Senior Gallery Exhibit

I realize it’s been awhile since I posted, but there’s a good reason for that, honest! My Senior Gallery Exhibition was last week, and now that all the chaos of putting it up and taking it down has subsided I can return to a more normal senior project schedule, though even that is altered by the knowledge that there are only two weeks and two days (as of right now) between me and graduation.

Anyway, I only remembered as I was tearing down my exhibit that I hadn’t gotten a picture of me in front of it, so unfortunately it looks a bit sad with a third of the images missing.  The two puppets on the left are mine, made freshman and sophomore year, and the iPad is displaying “A Lot of Erasing: A Year’s Worth of the Thoughts and Drawings of a Perfectionist Artist,” which is the iBook I created to document my journey over this past year. I’m working on getting it published through iTunes, and I’ll be posting more about that later.

This is also an accurate portrayal of me in my most natural and comfortable working attire. I doubt I’ll ever outgrow my love of overalls.

I’ll have a few more things to post before this is officially over, but the gallery was the beginning of the end, in a way, and it feels very strange to realize that now that I have a minute to breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Fair Trade

Tags

apron, art, baking, cookie, cookie dough, couple, cute, fair trade, graphite, illustration, kiss, six by six, sketch, trade

Beautiful

Tags

art, beautiful, brown, children, daughter, dress, family, father, father and daughter, graphite, illustration, lace, lacey, love, moment, parent, quiet, sash, sketch

Coming Down

Tags

art, children's literature, computer illustration, flying, illustration, illustrations, mary poppins, parrot, six by six, sky, smoke, umbrella

 

Another six by six. The theme was “flying.” I promise some new illustrations are coming soon. I’ve hit a bit of a wall artistically recently but I’m trying to work my way through it.

The Importance of Tactics

Tags

art, boys, computer illustration, game, graphite, kitchen, male, military, six by six, sketch, tactics

Another Six by Six Illustration from Computer Illustration class. I drew this one with graphite, scanned it in, and colored it with Photoshop.

Next Stop

Tags

baby, couple, doll, expecting, toddler, train

Never Too Many

Tags

animal, bedtime, child, girl, pigtails, stuffed animals, too many

One of my “Six by Six” illustrations for my Computer Illustration class. I was told I should post this despite the fact that it wasn’t specifically created for this project. I’ll be doing two of these little, quick illustrations a week for the rest of the semester. Each of them is based on a theme that we’re supposed to run with. This one was “animal.” I’m sure at least a few more will make it up here throughout the semester.

Saturday Afternoon

Tags

afternoon, art, book, cherry tree, flower, picnic, relax, saturday, spring

Here’s to Tomorrow

Tags

cowboy, draw, journal, lists, moleskine, perfectionism, story, tech pen, tomorrow, whale

I think I did this in my new moleskine the day after I finished the last journal entry. It may seem kind of depressing, and I’m sorry for all of you close to me that are having a hard time reading all these and thinking I am in such a horrible state. The fact is it helps me to write this stuff down and express it in a way I can’t really when I’m just talking with people. That’s what happened with this journal-type thing. And it ended up a lot better afterwards, if only because I had gotten something out there. I was staring at the sketchbook thinking I ought to draw something and couldn’t think and got myself kind of worked up over the whole I’m-going-to-draw-something-and-put -probably-ugly-lines-on-a-page-of-a-awesome-pretty-much-new-sketchbook-and-it-will-probably-be-in-the-senior-gallery-and-it-had-better-be-good thing. So I just started listing things I am afraid of. And then the rest happened.

Today might not always be great, but a big part of what I’m trying to do right now is stay focused each day on how each day can be better than the last.  In the last few days since I wrote this I’ve been reminded through various events of who I am and why I’m here and how the future can really be wonderful, and I’m trying to keep a hold of that.  When I know who I am it feels like it would be quite simple to wake up tomorrow and forget about trying to be quite so perfect, or not have to try so hard to be hopeful, because at least for the moment I understand my place in the story. Maybe that’s the root of them problem. If I don’t see the story and where I’m at in it, I get lost.

I’m not sure if that makes any sense. All these things–hopelessness and perfectionism and thinking about the future–are all related somehow in my brain.

Anyway, here’s to a tomorrow that I know can be better.

Journal #3: Lost in my Own Perfectionism

Tags

art, journal, lifestyle, lost, perfectionism, self discovery, sketch

You might have noticed I wrote this awhile ago. I started doing this one before Christmas break, and it’s very frustrating to me (as a perfectionist) to have to admit that perfectionism, which I think is at the root of a lot of these struggles, is still very much a problem and refuses to be uprooted. I think that’s a big part of what this semester is for, so in that way it’s quite appropriate that I finally post this now, during the first senior project class of the spring, the beginning of a semester I hope will be full of lots of quick drawings and brave exploration into who I am as an artist no longer tied down by my perfectionism.

Sometimes it feels incredibly pathetic that fighting something as internal and supposedly controllable as perfectionism is so difficult. And of course it’s not all just perfectionism. But I do think perfectionism is at the very root of the matter.

So. Let the battle begin.