Sounds From The Studio Vol. 2

At the moment, I’m still working on this season’s playlist. I feel like as I started to get more into the groove with the work I’m making and started to form a more solid idea of what this body of work was really about the playlist just became stronger and stronger. I mean, I always grow incredibly emotionally attached to my playlists. But I have a very special connection with this one. Maybe because of all of the developments that have come as I’ve been working to it or maybe just because there’s just a really powerful attachment between my work and the music.

The whole point of these playlists is that I find that music has a real influence on my work. When I was in my first year of painting at SCAD I remember being down about the work I was making and thinking “I just want to make something really beautiful” so I put on No Shape by Perfume Genius and then painted what I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever painted. It was also a huge breakthrough in my work. So I’ve always believed in the power of music.

I don’t know if you can get a sense of the work just through the playlist like I can. There have definitely been shifts in the journey as I’ve been on it so…it might seem a little all over the place. But to me it fully encompasses what my new work is about. Which I’ll eventually share with you. But it has to be a secret for now.

We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

august 2020 recap

I’m not entirely convinced that August ever actually happened but APPARENTLY it’s September now so…I guess it did…

Let’s do a little recap, yeah? Let me try to remember what happened in August.

It started off as a pretty slow month. I did a good bit of updating my website, which you may have noticed. I made a lot of big business moves. Since I graduated at the end of May I’ve been taking my time just getting used to being in the “real world” and working my part-time job, but in August I started painting again. With painting for the first time in months has come a lot of growing pain. Every time I take some time off from painting I find myself having to re-teach the muscles in my hand and arm how to put some marks down and blend colors, and re-train my eyes. It’s both exciting and incredibly frustrating, so maybe I should stop taking such long periods of time off from painting.

While I got back into painting I also got back into posting on social media more consistently. One day I was touching up some old mini panels I had painted last year and the response to them was really positive. That was a nice push to really jump into work. So a couple of days later I went to my local art supply store, picked up a couple of new surfaces and brushes, and got to work on a new series.

I’m going to keep the details of the new series a secret for a little bit longer but I will tell you that I’m going to have a lot more mini canvases available and I’m VERRRRYYY excited about it all. I will share more details with you soon but you’ll get the secrets a lot sooner if you sign up for my newsletter *hint hint*.

New work has really been the most exciting thing to come out of August. It’s just a matter of keeping up this momentum and not doubting myself! Also - I went to the beach for a couple of days. It was magical. Please take me back.

looking back on july 2020

Jordan on the lookout for birds outside her mom’s house.

Ah, so I’m a little late with this.

Initially, I wanted my July recap to go up at the start of August, but this last weekend Jordan and I took a mini vacation (one day) away to visit her family. I wanted to document the trip for a video and I wanted to include the video in this post, even though it technically happened at the start of August.

Covid has reminded me how fragile our lives are and how quickly we can lose the people we love. It’s been a really harsh reminder. So, as much as I wanted to stay present while visiting Jordan’s family, I also wanted to capture it so I could onto it as much as I could. I haven’t seen my own immediate family in months, so I’m happy we have the ability to visit them.

July was an interesting month. It was my first time really getting back into painting. I took some big jumps this month getting into business. I started posting regularly on YouTube again. I shaved my head. I revived this blog. I graduated back in June and yet I’ve been putting money into business courses.

I guess, looking back at it, July was a pretty transformative month. Oh, and Taylor Swift released her best album to date (sorry Red and Speak Now).

Listen to seven on Spotify. Taylor Swift · Song · 2020.

For the last half of July, I was pretty focused on working in my sketchbook. It’s not something I do often, especially the way I’m working in it right now. But it’s been enough to warm up all of art-making muscles. I prepped an old canvas with gesso so I’m ready to get back to painting any second now.

It’s really easy to look back at any of the last couple of months and think they were just terrible. And they’ve been hard, I’m definitely not denying that. But there were some pretty good moments in July, if sandwiched between some bad. Or a lot of bad. When I look back at all of the transformation moments in July, I feel a lot of excitement for August.

“Please picture me

In the weeds

before I learned civility

I used to scream ferociously

anytime I wanted.”

