Category: School

I just got back from picking up my second portfolio. By 8AM, after a long night of coding, my eyes were tired but the sun was up, so I decided to put my shoes back on and go grab it. I got the other yesterday afternoon, just a couple of hours before this one was ready, but by the time I got home to the email telling me it was there, it was almost ten at night & not a good time to go to school to pick up a portfolio. Anyway, I’ve got both back now and I have both my grades back.

Both are A’s.

Excellent. I couldn’t have asked for better. I couldn’t have gotten better by working harder. I am fairly satisfied with the level of work/effort I put into my Drawing class, and very satisfied with the work and effort I put into and results I got out of my 2D Design class.

My actual Drawing grade was A-. I got an A on the final project, and would have got an A+ on it if I had done more “in-class participation”, which I guess means letting the teacher tell me to stop trying to be creative on my own terms.

There was a sketchbook in which we were told to make perspective sketches for about 15 minutes a day, several weeks into class. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was on track for the time he said we should put into it, less than 1/4 of the way through the 100 page sketchbook, when he said he expected them to be filled by the end of class. I was not the only person in class suprised and shocked by this information. I was probably not the only one who received a C for their Notebook grade re: not being full enough. I know I was doing the right sketches on a page by page basis; he kept passing it around as an example to the other students every time he looked at their progress. I guess I just didn’t do enough of it. Another 20 or 40 hours sketching in that book and I could have got an A on the notebook… and .. uhh.. still got an A in the class.

The only feedback I have on my 2D Design grade besides the grade itself is the same thign I heard last time; I don’t do enough ‘outside research’. Or if I do, I don’t document it properly. I have excuses I can give, and they’re reasonable. Most of what I want to know about things (like how far a body falling from a ten story building falls in 1/12 of a second during the last three or four twelfths of a second, or how to convert from 1:10 scale to 1:16 scale in one conversion step) I can work out in my head or with just a few quick notes on paper, and most general information is stored somewhere in my annoyingly encyclopedic brain. When I do end up looking something up online, or researching it in another way, it is usually fairly difficult to explain what I’m trying to figure out or why I think it’s relevent to the task at hand. I’ve tried. My mind just … looks in strange ways at and for information. Most people tell me, when they hear the explanations behind how I came to my idea for a painting, or all the math I did to get the color and the shape, or whatever else went through my mind, people tell me I’m strange. Anyway, not much in the way of ‘research’ ended up in my notebook, though A-grade projects came out of the ideas I had.

I’m getting pretty tired. I probably won’t write reviews for Star Trek: Nemesis or Maid in Manhattan or The Hot Chick right now. Just sleep, instead. I’m apporaching twenty hours up again, which I consider too many for the five hours sleep I got. Or maybe I’m just out of practise.

That’s it. It’s over. I just turned in my Drawing portfolio, which means I haven’t any classes left. Not this semester. And I haven’t even tried to sign up for next semester on account of not knowing about money for classes or hours for a job. So no more classes. I’m no longer a Student, I’m just Unemployed. I don’t have any more forced assignments left, no more classes which were nearly my last semblance of social connection with the outside world. Running out of money. I desperately want a pizza, but I know it’s not in the budget. I haven’t got the money for pizza, and if I do, I won’t have money for other things like rent and heat and water and the rest of my food, so why an extravagence like pizza?

A little bird told me the Edge, which has been camped out near the local cineplex for several days now, was giving out passes to a free screening of The Hot Chick tonight, so I hopped on my bike in the midst of trying to finish my Drawing final assignment, and tried to get one. Alas, the person there told me the person in charge of giving out schwag was at lunch, and if I come back, I could have my chance at fabulous prizes. I wasn’t particularly interested in fabulous prizes, but if I can save $5 and see a movie I was going to see anyway, I’m all for it. Except I needed to finish my drawing assignment, so I left empty handed. After I turned in my drawing assignment and left (that’s it, that’s all we were there for) I walked back over to see if there were any passes left, but of course there were none, though they offered to sell me a The Hot Chick Soundtrack CD. No thanks.

So now what? Well, I do have an interview at ASU next week to try to get the Graphic Design position, so I’ll have to spend some intervening time putting together a web portfolio. I don’t have one because I’ve never wanted to be a professional web designer. This is a good opportunity to work with people on the forefront of developing standards for interacting with all kinds of multi-dimensional data, something I am quite interested in, and which uses skills I happen to have, or can quickly learn.

Oh, and I have already begun work in my head on a sort of “Part 2” to Forlorn, and will be getting the research materials I was looking for for the story of my love life sometime in the next month or two, from various sources. And I would like to get some new paintings down on canvas before the end of the year. And now that my final assignments are turned in, I should have more than enough time to get my place cleaned up, dishes & laundry that have been waiting an age to be done done, Christmas decorations up, and a few other touches I have in mind. And then it will very quickly be January and if I don’t have the ASU job by then, then I’ll have to find some other jobs fast, regardless of pay and skills match, just to make ends meet. And then school will start, with or without me.

