Tanowto

So I've been going through the worst art slump. It had gradually been getting worse and worse over the course of the last three semesters, and had been affecting the quality and enthusiasm in my art. Hence I haven't posted anything in forever. (A year? Last post I saw on here was from Life Drawing III, so yeah, about a year then...) 

Figured out the problem. I was getting burnt out because, now that I know what I want to do and where I want to go with my art/life, school has been more constraining than liberating, and I had unwittingly been slowly strangling the life out of my work trying to do projects I no longer felt like I needed. So what I started doing (And wished I'd started THREE FRICKIN' SEMESTERS AGO...) was to start incorporating my own personal projects into school assignments as much as possible. Need to create a character for school? Well, I have this character that's been on the back burner for some time and they need some love. Professor assigning a book cover? Well, how about that "book cover" is actually the cover of my in-progress graphic novel... 

Funny how much one enjoys school when one is happy with the project assignments and feels like they're once more addressing a personal art need... 

The quality of my art is still on the suck-erific side, but gradually getting back to what it use to be (with improvements, of course) So hopefully I'll feel confident enough again to start posting stuff soon. There's several projects from this semester that, once I've cleaned them up and brought them up to snuff, I'm planning on posting. 

In the mean while, there's some of you wonderful people that I had meant to send tutorials that have helped me, dropped out of communication, or promised to show some work which obviously never happened. I haven't forgotten, honest, but this semester has been a rollarcoaster of trial&error. And that's just the art side of things. Family life has been a mixed bag of amazing blessings and utter chaos, and I don't even want to talk about the curveball the administration at my school threw at us in probably the most undiplomatic and thoughtless way possible. (I'm still really upset with them and am not looking forward to the spring term. That first "section" of the term is going to be nothing but hectic until everyone gets use to the new changes) I'm cutting of that train of thought now before I go into full-blown rant. 

Anyway, so that's about it. I'm currently working on revisions on some projects as time permits in hopes of resubmitting them for a higher grade before the term ends, so we'll see how much I'm able to do on here between now and Christmas.

To end this on a good note; The Hobbit's coming out soon, I'm *finally* feeling proud of my art again, I have good roommates, and wonderful professors. Yeah, school/home life has been hard, but its also had some very, very good moments (And it's not as bad has it could be or has been in the past)

Tallyho and Sally forth. 

Yeah...Waltz onto my profile and saw that I hadn't written anything since my Auroria Shooting post. Decided to fix that and all.

Anyway, Sorry for being absent yet again (not that that's terribly uncommon) but it's not just the internet I've been absent from, and here's why.

I've known where I want to go with my art, what I've wanted to do, for quite some time. I've known what I've needed to improve, what progress I needed to make, in order to get there. But for whatever reason, I just...Couldn't. I don't know how to explain it, it wasn't artist's block or anything, just a weird sudo lack of enthusiasm. This semester I've had a clarity about not only what needs improving, but how to go about it. And so I jumped on that rather ferociously.  

Because of this, a lot of things have taken a backseat in priority. My art is under constant change right now, hence why I haven't even bothered to update this account with recent completed homework assignments. (There are a few I'd like to post once I get them back and modify/fix them) My goals for the end of this term is to reduce the time it takes me to complete a project by at least 20%, and then by the end of the Spring term to reduce it by at least 40%. This summer I hope to get the internship at DireWolf as well as improve my drawing speed some more.

Why am I focusing on speed? Because it's an easier unit to measure that looks at my art as a whole instead of making an overwhelming list of abstract concepts. After this term I'll be a JR, and that terrifies me, because my art is no where ready to be qualified as such. This isn't a case of "the artist syndrome." This is comparison to the quality of art in the school at each year's level, the quality of art in the career world, and the quality of my own art. While it is good, it is not where it should be for how little time I have left before I graduate. Another thing is that I'm a terribly slow artist, which will not work in favor for me for my future goal to become a movie/game concept artist. There's a lot I can do to improve my speed without improving anything else about my art, but to decrease it by how much I want and need to means I need to stop relaying on what I already know and truly master my own skills and other artistic skills I've avoided learning. It means I'm going to have to not just know why something works, but understand why it works or why it doesn't work and how to fix it. I've been experimenting with new mediums, sometimes getting results on projects I'm not happy with, and sometimes learning better ways to work with tools I thought I was already pretty efficient with. It's been crazy (painful even) but so is growing up, which is what my art is doing, figuratively speaking. I've been wallowing in a stagnant pool of "pretty good" for so long that getting out of it has been hard, but worth it.

Unfortunately, it's not just DA or the internet that's been ignored because of this endeavor of self-improvement. While I haven't been meaning to ignore my friends (real life or web) it's been unavoidable. I've dropped out of participating in a lot of table-top game groups that I'd eagerly anticipate playing with (and now miss terribly) week after week. While it wasn't new for me to not join friends to see a movie because of my financial position, I've lately been declining invites to the more free activities. Most of my friend interactions have been while eating, driving to school, or Saturday afternoon for the one tabletop group I haven't dropped (and hopefully won't need to...They're kinda my weekly sanity check.) This is part of the "ouch, this hurts" part of the improvement stage I'm in, and it's the most painful. There's been half a dozen friends who've informed me of feeling ignored, and I'm sure there are more that haven't voiced their thoughts at all. Thankfully, most of those who I have talked to understand that I'm not trying to ignore them and that this is a necessary stage of my life if I want to succeed as an artist, but it still hurts for all of us and for that, I apologize sincerely for being the cause.

