It's Over!

One week ago I finished school! After two and a half years, I have my Associates of Art degree. And I am so glad to be done with school! (For now anyway.)

This was the worst semester Joel and I have had so far. We had one more class to take to earn credits required to graduate. Math. We chose to do Statistics. The adviser we spoke with said it was easier than regular college math. It was not. It COULD have been. The math itself was not that difficult, but every problem was a word problem, and none of them gave you the formula you were supposed to use. It was pretty much a nightmare. I almost didn't get a good enough grade to graduate. In the end Joel and I both got C's. The lowest grade allowed for someone to graduate. Normally I would have hated such a low grade, but after this terrible class, I was just glad I passed and could move on.

The other classes I had were all much better than the math class. I had a class that basically was supposed to help you get a portfolio together to show to future employers or schools. That was simple. I'd already had a similar class at ITT Tech, so this was pretty much an easy A. I also took Photography 2. I had a lot of fun with that one. I expanded on my Beanie Baby idea from last semester, and took a lot more pictures, in a bunch of different styles.

I will get the rest of those pictures up on my Photography Blog eventually.

My other two classes were both graphic design classes. They were my best two classes this semester. I had forgotten how much I enjoy doing graphic design work. I had a lot of fun in those classes. The first one was Typography, and the second was another Photoshop class. I learned so much in both. The teachers were very helpful and the lessons were all interesting. When I eventually go back to school, I think I will take some more graphic design classes. The programs are so detailed that it's almost impossible to learn everything they do, but I'd like to come close. I really like working with them.

Right now I am not sure what's next. Eventually I would like to go on to get a Bachelors in photography, but after the stress of this semester I feel like I just want school to be over with for awhile. In the mean time I am keeping my eyes open for jobs, and looking into 4 year schools. Maybe by next fall I'll have been away long enough that I won't mind the thought of going back.

School News and More

School has started again, so I don't expect I'll be able to do a whole lot of blogging. I have a whole bunch of posts started, it's just finding time to finish them that's the problem. This is my final semester at Iowa Western. After this I am not sure where I will be going. Sometime soon Joel and I will be talking to one of our teachers to discuss our options.

Mondays and Wednesdays Joel and I have Typography and Digital Imaging. Digital Imaging is basically a fancy way of saying Photoshop. It's a different kind of Photoshop class than the one we took before, this one is more for graphic designers, but we figured it would be beneficial to take it. I think we'll learn a lot of valuable things.

Typography is taught by the same teacher as last semester's Illustrator class. She's a really good teacher. A lot more relatable than most. This is another Graphic design class, but I think it's important to understand the fundamentals of type, because in some cases, words are just as important to art as pictures are. Graphic design is sure to come into play in our lives sometime in the future, even if that's not our ultimate career goal, so the more we know the better.

We also have... Math. 4 DAYS A WEEK! This is beyond horrific. I thought that by choosing an online statistics class we'd be getting by easy and we'd be able to do the lessons whenever we want. Well, technically we still can, but only if we work so far in advance that we beat the deadlines. Not cool online teacher, not cool. Aside from this, the statistics class has not been too terrible. So far it's actually been pretty easy, and most of the questions have been more common sense questions than actual math problems. Let's hope it stays this way, but I'm not holding my breath.

Friday we have a "Studio Practices" class. What this means I'm not quite sure yet. It's almost an experimental class that one of our art teachers is starting. its purpose is to prepare students for a career in their field of art work. This is the first time anything like this has ever been offered at Iowa Western, and from the looks of it, Joel and I are the only two students in the class. Hopefully this class will be a lot of fun.

I alone have one other online class which starts next week, Photography 2. It is taught by the same teacher as the Studio Practices class, but it all happens over the internet. He wants to get it changed to an "In Class" class, but so far he has been unsuccessful in convincing the Dean to let him do so.

That's all my school news for now. I'll try to keep my blog updated if there's any big new developments, but I will probably have a lot of homework, so don't expect too much.

In unrelated news, I now have my Hunger Games Blu-Ray, but as you can probably tell from what I just wrote, I am very busy, so finding the time to sit down and watch a whole movie by myself without interruptions like school, or homework, or work will be kind of a challenge, so don't expect a review any time soon. I also just got two of my favorite movies from when I was a kid "The Rescuers," and "The Rescuers Down Under" and I thought it would be fun to do a review of them as well, but who knows when that will happen...

This weekend, when Joel and I get out of class, we will be off on a weekend road trip with our friends to both Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun. This could be a time of great fun or unimaginable terror. :p

My family never went to places like this when I was a kid, so I have not had any experience with thrill rides. A few years ago I road a single roller coaster and it was not fun at all. It was a wooden roller coaster, and it was a bone jarringly painful experience. I have been repeatedly told that that particular roller coaster was a terrible first roller coaster to go on, and I should not let that experience taint my perception of what most roller coasters are actually like. I am told I should try a different one that is not made of wood as it will be a lot smoother.

