Unicycle Take 2

Okay. I stayed off the unicycle for ages. I need my knees. I am going to be working this summer in a job that involves carrying buckets of paint and ladders and bed frames up and down 4-5 flights of stairs. 2 people last year had to stop because of their knees. 2 out of 15. So I am being really careful, and trying to decompress my bones, and only riding for 20 minutes. I am also trying 2 things- my chiropractor said that I might do better wearing more absorbent soled shoes. So I have stopped using my thin soled cycle shoes with gel heel inserts, and have put those inserts and my ball of foot gel inserts that I liberated from some high heels into my Shoes for Crews shoes that I had to buy for El Pollo Loco. They have these little suction embossed crosses on the bottom so I can walk on wet tiles, but that actually does not come up in my life anymore. Thank God. I am probably damaging the non slip sole by walking and falling on asphalt. Oh well. Maybe when they are filed down I will be able to walk on a regular floor with them without going squidge. The second thing I am doing is only riding on level ground. My whole neighborhood and all of Santa Cruz County is on an incline. There is a little patch of the parking lot that is flat, and the neighboring parking lot has a good long flat stretch.

However, I started out on the slanted parking lot near my house, figuring that it would be easier to crawl home from there if neccessary. I was a little worried about whether my body would remember how to unicycle at all. (Do you ever make little deals with yourself? Like if you sleep in, before you look at the clock you assess the latest time you would be okay with, say 10 am, and if it is earlier you refuse to be discouraged? And if it's later you are allowed to be briefly dissapointed? I decided that if I rode like I had never been on a unicycle I was allowed to cry, but if I could get at least 10 feet I would be happy.) I got on and was very encouraged. I traveled about 6 feet: I got on, pedaled, and immediately fell off. 5 minutes later I moved to the flatter, farther away parking lot. I am definitely worse, but it might be the shoes. I have gotten the best result from my cycle shoes, and my other sneakers are just looser or slippier or something. The farthest I could get today was about 30 feet. It is hard to say how far I traveled because I was not trying for a straight line, just for staying upright, so there was a lot of wavering and veering. I think I could also have gone farther if I had pedaled faster. There is a trick for staying on, when if you start to fall you lean forward and carry on pedaling, but this means that when you do fall you are going kind of fast, which I think is bad for my knees/pelvis. Also I have lost 6 lbs. (of thigh muscle. From not unicycling.*) which according to a Kaiser commercial that I saw three years ago relieves 24 lbs. of pressure from my knees.

Tommorow I am going to juggling club, and I am going to work on free mounting. Right now I have to use a post. It is very hard to work on free mounting because it is difficult and not exciting. When you have got a unicycle and a bit of pavement, trying for at least a respectable bit of distance is irresistable.

*This is really true. When I started unicycling I went down a pants size (kind of. I was between sizes, and I moved to fitting best into the smaller size), and when I stopped I went down a pants size again. I can still wear all of my pants though, they are just loose and kind of unflattering.

Art 4/29

I am so tired. I really think I am sick. I was standing on a chair to take these pictures so I could be closer to the skylight, and my legs were shaking, it was sort of scary. So I climbed down and used the flash, and the pictures are terrible. I could have gone onto the balcony but the dog would start crying, and she cries for at least 20-40 minutes every time she notices people are around and not playing with her. Going outside to take the pictures would have the same effect, as the balcony is over the front door.
In art yesterday we played Exquisite Corpse, the juxtaposing co creation game. We made dozens of little creatures, then pinned them to the wall, drew numbers, and chose a creature. I was #1 and picked the deer headed creature on the left, and then we got to go back up after everyone went and I picked the half headed girl on the right (no one had chosen her! And she was my tied for first choice!) I was using blue crayon, so both of these are ones I co created. I do not know if that is why I picked them. There was a really nice fish headed boquet that I didn't choose because everyone else wanted it, and I wanted to see what someone would do. And then we were supposed to create a narrative or context for our characters. I was so excited to have a half headed zombie squid and a steampunk robot deer devil to work with- it is a very liberating game.

When I first made this I was really pleased, because it is so different from my usual thing, except that it has in it bones, tentacles, and a dik dik. So it is kind of my usual thing. I feel like it is more involved and chaotic than the sort of placid fantastic scenes I conceive of left to my own devices. But at the same time it turned out really generic. I decree that I like it, with reservations. I am so tired.

