an art-related post

If you really want to know how my cleaning is going you can check out my other blog Decidedly Nikkie to read about it.  It is my 'everything' blog- and I want to get this one back on track to art.

So I'm going to share in more detail one of my goals this summer.

If you remember I have a ridiculous amount of sketchbook pages that I want to fill by the end of August- and to keep myself from just drawing random things in my sketchbooks I've actually got a plan.

One of the first things I'm going to dive into is 'Keys to Drawing' by Bert Dodson,  I've started this book before and done the first few exercises in it; but I've never really gotten through the whole thing before.  I don't know why- and for whatever reason I've been really dragging my feet on starting it again.  I know it will help improve my abilities; I don't question this.  But for whatever reason Mr Dodson, who is a fantastic artist chose to fill the book with what appears to be half done scribbles with no regard to the finished product.  I'm not sure why he made that choice.  I suppose so we can see the rough sketch that eventually becomes a finished piece?  But that really doesn't make sense for all of the examples he has in the book.  I don't know.  In any case my point is this: I find the book hard to look through because judging by the art alone- it will not help me grow.  HOWEVER I've spoken with multiple people and professors who have all recommended the book- and I have no doubt that reading it and going through the exercises will help me.  I just need to do it.

That was a long paragraph to pretty much say- I'm going to be starting with this book to fill up sketchbook pages.  I'm excited to tackle this project- because I know by the end I will have grown as an artist- and that is exciting.

~Alicia

Making Progress!

No pictures- sorry; but I'm to lazy to take them.  We have the furniture re-arranged in the living room and it is now completely cut off from the kitchen; which is good- because with both the opening from the hallway and the opening from the kitchen it felt more like a large extension of the hallway and less like a room you'd actually want to watch TV in.  Office is unpacked and put away- and is now full of boxes to go through again.  This is a good thing- because that means that the living room, while still full of boxes; is empty enough that I can actually WORK in there.  At this point I've done all the heavy lifting (well; my second youngest sister helped a lot with that) so all that is left is sorting and putting away.  The good news? I actually have places for just about everything- so yea- it's going to be a lot of work- but it should feel faster because in general the space is more organized.  Well got to get back to work!!

~Alicia

Alicia- where have you been??

Ok- so at the beginning of this month I set out a bunch of goals.  Then a week later I modified all of them.  'Cause I sat down and figured out the amount of time I wanted to spend on everything I need to do this summer; then I added all those times together and compared that number to the actually amount of hours I have this summer... AND- well; I'd need 3 summers to accomplish everything.  So yea.

Anyway.

I've been away from blogging for a week- and I was going to have all of these awesome sketches and stuff that I'd be showing off to all of you.

I don't have any.

Not to say I haven't been sketching- but the bulk of my time has been spent on another project.

Remember when I mentioned we 'crash moved' back in November? Well- we've been trying to get the house livable; and as I've mentioned before I've made great progress unpacking our apartment overall.  Except for 2 rooms.  My office and the living room.  Below are the 'before' pictures.

my office- view from my desk to the hall

view from the door to my desk

from my drafting table to the window

Didn't take a picture of my drafting table- but it was just as bad as the rest- and then; the living room...

view from the kitchen into the living room

view from hall into the living room- standing on tippy toes so you can see into the room

the main entrance to the living room (from the hallway)

Scary huh?  I assure you the mass of boxes isn't this bad anymore- I have the office unpacked and just need to put everything away on shelves (currently everything is organized into those cute cloth cubes- but I'm not sure where everything is going yet).  The living room is still nearly as bad; but should un-pack and put away fairly quickly once I finish my office.  My hope is to have most of this done by tomorrow night.

I also am going to try to get my website going by the 31st- which gives me 4 days to finish all of this.  I want to start June off with everything put away and life functioning in some semblance of order.  Then I can focus on Art stuff, Family and weight-loss (so I can have more energy for art!).

So that has been my consuming project this month.  My only consolation in taking this month to do this is that we are not moving for another 2 years.  So I have some time before I have to pack it up and start over again (we've crashed moved like 8 times in the past 6 years- 4 of those were during our first year of marriage. :P)

Anyway- Not art related today- but there you have it; that is what I've been up to.

