The World of Adults

Yep, I've finally turned 18 and to tell the truth . . . there's not much of a difference.  Although I am pretty psyched about the fact that I can buy my own spray paint now.  There are these really cool outer space pictures people do with spray paint that I've always wanted to try, but who knows when I'll ever actually have time to remember to do that.

On to what I have been doing.

For one, thinking.  I've been doing a lot of that lately.  Possibly too much of it.  What I really want to do with my life, career-wise, is work with movies - either making stop-motion puppets, building sets, making costumes, or designing stuff.  The problem is, I have no idea how to get there.  All my life I've been determined to graduate from college, but I'm suddenly wondering if I've made the right choices.  How is Illustration going to get me into the areas I really love working with?  I'm still confident that college in and of itself is most definitely the right decision, but maybe I should've more seriously considered trade schools.  Ugggh, can I go back to not being a "grown-up".  Nothing really seemed impossible at 17 . . . No!  Nothing is still impossible, I say!  If I want to be a puppeteer for MacKinnon and Saunders or a Miniature Builder at Weta Workshop, if I want to move to New Zealand and live in a Hobbit Hole with a vardo for a studio then, gosh darn it, BYU is going to get me there, whether they think they can or not!

I digress.  All you really need to know, is that I have decided what I want to do with my life . . . and it may or may not involve building a gypsy wagon in my backyard to function as an art/craft studio.

That actually felt a little cathartic and energizing to write.

Of course, other than contemplating my life decisions, I have also been creating.  In June, my family took a vacation to New Hampshire.  I was born there and then we moved when I was six (yes, I do still remember a lot about living there) but my oldest brother and his family still live there.  It was the first time we've actually flown out there, we usually drive for three days straight (we actually like road trips).  Flying is another story altogether.  Coming home, our flight out of Manchester was delayed an hour or so.  When it finally came in and flew us to Chicago we had supposedly missed our connection by about ten minutes.  So, being the spry youth that I am, I took off as soon as we got off the plane to see if our connection was still there and, lo and behold! it was still in the gate.  However, they had just barely closed the door and apparently there was absolutely no way of reopening it for us.  So we got to sit there and watch our plane sit on the tarmac for another ten minutes and then pull away.  A tad frustrating, especially since I had training for my first job the next day, but I ended up getting to stay in Chicago for a night and riding taxis for the first time.  It was a pretty fantastic adventure and we finally made it home and just in time for me to make it to my training.

Anyways, back to the actual trip.  It was, excuse my New England terms, wicked awesome.  If I don't make it to New Zealand, I'm moving back to New England.  One of the best things there are all the antique book stores.  One that we go to almost every time we're back there had an entire section devoted to art dolls and dollhouses.  Not even our library or even Barnes and Noble has anything like that.  I ended up getting two old Doll magazines; one from 1990, the other 1993 (I guess that isn't that old, only 20ish years).  For the most part, I just drew in my sketchbook while there, but the greatest creative endeavor was, actually, also tied to that bookstore.  My 9-year-old nephew got a book about wilderness survival and we quickly discovered the shelter section.  Upon returning home that day my nephew and I were determined to build a little fort in the woods surrounding their house (another great reason to live in New Hampshire).  We used some old rope my brother had to tie up larger sticks and logs and then we started stripping bark off of trees to tie brush and twigs to those to form walls.  It was going to have a closed-in roof as well, but we never got around to finishing it, which is very sad; my nephew and I had great plans camp in it one night when it was all finished.

 Sorry for the poor picture quality, I was using my iPod.  My nephew had this genius idea to uproot a bunch of moss and move it into the fort because it was super soft and bouncy.

 My nephew built this fire ring, thought it was too wet to ever make a real fire.

The outside wall that was actually sort of mostly finished . . . and my nephew's arm.


Like I said, building that fort was probably really the most creative thing I did out there, but I was having fun all the same.  Soon after we got back I began work on a Pioneer Rag Rug.  Next week I'm going on something called Trek with my church youth group.  Basically, all the youth between 14 and 18 dress up in old fashioned clothes and pull handcarts in the middle of nowhere for 3 or 4 days.  It's like Mormon Larping!  Well, not really, closer to historical reenactments.  I've been on one before and I think they're awesome and very spiritual and you get to make all sorts of friends.  I'm rambling again.  So we have this checklist of things we're supposed to be doing to get ready for it, like walking so many miles a day or learning a pioneer craft.  I really enjoyed making this and it got rid of a bunch of my fabric scraps.  I used the metal ring supporting this glass table we have as the form.  You're supposed to weave it on an old wagon wheel rim, but we didn't have any of those lying around unfortunately.  I'm totally taking this to University with me, now.  I'll put it in front of my bed or something (speaking of, I move out in exactly one month.  I made myself a countdown to when I move out).

 I enjoyed making the rug so much that I decided to do it again, but this time I'd make two small ones and tie them together around a little circular pillow I sewed.  I'll be using it as a seat cushion and a pillow while I'm on Trek.

Rather than trying to find the pictures I took of the finished treehouse for my portfolio I just took a quick inside view for now.  I'm a little unhappy with the outsides of the walls because of the varying thicknesses of the boards I used.  I wanted it to look like it was built out of scrap wood, but when you put it in scale, some of those boards would be almost three inches thick.  That's a heavy board to be nailing onto a scrap-wood treehouse.  Anyways, I ought to put up a picture of the deck some time, 'cause I do like that part a lot.  The things inside of it aren't really going to stay there, but I have an empty little soy sauce bottle that came with some sushi once, a sculpted cat I made a few years ago, and a susuwatari (soot spirit from My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) in the top corner.  I'm planning on sewing some sleeping bags and other camp-y stuff to put in it.  And some small dolls for my nieces to play with in it when they're a little older.

