Looking forward to Fall 2014 Semester

Summer is over- and despite my goals; I pretty much did nothing but unpack and clean over the last four

Painting by Michelle Mia Araujo-
I just needed something to add some color
to this post :)

months.  I mean that literally.  The bright side is that outside of normal apartment maintenance- I don't have a huge house related project hanging over my head.  This is the first time in my marriage that I've had our home unpacked and clean.  It's kind of a big deal for me.  Also for the first time in our marriage- and consequently the first time since I started college- we have stability.  Which is to say we are not moving.  Considering I'm closely related to our current landlords (as I've stated before- living in the basement apartment of my parents house) we don't have to worry about being kicked out because the landlord is selling the place, the rent going up randomly, the house being sold because they are going to bulldoze it and make it into a parking lot or any of the other reasons (all out of our hands) that we've had to move in the past 6 years.

Basically- even though this summer I only did one painting and 3 sketches- I'm feeling good.  I don't have to unpack or do any major projects (well I do need to empty our storage unit- but honestly; that place is pretty organized- so it's mostly going to be moving box from storage there to storage here).  I can focus 100% on art.

Other positive news- my kids (4 and 2) are old enough now that they need a lot less mommy attention.  Not that I'm going to be ignoring them- but the three of us can actually sit down and essentially schedule our time.  For the most part they stick to the schedule (we've been practicing over the last month) AND they both go to bed on time.  THIS IS THE FIRST TIME SINCE I'VE BEEN IN SCHOOL THAT I DON'T HAVE A BABY!! (Babies are awesome- but take SO much time; toddlers and preschoolers are more awesome- specially when they get along and play together)

This next semester also marks my first full time semester in years.

I'll admit it- this scares me a little bit.

Also- we converted one of the bedrooms into a studio for me.  While this isn't the first time I've had a studio (the last apartment I kept moving my office- but I always had a space that was mine) This is the first time that I've had everything unpacked and accessible- which follows naturally from my announcement about having the house unpacked.

I'm excited- I'm excited that I will actually be able to focus on my classes and my personal art projects with a lot less of the stress of previous years.  The only thing I don't have done right now is a perfectly planned out meal plan. I'm going to tackle that this week as school begins to wind up.  My husband and I have discussed what we'll do for meals- so it won't be that hard to finish up.

I'm not putting out my Fall Semester Art goals at this time- I need to see what my professors have in store for me before I start making my rather absurd goals.  So maybe tomorrow night I'll post what I'm thinking of.

I make these impossible goals, not to overwhelm myself- but because I tend to reach farther when I have them.  I always grow- even if I don't reach my goals; and that's the point I think :)

~Alicia

Hello!

So as far as the internet is concerned I almost literally fell off the side of the planet this summer.  Good news? My home is almost clean.  I'm not going into that any father because I tend to babble a lot about such things on my Decidedly Nikkie blog.

The weirdest thing about being gone so long and then coming back is that apparently I've picked up some followers.  Granted- they seem to be the same people who follow my other blog; but I'm not complaining :D

School starts in 2 weeks.

I've got a lot of work to do in the next 2 weeks.  The two big things on my list are to go over my A-Z entries and re-draw and finish some of the sketches that I did for that, and to do as many of the exercises from Keys to Drawing as I can.

Right now I'm going to bed- but thought I'd check in.

Night!

~Alicia

PS- wow- forgot how sad the design of this blog is; maybe I'll make that a priority and try to make this a little more amazing before school starts.

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