It's hard to get me to post nowadays
I've been thinking "I should post on LJ!" for quite a while now, but every time I open the page, I just don't know what to talk about and give up.
School has been going well. Not too hard on me, in fact, much better than I had expected. I never missed a single night of sleep and it's extremely easy to stay on top of assignments because they're always given with a lot of advance. I know it's going to get harder from now on, but one of our teachers heavily insisted that the first few weeks are an excellent way for us to pace ourselves and see how we're able to schedule ourselves- if we can keep that up all year, it should go smoothly, although we'll keep getting more work.
This is very encouraging considering I always get a good night's sleep, still have time to watch movies and stuff, and read on public transports as well as before I fall asleep (I'd like to start drawing on the metro, but I almost never find a seated place, and even then, it's never for long). I don't really intend to add much to my routine, except try to do a bit of physical activity on some evenings (probably stretching and small workouts when I get back from school; I'd like to get back to running, but it's getting cold outside, and I don't know if getting a card for a gym would be worthwhile considering I don't have too much time on my hands either). The good thing is I've noticed I run out of my breath much less easily, like for example when I have to run after my bus to catch it, or walk up the tons of stairs in the metro- I mean, I still get tired because I'm no Stallone, but I'm getting back to being healthier like I was a couple of years ago, and it's great.
I love all of our teachers, they're great at what they do and extremely close to us most of the time. My favorites are probably our analytical drawing teacher, whom I get along with extremely well: We spent a 15mn break talking the whole time, about Street Fighter, Taiyo Matsumoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, and more... we've got a ton of similar interests and influences, it's great. Hell, he even follows me on Tumblr haha. Unfortunately, I got a pretty shitty grade in his class, and I suck at constructing my drawings, although every time I ask him for help he's like "well this is fine, this is fine... but you should construct this more because it's falling apart... nice lining though" :'D Then there's our graphics/visual development teacher who's super charismatic, just about every time he opens his mouth I end up laughing or really connecting to what he says. We've only had him for two classes so far, but both times it's been a blast (even though on one of those two he basically destroyed everything I had planned for my assignment, because my composition was super week and uninteresting ;'( ). He's also an extremely impressive artist, I really wonder if he's published any kind of comic book before, because his style just screams he's worked a lot on that kind of stuff. He's an ink lover, and so am I even though I'm still a beginner on more traditional inking nibs (I really wanna practice so I can control it though, I love the results it can give). During one of our class, he was testing out supplies to show us how it goes, and I showed him some of my small pointed Japanese brush-pens, he had a ton of fun with it and was just saying "ooooh yeeeeeaaaah this is a good one" while trying it out hahaha. Our perspective teacher is also great, same goes to all of our history teachers (my preference goes out to our cinema history teacher though, first off because I love that subject a ton more than the other history ones, and also because he always has interesting anecdotes to tell us).
I don't spend too much time out with my classmates (didn't go to our integration evening for example, or join them when they planned an evening out in a bar), but I don't intend to be spending much more either. Seeing them in class every day is already good as is for me. I like them a lot and they're all very nice, I don't mean the opposite- but I always feel like I could be more productive when I'm out socializing, haha. A quiet evening at home is much more rewarding to me when I have free time. I do get along with my classmates well though, seeing as I was elected to be one of the class's delegate. The other who was chosen looks like a clone of Karim Debbache, except taller and a bit heavier. I just wanted to mention it because it makes me laugh how the resemblance is uncanny.
This month, I also got to go to 2 concerts: the first was MIYAVI, which was fun, but not as good as the latter... RADWIMPS! I actually have a crazy anecdote about that one.
When I got out of school that day, I had a lot of time before the concert started, so I joined with friends to eat out at a sushi place near the venue. We had a good time, and weren't in a rush at all since we thought we were very close to the livehouse. We left with about 30 minutes of advance, something like that. First, it wasn't as close as we thought- there was a long pathway to cross. If you've ever been there, it's Le Trabendo, on Metro 5 (the stop is Parc de la Villette, I think). And if you've been there recently, you'll know that the Philharmonie de Paris (yeah, the huge-ass modern building that made a lot of fuss when it opened at the begining of this year, because it meant the definitive close of Salle Pleyel etc.) is closer to the metro station than the Trabendo. Point being, there's a lot of walking.
