circles wouldn't be balanced. And that would mean me redoing the whole entire thing and taking pictures, and making brushes. And that would take too much work/time.

But this project was fun. We finally got to use Photoshop. I've been getting sick of Illustrator.

Summer. Kicia asking for her food.

My socks have kittie cats on them. One of them lost his bowtie. :(