It is 6am

I am in a car. On my iPhone. Kathleen is driving. We are going to Detroit. The sun has not yet risen. The passenger-side windshield wiper does not work.

I was pretty excited about this trip, because Detroit is basically the land of milk and honey when it comes to abandoned structures and urban exploration and whatnot. However, we ended up being on a really tight schedule, so I'll only really have an hour, maybe two, to gallavant about the city. I guess I'll just try to find some plight to photograph with my BRAND NEW POLARIZED LENS FILTER (thanks for the Best Buy gift cards, extended famy)!

I used some of my Christmas money to buy art supplies yesterday. There was this cool clayboard thing, and I loved it so much that I made a painting! Can't really show you now because of the whole being-in-a-car situation, but I'll try to soon if I don't end up hating it. Jess said it looks like a cat puke cyclone. I'm sort of inclined to agree.

Speaking of darling Jessica, she visited yesterday and drew me pictures with my BRAND NEW PRISMACOLOR MARKERS (thanks parents)!






That is a robot!






That's me and Oreo, the only woman I will ever love.

iPhones are so cool. I'm blogging at 65mph in a snowstorm. Kathleen is driving though. It would be cooler if I were.

So speaking of my prismacolors, the goldenrod one is completely devoid of ink. Not so sure what to do about that. Maybe return them? Dunno.

Well, that's about all I have to say. Kathleen is yelling "Blog!" at me because I apparently I don't do it enough. Also, I got a 3.0 GPA this semester. And I'm taking a printmaking and a glassblowing class next semester, and you should be jealous.

Adam Colas, sorry I didn't tell you I'm going to Detroit. I really wanted to see you but we are in a hurry :-/

See ya, kids!

If I go on a killing spree, this is why

Wow! I haven't posted in a long time. Where has the year gone? Only 18 shopping days until the winter solstice! I realllyyyy hope someone gets me a virgin to sacrifice! Last year I only had a second-rate sickly goat, and my crops didn't prosper. :-(

So anyways, I finished a portfolio tonight for my 2D Composition class, and I'm totally in love with it. It's a pattern thingamajig. The motif is taken from some art noveau book. It's hair. My teacher thought it was basket-weaving. I'm really proud of this. It's due tomorrow (technically today), so wish me luck!

Part the First (gel pen on vellum):

Part the Second (enamel on acetate):

Part the Second (layered paper, acetate, my sanity):

So, uh, that's that! Took forever, but I'm glad I did it.

Currently I am watching Bruno. It is a wonderful movie. Also, it's Jess's birthday! Happy birthday, Jess!

To Be Next...

Hey! Remember that painting I promised you? Well, I spent a good part of the weekend working on it. And it's not perfect, but for that to happen, I'd have to have spent a billion hours fine-tuning little tiny things. And, well, fuck that.

So here I am, drinking something resembling red wine that comes from a box (in excess). Jess is in the corner doing Italian homework.

In my Drawing class until now, we've been doing nothing but line drawings. My professor wanted to make damn sure that we had perspective down. Only now, what, two months into the semester, have we started doing value and shading. To get us used to the idea, she had us do this project. For the first time all semester, she gave us the option to use whatever medium we wanted. The project was to draw a still life with as little line as possible, using almost exclusively value. But we were only allowed to use two or three values -- white and black or white, grey and black.

I did this with acrylic and acryla gouache on paper. And it was sooooooo fun. Well, OK, it sort of made me want to stab myself a couple of times. But overall, I'm really happy with it. And although you don't get a GIF, I've always wanted to do a progression from beginning to end, so here we go on a magical journey! (Sorry I can't take pictures straight)

Oh by the way, I have the most gold stars in the studio at my dorm building! And whoever has the most at the end of the year gets a gift card to the art store!

Edit: P.S. I told you I'd link you guys to my tumblr! Well, it's at http://corduroydog.tumblr.com/ !!! Disclaimer: It's pretty pornographic!

Hello blog!

I miss you, blog! Currently, I am sitting alone in my dorm room (my roommate went home for the weekend), drinking something like, but not necessarily, boxed wine, listening to Jethro Tull. I just finished working on a painting for the night. If I actually finish it and don't rush it, this painting will be pretty badass. It's for my drawing class, and it's a two-value painting, just black and white. As  much as I abhor still lives, I think I set up a pretty good one. I'm taking in-progress pictures and, blog, if you're lucky, I may even post a gif!

So, sorry, three people who will read this, that I haven't been posting. I've done a decent amount of stuff for school, but not much of it is entirely pretty. And I don't want to look like a douchebag, taking pictures of my stuff in the studio. I'll try to get some of my favorite stuff up at some point.

I'm going to go to a party now. I've sort of been isolating myself recently, and that's bad. So I'm going to go, and I'm going to have fun, whether I like it or not.