Once we arrived, there was... nothing. Not a single person. Doors closed, it was a complete desert. Not a line, nothing. Two other lost souls arrived, just as clueless as we were. I started to wonder, and remembered that on my ticket, it said "reported at La Flèche d'Or" next to the band's name- but not listed as the venue, which is why I hadn't given it any thought (I even thought it could've been the opening band, or an error or something...). We really started to wonder if it could've been at that venue, except none of us had any clue where the fuck it could've been. That's when a group of three people came running towards the (closed) doors, and saw us being lost as we were. One of them started screaming "fuck you guys, I told you it was going to be at La Flèche d'Or, you're the ones who brought us here!" That was a cue for the whole of us (my friends and I, the two lost persons and their group) to run to the metro, change to grab line 2... and its fucking share of stairs (like what the fuck, we thought we were going on the Eiffel Tower or something), and then run to the venue, which was a good 15 minute walk away from the stop. Thank God, the show hadn't started, and we were just in time!
The concert was worth the way there, and was much more impressive than I had expected it to be. Lots of impro, excellent musicians, great ambiance, great audience too (never saw an audience follow along the band's needs so well by clapping during the solos etc!)... Definitely a blast.
I'll also mention that two weekends ago, it was my birthday. Totally shitty day, I spent the whole of it puking my guts out, sick to death. Thought I was gonna pass out. The whole afternoon was about me being in deep pain, crying on the bathroom floor. Fantastic way to spend your 20th birthday if you ask me :Db
But the following day, my mom came to pick me up for a surprise she had planned a long time in advance... We ate lunch at the Tour Eiffel restaurant. You know, that way expensive restaurant? Well, it's worth the price.The view is splendid and the food is fantastic. Not the kind of place you'll eat more than once in your life, but it was a very pleasant meal, and I spent a great time with my mom. We laughed a lot and it was great to see her, especially considering how tough her life is now that she's got an awful job. I'm glad she got to have this happy memory as well. :)
Now I'll just leave this here as a memo to myself:
Thaaaaaaat's it. Why do my entries here always end up being way too lenghty?
School has been going well. Not too hard on me, in fact, much better than I had expected. I never missed a single night of sleep and it's extremely easy to stay on top of assignments because they're always given with a lot of advance. I know it's going to get harder from now on, but one of our teachers heavily insisted that the first few weeks are an excellent way for us to pace ourselves and see how we're able to schedule ourselves- if we can keep that up all year, it should go smoothly, although we'll keep getting more work.
This is very encouraging considering I always get a good night's sleep, still have time to watch movies and stuff, and read on public transports as well as before I fall asleep (I'd like to start drawing on the metro, but I almost never find a seated place, and even then, it's never for long). I don't really intend to add much to my routine, except try to do a bit of physical activity on some evenings (probably stretching and small workouts when I get back from school; I'd like to get back to running, but it's getting cold outside, and I don't know if getting a card for a gym would be worthwhile considering I don't have too much time on my hands either). The good thing is I've noticed I run out of my breath much less easily, like for example when I have to run after my bus to catch it, or walk up the tons of stairs in the metro- I mean, I still get tired because I'm no Stallone, but I'm getting back to being healthier like I was a couple of years ago, and it's great.
I love all of our teachers, they're great at what they do and extremely close to us most of the time. My favorites are probably our analytical drawing teacher, whom I get along with extremely well: We spent a 15mn break talking the whole time, about Street Fighter, Taiyo Matsumoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, and more... we've got a ton of similar interests and influences, it's great. Hell, he even follows me on Tumblr haha. Unfortunately, I got a pretty shitty grade in his class, and I suck at constructing my drawings, although every time I ask him for help he's like "well this is fine, this is fine... but you should construct this more because it's falling apart... nice lining though" :'D Then there's our graphics/visual development teacher who's super charismatic, just about every time he opens his mouth I end up laughing or really connecting to what he says. We've only had him for two classes so far, but both times it's been a blast (even though on one of those two he basically destroyed everything I had planned for my assignment, because my composition was super week and uninteresting ;'( ). He's also an extremely impressive artist, I really wonder if he's published any kind of comic book before, because his style just screams he's worked a lot on that kind of stuff. He's an ink lover, and so am I even though I'm still a beginner on more traditional inking nibs (I really wanna practice so I can control it though, I love the results it can give). During one of our class, he was testing out supplies to show us how it goes, and I showed him some of my small pointed Japanese brush-pens, he had a ton of fun with it and was just saying "ooooh yeeeeeaaaah this is a good one" while trying it out hahaha. Our perspective teacher is also great, same goes to all of our history teachers (my preference goes out to our cinema history teacher though, first off because I love that subject a ton more than the other history ones, and also because he always has interesting anecdotes to tell us).
