Stupid stumbles...

I sprained my ankle today. I blame SOPA... because I want to. Lulz.

Stepped off the treadmill at home and gravity tried REALLY HARD to break my ankle. But failed, thank goodness. It's not bad really. The ankle isn't even bruised. It's just puffy and hurts if I move it around much. At least I can still walk on it.  But FFFFUUUU. One more thing to fret over.

Finished The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Spent about 40% of the book bawling. Hoo boy. So many triggers. But it was wonderful. Sad and wonderful.

16-page syllabus for the Silkscreen class. *facepalm*
Mmmm'kay. Good to know he's... organized?  >.>
First prints will commence next Tuesday! Yay for learning new things!

...
10+ years of ballet and never a sprained anything.
How does that work?
-____-

Winter throwback III

I'm sensing a theme here. A bit of an odd story behind this one. Claytonian is a Youtube vlogger who lives/teaches English in Japan. He visited a gallery somewhere... this was quite a while ago... and this piece caught his eye. As seen on the left, I screenshotted it, because it is rather gorgeous. Eventually got around to painting a version, based totally on the screenshot. Claytonian didn't know who the artist was or what it was called. I couldn't find any information either. I would love to know. Until that happens I'm just calling her 'Clay's Geisha'. Kept messing up the eyes and redoing them 'cause they're so much lovelier in the original, but I couldn't make them work. I like the grey-ness of it, though!


In other news, I have fully moved in to my new computer. Still getting acclimated to all the Windows 7 jazz. Feeling less anxious now. I was worried I wouldn't be settled in by the time my online classes start next week. Silkscreen, CSS, Web Development, and Dreamweaver. I predict I will be confusing the three online classes with each other. Lots of passwords and schedules to stay on top of. I'm suuuuuper excited about Silkscreen, but the teacher is notoriously a bastard. As far as I have heard, he rarely gets through a semester without making at least one student break down in tears in class. Soooo... yeeaaahhh.

Oh, and I got The Fault in Our Stars a day early from Amazon. w00t. One of the gazillion pre-orders signed by Vlogbrother, John Green. I'll start reading it tonight. Huzzah! DFTBA.

Winter throwback II

 

I worked on this one during the 'beginning painting' class also. The antique picture to the left is the obvious reference. I stumbled across it somewhere on the net... possibly the Pink Tentacle blog. It hasn't been updated much since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but they had a lot of incredible old artwork/posters/photographs on a regular basis. Anyway, this lovely lady was rather striking. The fabric of the kimono looked like a fun challenge. Unfortunately, I never finished her face and neck, so she's a little lacking. I was really pleased with the kimono and obi's color and pattern. As far as I recall, the rounded hairstyle indicates she was a married woman... 'marumage'. There is a Japanese language lesson in there. Weee!

Winter throwback I

A handful of older pieces will be on their way to this space during winter break.

First up...

Alphonse Mucha's 'Cycles Perfecta'. The Art Nouveau style is so... accessible? I think it just always looks good. Mucha was the master. Came across this poster a few years ago. I hadn't seen it before. Interesting combination of the crazy hair and dress and simple bicycle. Kinda spiffy. I painted this during 'beginning painting' at the JC. It's more like a class for experienced painters who can take advantage of the studio and get units for it. Our Prof let us paint anything we wanted. Actually, the three figure studies I posted recently were during this class... from the only day we had something specific to paint. I digress...

So, my Cycles Perfecta is acrylic on canvas. 18x24. Pardon the terrible photo quality. I was really happy with it and thoroughly enjoyed painting it. But, the curse of a perfectionist, I wasn't quite happy with the blend on the face and the arms. Went over them again and it irreparably dulled out the color. Gah! Even though it's glaringly annoying to me, I guess it's not obvious to everyone else. Miss Perfecta has recently taken up residence at my bro's place, where she can be enjoyed by real cyclists who would never let their hair get silly enough to get caught in the spokes.