Do Not Read This Post

So, this is probably going to be offensive to everyone. Jordan asked me to draw her a picture, and this is what happened. Look at it if you want, but don't complain if you're offended. I'm posting it because I like how it turned out. I think I did a good job :-) So, uh, here it is.


The answer to the quiz from Jess's last post is The Death of Ivan Ilych. Nice job, Haley! You win... well, nothing!

I, Operation Khaki, hereby decree:

My name is Sebastian. Today, I ate: hommus, cookies and milk, a delicious wonderful salsbury steak from Stoffer's. Ya know why? Because I'm a freakin' college student! I'm also drinking vitamin water. And my TV dinner looks completely, completely disgusting. 


Today, things I thought about were: the quizzes I took on facebook, Hayley on Skype (far away), drawing for my classes, how much fun it would be to get drunk for Thursty Thirsday, and whether or not I am able to love (because of the quiz on facebook that is a funny joke). 

Speaking of funny jokes...

Q: Why did my woman from Tokyo get stuck in my head earlier?*

Today's contest: Identify That Passage!
Can you identify the passage from this random book I have on my bookshelf at college (even though my room is not large enough to house anything that isn't necessary for my own survival)? 

" ' I look after everything myself,' she told Peter *****, shifting the albums that lay on the table; and noticing that the table was endangered by his cigarette-ash, she immediately passed him an ashtray, saying as she did so: 'I consider it an affection to say that grief prevents my attending to practical affairs.' " **



The best part of my day today was spraying the Febreze spray, Brazilian Carnival, all over the room for like an hour.
The worst part of my day today was waking up, because last night I probably sprayed just as much Febreze spray as I did just now; so when I woke up, I was probably not getting enough oxygen.




*Comment with a good punch line, and you could win free prizes!
** Also, prizes are offered to anyone who can make a good mad lib out of this so it might become less boring. (Um... no offense!)


A good day for eating! Aren't I (Sebastian) a good person?

Things I Ate Today

Um, I ate some breadoniongarlic onions, and a vanilla silk for breakfast. And then I went home, and I had some frozen pasta carbonara that my mom made for me. Then I came back to school and I ate like four million veggie burgers, but that didn't fill me up at all so I went to Rosie's to get food and the creepy guy was there. Blah blah blah blah... cookies and milk. I ate something really gross with meat and cheese. Then I ate a pickle. Not a crazy pickle, but a spear. After that, I smoked crack from a hookah and had a cup of tea in the Verder laundry room. I had a piece of Reece's bar, but I hated it. And I drank more Silk, with pickle Pringles. They're the only Pringles I actually like, I guess now.

Cody Wallis is my totes new biff and I'm pretty tired because it's five in the morning. We were supposed to watch Little Miss Sunshine about five hours ago, but instead Jess is updating my blog because she's sooo cool. Did you know that her blog is called Things I Ate Today? Subscribe to it, I decree. A good day for eating!

(Edit: Jess is here)

Corral

From yesterday's tea party. Reasonably okay with how they turned out. It was a very surreal experience.

--

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-


--

Going with Kathleen tonight to see a midnight showing of Inglorious Basterds. I'm so very excited. Huge mancrush on Tarentino.

Typography... Wednesday? And more!

Hayley is sitting next to me blogging, while I am in the process of fixing my family's godforsaken computer. It's taking forever: ETA 212 minutes for my dad's iTunes library to copy to the backup drive. I haven't blogged in quite some time, and I felt like being corny, so now Hayley and I are blogging next to each other.

First things first: a belated Typography Tuesday.

Katoma Bouabane is responsible for Melting Words, a wonderful collection of photos of ice-cube-letter-things. They, to me, spell out (ha!) how temporary the feelings they express can be. I like them a lot.

from here.

Also great is fridayfonts. They share a new font every week developed by students at Academy of Visual Arts Hong Kong. None of them are incredibly utilitarian, but they're all very innovative and fun to look at.

--

The wedding was great. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, because that would take forever. Suffice it to say that it was awesome and beautiful and great (and so, so stressful. I am never handling a wedding cake again, as long as I live). I'm very happy and honored to have been a part of it. It gave me a lot of inspiration for my own life: Graham and Sarah are incredibly in love with each other. If you want to read more about it, I'm sure Hayley's post will more than cover it.

--

My parents are currently at a tea party. It is taking place in a public square paid for with tax dollars. My parents send their children to public school. I'm drowning in the irony. I'm actually about, as soon as this is posted, to go take some photos of it (and entrust Hayley with the computer. She doesn't want to come). I'll put those up as soon as they're ready.

EDIT: Lauren (whom I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting this weekend) took a brilliant, lovely photo of Hayley and I. It's one of the few photos of myself I actually like, and possibly the only good picture that will ever be taken of Hayley and me together. So thanks, Lauren. You kick ass.