Today I sat down to do my weekly reset and remembered with quite a lot of dread that it was actually a new month as well, so I had to do my monthly reset too. I’ll make a whole video and accompanying blog post on my resets and planning in the future, but part of my monthly reset is to remake my desktop wallpaper. Every month (for the last three months) I’ve been creating a sort of vision board to set as my wallpaper for the next 30-or-so days. I’m not super conscious of my wallpapers when I use my laptop. It’s not like I pause every morning before I start work to really think about all of the goals I have displayed on my vision board or anything. But I do look at it every day and I think that casual reminder is enough for me. I mean, on my July wallpaper I had an image of a person with a buzzcut and then I did in fact shave my head so…maybe it works!

I’ll share my wallpaper for August so you can get an idea of what it looks like and maybe it’ll inspire you to make your own. Or not.

Either way, I guess I’m excited for August. I mean, technically, it’s already started, and I’ve already felt super melancholy, but that doesn’t mean it still won’t be a really good month.

Sounds From The Studio Vol. 1

Listen on Spotify: songs i've been listening to while i work for the last however long

Just some of the tunes I’ve been listening to while I work for the last while. No set amount of time. Just the artists and music I’ve been gravitating towards. Hope you enjoy <3

*I was feeling good about putting out this playlist as is and then yesterday Taylor Swift went and released a surprise folk album (her best album don’t @ me) out of nowhere. The vibe of the whole album really suits the mood I’ve been in while working in the studio lately, so it was hard to decide what songs I should put on it. So I’m just going to link the rest of the album here and you can go ahead and listen to the whole thing and then leave your thoughts for me in the comments :)

recent studio views <3

Failing As An Artist

me looking like i’m about to pick some freshly grown veggies from my garden as soon as i finish this shoot

How are you doing? Are you tired of people asking how you’re doing?

I kind of am. There’s really not much to say, you know? I’m at home, I miss my family, everything seems like it’s on fire, I watched my cat chase a piece of fuzz around the living room for 15 minutes today and it was the most entertaining part of my week.

If you don’t know, I just graduated from SCAD in May. Since then I picked up a part-time job and have been taking some time to really think about my work and the career I want. I’ve been reflecting on my 4 years at SCAD, what I learned, and what I didn’t. In case you missed it, a couple of months ago I posted a video about thoughts on my time at the school and whether or not I felt like my time was worth it. TLDW: I do think it was worth it. But I don’t think anything could ever prepare me for the “real world”.

I’ve just been thinking a lot about my career and how it feels post-graduation. The truth is, I’m not where I wish I was. I’m not near where I imagined myself being once I graduated. And it’s because I didn’t really take ownership or control over who I was and my goals until…well, now. Maybe I’ll talk more about that process in the future, but for now I just want to acknowledge the mistakes I’ve made, or things I’ve done wrong.

I just posted a video reflecting on the mistakes I’ve made so far as a young artist, in case you’re more interested in watching the video.

But I know some people enjoy blogposts more, so keep reading if you’re interested.

Mistake Number One:

Not Getting Started

Sooner

I think that it’s important to have work that you’re proud of and confident in before you start trying to put it out there in the world. But it can be hard sometimes to differentiate between: “Oh…I don’t know if I’m ready yet…” and “No. I’m not ready. I know what I want to do and I have an idea of how I can get there.”

Over the last year, I can just personally tell that I was playing things safe. I look back on the work that I was making a year ago and I just wonder why I never did anything with it. I was reorganizing files on my computer recently and scrolled through some of my older work and I was struck by how much I enjoyed looking at it. I looked at those pieces and I almost felt like I was looking at the work of another artist, I had become so disconnected from it.

I remember at the time, I was also proud of the work, but I was too scared to stake a claim on it, you know? I was too scared to submit that work into shows, or put it on my website, or even just start pushing my work on social media. Since I’ve been looking at that work more, I’ve started transitioning my current practice to reflect the older work more, because what I was working on recently was incredibly unsatisfying to me. And I just think if I had started promoting myself and my work then, where would I be in my career now?

But there’s no need to think of that time as wasted, I now know that what I was just working on isn’t for me. And that’s an accomplishment.

Mistake Number Two:

Always Taking

Everyone’s Advice

Probably my biggest mindset issue is being too susceptible to others and their opinions of my work. It’s one of the main reasons why I was so ready to graduate, and one of the main reasons why I’m putting off grad school for a while.

I’m not good at avoiding seeking validation for my work. Whenever professors would compliment my work, I’d be sure I was on the “right path”. Whenever professors would suggest a different direction I’d think “okay that’s the actual path I should be on” even if I knew that wasn’t the direction I really wanted to go in.

