Coming back from the Art Store

Feels good to blog again.. but I need to stop making typos ;_;

Came back home just in time before the snow storm started lol. Man what good timing. On Monday I spent my day after class buying $150+ worth of art supplies. The professor gave us this massive list of stuff to buy, even after my little shopping spree there was still about a third of the list left to buy =_=. After spending so much money on books it really sucked to watch so much more go into the art supplies. It was pretty cool buying my own portfolio and everything but jeez the stuff can get pretty damn expensive. At least it's a "one time" buy sort of thing.

I'm so glad I finally got a digital camera, I've been taking pics of everything...

I bought the more old fashioned looking portfolio. I think the measurements were like 23 x 33 or something, so it was just the right size for me. Honestly I wish I had gotten the portfolio with the strap-on so I could carry on my shoulder rather than lugging it around all the time. But oh well, its just another way to work on my manly muscles.

Bristol paper pad and a Sketchbook so far. And yeah, 1st project is all about dots lol

It's kinda neat carrying around for the first time. Because people really do look at you and think "oh hey this guy must be a real artist" and whatnot haha. But I'm pretty sure I'll grow to hate carrying the thing as time goes on since it'll probably get pretty heavy as the semester drags on. We apparently have 12-14 fat ass projects to do this semester. Which is pretty nuts considering that is what you would typically do during a regular high school year in an art class. So basically imagine all that work and probably a lot more being squeezed into like what? 4 months or something X.X.

So I bought the big important "one time" purchases on Monday, unfortunately I didn't really want to carry an Art Bin along with the portfolio with my school bag hanging from my shoulder all at once so I neglected to buy it until today.

I feel more like a construction worker carrying it around

So today I went to buy all the other dispensable sort of stuff. I bought my brushes, sumi ink, pencils, pens, painter's tape, ruler, knife, triangle.... I bought a lot of stuff. The list was pretty long but when I put it altogether into my box it felt juuuuuust right lol.

I felt like such a baller when I threw it all together

One thing that is going to haunt me forever is the price of paint. Paint is soooo expensive. I bought a decent tube of it for like I think $13.99 or maybe $15.99. I'm not sure how long the tube will last me for, but it doesn't look like it'll be too long seeing how big our projects need to be. I could only afford to buy 2 tubes, Mars Black and Titanium White. If I went and followed my professor's orders, I'd be buying those $30 jars =_=. Plus this is just black and white, there's still other colors to buy >.<. 

Well aside from all that stuff, I was also required to have a digital camera. Never in my life have I ever had a camera, and shit it's pretty damn fun taking pictures. I think taking pictures from an art perspective is by far one of the most exciting things I've done in a while when it came to art. I'm quite positive now that taking photos of scenery you want to illustrate is a really really good way of practicing. Some of the pictures I've seen of like a full blown out scene really made me question whether or not an artist drew everything off the top of their head. In the case of George Seurat, that guy and other like-minded guys spent a lot of their time visiting different places and sketching them out so that they would have ideas to put out on canvas when it was time. So it's certainly a good thing to take photos and use em as reference. One of these days I'm going to take a pic of my desk and computer and draw my own little "anime girl in your room" sort of thing LOL. There's sooo many pieces that people have made with that, it's not only awesome for the artist (lawl) but it's also a ton of fun to look at. To be honest I'll probably have to set my anime illustrating passions aside and focus on doing the usual realism sort of work. It'd be a little embarrassing to bring in projects loaded with people with big eyes and ridiculous long hair lol. 

Here's an example

I really really loved how this room was illustrated. It's exactly what I want to try to draw at some point. Although it could've been done straight off from the top of the artist's head, I highly doubt it, unless their that amazing- that's always a possibility. There's just soooo much attention to detail. One of the problems of trying to imagine what a room would really look like is the fact that the things that naturally accumulate and clutter up in a room are extremely difficult to process into your head. I'm also suspicious of this artist simply just uploading the photograph and simply recoloring it over while keeping all the perfect lines. Whenever I've done a "room" type of drawing, it always comes out really uncivilized. Human homes aren't natural because of all the perfectly straight lines there are that exist. In this pic, the artist did such a good job of making every detail look perfect that it makes you say "wow, it feels like a real room."