Uh, hey there

Sorry. It's been a tremendously long week. And, for that matter, a tremendously long day today. I won't be able to do Typography Tuesday today, but it'll be up tomorrow, along with the dish on the wedding. Sorry again; see you soon.

Typography Tuesday - Arbitrary Constructs

Before I dropped my Linguistics class (it was waaay to early in the morning), I remember the professor saying something that made me think. There's nothing special about any word -- they're all just arbitrary constructs we all agree upon. For instance, if I say "chair," there's nothing magical about the word that makes it mean "thing to sit on." The only reason "chair" means "thing to sit on" is that we all agree that it does. Language nerd that I am, I'd love it if words had some special properties (they often feel like they do), but they don't. Type is the same way.

Sam Winston took Romeo and Juliet, cut out each line, and arranged them into Passion, Rage and Indifference. He then made collages of each collection (Indifference is still unfinished).

The first is Rage; the second is Passion. But can you really tell? I can't. There's nothing intrinsic or special about the type itself to tell you.
from here.


To go in the entirely opposite direction -- I know the last couple of these have been letters made of clever things -- but I really couldn't pass up "Alphabets" by Bela Borsodi. It's really a beautiful collection of photographs, and it took me a few minutes before I realized that they're all physically possible. The photos are brilliantly composed. It's like seeing a face in a cloud but knowing that it was put there. Even though letters themselves don't have any intrinsic meaning, the meaning we attach to them is enough, maybe.

from here.

Ye Olde Roadtrip

I slept for 12 hours last night. It's been quite the couple of days.

Saturday, Kathleen and I drove to Philadelphia to deal with Badgergate (a situation described in the previous post). I had a sudden flash of rationality on Friday and decided that it would probably not be the best idea to make the trip even longer by going to the abandoned PA turnpike; Kathleen was very relieved. The trip was fun, albeit extremely tiring. My GPS, who we have named Marta (the name of the Spanish female voice on the language selection screen), decided around halfway through Pennsylvania that, instead of staying on the turnpike -- a straight line to Philadelphia -- we should instead drive through Baltimore first. This added considerably to the length of the trip, especially because it ended up sending us directly into the bulk of the traffic for the Philly's game. Needless to say, there was much cursing and some violence inflicted upon the device.

After we got Graham, there weren't any more obstacles, and we made it back home fine, after about 14 hours of driving. I got to sleep at 4am. And then woke up at 7am for Medieval Faire. We all had a great time at the faire. I wish I could have dressed up for it, but there just wasn't time/money. Not much of note really happened -- we watched comedy acts, walked around, ate overpriced food, checked out the shops. The best part of the day was buying the best pickle I've ever eaten (it was the size of my head) for $1.

So, then I slept a bunch, and here I am now. I did some work on my tempera painting that I haven't touched for a long time. It's almost done -- tomorrow or the next day, probably.

Ariel's busy, so I'll see you tomorrow for Typography Tuesday.

Baby's First Vlog

As many of you probably know, Hayley is a member of the youtube channel fiveawesomegirls. This week, their boyfriends are making videos in their places. Miss Thursday is Hayley, so today was my turn. Hayley is a goddam saint: she edited 4GB of rambling, "um"s, and general annoyance into this. I hope you like it; however, Hayley probably deserves more credit than I for anything good about it. My undying gratitude also goes out to Kathleen, who thought of pretty much every funny thing in the video.

A friend, Graham, is getting married on the 15th of this month. He's currently in NYC, and he and his fiancée were planning to fly back to Ohio on Saturday in order to make sure everything is ready for the wedding, which will be here. Then Graham was pickpocketed, and his ID and Social Security card were stolen. And now, in a remarkable feat of bureaucracy, Graham cannot fly home. You see, one cannot fly on a plane without ID, and one cannot be issued ID without a Social Security card. A birth certificate is needed to be issued a Social Security card -- his is in Ohio. I'm calling it Badgergate, because his last name is Badger and, well, this is scandalous. I'm the lucky one who gets to drive to pick him up this weekend. Kathleen is coming too, to help with the driving. We only have to drive to Philadelphia, because he's taking a bus to meet us there. But that's still about seven hours, each way.

About five of those hours will be spent on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The PA Turnpike and I don't really have the best relationship. Once, when I was on the Obama campaign, there was a crash, and I was stuck in literally the same spot for two and a half hours. People were walking their dogs on the freeway. The carfull of businessmen in front of me took out cigars and started smoking them, and then popped the trunk to have a couple of beers. It. Took. Forever.

Anyway. The reason I'm telling you this is because there is a chance I'll be able to visit the abandoned stretch of the turnpike on the way to Philly. I'm very excited about this, and I hope Kathleen agrees to it, because it's in the middle of nowhere in central Pennsylvania. And (no offense), all I ever want to do when I'm in central PA is to leave central PA. This time, however, I think I'll have the willpower to make myself stop and check it out.