Or when classmates I thought were further along than I was, or classmates I respected would say something like “I’m not sure this is the work you should be making right now” or “I don’t think this work would be successful in the world right now” I would instantly discount what I was working on. Later, as I was getting closer to graduating, I got a lot better at saying thank you for that critique but I’m not actually going to listen to that.

Critique is super valuable, but so is understanding that you have the ability to take ownership of your work, even when people don’t agree with it. You won’t ever be able to please everyone, your art should only please yourself.

If you’re not making work that you’re passionate about one) you’re going to get tired of working really fast because there won’t be any true drive two) people will see your lack of confidence and interest. Nobody is going to invest in your work, much less be interested in it, if you don’t even seem to enjoy it.

Mistake Number Three:

Thinking Too Much

If you’ve seen my most recent sketchbook, you know that the first 1/3 of it was mostly note-taking. I’m a big believer in constantly questioning your practice and learning new things about your work. But there is such thing as thinking about things too much.

It would get to the point where I would pose a question in my sketchbook, struggle to find the answer, and instead of continuing to work and make my way through the problem, I would just become stuck in place. I would shut the sketchbook, put my work to the side, and become plagued by that question for several weeks or months, unable to work before I solved it. That’s not a necessarily healthy or productive mindset.

I still ask myself questions, I still give my work room to breathe, because I think it’s important to my personal practice, but I’m working on being more active and trusting the process.

May 2020 Sketchbook Tour

A couple of weeks ago I finished my first sketchbook of 2020. I’m hoping to fill at least one more by the end of the year - with quarantine I may finish one a lot sooner than that. This is actually only the second sketchbook that I’ve ever completed in my entire life. I’ve never been very good at keeping up with them very consistently.

I think the thing that encouraged me to finish this sketchbook that most was that I started using my sketchbook to write down notes about my work. I had never really had a place where I wrote down my ideas or questions about my own art. I wasn’t big on planning out my paintings and I also maybe just didn’t have a lot of questions I was asking myself. I filled up a good third of this sketchbook I’d say with just note-taking. That kind of attitude also helped me feel more open to just sketching in the book - jotting down all of my ideas and concepts without worrying about making something “good”.

composition sketches for my thesis

If you liked this little glimpse into my most recent sketchbook, you might enjoy the video I made on YouTube of me flipping through and talking through my sketchbook. I’ll link it down below incase you are.

long time no post

She says literally every time she remembers to post.

So I’ve started my senior year. I’m actually well into my senior year. I’m 6 weeks into my second to last quarter…life moves so fast. I’ll post again soon with a more in-depth update on everything I’m doing (I will I promise) but for now, here’s a post to catch you up on some of the other content I’ve been working on lately.

Over the summer I took a little break from painting and started to work on my illustration - which I haven’t done in years. It was a well-needed break and I’ve started up a separate website and Instagram for all of that if you’re interested.

I've also been documenting life on YouTube as usual. Here are a couple of videos to recap what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months.

Also, if you haven’t noticed, my website is in mega demolition mode. I need to redo it for a class but also it was just do for an upgrade. Probably more changes to come but hopefully it doesn’t mess with your visit!

That’s all I have to update on now - I’m about to grab lunch and then head to class. Will see you again soon with a school/work related update!

Where I'm At...

Happy end of the second week of the new quarter. Winter Quarter flew by with me basically posting…nothing…though I did manage a catch up post in the end there.

Currently I’m putting together a vlog of my trip to New York that I took over the break and will have a complementary blog post to go along with that. That’ll be coming up some time soon.

For a visual, right now I’m sitting at the pull out desk I have set up at Jordan’s apartment, that’s only a little bit wobbly. I’m right by the window where Khajiit (the cat) recently pushed over two plants so he could have a perfect kitty size spot to lay in - which is what he’s doing right now. The table is wobbling as I type this blog post and is also cluttered with charging cords, a red nail polish bottle, an old water bottle, a stemless wine glass full of water, my chapstick, some random papers, my tin of colored pencils, and my ridiculously large sketchbook. I have a new professor for painting this quarter and he’s taking a little getting used to. But not in a bad way. Just in a “I’ve Gotten Very Used To Working With One Professor For Two Years And Now I Feel Like I’m Learning A New Language” kind of way.