I hope they are right, because I really want to be the kind of person who likes going on thrill rides. I probably just need some good old-fashioned peer pressure to make me get on one. :p I think I will have a few people like that with me on this trip. :) I just hope we start out with something easy and work our way up to a roller coaster. I really don't want to get there and just go directly to the most extreme coaster and just jump right on without getting used to the others first.

Well, that's all for now. If I don't die this weekend, I will blog about the experience. :p

4th Semester Paintings

I'm finally getting around to posting my paintings from last semester! I still have more art than this to post, but at least I'm getting it up, slowly but surely.

My first painting was for a grid assignment. We were to draw a grid on a picture and paint it. I chose the picture below.

I ended up with this painting after I was finished.

The second painting was supposed to be a science themed painting. We were to take any branch of science and illustrate a specific scientific principle. I chose refraction through a prism, but I put my own spin on it.

The third painting was a mythological painting. I chose a phoenix. Because phoenixes are awesome. :p I used photos of peacocks for references.

The next painting was actually three paintings. We were supposed to paint either a triptych, or a diptych, and I went with a tryptich after I chose my subject, eyes.

When I remembered that the space between two eyes is about the same size as an eye, I thought it would be perfect to paint a pair of eyes as a triptych.

The last painting was a rather different sort of assignment. We were supposed to build a composite picture in Photoshop, and then after having it printed, glue it to a canvas and paint over it. I made a flying giraffe in Photoshop.

And then I painted over top of it. Apparently it turned out that my teacher meant that we were supposed to add to the Photoshopped picture with paint, but I must have missed that, because I just used the whole thing as a base for a painting.

My teacher didn't mind though and I still got an A.

Overall, this semester had some of my favorite paintings in it. The only two I wasn't too crazy about the end result were the giraffe paintings, but I loved how my other ones turned out. And all of these were a thousand times better than my self portrait two semesters ago. >Shivers<

I have loved these painting classes, and I'm kind of sad that there were only two classes available. I won't have a proper studio arts class in my final semester. Hopefully I will in the future though, we'll just have to see what happens. :)

A Pretty Ok Bag

My cousin has an awesome tote bag.

Yes, I overuse the term awesome. But I don't care. :p

Just because I want to, here's a side by side comparison of the Photoshop before and after versions.

Art History Brush

I have discovered that the Art History brush tool in Photoshop actually has a use! I could never figure out what good it was when I tried it out, but I came across a video online that told me how to use it. It's basic function is to create painted effects. To try it out for myself, I took a picture of one of my old Beanie Babies, (This is for a school project, more on that in a future post) and I started playing with it.

This was my original picture.

The first thing I had to do was clean it up for my project for school.

After I had it looking good enough for my assignment, I saved it and started playing around with the Art History Brush. This was my result.

I had no idea I could do this before! It looks like a watercolor painting or something, and that's only one of the many, many possibilities with that brush! I can't wait to see what else I can do!

Vintage Photographs #2

You probably recall awhile back when I posted about learning how to restore photos for my digital photography class, and then using what I’d learned to restore some pictures for my grandma. I posted the before and after versions which you can find HERE if you’d like to see them again. You might also recall that I mentioned I was working on some more to use in a Christmas gift for her.

Well, I finished the last 6 that she had given me when I started the photo restoration assignment for school. I put them all into an album which I gave to her for Christmas. She really liked it and I told her I would do some more and have them printed and keep adding to her album. And of course, I will share my progress here as well, so here are the most recent pictures for my grandma’s album.

That is my Grandma on the right. That may be her mother in the middle, but I’m not sure who the little girl is. You can’t really tell with these pictures, but there were little cracks and scratches, and tiny little pieces missing from the original. The online version is too small for those imperfections to be very noticeable.

  

This is a picture of my Grandma and Grandpa.

  

I do not know who these two women are.

  

My Grandma.

  

I don’t know who this woman is. And again, most of what was wrong with this photo you can see at this size on the internet, with the exception of that crusty spot over her fingers.

This is a picture of my Grandma’s mom, and those are her two older brothers. There was some writing on the back from her mother who had sent this picture to a friend some time in the distant past. She wrote to her friend, “Don’t look at me.” Which I found to be hilarious. :D

Grandma recently gave me an envelope with more pictures that she would like to have restored, so when I get the chance, I will be working on them. But, school starts again tomorrow already, so I’m not sure when I‘ll have a whole lot of free time. When I finish some of them I will post them for you all to see.

Facebook Photos(hops)

As you may have guessed, all of the pictures that I use for my “Facebook Friends” posts are Photoshopped. I actually put quite a bit of work into them, so I thought it would be fun to share the original pictures with you so you can see what all I did to them.

