Copper love...

Weeeeeeeeeee!!!
I've taken four prints so far. The burr is standing strong, which bodes well as I more forward. Some background to add. Then the transfer onto the second plate, aquatint, and color decisions. Double-drop headaches beyond that.

Since I've found a method of taping my fingers that seems to prevent my swelling problems... I am a lot more inspired to work. Or at least I'm not as scared as I was.
I have three 'braincrack' plates sucking up grey matter.

• 'For science!'. A high contrast twist on the Tree of Life.
• 'Flight'. To a child, a large box is conveyer to every surreal landscape imaginable.
• 'Regatta'. A steampunk vision inspired by the yearly, local, and upcoming Handcar Regatta.

All three require a lot of drawing time. I would be happy if I could finish at least ONE of them before the end of the semester.

Getting a new 23" monitor for the computer. Excited!

Diablo III is in beta. So jealous watching some testers uploading gameplay videos. Eeee!
Too many projects going all at once. Needing to sprint to keep up. I might be headed for a youtube-worthy faceplant, but I'll just forge ahead anyhow!

<3

In Heaven

...
Eyeballs are swimming and... yeah...

Probably the hardest part of watching it is knowing what inspired Jaejoong to write the song in the first place. While recording in LA in 2010, he spoke to his good friend Yongha on the phone. Yongha offered they should go out for drinks when Jaejoong got back to Korea. Yongha killed himself the next day.
An experience similar to this affected my own family early this year.
No judgements here. Suicide is brutal... from every angle.
Shared by many survivors, including Jaejoong, is the feeling that if you could go back in time, you would never leave their side. You would change things. You would treat them differently. You would do... something. If only you knew.
Sometimes you can't know, but even that doesn't throw off the burden and grief.

No more about that.

In Heaven: The album is lovely, honest, personal, and very much outside-the-box as far as the Kpop industry is concerned. We'll see if any broadcasters step up and allow them to perform on TV. Junsu's acting is pretty adorable in the video. Jihyo is gorgeous and well-cast. Very pleased with the way it's shot, the colors, the pacing, etc. The Gregorian chant bit in the intro is a nice addition, too. Apparently, there will be a 10 minute long version released. Not sure if that's a rumor. Regardless... lovely. 300,000 preorders on the first day. Unheard of. After two years of hell--it's a good time to be a JYJ fan.

Playtime...

Semester #50281347538485
Fall '11
First project for etching is a copper/zinc duet. Drypoint on copper with either the theme of work or the theme of play. We will ink the drypoint and print it right onto the zinc. Drypoint the zinc a bit and eventually aquatint it to block in color... and double drop for the edition. Double dropping scares the bejeebus outta me. XD

Totally uninspired for the project, I browsed the interwebz and flikr. Found some lovely vintage Japanese photographs. Rather liked this woman playing shamisen. Trying to figure out who the original photographer is. Some related images were Tamamura, but I don't think this was.

Above left: raw scan of my copper plate after one session of the scratchy scratchy.
Above right: reversed and inverted in Photoshop to get a sense of where I am.

Still a lot more to do, but I'll take the first proof on Monday and keep at it. Still terrified of double dropping. I haven't even done a proper aquatint yet. Eeeeeeee.

Also taking HTML/CSS online. I guess we're building our student server site for two quarter classes. Decided to make my topic on etching since I'm up to my eyeballs in it anyway. Lately been working with a musician on album art... drawing hot air balloons. I might do a simple/different version for myself and make a soft-ground etch out of it. Mostly just loving the coding process. Tedious Allison loves tedium. And I'm almost choked on my drink when I opened a classmate's site. His topic is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Brony alert!

Parallel parking is fja;9i3edmkmcvaeeesfmvneie guh.

JYJ's album releasing on September 15th! Guess who already pre-ordered! Yeeeaaaahhh!

Each time 9/11 comes around my atheism surges and I have to watch beautiful things to calm myself down. Like this...



Love.