We just finished our first assignment in that class, called “Self Image As A Landscape” which involved…painting a self portrait…but as a landscape. Similar to the Human Essence and Image class I took last year, it didn’t have to be a literal self portrait or a landscape. It just had to visual represent the essence of those things. Needless to say it was a struggle, especially since I haven’t painted analog in about four or five months. I feel like I’m constantly having to remember how to paint. Maybe I should stop not painting for such long periods of time? Will get back to you on that.

I usually don’t work in sketchbook (though I both need and want to) but I have gotten into the habit of scribbling sometimes work related notes into it. I developed that after my Art of Tomorrow class, taken last quarter, had an assignment on where we’d like to be in five years and it sent me into an existential crisis that required writing down exactly where I wanted to be every 6 months for the next 5 years. Our new assignment in this painting class (Concepts and Strategies) is to paint our evil twin. Which has me thinking about all the negative qualities that exist in me that I think would be reflected in my evil twin and how I can represent those qualities in a way that either aligns with the current direction of my work or will send me into a different direction that doesn’t entirely terrify me. I’ll also get back to you on how that goes later.

Other classes I’m taking are 20th Century Art History online (which has my art history nerd heart SINGING) and Branding and Entrepreneurship. So if you pay attention to my website and see any weird changes over the course of the next eight weeks, it’s because that class is actively preparing me to be a fully functioning career bound artist by the time I graduate. It’s a good thing I still have another year to get a grasp on that.

I’m including a little photo reel of some of the things I’ve been up to so far since the quarter started - NO New York spoilers! Those will be in there own post! Maybe I’ll make more than two posts this quarter. Will get back to you on that. Haha.

Oh I should also mention that I got hit SO HARD with allergies last week. I missed 90% of the first week of class. Was terrible. Hope you’re doing well and you’re not either sick from the flu or allergies. I hear both are happening simultaneously. I wonder what we’re doing to the earth to piss her off. Huh.

:) AV

RECAP: Winter Quarter Junior Year

A much shorter snapshot from this quarter BUT with a text entry this time because I actually have the energy to type this up.

This quarter was way different from every quarter I’ve had so far at SCAD. I took a SCADpro class, which means someone in Atlanta approached the school about collaborating with the school on some work of art, and SCAD brought together a group of students to work with them. It was very business oriented. We designed the work which isn’t too different from what we normally do, but it was very client based, so we had to meet with them multiple times to pitch our ideas and get feedback. It was a huge learning experience.

Aside from that one, I took a class on digital techniques for painting, which means using programs like Procreate to create work that in some way represented, was informed by, or informed our traditional painting. I had a couple of chances to practice using Procreate before the quarter started so the weirdest part of the quarter was just…not having to paint…and not having any opportunities to break out the paint and brushes to do anything. Which is going to make next quarter interesting when I have to start painting again after essentially four…maybe five months off.

I also took a class called Art Of Tomorrow where the professor pushed us to create work outside of our comfort zone and really consider what we were going to do with our art post-graduation. It was an incredibly interesting…confusing…kind of intimidating class. But I did come out of it with a different perspective. So that’s always a plus.

I’ve added a page to my portfolio that includes my work from the digital class and will add a page for the SCADpro class sometime later this week but it’ll require a lot of attention and care to layout the whole process of that class.

Non-school related activities took a bit of a break this quarter, mostly because Jordan and I were both so busy. We saw the Kusama exhibit at the High Museum, which I have a video of on YouTube, and we saw King Princess in concert. Otherwise that past two and a half months have just been the two of us staring at our different screens.

No idea what next quarter is going to be like with the different classes I’m taking but I’m sure it'll be interesting as ever. Tomorrow I leave for a school sponsored trip to New York which I’ll talk more about soon. But now I have to run to lunch. See you soon!

-AV

November Bullet Journal Plan With Me + October Walkthrough (VIDEO)

New Videos Up | Studio Vlog + Making A Digital Collage

Over the last week I posted my first (of the year) two videos on YouTube. I have a studio vlog from the beginning of my finals month when I got hit really bad with allergies. In the video I show you how I managed to keep making art even though I was sick and stuck in my room for most of the week. It's a really dramatic video but I did feel really really bad.

I also uploaded my first time lapse video. I like making digital collages as a more casual form of creative expression, as opposed to my paintings or drawings. So I filmed the process of a quick digital collage I made a couple of weeks ago. I might do a tutorial on making a collage in photoshop in the near future but I hadn't made one in a while and was a little rusty.

