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.

The Hunger Games - With Beanie Babies?!

Wait, What?

For some reason my copy of The Hunger Games Movie has not shipped, and won't until next week. I'd be angry and depressed, but I just found this sort film on YouTube. The Hunger Games acted out with Beanie Babies! And it is hilarious! Not to mention VERY well done. Not just some kids with a camcorder, playing around, it's really a legitimately well-done film.

It's probably best if you've read the books or have seen the movie, but I suppose that's not a necessity. Still, it will help you get all the jokes. I about died laughing. :D



Even though I don't have my copy yet, I can watch the Amazon Instant Video version since I pre-ordered it, but I'm debating whether I want to deal with potential buffering issues over watching it seamlessly on Blu-Ray. I think I might stick it out till next week. I'll watch this again to tide me over. :p

County Fair 2012

Today was the entry day for the fair. I had been debating whether or not I even wanted to enter anything this year. It cost big bucks to get something framed, and for the pitiful monetary prizes that they award, it isn't worth spending $50 to get a painting framed, even if you won 1st prize. ($2) I lucked out last year and I found some old frames that fit my paintings and drawings, but this year it would have been a lot more challenging, since my paintings are on canvas and canvas board. So I elected to just skip the art department.

I almost didn't enter anything at all, but I decided this morning to enter some photography. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, eh? :p I didn't have as many as I did last year, but I did have 5 good ones that I found. Except for the last one, these are all pictures that I already shared on my photo blog in the past, so they may look familiar. The only difference is these are all BEFORE any manipulation.

One of the rules for entry is no photo manipulation. Not even color correction. In my opinion it's a stupid rule. You might as well ban any camera lenses that alter the color before you take the picture. You might as well ban the use of different colored lights! It's about the art, people... Come on. Are you going to start saying that we can't use certain brands of pens for drawing because they make the pictures too colorful? As you can tell I really hate this insane rule.

Anyway, enough of my rantings... :p Here are my five pictures.

In the "People" category:

In the "Animals/Birds" category:

In the "Things/Still Life" Category:

In the "Miscellaneous" category:

In the "Life in Iowa" category:

The Firework was from my first ever PROPER fireworks photoshoot last week on July 4th. I used the Bulb feature on my camera, along with a tripod, so the pictures actually turned out well. I plan to do a post featuring my best ones pretty soon.

So, that's it for my fair entries this year. Hopefully I'll get something. I'm not really expecting much, but I'm hoping that at least the picture of the Barn Swallows is worth a Blue. We'll see. :)

The Art Gallery - Our Final Project

In Design 2, our final project was not an art project, but it was a project that used our already existing artwork. We put together a gallery display. Most of mine was photography, but I did feature a few paintings as well. I took pictures of the process so you can see what all we did.

The first thing we needed to do was to get the photographs ready. We have a large photo printer in the Mac lab, so we were able to get all our photos printed for free right at school. We then attached the photos to mat board with a special paper to get them ready to be vacuum sealed.

This is the machine that seals the photos. It seals any kind of artwork, but we mainly used it for photographs.

Joel is covering the photos with a non-stick board that protects the inside of the machine. The paper that we used to seal the photos to the mat board is melted after all the air is removed to make the pictures perfectly flat. If the non-stick layer weren't there any paper that shows under the photo would be melted and could stick to the inside of the machine.

After everything is in place we close the machine and start it up. It takes around 5 minutes to vacuum all the air out and melt the paper.

After the photos have been sealed, we remove them and use a large paper cutter to cut off the excess mat.

And the photos are done!

My Beanie Baby display. I have two posts dedicated to these pictures on my photo blog. You can find the dinosaur storyline HERE, and the cats HERE.

Some of Joel's artwork.

More by Joel.

Pieces by both Joel and I.

Getting this gallery ready was a lot of fun, but showing it off to our friends was even better. When we went to see Brave in Omaha we stopped by the school to show them our gallery. I'll have a post about that soon! :)

Beanie Babies

So, as promised in my last blog post, today's post is all about Beanie Babies! Actually I have been planning on writing this for the last few months, because my first project for Design 2 was all about Beanie Babies. Yes, Beanie Babies. I have a very large collection of them.

"Jonathan, you're almost 26. Why do you have a very large collection of Beanie Babies?"

Well, it all started many years ago...
My Aunt Linda gave me and my brothers each a Beanie Baby one year. Mine was a dalmatian named Sparky.

We had never heard of them before, but soon afterwards, Beanie Babies blew up in popularity. They were the "It Thing" to have. Mom started buying them for us for Christmas, other family members bought them for us, and if I saw a Beanie Baby of some animal I really liked, I bought it for myself.

I think this was the first one I ever bought myself. Is anyone really surprised that it's a giraffe? :)

So over the years I amassed a rather large collection, and they all ended up stuffed in a giant plastic tote and put away. Who would have guessed that they would one day resurface to become the focus of the first half of my fourth semester of college?

This project was based on the book "Creature" by Andrew Zuckerman. The assignment was to study an artist and make a work that was a tribute to their style. Mine ended up more of a parody than a tribute, but everyone loved it and my teacher is encouraging me to have the pictures I took made into a book of my own. I won't be able to share all my pictures on my blog, but here are a few, just so you can get an idea of what I did. I may post more to my photography blog at a later date. (No, I haven't abandoned that blog, I've just been too busy to work on it.)

That's all for now, but I promise, this is not the last you have seen of my Beanie Baby collection. :)