Another Example

Yeah yeah more Hatsune Miku lol... This is one of the pics out there that I believe to have been made from scratch. There's nothing in particular in the pic that stands out as something you would recognize right away in reality. Sure there's a rubik's cube and a goddamn old school Mac but those are two objects you'd rarely see in a common household. If anything I'm quite sure that whoever did this, probably took the foundations of some room and added to it. Because seriously who the hell would still have an old Mac like that lol. In the future I'm pretty sure that this is probably what I'm going to come up with when I give it an attempt, and hopefully I'll make that attempt in the summer during my Computer Applications class, where I'll finally learn how to use Illustrator, Photoshop, and w/e else there is.

But for now... just gotta keep drilling those basics. I should probably pick up other foundation courses too..

A New Start

Yeah.. I've definitely almost lost myself these past few months. It's like stuff you would see in a psychological satire, but in reality, it's very real. It does happen. People go a little nuts at some point in their lives, I think we all do. But when we recover from it, we grow to become better people.

So how about an update?

Dear Me,

So the past 6 months, I've been sitting in the shit hole, and just this month I was hoisted from the pit of shit and brought back into the warm light of life.

Haha, well thats a short TL:DR summary of the events that have happened to me the past few months. I mean I took off a semester, involuntarily, which a huge difference from taking off a month voluntarily. So it was pretty painful, I had trouble keeping myself composed and whatnot. On some days (like the last 2 entries) I would just have random thoughts or rants (outbursts tbh), it was really silly, and IMO also pretty damn immature of me =(. It was really tough, I don't like to bitch, but for real- it was tough. If anything it has been one of the biggest life changing things I've had in my life so far. I never ever wanted to go back to school so badly.

Annnnd, swinging back to the present- I'm back! Back in school, finally. Like this past week, although I have to wake-up at 5:30 AM every week to commute, I've never felt so relieved and so goddamn happy. It's such an amazing feeling, to be happy. Like holy shit lol, I just don't how to describe it. If anything, my overall wellbeing has improved dramatically, just because I finally dragged myself out of my mixed solemn state of depression and insanity. Everything around me just seems so clear and wonderful. It's like, all the bullshit in the world doesn't affect you anymore, because you've got your mind focused on more important things. 

So I dropped my Global Business/Finance double major. I didn't like it. I didn't want to spend my college life digging around through stacks of numbers and vague economic concepts. I switched over to ISOM, which is Information Systems Operations Management. Which is basically the business side of using computers to deal with company data and what not. My specialty =). Plus it also has a wide range of possible careers which includes dealing with running websites, managing corporate data, computer technical work, database management, the list goes on. But they are all careers in which I would verrrrry comfortable working in. 

And as for minor.... ART!!! FRIGGIN ART!!!!!!DIAS()D*()YNDAJ YEESSSSSSS!

Best decision I have made in my life so fucking far. I mean seriously, I'll put it down right here, January 2011, best decision in my life thus far. I love it so much. I can't believe I didn't minor in art as a freshman. Seriously. Here's the deal. If you don't follow your passions at all in any way shape or form, you are making a huge mistake in your life. Huge. I've been very skeptical about it, but now I've confirmed it. Always follow your passion, even if it's a far out sort of dream, you can always still follow it in some way- no matter how unrealistic it may seem. There's always a way.

I'm going to turn this blog into mainly an art blog. I've put up things in the past and made some good progress by sticking things and critiquing them heavily with my own efforts. In truth, well with the new knowledge I have, I discovered that my way of trying to learn things was actually really flawed. I was taught as a child that using references to draw things was bad. In truth its what you're actually supposed to do in order to improve yourself at a quicker pace. As for the design aspect of art, or in other words- the creative side, that too can be taught. But of course rarely anyone has any clue as to how to exercise their brain properly in the creativity field, so I was doing very little by myself trying  to desperately come up with the most oddest looking designs.