In other news, I have some Sculpey and no idea what to do with it. If anyone has any cool, unconventional ideas, please leave them in the comments.

Typography Tuesday - A Proverb

There's an old proverb that I cannot find again, and it goes something like this.

Two typographers are released from prison, witnessing daylight for the first time in years. One looks down at the ground, seeing dirt, trash, and ruin. He thinks "I won't miss this worthless world- how could my life walking on this earth ever be enjoyable?" The other looks at the sky, seeing the sun and clouds and birds, and thinks "I am looking forward to living a full life, lucky for this beauty around me."

It's one of those "it's-all-how-you-look-at-it" things.

The first typographer looked down and saw the earth:



The second typographer looked up and saw the sky:



From here.

A Doodle Doodled While Waiting For The Doodler's Beloved To Return From Rocky Horror On A Saturday Night

Ancient History (Zombies! Clones! Trespassing!)

I'm not really sure what made me think of it, but today I realized that I took a Digital Photography class junior year of high school. It was hell. There were about three of us in the class who actually cared — everyone else was just there to get an art credit — but the teacher took an immediate disliking to my being a smartass and promptly assigned me a horrible partner, showed nothing of mine in the gallery, and gave me a B. I'm still a bit angry about that. Guess I deserved it for being a smartass, though.

Anyways. I was going through these pictures and, while they're mostly attempts to be artsy while conforming to the lesson, there were a couple that I sort of thought were worth putting up here. I can't find the originals, so all I have are the resized/compressed Facebook versions. Sorry. They're around here somewhere and, if I find them, I'll put them up.

First, there's a theme project I did on "Urban Decay," which, technically speaking, isn't the most urban. I visited a then-abandoned (now-demolished... RIP) truck depot and the vestiges of an old house nearby, neither of which being anywhere near anything urban. For the most part, it's not really anything to write home about, but I like to put all of my adventures in breaking-and-entering up here, especially since the truck depot was leveled last fall.

Urban Decay (click for album)

Then we've got these lovely numbers I did for my portrait assignment. I own that mask. It is a wonderful mask. It frightens children.

Lastly, there's my final project. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew it was going to involve a box and a sword. Lacking a sword, I drove to Graham's house to borrow one. Because, really, if you need a sword, that's where you're going to go. He wasn't there, but Sam was. And then this just sort of happened. I happen to like it a lot, shoddy as the photoshoppery is (and my lack of a tripod). It's called, "Attack of the Clones!" If you can't see the slideshow, click here to get to the album.

Typography Tuesday - Fonts in Books in Fonts

Today, the theme is meta, inspired by a slough of music I am listening to this week. The headliner is Patrick Wolf, whose song “The Magic Position” says, “You put me in the magic position/to live to learn to love, in the major key.” This is meta. Discussing music theory within music is tongue in cheek, but this song also takes it a step further with rising major scales in the background. Another example of this is Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah: “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth/ the minor fall and the major lift/ the baffled king composing Hallelujah.” (Also see: that song from the Sound of Music: “Do! a deer! A female deer.”)

You get the point.

I love this tongue in cheek/artsy self-awareness, whatever media. Today’s typography grabs this theme, and is called Book as Type. Books are filled with fonts. This font is filled with books, which are filled with fonts.

As the creator, Amandine Allesandra, notes in this picture, “A book that is shut is but a block.”

And here is the alphabet- so colorful and gay!

What would be even cooler is to do a renegade setup of this in a library—a kind of underground typography vandalism. Leave your favorite librarian a special message—nothing says “I love you” like “I screwed up the order of your books for art.”

Green Windows (Well, technically, aqua, or turquoise, or something)

Well, who'd'a thunk? More pictures of the cement plant? What a surprise! (psst: You can see the window from the second picture in the first picture! 1000 points to whoever can find it!)

--

--

This whole tonsil thing is pretty dumb. On Friday, when I got them taken out, it honestly wasn't so bad. But it's gotten progressively worse over the past couple of days. I'm not sure if it's the pain level or my annoyance with it that's increasing, but it's to the same effect. I can barely think; as per the doctor's orders, I've been fed a steady dose of Vicodin once every four hours since Friday. This has resulted in sporadic sleep, confusion, disorientation, difficulty keeping track of time, and general frustration. I don't really know why I'm whining here though. I mean, things could be a lot worse. I get a bunch of ice cream (even if all I really want is a Crunchwrap). I no longer have tonsils, which means I'll stop getting sick all the time. But no, I have to complain. Sorry. I'm also sorry if this paragraph made absolutely no sense; I'm having a bit of trouble thinking, what with being constantly drugged and all. Oh well!

Ariel will be around on Tuesday to talk to you guys about fonts!

Columbia-Portland (Ext)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-