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.

Lightning-struck Summer...

Above: Old piece. Black construction paper strips, vaguely a la Mondrian.

Nothing special to add. I've been painting and drawing some things for myself and for projects. Once the semester starts I'll post the bits and bobs that I can. The Summer has been mostly me being stressed about all the artsy things I'm trying to get done and not doing them because I'm stressed. That happens a lot. I don't feel like I accomplished much, but part of the slowness is related to concern for my hand and its bouts of swelling. There hasn't been another incident since I starting using vinyl gloves religiously... for everything. But I still think it's at least partly a mechanical thing--not just an allergy thing. It could just be scar tissue. Whatever the case... I'm being careful. I'll draw for a few hours and feel that sensitivity. The skin a little raw. The sense of something foreign in there with my bones. So I rest and wait. Take a day off. Seems okay so I work again. But it's always the same feeling and it worries me. Makes me cautious.

With that caution, I head into my gazillionth semester at the JC. Taking a website building class and Advanced Etching. I should really take silkscreen, but I'm so attached to etching right now that I want one more semester of it. See if I can manage anything I really like.

Big changes in family and their jobs. Speeding right ahead.
Not me. I'm still putting along. Aiming to get my driver's license finally. Practicing with my permit. Trying... no... I will close the deal this time. I will get my license before 2012. Chyeah!


As for the lightning... POTTER!!! Deathly Hallows pt.2 was great. Were there silly additions? Of course. Was time wasted on unnecessary non-canon stuff? Of course. But I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. Here's the thing. The books are about Harry discovering his history and his role in it. They are about mothers and their sons. They are about sacrifice and love. They are about Snape. Far more time is spent on these things than on Voldy and his cronies.
The movies, on the other hand, focus disproportionately on Voldy and his cronies... arguably the least important aspects of the books.

IMO: The overarching plot of the series climaxes at The Prince's Tale and Harry marching to his own death.
However, the climax the movies always built towards was the Harry vs. Voldy showdown. Because of this, it's a letdown by default.

In the books, Voldy's death is epic, but it's not the most epic thing that happens at the end. When they translated that to the screen, the death was not epic enough for all that build-up. The movie-viewer is left feeling like, 'that's it?', because the epic book stuff is downplayed or not included at all.

...This is getting long and I didn't think I was going to write about this. ANYway, the stuff that came from canon was really well-done. Alan Rickman is a BAMF. I was pleased with The Prince's Tale. Overall, the young actors did wonderfully. *applause*
For the record, I saw it in 3D and 2D and preferred it in 2D. But the 3D Potter glasses are nice souvenirs!

For giggles.
I started reading Potter in the Summer of 1999. Books 1 and 2 (3 wasn't out yet). That December, I picked up Book 3. Loved everything about them. PoA was such a joy to read! I drew fanart and made my own Potter memorabilia for fun.
Clay figurines included! They're totally crappy, but I love the associated memories and that I cared enough to do it. They are pre-movie, so their look is purely inspired by the American edition illustrator Mary Grandpre and my brain. I'm grateful that I was invested into the books long enough before the movies that the characters are still my own.

When I pick up any of the books to re-read, the Harry in my head looks like he did in 1999. He isn't Dan Radcliffe. Alan Rickman, though I adore him, looks very little like my Snape. I'm glad for that.

Blah blah blah.
Pottermore is amazing. Got registered within the very first minutes of the Magical Quill Challenge and then got my beta welcome e-mail last night... at the end of the first day of the site being opened. The extra stories/information from Jo is priceless, entertaining, and amusing in a way that she has such a knack for.
The Sorting Test is a little questionable seeing as I was sorted into Gryffindor. I am totally not a Gryffindor. Doubtless, the Sorting Hat would shriek, "RAVENCLAW!" before it even touched my head. Ha. That's okay. Ollivander's wand test is completely fantastic and there is a MASSIVE amount of background information about wandlore.

Pottermore:
I am AurorSeer155. Gryffindor. My wand is Cherry with a Phoenix feather core, 10 and 3/4 inches. Slightly yielding. I'm 81% into brewing an Antidote to Common Poisons and have so far earned 28 house points. w00t!

For all of the Potter lovin'... Thank you Jo! <3