Only a few more hours..

...and this terrible year will be done with.

As some little bird (me) once said, odd years tend to be the worse ones. They're not incredibly terrible, but they don't seem to be as good as the ones that end in even numbers. It's weird. For example, I just cut myself while opening a plastic container with an exacto knife. But that must also be because I'm more or less drunk (I'm trying to make the best of the ending of this year).

In spite of all the things that had gone wrong this year, I must admit that I'm still thankful. I'm more aware of what I want to do and more aware of who I am, and of the things I should be doing with myself and of the consequences of my decisions. I'm a lot less innocent but at the same time I'm more wise. I interpret things a little differently. My grades at the end of this year didn't make me think "I want to make better grades so I can satisfy my mother" but more like "I want to make better grades to satisfy me". I want to grow. This year has made me realize how we have to make the best of our time while we can and I will make sure that I do from now on; I wanna get in better shape, make better grades, create art, read more things. Maybe travel. Essentially I'd like to be a lot better. I'd also like to see where Laura and I can go, to see if things will get better for us and back to where things once were. We'll see how all goes, but I think 2010 will be better -- or else. Adieu, 2009.

Moar updates, 09/03/09

Okay! The fall semester's finally begun, and I bring you pictures.









Anyway, it's been about a week of school (including that one Thursday, which shouldn't have happened) and things are going fine. I have a real adult's schedule, so I've been waking up at around six or seven in the morning every day, but aside from that, I've been enjoying my job and my classes. I'm finally taking my first photography class, all black-and-white photography, and am currently working on figuring out what typology (basically a set of pictures based on a specific theme) I wanna do for my first assignment; right now I'm actually wanting to work on three (staircases, beer glasses and quick portraits of people failing at things) and hopefully I will be able to figure out which one is best pretty soon. Photo history is also a really cool class; the teacher's pretty lax about things and he doesn't over-explain things. My computer art class is also enjoyable since it's about Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Illustrator reminds me a lot of when I used to do pictures with Powerpoint, only it's vector-based and easier to use; I'm taking Photoshop in both the computer art class and in the photo class, and given that I have been using it for awhile, I should be doing pretty well in at least two of my classes. The only class that I'm having a little struggle with is my watercolor class, but it's partly because I don't have the experience, which will soon come.

To conclude, my weekend will begin in about seven minutes (good) and I'll have a bit of homework (not so good) but I should be able to finish it before Monday. Cool stuff, yeah?

The End-of-Summer Report

The summer break is two days away from being over! Woooo!

In one word, I can say that this summer was pretty successful - I managed to raise my grades to where I could stay in Denton, went to several parties, went out to the bars and even drank before class, draw naked chicks (and guys, I GUESS), found a job, and even got to see my family when I have had all this going on! It's been really good. More importantly, I get to spend my last break days with my babycakes. When she's not complaining about trivial things, we actually have a pretty good time together; she's really cute and sweet, and she's also pretty funny. I like cuddling with her at night and waking up with her and kissing her all over.

I've had a lot of fun this summer; and even when I didn't really have a summer break, so to speak, I'm ready to keep going with what I want and have to do. Last week I got my first DSLR camera, a Canon 20D. It's a really good camera even if it's a 4-year old camera. A 4-year old Canon. Now my little heart can take artsy, hipster pictures to its greatest content! And by that, I mean I'm gonna harass my girlfriend until the end of time with it. As well as her other roommates. Oh yeah, I have my photo class footage ready to go.

But yeah, I'm really looking forward to taking photo, as well as computer art, advancing in general. And doing "spit art" as Laura calls it. That's it. I'm out.

P.S. A picture of the camera.

Best experienced as if Morgan Freeman is reading it to you

I enjoy walking by myself on the town square, late at night. Everything of it is comforting. For one, you can walk by yourself because we're all tired to do wrong or right. You can comfort yourself under the blanket of air that's warm from the traces of smiles; you can read the phrases of saxophones beyond the smoke thanks to the light of glowing eyes. The soothe that comes with the last caresses of the town square says more about us than the public prowling of the day.

Rabble rabble rabble

Okay, so, where did we leave off last time?

I survived last semester... sort of. Details aside, I miraculously survived Design II thanks to my ridiculous stop-motion project (and maybe the sweet mercy of my teaching assistant, but I might be wrong). I stayed in Denton over the summer to get ahead on some of my classes, so I took Art Survey I and did really well; now I'm taking Figure Drawing, and it's taken me almost to the end of the class to unlearn how I've drawn years before, but how little I've changed is actually liberating and not as dull and plain-looking as I used to draw. Hopefully I get a decent grade by the end of it.