Ever since I've taken my art course, I improved quite a good bit. Maybe not so much on the technical side, but a lo ton the fundamentals side. I was lacking the most in my fundamentals. I just had no direction in whatever I did, as a result progress was slow and often discouraging. 

Right now it's still pencil and ink, but it's like on a whole other level compared to my old work. The design exercises so far have been super useful. It's awesome when you can go to school, and then go home right after and use what you've learned right away. 

This is what I was drawing tonight as I wrote this blog. Originally it was a doodle, because I needed to practice drawing "Dots" (lol) for the first project. I'm thinking about finishing it up, and putting it on my big bristol paper and ink it with sumi ink. I really liked how the design classes can give you ideas.

Some more drawings I did to practice. These are really recent, using the new things I learned to my advantage. Learning to draw figures practically requires you to use something as a model. It's just not possible to Learn it by imaging it in your head. Well actually you can do it all in your head, but you'd probably come out with some abstract looking figures. I like mine with well defined proportions that I can agree with lol.

More practice sketching. Gotta push those boundaries and flesh out poses that I'm not comfortable with drawing, it's the only way to improve. And if I can't do it using my own head, then I'll just find something to refer to. In France they often had nude models pose for young aspiring artists to draw them. So there really was a place for using things as models. 

Basically this entire time, I've been approaching art the completely wrong way. Right now I probably still need some guidance, but if I keep taking these classes and practicing, I'm bound to become a pretty legit artist. So far I like how much better I've gotten. If I compare my current little mini personal project which is the first picture on the blog, to things in my old forgotten gallery there's a noticable difference. I really have a good feeling about this year. I really do.

It's New Day

I hate awful blogs. Like the one below this one >.<. It's really awful lol. I can't even look at it. More over I'm surprised that people have read it, but thank you to the people that have.

I guess you could say I'm in the midst of picking myself up, and I've decided a good way to go about it is to try something completely new. Which is.... writing =O!

Reading Manga, short stories, web articles, it's one of those little productive things you'd do that don't really get mentioned to friends. Before I was really big on drawing and everything, but lately it's been hard to sit down and try to create something that I really can be satisfied with. Everyone has their own little thing that they do in order to please themselves. Everyone has something that they do so that at the end of the day they can nod their heads and say "Hmm, yup that looks good to me." Maybe even after all these years, graphic art isn't for me =(, or maybe I just having been going about it the right way. Either way, it's become a bit too much of a hassle to try to put aside time as well as gathering materials to make art. So I thought, hey, maybe writing will be more convenient.

Being a big critic on anime and manga, I'm pretty sure I'll tear myself apart when rereading the crap I write. I went onto some community forums and the advice they gave me is to basically write my balls off and read a shit ton which I'm glad I already do.

This is probably why people make those blogs full of random stories. A while back I used to browse blogs to burn time and once in a while I would stumble upon blogs that would make absolutely no sense. There would be no beginning thought and concluding thought, and each entry seemed to be entirely different from one another. It was only until I did some minor detective work (searching further back in their history) to find obscure comments of what they liked and what they didn't like about their writing, that I understood that what they were doing was just keeping work in a safe place- the internet.

Not a bad idea, I did something like that too except with anime reviews. Most of them were awful, but the Minami-Ke one was my particular favorite, the best one I've made, and the last I've made since lol.

Well time to turn on some music and just make my fingers do work.

Living a life of Satire

It's been a constant downward spiral. I really wonder how low I'll keep going until I finally pick myself up. I wonder why I stopped visiting my own blog. The internet is such damned place sometimes, maybe that's why I try to stay away from expressing my thoughts through blogging, after all anyone could be reading it. But maybe that's why I get the urge to come back once in a while and do a blog, only to delete it when I realize it's really stupid to share my pointless thoughts. How many times have I done this? Too many =P. It'd probably be better to just keep a personal journal. Shit, but the allure of someone on chance to stumble across this blog is so attractive and exhilarating. They would be like "haha, get a load of this shit guys". Being a little cynical here? Well it's true isn't it? I can't count how many times I've shared those "fail" videos and images to my netizen friends. If anything at least it's proof that they've acknowledged my existence.

