Cheers, London (be back soon!) Bonjour, Paris.

Here ya go, Torie... This one's for you.

These past couple days haven't really been too overly eventful.

Monday: A lot of my friends worked, so I went to the Tate Modern solo. It was a lot cooler than I thought it would be actually. I really enjoyed the Andy Warhol room and there was even one room over Robert Frank! A photographer I've learned a lot about and really enjoy his work. They even had some of the contact sheets from one of his most famous collections, The Americans. I spent a solid 20 minutes just staring at those. After Tate, my friend Alex recommended that I walk down the Thames to the London Eye because it's a really pretty walk. I loved the area, so I thought I'd give it a try... Somehow, I managed to get lost... So I just jumped on the nearest tube and made my way back.

Tuesday: Went to work. It was a good day. Went back to the Morlborough Gallery to help photograph a painting. Then in the afternoon I actually got to take some pictures myself! It was pretty exciting. I've been watching everyone else take pictures for a week and Tuesday they actually let me do some for myself... and they turned out good! So hopefully I'll get to do some more later.

Wednesday: Basically the best day ever. Literally spent the whole time at work 'working' on Photoshop... Yeah, I could make that be my everyday job. :) The evening... was not so grand. London decided to have a 48 hour long tube strike... Real cool. What is usually a 30 minute tube ride to class took an hour and 45 minutes on bus and a 40 minute walk... Looooooong day.

Today: Tube is still on strike... Walked to work (which isn't too bad. It's about an hour walk 90% through Hyde Park) I went on location with a couple guys to photograph a Damien Hurst 'Pill Cabinet' for a gallery. It was a really long day... followed by a really long walk, but overall very good.

As for tonight: Not too much on the agenda... just PACKING... for PARIS. Probably won't be able to update while I'm in Paris... So next time you'll hear from me will probably be Monday night or Tuesday.

final project

for my final project i have a really rough idea of using the solving of a rubiks cube of the passing of time. i learned how to solve the cube about 5 years ago and have been solving it ever since. it's not a big deal to me that i can solve this thing in under a minute because one of my friends (the person who taught me) can solve it in under 30 seconds. and since i've solved it so many times, it kind of looses it's magic... until i solve it for someone who has never seen such a thing. i always have fun just pulling my cube out in public places such as buses, stores, etc. and solving it for those around us. most people start watching... look away because they think i'm just playing with it then look back a while later and there i am, holding a completely solved rubik's cube. the expressions differ. some just look at me, look at the cube, then laugh a little. others will hit the person next to them and whisper something in their ear along the lines of 'that girl just solved a rubik's cube!' and some start asking me things...
"did you really just solve that?"
"how long did it take you to learn that?"
"if i mix it up, will you still be able to solve it?"
i answer them and always let them mix it up in an attempt to trip me up... for my project i want to go to wal*mart (or some other public place) and start solving my cube, waiting for people to gather around and take pictures of them and their expressions as i'm solving it. while this is the ideal situation, it won't work for a couple of reasons...
1. i need to be taking the pictures... not in them.
soooo, i thought i could get my best friend (who i taught how to solve the cube a couple years ago) could take my place, and i could take pictures.... this won't work for a couple reasons...
2. she can't solve it as fast
3. she doesn't really remember how to solve it all the way.
so. i came to the conclusion that i am going to try and re-teach it to her.. and while i would really like to have real people and real reactions i don't think it's going to work that way. so. i think i am going to get some of my friends/family to pose for the picture... that way, if audrey (my friend) gets into trouble and can't remember a move, i can step in and do the next move for her. my goal is to cover all of the reactions i normally get and resemble the real reactions as closely as possible.
i'll post some rough sketches of my idea soon...

a couple artists i'm looking to are the guy she showed us in class, frank wall. his pictures show real reactions in staged settings... another one is my uncle, barry george. he captures true reactions in real situations. nothing is staged... you can always get a good sense of the mood of the time the picture was taken and he often has a very wide view...

example of barry george pictures - these are all pictures of my family that he took in spain. no one really knew when he was taking pictures. we're used to him by now and just assume that he is taking a picture of us all. the. time.



this is of me, my dad and brother. as you can tell we've been walking for a while and are all tired and ready to move on.



this is a picture of me showing my family a funny picture of, ironically, barry. as you can tell, i'm pretty proud of it, and my family sure seems to be enjoying it.



this picture was taken after my sister asked if a balloon was tied to her head. no one really knew what she was talking about (typical) but we all started laughing, obviously.

here are my word art sketch things. this was one of my favorite projects to do...

for my disruption one, i just repeated the word "disruption" over and over continuing it onto the next line right where it left off on the one before.. making sure not to disrupt it due to the line change. then after i filled the entire canvas, i erased one of the words and rewrote it in different colors and tilted all of the letters disrupting the entire piece. i'm very pleased with the overall look of this one.

the next word i chose was "migration" i made the word into a brush, then turned the 'scatter', 'shape dynamics,' and 'color dynamic' options on and made the words "migrate" into the lower right hand corner of the canvas. i choose the green color scheme because when i first think of migration i think of nature and animals migrating and the color i associate with nature is green. again, i really like the overall look of this project.

wavvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvves

i really like the filter wave thing. i've created a couple things that convey completely different moods. i don't really know if we're supposed to post these, but i like them, so i'm going to...

here's my first one. it has a very peaceful, water-ish mood. i chose relaxing colors in the blue/green family because those are the colors that relate to relaxation and such. the waves are very smooth and lucid which also add to the water effect.



my next one conveys a more urgent sense. i used red, orange, and yellow and made the waves much more abrupt and jagged. i reminds me of fire/flames and is not relaxing to me at all.

sketching assignment

heres my new sketching assignment. i really left my project up to the choice of the computer for this project.

rules:
create a grid using the line tool at pt.1 (don't worry too much about making them all the exact same size, but make it close.)
select a brush that you like (i suggest something like the flowers, leaves, or rubberduckies, etc.) under "brush presets" check the boxes marked "shape dynamics," "scattering," and "color dynamics"
select a color you like
go onto the grid and click once with the middle of your brush at each line intersection.
do this for the entire grid
when you are finished, hide, or delete all of the "grid layers"

this creates a very random, spontaneous depositing of the leaves, butterflies, or whatever you decided to use. also, you do not choose where it is going to go, or what color it is going to be... the computer does. this got very frustrating at first because sometimes the stamp wouldn't go anywhere close to where i clicked. but after i finished the whole result it normally balanced out pretty well.
for my first two, i created the grid myself. for the third one i went into the "view" bar and selected "view grid" this gave me a perfect grid to work with easily. it did not really change the overall look of my piece. it was a lot easier, and took a lot less time, but left the project with less chaos and chance. in the first one, i didn't create a new layer before starting the brush tools. when i got to the end i tried hiding all of the grid layers and had to leave the last one because otherwise, my whole project disappeared! i went back and erased the lines that were easily exposed, but had to leave them over the flowers. this did not upset me though because it was chance. for the rubberduckie one i left the grid there so you could get an understanding of what i meant. i like these projects. they are simple, yet... neat.

pictures for collage

well, since i didn't end up using the collage i was planning on using, i thought i'd post the pictures i used for my actual collage project. soooo, here they are.

sketching assignment

we were supposed to use the cloning tool. i did my version of the example that was showed in class and used road signs and erased the words and support posts. i did, however, decide to leave the numbers and arrows on the signs just because.