Today
I am going to Europe! Edinburgh, London, Paris, Lyon, Carcassonne, Montpelier, and Bordeaux! It’s going to be lovely, but I will be gone for a whole month, so my blog will be deserted for a while.
Leave me some love to come back to!
PAGE 62 & 63: Now I…
Last entry of my 2006-2007 visual journal!
“NOW”
“I can see so much more clearly”
I painted on the left page then closed the journal while it was still wet to get some paint on the right. It turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted.
I’m not really sure where this came from. I think the sentence just popped into my head one day, so I did it.
B.
PAGE 61: Self Portrait
“it breaks my heart, because now I know. I’m so sorry, but I’ve found something better. somehow I doubt you’d even fit in my life anymore, but I still wish you could come back home. it’s okay. I can wait. some days it feels like you aren’t even gone. I know you had to go, and in a way or two I’m truly glad you did, but if I could go back, I would in a second.
you were my best friend.
and my only regret is that I never said what I always wanted to say, that you never knew exactly what you meant.”
I thought at the time that I had found something better. I don’t know if it was better with the new boy, but it was definitely healthier, though I never did let go of her.
The image is purposefully altered to be unrecognisable, but I’ll let you guys in on a secret: it’s a picture of her, altered and upside-down. The real-life image has a bit more contrast, but it’s still a pretty light grey.
I snuck this photo into a previous entry, actually. I should think of a good prize for if someone cares enough to search through my old entries and actually find it.
A+. This entry is so painful and beautiful to me. I still feel most of this. Maybe even more now, sometimes.
Last night
I had a dream that I was making French toast for Idina Menzel.
PAGE 60: Mentor Photographer – Edward Weston
He has some cool pictures. You can’t even a little bit see what I contributed, but to the side of each picture I did a little rough pencil sketch of the image, and on the pepper sketch I wrote “CURVES” over and over, and on the landscape I wrote “REFLECTIONS.”
C-. Poor response.
PAGE 59: Repeat it 11 times
Meh. I repeated the word “life” 11 times. I’m not really sure where I got the images from, because none of them really represent life to me. Maybe what my life at the time was made of? Music, theatre, writing, art… balloons? Crying? Cake? I really can’t explain my motivation here, sorry.
C-.
PAGE 58: Mentor Photographer – Karl Blossfeldt
His photos are so awesome. I don’t even know how things grow like that… They’re plants!
I did a swirly thing, with pen. I think it was a good reaction to the swirly things in the pictures, right?
B.
PAGE 57: Arcs
It’s a rainbow made of magazines! I actually think it’s really cute. Everything has curves and I like the fact that I used parts with words still visible. Not much else to say, I suppose, except that I’ve recently developed a bit of an obsession with rainbows and rainbow-coloured things, so I super-duper like this page now.
A!
PAGE 56: Mentor Photographer – Margaret Bourke-White
I’m not entirely sure why I even picked her for one of my MPs, since I’m not a huge fan of either of those photos… but anyway. I guess they have some cool lines, with the wheel and spoke theme.
My contribution is some super lame pencil-drawn lines and circles. Woo, very good.
C-.
PAGE 54 & 55: Narrative
Left Page:
“In the evening, leaves fall silently to the quiet grass, whisper gently to the solemn stars, wave to the rising moon. Midnight stalks up and steals the silence, screams to the sleeping world without a sound. Something in the sky longs for the dawn, begging for light and awakening. No one sees the pain it shows; no one really cares. Silent in their beds, the world remains unaware of the sky’s pining.
In the morning, when someone finally wakes, the song’s tune will change. With dawn will come a new melody, a new silence, a new scream. Color and light give the sky a look of hope and promise. With this hope, the world awakens, but still no one cares. She shines and shines for all the people, but not one person looks up. The sky passes the time brightly, not a cloud to be seen…but no one looks up.
Dusk fast approaches, and the sky’s big finish begins, a rush of color and beauty before the darkness takes over once more. No one’s watching. The sky covers herself in stars once again, spinning and sparkling. Not a soul on earth sees.
Broken, the sky breaks down in tears, great drops falling to the ground. Fallen leaves fill with her tears; the grass quenches his thirst. Tears fall, fall, fall from the great, dark sky. Dawn approaches once again, but the sky’s color is faded with sadness. Tears touch the faces of waking people, yet no one will look.
Another day passes, darker than before. Still crying, the sky rushes through dusk, straight to midnight, no grand finale. Crying through the night, the sky watches as the world sleeps peacefully on.
The sky’s sorrow drains, and all of a sudden, with a flash and a shout the whole world can feel, she spins into a frenzy. The sky’s peaceful lullaby ignored turned to quietly unnoticed tears now transforms into violent fits of unavoidable rage. Her screams and cries shake the world as she ravages the peacefully innocent leaves, silent and accepting on their bed of drowning grass.
Not a soul looks away.
All eyes on the sky in her terrifying fit, the sky is too busy to notice a thing. As she tires of her screams and tears, the forsaken sky moves slowly to dawn. Crying softly and silently, the sky watches the destroyed world, and the world watches back.”
Right Page:
“narrative”
This is a micro-short story I wrote in November, 2005, called Sky Tears. It’s kind of bad writing, but as you can see, it’s hard to read in the entry, which was sort of the point. I like the way the cloud pictures turned out. The one on the left page is one I printed in my normal printer, and it’s a little shinier, and the one on the right is upside-down and was made with a photo-copier that made a lower quality image that’s very matte and has much higher contrast, and I love the juxtaposition.
A+. Because despite the horrible writing, it’s visually an excellent entry.
Today
I graduated from college. :)
PAGE 53: Mentor Photographer – Jim Brandenburg
I’m not sure why, but I really like this one. His photos are gorgeous, and I guess I like that I didn’t try to do too much in response, I just added the little bit so that the photos stand out most. It just says “color and light” over and over.
A+. I think I did a good job not screwing up what was already great to begin with.
yummiest breakfast ever. (it’s already all gone, and it was sooo good)
PAGE 52: Movement
You may recall, I did an entry for movement already. Well, we had to do another. This time I took it in a different direction and went with the civil rights movement. I found a picture I liked, and I added the colour to it by hand (I believe with coloured pencils).
It’s cool, I think it can get a B.
PAGE 51: Family Ties
This one is so sugary. And scrapbooky. But anyway, it’s some of my favourite pictures of me with my family members. Top says “these are my family ties.” With my brother, “the one I’ve always watched.” With my dad, “the one who can always carry me.” With my mom, “the one who is always there.”
I was a super-adorbs kid, if I do say so myself. And look how pretty momma is! :)
B-, because BLEH but true. I like the pictures, but I dislike the rest of what I did with it.