But honestly I only get the urge to actually go out of my way to blog when I get that "forever alone" type of feeling. That's kind of how I feel today, it's been a horrible day. Such a shitty day. Before I blogged because, you know, it'd be a fun little project to record my thoughts over my life. But sometimes it's not just fun, sometimes its fucking necessary to reach out- even a little bit, to prove to yourself that you're still alive.

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I don't know. Today sucks. I won't say why, because I'm talking to myself here. I already know why. But leaving a note behind saying that this specific day sucks will be well worth it. My life keeps spiraling down. How will I be in 2 - 3 years? I don't know, I really just don't know. I hope that if I do happen to look back at this blog maybe I'll be able to finally come to terms with myself and just do SOMETHING.

I feel like I'm in a silly satirical cartoon. Ever watch the movie Taxidermia? That stuff is like a big mind-fuck. And my mind is doing some serious fucking right now. Nothing good has been happening. I don't have anything good to share. Well maybe I could say I'm a fucking amazing actor, for putting up a smile while working at my shitty job, and saying "How are you doing today?" as if I'm the happiest person in the world. Shit the liquor store guy next door seems to have been pulling it off for fucking years and he looks just fine.

At least I'm not alone. I read a blog about a 28 yr old guy who works at a pizza place as an assistant manager. He makes $37,000 a year. He has not finished college, nor is he enrolled into a college. All his friends have moved on. They have good career jobs. Some are married, some even have kids. And here he was, all alone, at the pizza parlor. He reached out to his community to ask for help. They gave good advice. Just DO SOMETHING.

Do something. Good idea. I don't know when, but one day I'll do something.

Or here I go again. I almost deleted the blog. I lay back in my chair. Brood over my cynical thoughts. Maybe I should try to pick up writing? What an awful writer I'd make, haha. I lean forward in my chair again. I highlight the entire blog. I don't hit the delete button. Lean back into the chair.... Well today must be a really shitty day for me to actually do this....

*sigh* =_=

What is Normal?

I'm tired, I really am. Maybe it's just those random mood swings or something. This has been the most fucked up week I've ever had. It's not life drama or anything, it's just so abnormally surreal that I don't know what to make of it. I don't even know where to start to describe it. At the beginning of the week I knew I had a ton of work ahead of me, I was super pumped to get it all done. I had a nice schedule put out for me to divide up my hobbies and work. My intention was to go quickly and thoroughly through all of my homework and review notes, and then play games and relax. But after I finished my work I didn't play games nor did I watch anime. Instead I just sat there and aimlessly surfed the web like a robot. My body was doing one thing and my mind was doing something else. I was thinking about what to do, and kept looking over to the clock and watched the hours past by. Eventually I picked up the guitar and played til 3 in the morning before I went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up and was like "WTF" out loud. I went to school, then to work, and returned home. This time I didn't study, I just sat there and watched Starcraft commentaries and anime- but I didn't even touch any games. The next day and night were the opposite. What the hell is going on with me... Then I started to go through that "thinking" phase again, FFS I friggin hated it. I sat there drinking tea and just drew in my sketchbook. I didn't sleep at all for 2 days straight, 2 days after that I went to bed at 4 or 5 in the morning everyday. Obviously I couldn't go to class in the morning in that condition, so I missed out on the last few classes of the semester.

Now I'm here sitting in the library trying to figure out why I haven't been myself lately. Today I ran into Connie and we talked for a little bit. We bumped into each other at a pretty bad time though... Well she asked me what I was doing around Downtown Crossing, and I told her I was just walking around- she gave me a funny face and said that I shouldn't be walking around "on a day like this". That totally caught me off guard, I was just walking around aimlessly just thinking about what the hell was going on with my head. I didn't even realized that it was a really cloudy and gloomy out today until she said that. I don't know why but I was really freaked out by it so I told her I had to head off- which I regretted right after because 1. it felt a little rude to not talk a bit more with someone you haven't seen in a while and 2. I kind of needed someone to talk to, not about my weird mental crisis but just to have a normal conversation. After I ran away =_= I went to Chinatown to get some Avocado Bubble Tea and met one of my economics classmates. I had never ever talked to him before but he greeted me nonetheless, and I greeted him as casually as I could. I actually really enjoyed talking to him, he was my kinda guy to talk to. I'm positive that we could have been great friends, but we had only just started talking today... at the end of the semester...

