Put a fork in me, cause I'm done!

At last! After 3 long years I have finally taken my last final for the next 2 years! This has given me a taste for how great it will feel if I ever graduate.

Intaglio Take Two

Awhile back I did my first intaglio print, which was of a matador with a bull. Before I did it, I had a great difficulty deciding between doing the bullfight image or the Plaza España in Sevilla. I ended up calling my parents and having a long discussion about which one to choose. In the end I think my mom liked the bullfight and my dad liked the plaza. I ended up going with the bullfight, but then when it came time for me to do my final project, I decided to do a larger version of the Plaza España (this way both of my parents can have their favorite one).

This was the image I used, which is a photo I took on my study abroad in Spain:

If it looks familiar, either you've been there, you've been reading my blog for over a year, or you have seen the second episode of the Star Wars movies. The plaza was used to create the planet Naboo.

Here is my initial sketch:

Here is my plate with the hardground on it before it was put in the acid.

Here's the plate as it was when I printed (after the acid and dry point):

The final products:

Oil Painting

At last, after many long hours I have finished my oil painting. Here is a rough outline of the journey it went through.

The sketch:

Somewhere in the middle. I thought I was almost done at the time, but there is a rather drastic difference between this and the finished product:

Fin:

While far from perfect still, I figured this was about as good as it was going to get. I will say that I am terribly proud of the two bottles on the right. I probably spent about 3 hours painting them alone. A little tip for anyone who decides to paint bottles...don't use transparent ones when you are starting out! They may look beautiful, but they are much more difficult to paint.

Something Rather Funny

The Fresco Club

At long last I have joined the ranks of Michelangelo and many others as a member of the official fresco club. Ok, so maybe I made that up, but I guess the point I'm getting at is that Michelangelo and I now have one more thing in common than we used to: we have both painted a fresco. His might have been on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, while mine was on an 8x11 board, but still, it's the same process. Luckily I didn't have to lie on my back to paint mine.

So here is how fresco painting works. Rather than using a binder like oil to make the paint stick, fresco uses the carbonization of lime. The pigment becomes part of the limestone as it hardens. This makes for a rather important time restraint. Once the plaster is dry, you can't paint on it anymore.

We had to build up three layers of different coarsnesses of this limestone goup. Here I am applying the top coat, which is the finest of the three:

You might think it would be easy to go from that to what is pictured below, but it wasn't. The goup just did not want to stick, but in the end I conqured it into submission.

Once the plaster was all smoth, we had to wait about 20 minutes before painting on it. Our professor had told us to shy away from complicated human figures in our first fresco as it is a very unforgiving and different way of painting, especially compared to the oil paintings we had just been workingon. This was the photo I decided to use as my inspiration:

And here is my final product, you'll notice I took a few artistic liberties.

Here is a side view where you can see the different layers that we built up to paint on:

What I learned from painting my first fresco was that Michelangelo and the rest of the clube members were true masters at what they did. I can't imagine painting a human figure, especially on a ceiling or even on a large scale. But I did enjoy making my tiny fresco and understanding more about the process past artists went through.

Oh, and the best thing? This fresco will last basically forever. It will even continue to brighten for several years to come.

Happy Birthday Matthew!

So my littler brother turned 14 today, which means that he is officially of age to dance. In fact, I found this video of him dancing with none other than Miley Cyrus!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Dear Parents,

So this week my lovely siblings came to visit me in Utah. We had some time to kill before Greg got out of his class, so we went to DI. There was a prize offered for the most ridiculous item found, though I'm not sure what the prize was or who got it. I think we were all winners.

Adding to the level of ridiculousness on this one - it's a candle:


We did end up leaving with two VHS's, a Mary-Kate and Ashley detective movie (the case of the singing sharks) and a montage of music videos by NSYNC and Britney Spears, both real gems.

That night Megan, Matthew, and Greg went to the Sherwood concert while Emily and I watched the MK and A movie and then went out for ice cream with some of my friends. It was a jolly good time.

Wednesday night Emily, Megan and I went ice skating, which was definitely a major highlight of my life. Here we are prepping to skate:



















It turns out that Emily is a much better ice skater than me, despite the class I've been taking, but we all had fun.

After skating we dropped Emily off at Greg's and they, with Matthew, headed to the nickelcade while Megan and I went to see my friend Tim's band perform. Here's Tim singing his heart out:

Turns out his band, Count Me In, is actually amazing. Here's a little sample of the awesomenes:



On Tuesday I took the kiddos to lunch at In-N-Out for lunch in between my classes. They were pretty excited as you can see here:


Here Emily is displaying a ring she won at the nickelcade. Don't worry parents, it's not a nose ring, despite the fact that it is a ring she is wearing on her nose.


Later that evening Megan and I went to dinner with my roommate Kristin. Then we got some ice cream before seeing Miley Cyrus' new movie The Last Song.

We all really liked the movie, despite the fact that it turned out to be a real tear-jerker.

Basically we've had a lot of fun, but I do wish my mom and dad were here to share in the experience.