The first picture I ever did was “Lil’ Tinkles in the Toilet”. I’m sure you all remember that one. :) (You can find that post HERE) It was a combination of three different pictures merged into one. I find most of my pictures just by doing internet searches.

Combine them all together and:

Instant kitty horror. :) Well, not quite instant. These take quite awhile. :)

The other ones were the pictures of destruction and horror caused by Mamma Frazzled’s children. (You can find all those pictures HERE) For those, I began with more pictures I found on the internet. Two I found by searching for “Kids making a mess” or something like that, and the other one I just completely put together myself.

This was what I started with for my first picture.

But after a lot of work, and the addition of a digital alarm clock in the toilet, I ended up with this.

The next picture I did I decided to just start from scratch. I rather doubted there would be any actual pictures of children leaping off of a roof, so I decided to build my own. I started out by searching for a good roof picture.

Then of course I needed a picture of a kid jumping, and most any kid who’s ever jumped off anything was probably imitating Superman, so I also searched for a Superman cape while I was at it.

After I combined all those elements, I ended up with this.

The last picture I made, I again started out with a messy kid, but not quite as messy as the end result.

And again I just used the basic Photoshop tools to multiply the mess, add an empty bag of Cheetos, and stain a bunch of things orange.

So there you have it. A lot of work went into those four quick jokes, but they were fun to make, and if they made anyone laugh it was worth it. :) If I do any more pictures like these, I’ll put together another post showing what I did. I think it’s as much fun to tell how I make these as it is to just share the end result. :)

I’m Done!

With school! For now!

Digital Photography! A!

Biology! A!

Painting! A!

Geography! A!

History! B!

But, a B is still amazing considering that was the absolute worst class I have had so far, and I was fully expecting, and had made peace with the fact, that I was getting a C. On all 5 of the exams throughout the semester, there was not one that I completely finished. As I got to over halfway done each time, a little message would pop up saying “There is two minutes left. Please save your work as it will be submitted for grading.” And I would panic and quickly race through the rest of the test franticly clicking random answers hoping I would get some right. I never did. On the very last exam, however, I only had one single panicked click. One. And I missed three questions. I was fully expecting to get another D or a C on the test, because normally I always missed so many. I never had trouble on any of the assignments. I got full points on just about everything, except the exams. But since I did so well on the final, it pulled my grade up instead of down, and I ended the class with a final score of 84.66. I am very happy with that B.

My second worst class was Biology, but it turned out to not be nearly as bad as I had expected. The “horrible” teacher who made Joel and I split up in lab the first day, turned out to not be nearly as awful as she seemed. In fact, by the end of the class, I felt sorry for her because just about everyone else in the class talked about her behind her back, using language that, 70 years ago, would have gotten them 12 bars of ivory soap crammed in their mouths. She may not have been the greatest teacher in the world, but she did not deserve the names they called her when she couldn’t hear them. The only thing that made her “awful” was the fact that they didn’t like her tests, mainly because it was obvious they didn’t study enough, and half of them didn’t show up on the time, if at all. By the end of the class, 6 people had failed just because they missed so many labs, and most of the rest came very close to failing. It was their own fault they didn’t get good grades, but of course they blamed her. They were all adult age, but they acted like babies. It was very pathetic.

On the day of the final I was sitting outside the class studying, waiting for Joel to get back before I went in, and she came up and told me that she just wanted to tell me that it had been a pleasure having me in her class. I’m sure if Joel had been there she would have expressed the same thing to him, because out of all the other students, I’m pretty sure we were the only two not to either give her any grief or gossip about her with the other students.

Geography was an okay class. I took it because I had to, but I did choose it out of a bunch of other classes because I don’t think I know enough about geography. I still don’t but I know a lot more now that I did, and I plan to keep learning. You may recall THIS post, well, I still have that coloring book, and we actually only used it during the last two weeks, which is a shame since I think it really helps you learn. So I plan to just keep working on it, and I’ll just keep on learning as I color in it.

Digital Photography was my best class. besides the reports I shared from geography, that was the class that I shared the most on here from. I learned the most, and it was the class that in the long run will probably benefit me the most career-wise.
My other favorite class was Painting 1. I had a lot of fun in that class, and now that class is out I have all my paintings back, so I will start sharing them on my blog. I just need to get them set up and photographed. That will have to wait for a little while though because most of my free time will be spent getting ready for Christmas. Thanks to my Digital Photography class, I will be using my newfound knowledge of Photoshop to restore more pictures for my Grandma’s Christmas present. (See! It’s already coming in handy!) :) She knows I’m restoring them, as I had told her a few months ago that I needed to for a class for school, but she probably isn’t expecting me to get them all printed up for her for Christmas. So if I have time before Christmas I might get some of the paintings up on my blog, but otherwise it will have to wait until the holidays are over. Either way, I’ll get them up here eventually.