I know and I don’t know and I’m not worried, but it is a concern of mine. I think I’m going to go down to Mill’s End and have a drink I can’t afford and start working on that new novel. To clear my head, to settle me. To get me back to feeling good after spending the last week or two focusing on Marc’s comments has made me literally ill. What a day. What a long day. It grows longer all the time.

Today in Drawing class I got some sketches done and improved a little on some ideas I had that Marc might like better than the one I’m probably going to do, but some other things happened, too. Marc was going around the class giving people feedback (he upset at least two other students as much as he upset me), and he got to my setup and asked if I wanted to talk about where I’d been going with the sketches, I simply told him I wasn’t going to talk to him. That I would turn in the portfolio, but I wasn’t going to talk to him again. He said that would be okay, but asked me why, so I told him I don’t like him.

Ooh, and that’s not all! At the end of the class, it was time for teacher evaluations! If he had given them to us a week or two ago, I might not have been as harsh in my “extra comments” section, though I would surely have been just as brutal in the fill-in-the-bubbles section. I have never used the word “jackass” in a teacher evaluation before today, or had to mention that the teacher told me outright that I would be better off mowing lawns than creating art. They say it’s anonymous, but if he gets to see my comments, he’ll probably know it was from me. The other students who don’t like him don’t seem as honest or open about it, and will probably just keep quiet.

Still, mathematically, if Marc gives me a ZERO on my final, I’ll still pass the class, and will likely still get a B, depending on how he decides to grade the other compnents of my second portfolio. Presumably for turning something in that meets the requirements of the assignment, I couldn’t get less than a C on the final, guaranteeing a B. If he’d not a total fucking moron and grades it fairly, I’ll get even better. I didn’t say I couldn’t draw, just that I don’t care to.

So, I’ll freely admit that last week I spent a whole lot of time writing my novel, and not much time working on developing my final project for Drawing class. I did spend some time on it though, and I feel that I improved the intensity, emotion, composition, value, and generally moved more in the direction I wanted to go, well within the guidelines of the written assignment and my own personal artistic sensibilities.

Marc, my Drawing teacher, at first tried to simply dismiss my newer image as though it weren’t there, and was disappointed because I hadn’t done anything with the image he saw in last week’s class. I tried to point out the new image I’d made, and while he didn’t say outright that he didn’t like it, I asked him if he didn’t like it and he agreed. Then we tried to discuss that I felt the new image was better, or what he didn’t like about it, and he ended up basically telling me that I was creating art for all the wrong reasons, and I may as well as be mowing my yard if I’m going to do art the way I’ve always been doing it and want to continue doing it. And I had been slowly growing upset, and I’m sure it was visible, because he asked me if I was angry, and if so, would I please go take a break, so I told him I was angry and went to calm down.

I don’t know when the last time I got so upset was. I wasn’t really all that upset, I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have said or raise my voice or lash out, but I solidified in my mind that I really don’t like Marc. When I went to calm down, I basically was just reminding myself that making Marc happy with what I do is only important as far as his happiness or unhappiness with my work relates to my ability to take the next class. I’m going to school because I’m an artist and I want to increase my skill and experience by studying classical techniques and new materials. The classes I’m most interested in taking have “core” classes as prerequisites, which is Drawing 1, 2D Design, 3D Design, and Color. I’m hoping to take the other two next semester, and from then on all my classes will really be directly related to teaching me the skills and techniques and use of materials that I want to know. Hopefully that will help.

Did I mention that drawing has almost nothing to do with what I want to do? To a certain extent, yes, I do drawings for comics, and the things I’ll learn in “life drawing” classes in a couple of years will be helpful in porperly representing the human form in any medium, and will draw on the basic skills one typically gets in regular Drawing classes. Yes, I had to make some rough sketches recently so I could properly visualize features of the world my novel was taking place in, but I didn’t break out the charcoal powder or the kneaded eraser or the paper stumps, I didn’t go through a series of peer-reviewed iterations where someone else’s design choices overrode my own vision, and if I do end up creating a presentable version to include with the novel I still won’t do those things.

I know, I know, I’m not being realistic, I’m not thinking about the “real world” where other people DO get to influence my designs, even to the extent of what materials I use, because they pay my paycheck. Which is why I’m mostly not looking for any work that requires “design”. And why I may have quite a bit of trouble making a living as an artist, “breaking in”. I know how the business world works and can mostly work with it; I don’t want my art to be that way.

Me and my big head. Wanting to stand by my values while creating my own art.