~Alicia

Also- quick apology to anyone who follows me on google+ you're pretty much going to get the same post twice from my other blog.  They normally don't overlap much- but have a lot this month for whatever reason.

Totoro 2

So I spent much of day working on this painting- below is as finished as I got it for the invitations; the painting itself doesn't have the words on it of course.  I plan on working on it a bit more to finish off the edges and some of the other things that just aren't finished yet.  The other image on here was a quick sketch that I did for the inside of the invitation to put the text on.  

Night
~Alicia

Totoro

not the greatest illustration in the world; but I think it gets the
'ah cute' reaction- which is what baby shower invitations really need.

I haven't done any work in my sketchbook today- largely because I spent the first half of today fighting with my computer and silhouette cutter trying to print out a design for a baby shower I'm helping plan.
To back up a little; I had this cute little design ready to go and no way to print it or color it.  I don't have photoshop right now and I have no idea how to use Corel Paint Shop for anything beyond VERY basic edits; so I gave up on painting it digitally.  I decided instead it would look really cute as a paper craft design.  So I spent most of the week last week looking for my power adapter- I didn't find it until Saturday evening and that was of course AFTER I'd ordered a new one.  In any case I needed the invitations done by Monday morning.  So I went from deciding I was going to have to go a different direction to thinking I could do the paper crafting style.  SO sunday I found the rest of my stuff that goes with my Silhouette machine... and attempted to start cutting paper and assembling the invitation.  (thinking to do one and then scan it in and print flat copies of it)  This attempt ended up being an epic fight between me and the machine.  I just couldn't get the settings right; and the farther I went with the attempt the worse it looked!!  My machine was shredding the edges; so I have one of two problems either my blade is gong dull or I just kept getting the settings wrong.

you can see all the jagged edges I was getting; I kept going over
things with an exacto knife to smooth it out.  It didn't help as much
as I would've liked

Clearly I stopped trying after awhile.  I still like the idea of doing the baby shower invitation this way- but until I have more time to play with my machine- I decided to move on.

This was the point where I was like 'why don't I just draw it out and paint it' something I had thought of doing earlier but I had hesitated in committing to this avenue.  Why?
1> I frankly have no confidence in my work
2> I think it is tacky when sub par artists use their work for things as if they are professional
3> I thought it would take more time than the other things.
Well... tacky or not I drew it out this evening after all the rest of the fighting with my computer (it is the image at the top of this post).  I really am glad I made the decision to paint it- there were a lot of things that were wrong with the original vector drawings- chief among them being that I have little skill in drawing anything on the computer.  Drawing it out by hand I was able to shape the lines better- and am enjoying the picture more.  It's not really an original drawing by any sense- it is drawn from a screenshot of the movie itself; just simplified a bit.  I don't think I can claim this as anything but really cutesy fan art.  BUT I like the way it is going- I hope my friend does as well... we'll see I suppose.  I'm going to spend the rest of the night painting it- hopefully it comes out well.

Lots of words- but I felt like typing.

~Alicia

Summer Goals!

I'm FINALLY getting to this.  Before I jump into the goals I have *most* of my home unpacked and

organized- my adjusted goal for the timeline of being completely unpacked is May 31- so I'm going to do a little bit of organizing and unpacking every day until I get it done.  'Cause- I've got a lot of other things to do, overall though our little apartment feels pretty pleasant.  Just need to finish unpacking 'the lost city' of boxes that occupies most of our living room...  we just ignore that room right now.

As of today I have 102 days until school starts again- which sounds like a lot until I start to break down what I need to get done between now and then.  I've got two fairly large projects coming up this next year- both of which occur during the beginning of fall and spring semester.  Thing #1- happens September 4-6; I'm going to be participating in the artists alley at the Salt Lake Comic Con.  Honestly I'm kinda terrified- this will be the first time I will be displaying my art work publicly and will be attempting to sell some.  It is not a 100% for sure thing; I still need to reserve a table at the Con- BUT I'm going to be doing my best to get stuff together for it.  More on that later.  Thing #2 is getting together my portfolio to officially apply for the BFA-Illustration program at my school.  That isn't due until February 2015; which may appear like a lot of time- but once Fall semester starts I'm going to have precious little time to work exclusively on it- since I'll be working like crazy on stuff that is due in class (which I can put in my portfolio).  On top of all of that I have a lot of personal improvement drawing-wise that I need to make.