I'm currently editing a vlog of the last couple of weeks of finals and then I'll move onto my first week of summer. Then regular studio vlogs (or studio diaries as I like to think of them) will be uploaded every week. I want to post on Mondays and Fridays but I'm not sure if I'll upload two vlogs a week or one vlog and one extra video like a speed tutorial or something. I'll work it out as I move along and catch up with my studio diary videos.

- Ali

Recapping Sophomore Year at SCAD

It's been four days since the final quarter of my sophomore year ended and I finally feel relaxed enough to make a post about the entire year in review. I'm sitting on my girlfriend's couch surrounded by three cats, with a fan blowing full blast (thanks Georgia summer) and an ice cold bottle of water next to me. It's a very quick turn around from a couple of days ago when I was hunched over a printmaking table desperately trying to push ink into the burrows of a copper plate, running back and forth between that and the painting studio where I was willing paint to dry faster than physically possible.

This year was ultimately a very good one for me. From where I'd sit I'd say freshman year was the hardest. I missed my home, I was going through it, my friends were going through it, and the distance from everything that had been so familiar for 20 years of my life was extremely heavy on me at all times. But I came into my sophomore year a little more experienced and a little more prepared. I had my ups and downs of course but in the end I'm much happier.

I started my painting classes in the fall which was probably a huge benefactor. My freshman year I had to take all foundations courses, despite having gotten a lot of the credits from my AP classes in high school (don't ask me why I didn't receive those credits. We're still working on that). I learned very quickly that design classes were the bane of my existence and giving 105% in my drawing classes didn't leave me with a lot of energy for the rest of my schedule. It was a year of learning to balance things and I'd say I'm still probably working on that. But finally getting to explore the major that had given me a lot of apprehension (everybody wants to know what exactly you're going to do with a painting major) (paint.) since switching from illustration halfway through my freshman year, was like lifting a very very very heavy weight off my shoulders. My friend from home who came to SCAD with me as an illustration major was originally hurt to see me ditching him and our future as illustrators together for painting, said I seemed much happier and right at home up in the painting department. It also helped having constant support from my painting professor and parents over the year.

I can't say if the body of work I put out over this year versus last year is better. My work as of late is definitely more "me". As my painting professor says, I've taken ownership over my work. I did a lot of experimenting which led to immense growth in my creativity, but ultimately I'm still working at the medium. I learned more about painting with acrylics and oils in a couple months than I had in years, but there's still so much more to explore. 

Now I can compare my work from the beginning to the year to the end and definitely say my work is better. It's just entirely different from what I was doing last year. But over the year I clearly became more confident in the expression of my ideas and my experimentation with the media and I feel happy with whatever direction my art is going in. I have a vague idea. But my professors always say to discover the painting as we're working. And I feel like that's what I'm doing.

Outside of my painting classes I took a lot of art history and when I wasn't taking an art history class I was up in the library looking at art history books or books on painters or printmakers or sculptors. I always knew the library was up there, of course, but this year I really discovered it as a nice place to hang out, listen to some nice music, and stock up on a ton of inspirational resources, while also not being bothered by the regular hustle of the busy school. The highlight of my year was probably finding a book on the entire art history of Colombia, though I never got to read it. I know where it is and I'm going back to get it as soon as I return in the fall. 

I also took a Computer Arts class which sucked. Just flat out sucked. If you have any experience with computers at all just save yourself and take the advanced class and actually learn something. In CMPA I we were taught how to open up Microsoft Word and change the font. Seriously. 

Aside from that, I took Life Drawing I and Printmaking for Non-Majors which were both extremely beneficial and fun classes. Life Drawing changed not only the way I drew the figure but also the way I looked at the figure and the rest of the world around me. It sounds corny to say but drawing from life will always change the way you look at things. It also felt good to pick up a pencil to draw again. I hadn't taken a drawing class in about seven months and hadn't drawn much in between. I was a little rusty no doubt. Printmaking was an entirely different beast. I had done linoleum prints in high school but even then they were simple and basic. This class really made me appreciate all the work that went into prints. I guess something about the replication of it, the fact that you could make so many copies of a print once it was done made it seem like a quick and somewhat easy process, though I knew that wasn't really true. But there's hours and hours and days of labor that goes into making a print that really makes the final result so worth it. The duplicative nature didn't make it easier at all, in fact that's what makes printmaking so intense. But it's a very rewarding process and while the work I turned out might not be great I'm still proud of the work I put in. It was definitely a balancing act. 