So I went home, on my way home I tried to figure out what was bothering me in a logical fashion. The days and nights when I was just acting abnormally, I felt very lost, very frustrated, and very confused. I'm not saying I was depressed or anything  because I really wasn't, I just sat there trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me, why the hell would I suddenly lose the spirit to study, go to school, and play games? Plus I'm very biased towards the topic of depression, I've got that "Man up, and move on" sort of attitude towards it- hence why I sat there trying to figure out a way to fix myself rather than dwelling on it like a diseased shellfish. But I couldn't figure it out at all until I had a few hints from that afternoon. When I bumped into Herman and Connie I felt happy to see them unconsciously even though in my mind in the moment I was more like "o.o Er..uh... wut... oh heeeey! * =] * ". So why is it that I felt better once I started to talk to other people?

My goal after high school was to live a normal and uneventful life. I didn't want to go to parties or anything, I just wanted to live normally. Go to school, study, work, go home relax, hang out with friends once in a while, and enjoy what I love to do on the side. Hmm.. but now I see that my friends department has been lacking compared to everything else. What is Normal? Really what is it...? If what I typed up above me is the definition for a normal life then shouldn't I be fine with that?

Here's what I've come up with: Everything I've experienced and gained this year in terms of School - Work - Hobbies has increased in value. A simpler way to put it is that say for example: in high school my nominal values of school, work, and hobbies could be measured in monetary units (at least for this example)- So School would be worth $50, work could be measured by $40 and hobbies at $100, these values are adjusted according to how happy I am with those categories in my life. This is an extremely macro-economical way of thinking so it's a good brain exercise. This year these values have increased to the following: School - $100 Work - $60 Hobbies - $300. So basically this year I'm happy with classes I take, work is less of a pain, and I thoroughly enjoy my hobbies a lot more than I did last year. So I should be significantly happier right? Well I found that there's another category, my social life. In High School my friends were around me all the time, in college, all my old friends are scattered, and after seeing Connie and then Herman right after, I realized that I have made ZERO new friends in college. I made myself realized that just talking to them in class is not okay. I need to make real new friends that I can consistently talk to about school-life and other things in general while I commute or just walk around Boston like I did today. My social Life last year: $150 My Social life this year: $50- Conclusion? I occasionally talk to old friends but no longer have any solid friends to talk to consistently.

So the deficit of happiness in my Social department may be the problem here (I logically think to myself...) I only have myself to blame for that... Just focusing on school and coming home to play isn't enough I guess. Everyone has their own version of happiness. I'm probably still too young to figure out my version of it, but little by little I'll figure it out, and once I do I can start getting to work on making it. Ya know what, this is why its good to blog. As cheesy as I find it to blog about this shit, it really does help. Blog first for yourself before others. I remember when I used to use xanga, I would try to make it more popular, I socialize with total strangers like 100 times a day for that interweb attention. So stupid. It's another reason why I despise using facebook, networking is fine (that's why I have to use it) but I get the feeling that a lot of people use it for that publicity factor.Ugh, well I'm just biased in that area so *shrug* w/e. I took my blogger link off it recently, I wanted it there just incase people were curious about what I was up to- which was good for the first few weeks but then the wrong people started reading it, and its just really embarrassing....

I feel better now. I really do. But sometimes I feel a little crazy when I think about this stuff, but I need to remember that I'm not alone in this matter. A lot of people have these kinds of problems too... Thank god I'm smart enough to take care of myself, even if its through blogging (so lame imo) =_=. Well what to do now... maybe now I can get some sleep, my face is really puffy from the lack of sleep. I'm still a little confused, but things should work out somehow...