Earlier I mentioned that I made a countdown to when I move out.  Well, I actually made a drawing countdown, because I feel like I'm nowhere near as good as I should be.  I feel like I could have potential, but I just never apply myself to drawing, really drawing, all that much.  So each day, when I rip off a paper, I have something I'm supposed to draw.  I'm behind right now, but so far I've done a few portraits, used some drawing books my sister has, and when I had 42 days left, I drew 42 hands.  I actually really liked those hands.  However, I'm probably not going to upload any of those because #1 - they're just for practice and they're really messy and well, I don't feel like showing them to anyone and #2 - I don't have a scanner or photo editing software anymore, so I'm trying to keep posting pictures to a minimum until I have one or both of those things back.

However, I couldn't resist posting this project I've been working on recently.  In my room I have a box fairly overflowing with doodles and collage material (mostly doodles, though).  I take my sketchbook to school, but more often than not I just end up using my homework, notes, tests, and any other "important" papers to draw on.  Then, at the end of the year, I get attachment issues and I have to go through every single piece of paper from that school year and cut out all the pictures I like.  For the most part I've just been using them to collage boring covers of sketchbooks and notebooks, but then the notebooks get filled and I have to decide to either keep the cover or throw all that hard work away.  For some time, though, the thought of writing a completely random comic that had no planned beginning or end has been festering in the corners of my mind.  I once had the idea to take all the half comics I'd drawn on bits of schoolwork and try to mesh them together into one, but I knew that probably would never work.  But then genius struck.  I decided to try and use randomly selected doodles to form the outline of a comic.  I went through a few stages of how exactly some technicalities were going to play out and I finally (for now) decided to pull out 10-20 doodles/collage items at a time and use them to write a chapter.  At first I tried doing it doodle by doodle, then page by page but it was too much for the organizer inside me.  So, with great pleasure, I present to you Skin the Color of Alder (I got the name from something I wrote in the margin of my AP European notes once):

 Yes, this page is supposed to come second.  And yes, that is a diagram of a heart.

Again, I'm a little impaired in the way of computers right now, so sorry for the quality.  If you want to, I believe clicking on the pictures will make them bigger and easier to see.

I'm having so much fun trying to arrange my doodles into a coherent order and make them all connect to each other.  I constantly have to stop myself, though, because I start trying to figure out where the story's going past the first chapter.  I have to keep reminding myself that the doodles decide where the story goes.  I'm just here to connect the dots.

So my nieces were over again.  And we painted rocks again.  And I painted a dinosaur . . . again.

This little guy is a little grumpier than Herman.  Maybe it's because he doesn't have a space helmet.  Apparently rocks just look like dinosaurs to me.

Recently, as I've been packing up my life that is my bedroom, I've gotten into this tidy up mode.  I've finally found the drive to finish old projects that have been sitting around for who knows how long.  Such as  . . . this!

 I started this sculpture-doll-thing about one or two years ago when I wanted to learn how to make and use my own paper pulp.  It may have worked better if my paper didn't have shredded credit cards in it.  Anyways, it was sort of supposed to be a self-sculpture or something like that.  I made the dress from a worn pair of pants that I loved and then I gave her socks and sandals, a trademark of mine in the days of yore.  Then after a while I decided it was a stupid idea and set it aside.  Besides, it was just going to be another waste of space that I would want to throw away in another few years.  Well, after deep contemplation over it, I decided to let it live.  In any case, I had to have something for that little sketchbook I made to go with.  So I carved a fishing rod from a chopstick, turned that into a waltzing matilda all while still grumbling about how much space and materials it was wasting.  But, whilst gluing her to the cardboard box, I used my pencil cup to prop her up while the glue dried and I really liked how it looked.  So, in a stroke of functional genius! I glued my pencil cup to the box, too.  Haha!  Functional art!  Take that, internal criticism!

I also found time to finish this project.

I've had this sub-par head connected to a wire skeleton stuck to my bed frame (with magnets) since about winter.  I'd always wanted to make him into an astronaut, but designs kept eluding me.  I purchased a quarter machine toy, just so I could get the case to make him a helmet, but it ended up being too small.  I think that was the real discouragement to me.  Everyday I'd look at him and say "one day, one day I'll find you a good helmet, and then you can be an astronaut."  Well, I was taking apart a sewing machine a while back and I loved the porthole-esque piece I found that had been part of the bobbin case.  I suddenly had an idea for the helmet.  Not long after that, I had the rest of him, too, all in a matter of just about two weeks. I made his helmet on my birthday because my friends were over having an art party (or "arty").  I don't feel like I was very productive, but I certainly enjoyed watching one of my friends make a knife sheath out of silverware.  It was so cool-looking! Anyways, I'm unhappy with the backpack, but I think I might redo it at a later date.  Y'know, when I haven't been working on him nonstop for two days straight.  Blergh . . .

Also, I did not make the Tardis in the background.  It's a Yahtzee game my parents gave me for graduation.  I thought it made a nice prop.

That about sums it up.

Ugh, I'm too drained to give tips today.  However, if you have any questions about how I make stuff, feel free to ask.  I like question.

I do want to share this link, though.  I read it last month and it really inspired me.  The artist is Jenny Dolfen and she does some of the most amazing Tolkien-inspired artwork I've ever seen.  She's one of my favorites.  Oh, and a bit of a fangirl moment, but I left a comment on this link and Jenny Dolfen actually responded.  I totally had a (extremely brief) internet conversation with a somewhat famous artist that I happen to love.  How cool is that?
http://autnott.deviantart.com/art/Twenty-year-old-Jenny-uncovers-the-mystery-of-art-375233524