So- my goals for Summer 2014

not my drawing-
but I thought it was appropriate

#1- Spend at least 500 250 hours drawing and improving my drawing.  (that sounds like a lot; but it only amounts to about 5 2.5 hours a day of drawing- and since this is supposed to be my job; that is a pretty good work day!)
#2- Produce 1 5x7 painting per day (ok- so that bumps me up to an additional 2-3 hours a day at least)
#3- Create 1-2 large (minimum size 12x18) finished paintings per week.

All in all it probably amounts to about 10 7.5 hours of art work a day- plus taking care of my kids, plus taking care of my house, plus taking care of myself.  The goals are steep- and I've tried to make big goals like this in the past but have had a lot of real life get in the way.  For the first time since my husband and I have gotten married I actually feel stable, which is to say I don't think our landlord is going to sell our home out from under us again (this has happened to us 3 times now; I think we're cursed!) or any of the other big issues we've had in the past.  So I feel like I might actually be able to achieve most of my goals.

I hope so anyway.

For accountability I'm going to be posting at least one drawing/painting a day to this blog starting on Friday the 16th Monday the 19th.  If I get lazy and all I do produce this summer is that one drawing or painting each day- well that'll be at least 100 drawings closer to being amazing.

Well; that is all I have to post today.  I've got to dive in and get started on all of these goals if I'm going to complete them.

So see ya this Friday!
~Alicia

I'm not dead!

So last week I was going to post my goals for the summer- and as I'm sure you can see- I haven't done that yet.  The reason is simply this: after finals I pretty much slept for two days and since then I've spend most of my time trying to find the floors in my house.  As some may be aware- we moved in a rather rushed way mid semester last October- and I haven't really had time to unpack the apartment.  SO it's just gotten incredibly messy over the last couple of months- living half out of boxes has taken its toll.  So I'm trying to get our apartment to feel like a home by this Saturday.

I just thought this illustration was pretty
and the post felt kinda empty without a picture

I've made a lot of progress- the kids room is pretty much organized and done (just need to find a place for all of the stuffed animals we have), the bedroom for my husband and I is now clean and organized and the Laundry Room/Kitchen is nearly clean (it is just full of laundry to wash- which I should have done by tomorrow afternoon) and the bathroom will be done after I scrub the shower this evening. The last 2 rooms are the hardest of the group; and the ones I've been avoiding the most- my office and the space we've been using as a workout room/living room.  The living room is literally a large pile of boxes going from the floor to the ceiling- and I'm dreading cleaning it out.  My office... really isn't to bad- but I don't know where anything goes right now- as soon as I get it organized I'll be able to start clearing out the living room...

Seriously- probably more info than I really need to share- but it helps me know I'm accomplishing things when I can see it written out.

Well I'm going to get back to work now- later this week or early next I'll post my goals for the summer and start making art again! I'm excited- I have a lot of cool things in mind to do over the next three and a half months; but right now house cleaning is taking priority (as it has to sometimes)

~Alicia

A to Z Reflections

Ok- so I just finished the A to Z challenge- and am happy that I managed to make it to the end.  Not every post was on time or as well written as I would've liked- but I DID start it last minute and I had all the stress of finals at the same time... in any case I finished it!! I have decided that I'm going to do it again next year- however I'm going to do something different and plan ahead and have the posts more ready to go so I can spend more time focusing on school and visiting other participants blog.  With that said I still hope to visit as many of the blogs on the list as I can (for as long as it is up) and am very grateful to everyone who stopped by and left a comment on this one!

I loved the networking and am going to investigate and see if there are more challenges I can join like the A to Z thing- it was nice to have something to post about every day- even if I did get behind....

SO summer has started- I've been done with school for 2 days and so far all I've done is finish unpacking my kids room, built a futon for their room (for the nights that I have to stay up all night holding a sad/sick child- now I have a bed in there so my husband can get better sleep! I feel so smart) and cleaned out the fridge.  The remaining list of household chores is extensive- but I plan on having everything in order by this time next week.

As of today I have 116 days until school starts- I've got a lot to accomplish and very little time to do so. I'm going to post a list of my goals later today- I mostly just wanted to give my 2 cents on the A to Z thing I just finished.

~Alicia