I don't spend too much time out with my classmates (didn't go to our integration evening for example, or join them when they planned an evening out in a bar), but I don't intend to be spending much more either. Seeing them in class every day is already good as is for me. I like them a lot and they're all very nice, I don't mean the opposite- but I always feel like I could be more productive when I'm out socializing, haha. A quiet evening at home is much more rewarding to me when I have free time. I do get along with my classmates well though, seeing as I was elected to be one of the class's delegate. The other who was chosen looks like a clone of Karim Debbache, except taller and a bit heavier. I just wanted to mention it because it makes me laugh how the resemblance is uncanny.
This month, I also got to go to 2 concerts: the first was MIYAVI, which was fun, but not as good as the latter... RADWIMPS! I actually have a crazy anecdote about that one.
When I got out of school that day, I had a lot of time before the concert started, so I joined with friends to eat out at a sushi place near the venue. We had a good time, and weren't in a rush at all since we thought we were very close to the livehouse. We left with about 30 minutes of advance, something like that. First, it wasn't as close as we thought- there was a long pathway to cross. If you've ever been there, it's Le Trabendo, on Metro 5 (the stop is Parc de la Villette, I think). And if you've been there recently, you'll know that the Philharmonie de Paris (yeah, the huge-ass modern building that made a lot of fuss when it opened at the begining of this year, because it meant the definitive close of Salle Pleyel etc.) is closer to the metro station than the Trabendo. Point being, there's a lot of walking.
Once we arrived, there was... nothing. Not a single person. Doors closed, it was a complete desert. Not a line, nothing. Two other lost souls arrived, just as clueless as we were. I started to wonder, and remembered that on my ticket, it said "reported at La Flèche d'Or" next to the band's name- but not listed as the venue, which is why I hadn't given it any thought (I even thought it could've been the opening band, or an error or something...). We really started to wonder if it could've been at that venue, except none of us had any clue where the fuck it could've been. That's when a group of three people came running towards the (closed) doors, and saw us being lost as we were. One of them started screaming "fuck you guys, I told you it was going to be at La Flèche d'Or, you're the ones who brought us here!" That was a cue for the whole of us (my friends and I, the two lost persons and their group) to run to the metro, change to grab line 2... and its fucking share of stairs (like what the fuck, we thought we were going on the Eiffel Tower or something), and then run to the venue, which was a good 15 minute walk away from the stop. Thank God, the show hadn't started, and we were just in time!
The concert was worth the way there, and was much more impressive than I had expected it to be. Lots of impro, excellent musicians, great ambiance, great audience too (never saw an audience follow along the band's needs so well by clapping during the solos etc!)... Definitely a blast.
I'll also mention that two weekends ago, it was my birthday. Totally shitty day, I spent the whole of it puking my guts out, sick to death. Thought I was gonna pass out. The whole afternoon was about me being in deep pain, crying on the bathroom floor. Fantastic way to spend your 20th birthday if you ask me :Db
But the following day, my mom came to pick me up for a surprise she had planned a long time in advance... We ate lunch at the Tour Eiffel restaurant. You know, that way expensive restaurant? Well, it's worth the price.The view is splendid and the food is fantastic. Not the kind of place you'll eat more than once in your life, but it was a very pleasant meal, and I spent a great time with my mom. We laughed a lot and it was great to see her, especially considering how tough her life is now that she's got an awful job. I'm glad she got to have this happy memory as well. :)
Now I'll just leave this here as a memo to myself:
- Analytical drawing: Two assignments. The first is a small A5 sketch book we have to fill with every day (or not so every day) objects, which we have to construct using cubic shapes to sculpt details. We're heavily recommended to do one object per day, but I think I'll do a lot more since I'm so bad in that class (got a 9,5 on the only assignment we had to turn in so far, which we had to do in 4 hours in class- I would've given myself a lot less considering how fucking ugly the shit I turned in was lol). I already started, did 3 drawings on a day, but then was my birthday and I got sick- then was the school week... point being, I don't have as much as I had intended. We just have to do about 15-20 of them, but I'll do more.