Also, I'm finally about to start the photo classes and the photography class is mainly digital, so I have to get a new digital SLR; which is GREAT and would be greater if only I could make up my damn mind about which one I wanna get - or rather, if only I had enough money to get a camera in the kick-ass spectrum and not the bare minimum range, but now I have a job and if things sort themselves out I might get a D90 or a D300 by the end of the year (hopefully). Or a D60, prior to that. I really want something that lets me shoot HD video, and those are great candidates, aside from just being great DSLRs. I'd like to make movies. Kinda like Michael Bay movies, only worth sitting down for plot and not the super-expensive special effects; now if I can get started on creating stories...

Now, in the subject of photograhy, I've been doing a bit of thinking, particularly after something I agreed on with my drawing teacher; he was talking about the "dangers" of having art that one created being regarded more for how "pretty" it might be and not for the message it tries to send. I also remember someone in one of those tight-knit internet communities that I go to, who said that photography was the lowest form of art because it usually fails to find meaning. Mind you, I find the guy to be a dick and most likely a troll, but after seeing a lot of pictures (and thanks to the internet, a lot of pictures really is A LOT) and the advent of digital photography, most photography still is portraiture and landscaping, he's (mostly) right! And it sucks. It sucks because digital photography has so much potential, and yet a lot of it ends up being the same old thing.

Anyway, I'm mostly just rambling, and this all has been said before for sure, and surely there's photographers out there trying to do something else, but I know from this point that whatever it is I end up doing has to go beyond the point of being just aesthetic, and possibly beyond the personal, too; I want to make art that communicates more than just "pretty" no matter how much it confuses or enrages people. I just want to say I'm mostly done with capturing the common and wanting to do something more. Just as, I'm sure, other photo artists (and other artists) have thought before me. Rabble rabble rabble.

The last post, continued.

It's 11 now! No, rly! Ok, I was mostly just breaking this one damn long post into two, and this is part two.

So about those high school pictures, these were taken when I was in a photo class for my senior year.














Taken outside the Hard Rock Café in Downtown Houston. I like the incredible solitude of this picture.













Ducks! This one was at Lake Conroe. Ducks remind me of my friend John, who had a kooky collection of metal ducks.













Me and my family near the Willis Library area in UNT, 2004... maybe 2005? It was the first time in a while that the Jody's Fountain had been turned on. This was my only time with my entire family on campus, so I'm glad that I have this picture.













Water droplets from Jody's Fountain.

Looking back at these, and comparing them to other pictures I've taken (plus the actual prints of these posted pictures) I've come a long way, but need to work on developing brighter/more contrasted prints. Hopefully I'll be able to do that next semester!

Also, I wanna print myself a shirt with the cover of "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine" by Death From Above 1979. I really like elephants, and I like the general style of that cover, and there's this pink shirt that I bought to make fun of a shirt that a friend of mine has with her face drawn on it, but the cover sounds like something that would look better than my own face drawn.



Cool stuff, yo. More updates about that... some other day at 11.

Update: June '09

So, some good news and some bad news. I've slowly started becoming a little more proactive, I think; I've been wanting to get in shape for a little while, so I've been riding my bike, doing a few crunches, jogging occasionally and stuff, and I think this habit has slowly started seeping into other activities. Slow, but surely. The bad news? I've not put anything on here in like a month, failing to update it often. Also, keeping up with a diet is hard.

The good news? I HAVE SHIT TO POST HERE!111

Okay, way too much excitement. Anyway, I've been creating things with pastel (I will begin replacing the word "working" with "creating" because it feels a lot better that way). Stuff that I probably should give more value to than I perceive them to have, but satisfying to make.

(Information you don't have to know): I made this one after I had an argument with my girlfriend. When I'm not feeling right, for whatever reason, I play the piano, or draw, depending on which I can do at the time. I think it's funny that I ended up doing a drawing of something I would've rather been doing at that moment, but not have realized it at the moment.

I took the picture with my computer's web-camera, so the picture is washed out and unevenly-lit; maybe I'll post a better picture when I can.


This one was supposed to be a sort of color studies because I wanted to paint with acrylics, but once I got done with doing the graphite drawing it was actually good enough to pursue into a full color drawing; the drawing is based off my friend Regine as she dressed for another friend's party. This is also my first stab at coloring skin (my experience with coloring is very limited, especially realistically) but I think I did well for what colors I had, and the fact that conventional paper doesn't allow you to mix pastel colors as well as the expensive-but-better Rives BFK paper. It's 11 x 17 inches in size, as is the piano keys and hand drawing. It's also a sort of work in progress (still perfecting the face and background).

Also, I scanned some old high school pictures for amusement's sake. More at 11.