Now, the spine->skull transition is not very good. I did not want to deviate too much from the original character, and I did not want it to be a human zombie with a jaw. Whatever. If this was a homework assignment (those are more intensive than the studio assignments) I would sketch a few different skull/mouth/spine combinations. I wanted it to look sinister but not threatening. I don't know.

I fell asleep at 6:30 last night, and was wide awake by 2:00am, but now it is 10am and I am either tired, or hungry, or sick, or something. But, between 4 and 6:00am I had a lot of fun padding around the art studio at school (parking is free from 8:30pm-7:00am!), drawing on the chalkboard and sketching and eventually leaving because of the chill.

Now I am supposed to do the mentor dialogue on a digital ground and/or grid distortion. I have some thumbnail sketches that I like, but I feel like they aren't engaging enough. Instead of a dialogue with Bosch I am more having a listening-in-on-the-Bosch-Dali-dialogue. I was kind of interested in a Boschian fantastic hooved biped creature with a Dali kind of terraced pavilion saddle. Like on the spindly legged elephants. But I don't know. I feel like that is kind of boring and static, and the ground I have prepared so far is a pamphlet of magic tricks glued to a sheet of paper. I don't know. Seeing my sick reflection makes me want to do a hellscape of black buildings and smoking lakes and turbulent clouds with a little curled up caitlan in the foreground. (sane!) But how does the magic tricks background connect to that? I don't want to stretch it like if I was doing a critique, I want it to legitimately add a layer of meaning and intrigue. I also don't want to make a different background, because the only things I really have are xeroxes of Bosch paintings, Dali postcards, scrapbook paper, a map, library card catalogues, and an old course catalogue.

Well. It looks like adding depth and layers to my background will be a good start. Also maybe I should change my mentor to Dali. I sort of feel like basing things on a 15th century flemish painter makes my sad little derivative drawings better because they are not immediately, iconically recognizable.

I am stalling from climbing all the way back up to the living room.
Ugh.

Art 4/28/09

Today in Astronomy they showed us a Tesla Coil and it was neat. I drew a picture of it on top of a bisected star chart, for art, in my sketchbook. Tesla Coils are neat because they shoot electricity and can light up things that are not touching them. I slightly was not paying attention to the reason they work, because I had to finish my sketchbook for art. But Professor Vogt said that there are fields around us all the time, but we can't perceive them. Then we got little rainbow maker slides and looked at different elements burning in tubes, such as neon and sodium. They all burn different colors, and when you look at them through spectroscopic (rainbow) film, it divides them into their component colors. It is interesting to see. Professor Vogt said that the city of San Jose is replacing their sodium lamps (they look orange, and only take up a little part of the spectrum) with LEDs, and then Lick Observatory won't be able to see very well because LEDs fill the spectrum.

I am really pleased with this drawing. The assignment was to do a drawing from our mentor and push it into personal territory. I started with the lower part of the center panel of Bosch's The Temptation of St. Anthony and for my personal territory component I picked loving my bed.

This is kind of based on the Wee Planets, especially because the lower planet is the same kind of photograph as the Wee Planets.: a wide angle photo of the milky way, with the horizon all around it as a border. And then I tried to draw an alien rocket ship, but it looked too much like the fish I had just drawn. So I drew a plesiosaur rocket.

I am soooo tired. I have been needing huge amounts of sleep, like 13 hours, or two 7 hour shifts. Yesterday and last night I had to make do with a 7 hour shift and a 5 hour shift. It was very very hard to get out of bed, and I managed not to feel tired until about an hour ago, when my legs actually got weak while walking home, and I have collapsed on the couch. Possibly I am ill. Normally you get sick right in your center, in your head and your chest. And my head and chest are fine. I don't know.

Art: my favorite 2 pieces so far

The assignment was to make a still life with a theme: memento mori, knowledge, or food. I immediately chose knowledge, but I have this awesome hourglass and I really love skulls. So, I did a walrus skull, and you know what, I know it is confusing to put in an hourglass but I tried to make it look like the urgent and exciting need to do an adventure, or something. So yeah, those are some sketch and notebooks, a book of conversion rates and formulas from 1904, an hourglass, a walrus skull, and my moon globe. I got called out when we reviewed our projects. My professor said when you do a sphere you are almost challenging everyone to judge it. I pointed out that it is a lunar globe, hence the brightness, but they are right, it is not as perfect as I could have made it. The photo looks really good, but actually my brights are not bright enough in real life, especially on the skull.