Next semester I am taking a graphic design class, just a basic one to brush up on the subject, since it has been about 4 years since I went to ITT Tech. That will be an online class as it wasn’t available in a classroom setting. Not sure how it will work, but I’ll find out I guess. I am also taking my LONG awaited Design 2 class, with one of my favorite teachers. I loved taking that class in my first semester. If you’ll recall that was the class where I learned how to use a sewing machine and I made a kite that wouldn’t really fly, except to swoop down and attack the person who was launching it. :p You can re-read all about it and see the pictures HERE if you’d like. :) This time Joel and I will be taking Design 2 together, as he had a different class to take during that semester and he took Design 1 the following semester. Joel and I are also taking a class called Digital Drawing, which is another graphic design class. Due to the name of the class we are hoping it will be making use of drawing tablets, (The computer kind). The other class we have together is Painting 2. No waiting over a year for the second class here. :) I loved the first class, and we had a great teacher, so I am really looking forward to this one as well.

Well, that’s all my news for now! I’d better get busy on Grandma’s pictures, only 6 days left until Christmas!

I’m in a Music Video!

Well, maybe not me exactly, but I bet that got your attention. :p Allow me to explain. First watch this video. Or rather, listen to this song, as the video really isn’t anything more than lyrics running on the screen.

I love Parry Gripp’s songs. They always crack me up. :D “Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig)” is just one hilarious example. :p After he released this song he announced on Facebook that he was looking for drawings to use in his next music video for Slushy the Slushball. He’s done this before, you might recall my brief obsession with Space Unicorn. :p I didn’t make my Space Unicorn drawing until after he’d made that video, but this time I decided I’d submit a drawing. If you watched the Space Unicorn video you could tell he used everything he was sent, so I was pretty sure I could get a drawing in there. Here is what I drew. (As long as you listened to the song, the picture makes perfect sense.) :)

 

I know, super simple. But I did it that way on purpose. I wanted to test out my developing Photoshop skills. Here is the after.

I submitted it and today the video was released. Check out the third drawing! :D

This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me! :D Well, probably not really. But I am excited to have one of my drawings in a Parry Gripp music video. :)

Now that I’ve gone back and reread my Space Unicorn post, I realized I still need to make a big piece of art. It never progressed beyond that drawing. My obsession died soon after I wrote that post. :p Maybe I will use Photoshop and see what I can make out of that drawing. I'm sure I still have the original file somewhere… Stay tuned, I may just do that. :p

‘Shopping

Perhaps it’s because I took a Photoshop class this semester, but I can no longer just look up pictures to use on my blog without seeing a whole bunch of things wrong with them. I simply must mess with them and make them better before I use them. All the pictures I used in my Latvia/Nepal post were all Photoshopped before they went on my blog. They all started out as just a random picture brought up on Google, and I nipped, tucked, and color corrected them until I liked them. There isn’t any massive differences, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ll share a few with you so you can see what I mean.

My favorite edit was the map of Latvia. I didn’t even do much, and I actually didn’t even have to use Photoshop. I just corrected some highlights with the standard software that was already on my computer, and I accidentally got this!

The map of Nepal was a bit more difficult. All I had was this little Thumbnail, and of course blowing it up to a usable size made it look all pixilated, so I had to do some major editing.

Another one was the Latvian Rye bread. The picture was ok, but I felt it needed something more.

See what a difference just a bit of cropping and color correction can make?

My other favorite was the Latvian dessert. That one I also didn’t do much, just some cropping, color correction, and rotating.

Just a little bit of editing and the addition of the border turns a regular old picture-from-internet into something just a bit more special I think. :)

Yesterday someone posted a picture on facebook that I found really funny. It wasn’t the picture itself that was funny, but the caption they had put on it. I though about making a blog post and just having that picture, but I usually don’t like doing that. I like my blog posts to have a larger point to them. Plus I thought the picture needed a lot of improvement. So I decided to severely alter it, and then share it in this post about picture editing. So, here is the “Before” picture:

Their eyes of course really bugged me. They look rather “dead” if you ask me, so that had to be fixed, plus I didn’t like that they were facing away from the blank space in the picture. Most people probably wouldn’t notice little details like that, but I guess because I am going to art school, composition is something that I notice a lot more now than I used to.

To make it better and get it to the point where I would want to share the joke on my blog, I did some pretty major editing on it. I cropped it, cut off their heads and flipped them around, painted their eyes in, and color corrected the whole thing. Here is the “After picture.

The final step was to add the hilarious caption.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who gets the joke. :D

 

“We didn’t see any crows get killed,” Violet said.
“’Murder’ is the word for a group of crows, like a flock of geese, or a herd of cows, or a convention of orthodontists.”