Happy Late Totally Not Socially Awkward Valentine's Day

All my posts recently seem to be centered around holidays.  Well, I can most likely guarantee that I probably won't have anything relating to Saint Patrick's day next month.  But who knows.  I wasn't really planning on having anything related to Valentine's day this month, but then here we are, with a Valentine picture.

I honestly don't know why I decided to do this.  I was just feeling particularly inhibitingly awkward the other day and for some reason, this was the result.  I don't know, I think this speaks for itself.  I also just really wanted to draw my Box Elder Fettish in some Valentine related thing.  I really like her design and I'm thinking of maybe trying to do some 'professional-looking' comics with her.  I even decided to do the 25 expressions meme with her to try and work on consistency.

Yeah, the first ones are not the greatest.  I definitely think they got better as I continued.  It'd look better if I had them all in pen, but I've just been working on it here and there and since I have all the expressions at least in pencil, now, I figured I'd post it.  Silly I think is my favorite, or at least one of my favorites.

Oh! Speaking of my little Fettish.  In AP art we had a pre-show for the Springville Art Museum's High School Show.  It's an art show for high school students' work from all over the state and it's kind of a big deal.  Both my Fettish and Audubon, my robot, were selected in the pre-show to be judged at Springville for the actual show.   We sent 18 pieces from our class to be judged but only four made it.  Three of the 2D design students plus my Box Elder Fettish are going to be in the Springville High School Art Show.  I can't believe it!  The show opens this Wednesday and goes for a few weeks; I can't wait to actually go and see one of my baby creations in an actual art show.  Seriously, I don't know what else to say, it's kind of mind-blowing for me.  If anyone's interested enough, I would recommend going to see the show, not because I have something in it (you can just look at pictures in my previous posts), but I've been to the high school show before and there are some seriously talented kids out there.  It's really worth taking a gander at, especially if you enjoy museums and such.

That isn't the only thing that's been happening in AP art, though.  Recently we had to declare our concentrations for our portfolios.  I debated between a lot of things (art dolls, up-cycled material, wearable art, etc.) but I ended up going with art dolls.  I'm glad, because it finally gave me more reason to finish . . . Mystery Man!  Or, as was finally figured out, Hagrid.

For the longest time he was just a Sculpey head on an uncontained body of stuffing, lying in a corner of my room.  But now, he's a lumberjack Hagrid person, holding a little bundle o' Harry Potter (little baby Harry was part of a separate project I did over the summer).  His boots were especially fun to do and I love how they turned out.  My favorite part is actually his collar, although you can't see practically any of it.  I was so proud of myself, because I actually sewed it on like a real collar and it folded over and everything.  Curse his hair for covering it all!

Anyways, although we've dove head-first into our concentrations in AP Art, I still need a few more pieces for the Breadth section of my portfolio.  So, while being unmotivated to finish other projects, I started and finished a new project.

It's a guitar birdhouse feeder thing.  My sister just brought over this broken guitar once and wondered if I could use it.  Well, apparently I could.  I had some other plans for it originally, but then a friend of mine suggested I turn it into a birdhouse.  Well, being mildly to overtly obsessed with birds, I of course thought this was the greatest idea since sliced bread.  I mean, why not? it already has the hole and everything.  So I sanded the original paint off the guitar (it took forever! at least 4 hours) then added the peg and seed trough, added paper clay (you can't tell so much in this picture, but it has a lot of texture to it), and then I painted it.  I'd really like to have a picture of it outside with some birds on it, but unfortunately it isn't weatherproof, yet.  I need to get some marine varnish or something to help protect it from rain and such.  Can you tell it's supposed to be like an aspen tree?

The day I finished the birdhouse I was on a sort of productive rampage and decided to finish another project I had abandoned for a while.

I got a bunch of wire for Christmas and so I decided to experiment with wire-wrapping.  Originally this was going to be a ring, but I really don't have the right kind of wire for that, so it simply became a pin/brooch thing.  I like how it turned out.  I was going for a sort of steampunk hot air balloon thing, don't know if that translated very well, though.

It seems I've been doing a lot with steampunk lately.  I just barely finished the second costume design for a friend of mine's post-apocalyptice sci-fi short film he's been working on.

Annie's design became completely different from the first one's I showed, so I decided to return to Annie's original concept for the design of Lydia, her sister.  I like this one much better.  I don't know if I'll be doing anymore designs for my friend.  I was kind of late with my other ones, so I don't know if he's already worked out the rest of them.

It's not that I was slow working on them, or that I was procrastinating for no reason, I've just been rather overwhelmed with a ton of things recently.  As it turns out, college gets a little expensive, so recently I've been trying to find scholarships and such (no luck so far).  I've found a ton of art related ones, and that's mainly what I've been trying to focus on lately, though I'm only close to really finishing one of them.  The Doodle 4 Google scholarship contest.

I'm not entirely sure I like how it looks in Photoshop, so I've been thinking I'll finish my original sketch with either watercolors or colored pencils and then decide which one I'll actually turn in.  I am pleased with the design, though.

Okay, one last thing before I sign off probably for the rest of the month.  I bound a book!  I've bound books before, actually I bound some books for Christmas, though I forgot to ever take pictures of them, but I feel like its been ages since I just bound a book for fun.  It wasn't totally all on a whim, though, actually.  A few months ago I was talking with a friend of mine and we started discussing the phrase "for the record".  Her comments to me were "what record?  Is there someone keeping minutes on everything we want 'for the record' and if so, where is this record? who gets to read it?"  So, I decided to make "The Record" and I'll use it simply for that; writing down the random things people say with the preceding statement of "for the record".

Well, I guess that wasn't the completely last thing before I leave.

This month's recommendation I have for anyone who still reads my posts is to check out this awesome web-comic I've been reading lately.  www.seed-comic.com  I love the art style and the plot is really intriguing so far.

And, uh, my tip for the month . . . . um, don't work on projects you're frustrated with.  Step away for an hour or maybe a day or two.  Lock the project in a box and refuse to look at it until you've had time to cool down.  If you work on something while you're mad, you'll likely end up breaking something or ruining something which will only compound your frustration.  Yep.