This is what I worked on today. It is a studio practice for our next homework. It is supposed to be an enlargement of an existing digital (?) image onto a collaged "ground" made up of black and white text and graphics, no photographic sources allowed.* It can either relate, or not relate, to the ground. And our final version, due thurs, is supposed to draw from our mentor and/or use grid enlargement/distortion techniques. (People are visual, or people are verbal, and nothing in the world can make a right brained artist describe what she is visualizing in a way that 25 students can create it. We were all so confused.)

So, for this, I used an extremely enlarged enlargement of a tiny (<1"x1") portion of a Salvador Dali postcard I have. He is not my real mentor, Bosch is, but really Bosch was Dali's mentor also. I was planning to do a Bosch-non-flaming-Garden-of-Earthly-Delights-giraffe on the right, but I felt it would be too "busy" looking, so I just copied the Dali and stretched it out a little. I think giraffes might be my favorite animal, because I have always really liked them. You can tell, by the way I spent an hour drawing one on fire.

I am probably secretly a sociopath. But in the original Dali the giraffe is on fire also. And Dali, of course, was totally well adjusted and everything.

I really liked looking through my old scrap papers and notes for this, the ones that I have kept through move after move, for no real reason. I think that using them as the ground for various collages is an interesting way to let go of/utilize** them, like when people use old clothing in quilts.

*Here is what I used for the ground:
> card catalogue index cards that I liberated from the library
> a small envelope
>worst case scenario survival postcard
>little printed out powerpoint slideshow from some bio class I took in hs
>red and yellow and black scrapbooking paper
>diagrams of indigenous american stone carvings from a flyer

**some people really hate the word utilize, because they think the word use can be used just as well in nearly all cases. I think there is the same complaint made about mobilize in place of move. But you know, they are totally wrong. Shades of meaning are valuable for precision of thought and expression.

Art: Very quick gestural drawings

So these are really, really rough, I spent between 10 and 60 seconds on each, and they are done with a lump of charred driftwood I found on the beach. THIS IS WHY I AM SAD WE HAD TO BUY FIXATIF INSTEAD OF USING HAIRSPRAY AS FIXATIVE.


No, this does not look like a pigeon. Yes, it is meant to be a pigeon. Pigeons do not hold still for even 1 second, let alone the 12 seconds I spent on this drawing.

Anyway, I think it is kind of a milestone to be able to make recognizable images instantly.

Art: Struggling with pen and ink and ink wash

A kind of unspoken requirement in art class for every assignment is "don't make terrible work". This is impossible for me when doing ink washes. This is supposed to be an enlargement from a photo using a grid. Lots and lots of people made nearly photographic works. I would venture to say mine is the worst. I am going to redo it in charcoal for the final portfolio because I find charcoal more manageable.
Today (yes, there is saturday studio) we were supposed to revise one of our landscape drawings (that's mine in charcoal on the right) using a different medium. I chose ink, because ink is very difficult for me and a landscape is sort of forgiving, particularly since I already made all of the decisions about layout and everything in the first version.

I really struggle with ink. Really, really. Partly because it is permanent and unforgiving. Mostly because I find it a little unpredictable, with the blotching and the pooling and the dripping. That is the worst excuse ever: "This liquid is liquid!" but it is true. So I did some mock ups of pine needle branches in lieu of working in an erasable medium.
Here is my finished work, which I am actually reasonably happy with. I spent about 2 hours on it. I think the decision to layer pen and ink and ink washes was good. I started by using my original charcoal sketch to do a rubbing, so I wouldn't have to spend any time on the sketch, then I deliniated some branches with vine charcoal, then I went over the lines with a bamboo pen, then I filled in everything with medium dark ink wash, then I went over the shadows with bamboo pen, then I added texture with the bamboo brush, then I defined some branches and foliage with the bamboo pen. It was a slow process.

1st day of art class

For our first day of drawing we had to use as many of our new tools as possible to create a layoutly (nooooo idea what the word for that is, right now.) compelling composition by repeatedly drawing the same object from different perspectives and sizes. Mine isn't very compelling. I did not really realize I was actually going to spend 2 hours on it, so I filled the space too quickly. Also, I picked a really unambitious object, and was bored of it very quickly. I doubt many people can draw the same jar 10 times for 2 hours without getting terribly bored.