Outside of academics I just grew a lot this year. I gained a lot more independence. I got comfortable going to events alone. I went to my first concert by myself and got used to walking around the city more alone (though still with caution of course). I'm overall a lot more sure of myself and my decisions. I just made a somewhat spontaneous decision to join a girl's creative trip to Cartagena, Colombia (<3333) with My Closet Etc. and I'm so incredibly excited. I have family members that go back every year but in my 21 years I've never gotten to visit. So I'm going to work extra hard this summer to make the money and take my own butt to visit The Homeland. 

I've got a lot of traveling planned this summer, which is weird for me, but I'm not going to let it get in the way of making art and growing more. I'm gonna brush up on my digital art and make more collages and I've also got my dad prepared to help me build some canvases this summer so maybe I can start working larger. 

I have two vlogs I started filming during the final month of finals which hopefully I'll edit to be cohesive and get up on YouTube. I want to make a lot of videos to document my journey and life as an artist to add to here. I've got a lot of plans for the future and I couldn't be more excited.

Dealing With Criticism (Or Rather Lack Of Positive Reinforcement)

I'm resolutely refusing to let it get to me.

We've only had four classes of Human Image: Capturing Identity and Essence and I feel like I've already fought a whole uphill battle and gotten nowhere. I haven't even hit the "Capturing Identity and Essence" part. I'm still trying to figure out the "Human Image" part. If I could tell past me anything it would be to take Portrait Painting before this class and save myself a little trouble. But, of course, with scheduling that would have been impossible anyways. This is for the best. Even if I'm struggling.

As I finished in my last blog on Monday, I've started practicing in my sketchbook (who would have thought that sketchbooks could be used outside of class to supplement learning?? Certainly not my life drawing professor who gave us sketchbook assignments outside of class every week to help us master figure drawing in just 10 weeks. Thank you Professor Hung) so that I can get better a lot faster than I...am. I started working in acrylic and felt fairly good until class on Tuesday when my professor reminded us we'd be working in a limited color palette of Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, and Titanium White. 

This is what my palette eventually looked like after a lot of trial and error with color mixing. And after ditching acrylics again.

My first day back to drawing from a live model was not...I would say...successful. It took me a while to realize that when drawing from a figure it wasn't good for me to just start painting like I can do when painting other kinds of still lives. As I said earlier, I haven't even gotten to the painting identity and essence part. I can't get past getting the figure right. And maybe I'm getting too hung up on accurate representation of the human figure but I'm going to keep being hung up on it until I'm satisfied.

Each class I leave feeling bummed, dissatisfied, and ambiguously angry. Ambiguously because I can never really tell what I'm mad at. Myself? My professor? The model? Paint? It's frustrating not being instantly good at something and having to work at it. So after class, like I did on Monday, I pulled out my sketchbook, gessoed some papers, and dragged my butt to the studio to work some more. I played around with acrylics one more time before deciding my paint was frankly too cheap to mix the colors I needed to mix with a limited palette. Like, I'm not trying to blame the material because I often don't believe you need expensive materials to create good work but with acrylics you can only mix so much before paint turns a gross grey-brown. Especially when the paint's filled with filler. So I had to ditch the acrylics. But I had calmed my earlier disappointment once again with my sketchbook practice and felt good calling it a night after a couple of sketches.

More acrylic on gessoed paper. My old life drawing professor once said when you feel bad about your work not being appreciated in an academic setting you should post it on facebook or instagram so your family can see it and your confidence will be restored. He was right.

Wednesday I went up to the studio a couple of hours before my 5 o'clock class so I could get some more practicing in but ended up leaving after finishing my English and Print Making work because I felt sick. So Thursday I walked into class feeling great and ready to work. I felt optimistic and confident. I had started a moodboard with inspiration on Pinterest and I had thought of a great idea for my midterm project. I started with a quick sketch of the model and felt confident enough to start on my 30x30 canvas which had been daunting me since I bought it on Tuesday.

And then...it all fell apart. I've been rather dramatic this week and my emotions are on a rollercoaster so really it wasn't as bad as I still feel like it was. I started to lose my confidence the more I painted. I had thought of an interesting composition as I sketched the model out on my canvas but accidentally lost it and ended up messing up my proportions which I thought I could fix with a cool idea that ended up falling flat and leaving me with more ambiguously smudged paint that did not look good. My colors ended up getting muddy as I tried to make this limited color palette work in ways it probably wasn't meant to. And my professor kept coming by to give me slight critique, really just tips to help me make the painting better, and floating around the room to praise other students. 