With that said, I hope that this stage doesn't end, but just lessons in its intensity. I hope it doesn't end because each week I'm learning something brand new about my art or myself and making improvements, so much so that I'm surprised looking through my current sketchbook and seeing the subtle changes that have taken place in such a relatively short amount of time. But I would like the intensity to die down, at least for a little while every now and then, as I'm feeling increasingly burnt out as I race to get school projects and side projects done, not to mention that I miss being with my friends and feel like a criminal for more or less ignoring them. (And this is talking only about my school life. Life outside of school hasn't been real peachy lately, but that's another very long story) Regardless, I know that it's for the best and that by the time next year I will feel like my art actually lives up to the school year I'm in.

So, that's why there haven't been any updates lately after I had said this summer that there would be more school-related updates. Please bare with me, I'm just experiencing an artistic growth spurt and should have something to show for it soon enough.

Well...This originally was going to be a glowing report of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, but not anymore.

For those who have managed to stay out of the loop thus far, This morning was the premier of The Dark Knight Rises, (Very good, by the by. Christopher Nolan continues to work his magic in the series. I definitely recommend seeing it) and for most of us, it was a wonderful experience of waiting in line hours before hand, nerd'ing it up, and in my case wishing the camera on my phone worked so I could have taken pictures of this awesome Batman costume someone came in. Unbeknownst to us in line, however, is that a little more than an hour away from where we were there were people who should have been experiencing the same excitement as us and instead were thrown into chaos and tragedy. Some deranged individual in Aurora, CO decided to shoot up a theatre, killing 12 and severely injuring 38 over 50 others. He's been caught, thankfully, but the damage is done.

Just, why? I cannot comprehend a reason why anyone would feel so much hatred as to want to not only kill, but do so in such a cowardly, horrifying way. What reason did he see that he had to murder anyone, even children? What gave him the right?

But just as revolting, in my opinion, is how quickly this turned into a "blame the thing, not the person" and political slag. It's barely been 12 hours since this happened, and conversations (both online and in political circles) have turned to gun control and what the president should do about it. Really? Have you no respect for the families that have just lost loved ones so suddenly and unexpectedly? Imagine what those families are going through right now, and then to just go and start spewing political jargon...Really? How callous can one get?

I'm thankful that my friends who live in and around Auroria were not at that theatre, and I can't even imagine what I'd do if I or my friends/family had been there. I know one thing, though. If I had lost a loved one and then heard all this gun restriction/political bull...I'd be incensed! Yes, it's an issue that should be addressed, but in the first 12 hours of the tragedy? Show some bloody respect and empathy!

This man is a sick and deranged individual. *HE* killed those people and injured so many others. Don't weaken the horror of his crime by turning this into a political campaign so quickly after the event. That, too, is just sick in my mind that some people could be so callous. I'm not saying don't discuss gun laws, media violence, and how we can improve what we already have, but show some humanity first.

For what it's worth, there's my two cents.

Wow...Words cannot describe just how amazing this movie was! PIXAR delivered, and they did a very beautiful thing in making this movie. Go see it. NOW.

I'll go over a review of sorts (With plenty of spoiler warnings! Don't worry!) But right now I need to try to wind down and get some sleep.

But seriously...Go see this movie. There is no excuse NOT to see it. The story is fantastic, the music delightful, and the animation...THE ANIMATION! PIXAR really outdid themselves this time! (Don't they always? (Minus Cars 2))

Review/thoughts will come below this point. If you don't want to see them (And you better not before you see Brave! >:C ) Than ignore the edit and journal update that will come sometime tomorrow.

G'night!

...You should come check this out! *Shameless self-advertisement*

My school is hosting the WaterTower Arts and Crafts Market which is a family friendly art fair/sale with activities for kids as well as food. The admission is free, so if you just wanted to get out of the house for a bit this should be a fun, free activity to go to.

You should also come because I'll be selling some of my artwork there and would love to a) meet some of my watchers that I haven't had the privilege to meet in person yet, and/or b) enjoy your company! (For those who don't know what I look like my booth will be easy enough to find. I'll have a life-size print of my Deconstruction Project on display as well as some other, smaller prints you've seen on here hanging up behind me. It's the first time I've ever tried to sell my art aside from individual commissions, and while I'm not as prepared for it as I'd like to be (I found out just a week and a half ago!) I'm rather excited to be promoting me and my work and my DA/Etsy account like this! (Yes, I have an Etsy, I'll link to it once it's fully up&running)

That being said, I'll be cleaning up my gallery pretty soon. Don't worry, I won't delete anything (*Personal pet peeve when my favorites folders have a bunch of deleted artwork*) But I will be moving things around and putting a fair bit into my scraps folder. (Mostly my experimental and older works) I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on that.

With that, wish me luck! I've been running around like my hair's on fire, trying to clean up older pieces and figuring out what's worth selling and what should stay locked up. (jk) If you can come, terrific! If you can't, that's cool too.

Tally ho!