The second assignment: We're given a picture of a toy truck. On two A3 formats, we have to draw it from 3/4ths front and back (so we have to invent the back), and fill the truck with items of someone moving to a new place. We get to choose which items, but the teacher wants to draw at least one table and two chairs, the rest is up to our choice. He mentioned it'd be nice to be able to tell who's moving out by looking at the truck: a witch, an astronomer...
And both are due on our first day back. *whale noises* - Perspective: Two assignments. On an A3 format, draw a background in axonometry on the theme "maze/city". Don't get too lost in details (as in, don't go drawing tons of windows and stuff if it doesn't help shape your structure), no pivoted shapes (structures parallel and perpendicular), but ellipses allowed (that means arches and stuff like that). The teacher didn't have anything to say about my rough except I need to watch for vertical lines, which aren't always so vertical. Other than that, he liked my structure and the small streets with houses, said it brought a lot of life to it. My idea stemmed from this photograph, which means I've got lots of small streets, stairs, up and down structures. I kept it simpler because we can't pivot anything on axes, though.
Second assignment: We're only accounted to do an A4 rough, which our teacher will check before we move on to the clean line. We get to choose between these themes:
1. When the tough have fun crushing down the weak
2. The final assault: the last survivors
3. The crowd watching an execution
4. Overall jubilation: festivities, carnival
I still have no clue which to choose, I'll probably have to do tons of tests to make my pick. All characters involved have to be represented by simple shapes: cubes, rectangular parallelepipeds, pyramids (triangular or square base), cones... We're allowed to do some more unique ones (like hexagones or something), but their use has to be self-evident (for example, a complex shape to symbolize a king, as if it were his royalty/uniqueness). The point is to do a "casting" of shapes, what they symbolize and how we can put them to use to make our composition understandable. - Graphics/Visual development: A4 format, using China ink. Make a composition using only silhouettes, black and white layers to recreate a scene from a legend or a fairy tale. The composition is the key element here, the lisibility of the silhouettes the second one.
That's the assignment on which my teacher basically told me to trash the rough draft I had brought. I had chosen Miyamoto Musashi, the scene where he kills of the entire Yoshioka Clan in the forest. I took the Japanese's rising sun flag and used that to make my black and white layers, carving the silhouettes in white and using perspective to make the action easily readable. Thing is- it felt a lot like "filling in". There was the main action on the first layer, but the rest was mostly dead bodies, swords, flags, trees and surviving soldiers ready to attack dispersed among the layers. Although it felt organized because of the flag, the teacher said it needed a lot more work to create depth, and that there wasn't much to feel on it. He made me a composition suggestion, and although I think it's a fantastic one, I feel very bad about using it as is, since the key of the subject is to make up your own... I'll get on it and try to come up with something else, although I might use another legend (I was thinking something from Rashomon, or maybe the Illiad/Odyssey... Hell, I've even been thinking about Yan Bibian, a slavic folk tale that I really love and that's similar to Alice in Wonderland concept-wise, but much darker and scarier). I'll see. All I know is that my silhouettes are fine, if I keep up with the level of detail I've already put out (this was what I had intended for my samurais). - Observation drawing: Draw 2-3 buildings from anywhere outside... in axo. *groans* And rework the ones we did at Austerlitz and Jardin des Plantes.
- Texture: Work on small parts of a Monge drawing the teacher sent us to recreate texture using BW (charcoal and pencil) or color (pastels). Understand the shapes of the overall picture and make a simplified version of it.
- Cinema history: Watch An Andalusian Dog and a Buster Keaton film. I'll just take this space to mention I love this class a ton more than art history and styles history because of what we're learning in those other two... 17th century and classical era. Eeeeewwww I fucking hate classical styles and all the Louis XIII-etc bullshit. We spent like 10 minutes on baroque styles and I cried as soon as it was over because I just don't give a shit about classical art (whether it be in music, art, furniture/fashion, I just don't give a shit about it) :'(
Thaaaaaaat's it. Why do my entries here always end up being way too lenghty?