Now I know comparison kills or whatever and I should be focussing on my own work rather than listening to my professor talk to other students. But as I worked so hard to try to make my painting work I couldn't help but notice the bits of praise he gave other students and the lack of praise I was getting. I knew my painting wasn't good. I still don't like it and didn't like it for the majority of my time painting it. But I can honestly say it's a huge improvement from my other paintings. And really that's all the recognition I wanted.

Like I said it feels like I've fought a whole uphill battle and gotten nowhere. I left class today honestly fuming. I wasn't ambiguously mad. I was mad at myself. I was mad at my paint. I was mad at my professor. I was mad at the model. I was mad at my class. Really I was dramatic and a more than a little pissy so I left my stuff in my dorm and blew off steam with a good walk to Target and some retail therapy, if you could call it that. And after hitting my 10,000 steps and buying a couple of facemasks, I picked up my stuff again and set off to the studio with burning determination. I didn't try much on anything pre-college but since coming to art school I've had some unquenchable desire to actually try and achieve something. So I sat down in the studio, finished my English homework, pulled up a live model session on youtube, and set out to paint until I was proud of something.

And finally I think I get it. I think I get painting human image and this limited color palette and all of the help my professor was trying to give me in class. 

I still, obviously, have a lot more practicing to do. But I'm glad I have this drive that makes me want to try harder when I really just want myself to give up and sulk. I know the more I work at it the better I'll get. Last quarter my professor told me to kick his ass and then kick my own after I did that. So I guess my goal is to kick both of our asses. Or something.

New Quarter At School

Last week we started our spring quarter at SCAD. The school operates on the quarter system so we have the fall quarter, winter quarter, spring quarter (which counts up a full year of credits), and then the optional summer quarter.

This is my second spring quarter at SCAD so come this June I will have been in college for a full 2 years now. At the beginning of this school year, in September, I started my major classes, having finally finished enough intro level credits. I try to take my classes in the recommended order for my major so I don't mess up my scheduling in the future. So far, as a painting major, I've taken Water Based Techniques, which was an intro to acrylics class, and Oil Based Techniques, which was an intro to oils. So far I've come out of each class with works I'm extremely proud of so it looked pretty promising that I would continue making solid work the more I learned.

This quarter...it's only been a week but I already feel like I've hit a wall. This spring I'm taking a class called Human Image: Capturing Identity and Essence, which sounds great but I have a strong feeling I should have taken Portrait Painting before this. You know, learn the basics and then build up. I've never really painted the human figure before. I painted a couple of self-portraits before I came to SCAD but that was before I had any technical skill. I've certainly never painted from a live model before so this is all very new to me. I know with a lot of practice my skills will definitely improve but I took kind of a hit coming into a new class and feeling so out of my element. Last class we practiced drawing each other, every student taking a turn modeling, and the work I came out with isn't necessarily work I'm proud displaying. But I think it's a solid jumping off point. I'm trying to approach this with as little hesitation as possible and just diving right into the paintings. My professor always says not to be afraid of making shitty paintings and I think this quarter I'm going to have to finally embrace that.

acrylic on gessoed paper

oil on gessoed paper

acrylic on gessoed paper with medium

I tried working in a couple of different ways to try to get used to working with the different mediums but there's definitely a learning curve. I put those pieces away for the weekend and didn't come back to them until today. My printmaking class on Mondays and Wednesdays isn't until 5, which basically gives me an extra day on the weekends to get work done. I decided I should do some practicing before class tomorrow. I pulled out my multimedia sketchbook and gessoed a few pages, looked for some references on instagram, and sat down to practice before breakfast this morning. 

acrylic on gessoed paper

As I was hoping, the more I practiced the better I felt I was getting. And I started to have fun with it too. My professor asked me how I was liking it last class and, because I'm honest, I said "I hate it". I'm happy to say I don't hate it as much anymore. I'm still trying out different techniques, though. I attached another piece of paper to the one pictured and decided to paint over it with some acrylic medium. Now I'm waiting for it to dry to see if I like painting over the smooth surface of the medium versus the chalkiness of the gesso. Later I'll test out oils more too.