Magazine

I went to a store in search of magazines that immediately sparked my interest. I found two. The first is an issue of life magazine, and the issue is about the titanic. The cover is simple and has a powerful image. The text is clearly legible and different from the other title fonts of the other magazines. I like that the picture takes up the whole cover as well.
The second magazine kind of scared me a little bit. It is a tattoo magazine , and I can't really make out the title because it is behind a person's head. The thing that made me pay attention to this magazine, however, is the picture of the woman on the front. I am usually not one to judge a person on their appearance, but let's just say I wouldn't want to run into her in a dark alley.

wip

This is a work in progress, entitled "I know the voices dying with a dying fall". I don't really know how i feel about it right now. I guess i need to finish it before I start to make adjustments over the whole painting. I guess I don't really know how to feel about this painting because when I started it, I was upset, and I think that feeling has attached itself to my painting. I hope I begin to like it more as I finish it.

Photos

Here are some pictures I took around campus and at my boyfriend's house. I am just playing around with photoshop on some of them. Enjoy!

This is a photo my boyfriend took of me writing his name with the flashlight on my phone. I love this trick!

This is just a picture of a puddle that I dropped a rock in. I was playing with filters in Photoshop, and I liked this blue one.

My boyfriend carrying me, because I had no shoes on, and mud is gross.

The same method I used for writing Isaac's name with a flashlight also helped us capture this car. You can barely see it, except for the light that was hitting it.

Bethany, being an evil villain. I just played around with filters here, too.

I love pansies. I know, I put the lens flare in the wrong place, but i still like this picture.

Again, playing with filters and such. This is Bethany and our friend Sarah.

Itching to Paint

As most of you know, the winter trimester was my very first painting class. I never painted with oils before then, and I was never taught how to paint. I was so excited about that class. I learned so much about myself through painting, and now it is one of my favorite things to do.

I have been out of that class for about three weeks now. Since the class, I have volunteered to paint a mural on the wall of one of the Sunday school rooms at my church, volunteered to be on the painting/decorating commity for my church's VBS, and I have continued to work on ideas for my series of paintings based on "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

I am pretty sure painting has changed my life. It has certainly changed the way I see the world. I am so excited about what I want to do now, instead of procrastinating because it is "homework".

Painting has also encouraged me to try harder to do well in other areas, like photography, drawing, and general school work. I have learned that if i can do well and barely try, than I can excel if I try my hardest.

I look forward to the years ahead of me. I can not wait to be the artist that I can become.

concept drawings

The assignment was to sketch for an hour on something that inspired me. At first, it was really hard for me to find inspiration, so I just sketched out what I saw in front of me. As I warmed up and began thinking, I got an idea for a painting that went along with my collection of T.S. Eliot inspired paintings. I will hopefully have the finished product done during the upcoming spring break. But anyway, here are my sketches. Enjoy! (I will hopefully have better pictures of the sketches later, but for now, here are the webcam photos!)

This first sketch is what I see outside of the office that I work at. It seems that I have an animosity towards my workplace, and it shows in this drawing.

This sketch is an abstracted version of my first sketch. I am inspired by Diebenkorn, so I added a Diebenkorn-esque geometric design to the first sketch. 

This sketch is an arial view of the office that I work in. I like geometric shapes, so I went with making everything as geometric as possible. 

This sketch is of my TOMS. I love my TOMS. I wear them all the time, and I love the story behind them. Also, I haven't drawn a still life in a long time, so I wanted to get back in the habit of doing contour drawings of still lifes.

This sketch is my favorite. It is a concept drawing for a painting that I'm going to do over spring break. It is entitled “I Know The Voices Dying With A Dying Fall.” A dying fall is a type of musical phrase, so I decided to make the background sheet music, and have a person singing. I also took a literal interpretation of the words “dying fall” and drew a person falling to their death amidst the breath of the singer.