A Blossoming Artist

Years ago when I was a junior in high school I took an art history class. In that class my teacher talked about taking an art class when she was in college where they did most of the techniques we were studying in art history. Most particularly I remember her talking about trying to paint with egg tempera, and it being a very tedious process. Ever since then I've wanted to try egg tempera along with a number of techniques I've learned about.

Naturally, when I discovered there was such a class offered at BYU I decided to take it. On the first day of class I read through the syllabus and saw that we would indeed be doing egg tempera, in addition to fresco, various forms of printing, casting bronze, and a number of other things. I could not have been more thrilled, that is until we actually started making art.

Our first week we focused on drawing, blind contours in particular. A blind contour drawing is where you look only at the object you are drawing, never at your paper, and draw what you see without picking up your pencil. For homework we had to do several blind contour drawings of the same thing and then draw it for real. Here's how mine turned out:



I happen to prefer the blind contours to the real picture of the fruit.

The next week class started with my professor telling us to all throw our chairs into a pile in the center of the room. We did this and then were informed that we were to spend the next few hours drawing only the negative space between the legs of the chairs. At first I found this to be a most distressing assignment, but I quite like my final product (sorry the lines are so light, it's a pencil drawing):

This week we started the truly exciting stuff: relief printing. There are many ways to do relief printing, but we did ours using woodblocks that we carved a design on.

The inspiration for my woodblock comes from one of my favorite artists Edvard Munch. I took two of his paintings that I really like and sort of combined them into one image of my own. Here are the two paintings:

Kiss by the Window

The Scream

Here is my initial sketch:

And here is my carved block of wood (after it has been used to print several times, hence its odd color):

Something interesting about relief printing is that what you carve is what prints white, so it's backwards from how you normally draw. Also, it prints backwards.

Here are my 7 finished prints:

The blue one turned out lame. The ink was struggling to transfer for some reason, so here are the other 6 closer.

One of my favorite ones:

My other favorite (at the end of class we were allowed to experiment with mixing the inks):

A Date with Emily

For Christmas I gave Emily a date with me that included making a Build-a-Bear and getting lunch at Olive Garden. She carefully selected this adorable pink and yellow bear (which is pictured below without having been stuffed).

She stuffed it and fluffed it and then chose this super cute outfit for her which we dressed her in after naming her Kelly.

Then we went to Olive Garden where Emily ate Spaghetti,

I had the soup and salad, and Kelly waited in the car so she wouldn't get dirty.

I have to say it's one of the best dates I've been on.

Cherub Bootcamp

I feel inclined to include this video after mentioning the Jonas Brothers as Cherubs in one of my previous posts. I almost died laughing the first time I saw this with Megan.



Also, congrats to Kevin for getting married (just in case he ever googles himself and comes across this).

Fun with the Fam

With the snow partially melted we headed out for a fun day Christmas Eve. Here we are driving into D.C. for some ice skating in the sculpture garden.

Once at the ice rink I quickly discovered that my baby sister Emily is well on her way to the Olympic gold medal in figure skating. She's already doing swivels and cross overs and even the awesome "shoot the duck," which I must say I never have been able to accomplish.

Here's the whole fam at the sculpture garden. My mom got a police man to snap this shot.

This lovely sculpture is found in the National Gallery and is by Degas. Even better though is that all 5 of us are imitating it quite perfectly (except maybe that Matthew is looking at the camera).

Here are me and Megan in front of a fountain that features 2 cherubs. For anyone who has seen Night at the Museum 2 and knows Megan or I this photo becomes more significant. You see, the Jonas Brothers play 3 singing cherubs in the movie. There are only 2 cherubs in the picture because Kevin (the oldest one) is obviously off preparing for his wedding.

After a stop at a chili restaurant in D.C. that was featured on the travel channel or something we returned home to begin the Christmas Eve traditions. This of course included Christmas pajamas, which are pictured below.

We ended the evening with a seafood feast and eventually headed to bed after putting out cookies and milk for Santa. Christmas morning was a delight. Some of the highlights for me included a coloring book of famous paintings, new nail polish, and some Hemingway books from Santa.

The funniest gift definitely goes to my younger brother Matthew who had been saying he was going to give me paper towels for weeks. When I opened my present you can imagine my shock when it actually was a single roll of paper towels. I was certain there was more to the gift, but didn't know who I went about getting the rest of it. Then he told me to open the paper towels and it turned out he had hollowed them out and put two DVD's inside: March of the Wooden Soldiers and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Needless to say it was very funny.

My mom took the more sentimental route and gave me this quilt that she had made me:

She also gave me and Megan both a ring that matches one that was given to her by her Stepmother. Megan and I were both guilty of coveting it a little bit, but I at least have since repented.

The next day Emily was baptized, which was a wonderful event. She was so beautiful in the same white dress that Megan wore years before as a flower girl.

That evening my family accompanied me in the search for a true Doner Kebab (which was something I ate a lot in Spain and have missed greatly since returning to the U.S.) The place we went to in Leesburg claimed to have the smallest kitchen in the country or world or something. We're standing in front of it below. The kebab was good, but still not up to par with the ones in Spain. Guess I'll just have to go back.

Sometime in the next week we went to Annapolis to try another restaurant featured on "Man vs. Food." The challenge at this restaurant was simply to eat a 3 lb sandwich and drink a 6 or 7 lb milkshake (I forget exactly how much it was...but it was a lot). We all opted not to try the challenge, so instead I ate a delicious corned beef hash.

We still got the 6 lb milkshake though, but it took all 6 of us to drink it (Emily opted for her own personal normal sized shake).



On New Year's day we went up to D.C. again to go to the top of the Washington Monument. Here are me and Greg at the top just being buds.

Us goofing around while everyone else took in the view.

I gave my adorable Emily a piggy back rid all the way back to the car. I think she was enjoying it.

All in all it was an excelent end to a great year.