Monochromatic Is Not a Disease

The Beast

2010-02-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

I have no color and all colors, I am nowhere and everywhere. I am hidden and shadowy, elusive and haunting. I cause those unexplainable goosebumps, chills and worries you feel. I am dormant and active. I lurk in your home and in your mind. I will never leave, you cannot run or hide from me. I am the unknown. I strike unexpectedly and I settle in for days...weeks...months...and even when I leave you know I am not really gone. I will come back! I have many different forms and shapes - I am constantly changing, shifting. I am weak and strong, void of simple definition. I am seen and felt and understood differently by each being I encounter. I am The Beast.

I have tried to write about The Beast several times, but like it's shadowy existence explanation has always eluded me. Lately I haven't had to face The Beast head on; it remains dormant. Despite that fact it still lurks in the corners of my mind; it is inescapable. At times it steals sleep from me, like it is now, relishing my worry over when it will make it's next appearance. I draw and paint The Beast in order to expel it from myself, even if only briefly. No one sees work that is the result of The Beast; it is disposed of or hidden away. When The Beast is prominent and no longer hiding - it clouds my every thought, move, action and creation. It consumes me - even though I am not The Beast's true target. It is mine indirectly, affecting me while attacking another. I cannot spare it's true victim harm or pain. I am helpless against The Beast. When I move out or away, The Beast will not let me go. It will follow me and stay behind. And I will know that it is here for it is always here. Perhaps the mere fact that I know fighting it is pointless, perhaps that is what bothers me most about The Beast. It is my true greatest fear - for above all else, The Beast is unknown.

Ruined

2010-01-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

In many ways, I feel like school is ruining me. It's a good kind of ruin I suppose which I'm sure is an oxymoron. I feel like everything I look at must be judged by my critical eye now. For instance, a high school friend started her own blog. As I read her first post I couldn't help but notice her busy, distracting color scheme. Also, it didn't help any that her grammar was atrocious. The fact that these have spell check must not have dawned on her yet..

Another example is any store I go into. I find myself looking at the floor to avoid having to see all the package designs. My mind is overstimulated by all the ugly right in your face. I can't go down the aisle that contains laundry/cleaning supplies. All those tide bottles with the swirl makes me disgusted. That swirl design should be swirling down the toilet. What is more painful is that I use tide. So I have no choice but to consistently subject myself to that evil swirl. Granted I could switch brands, but I need a "free of everything but the basic soap" and even then once I find a soap that doesn't make my clothes or skin itchy I stick to it. So the evil swirl prevails...

In the end, all the exposure to designs both good and bad will surely help me as a graphic designer. However, I still have those moments when gouging out my eyeballs seems easiest.. (just kidding)

Art Student?!

2010-01-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

Being an art student entails far more effort than people understand. Most kids go off to college and write a million papers and cram for a bunch of written exams. I go to college and have to go out and draw for two hours straight or I have to make a CD case (that includes the front/back cover, inside booklet and CD label) and on top of that there are some written papers and research. Then forget some standard exam. I have a project due that we work on for three weeks straight, to the point where I don't want to look at or think about it but it's worth half or more of my grade so I have to stomach it. In addition to our projects, we sometimes also get to take a test full of artsy vocab words or a bunch of buildings and we have to find their perspective (that one was big fun..) Like most college kids, we also have to work in addition to school. That means for about 90% of my homework there isn't any possibility that I can cram in some study or homework time into a break or lull at work. I can sit at work during a downtime and think and stress about all the things I need to do for school; none of which can happen without a drafting table to draw building scales or a computer with CS4 design software on it. Exceptions of course are drawing thumbnails, those can always happen on a napkin during lunch at work. However, most of our brainstorming happens in class and even if we do have thumbnails due outside of class that's not always helpful. Sure I got my thumbnails done, but now I know what I am going to do for my project and I have to wait so many hours to start. This jacks with my creative process, although that could just be a personal opinion more than a problem every art student has. Not that I am trying to demean other areas of study that people go into. I'm just tired of the stereotype that because we are art students our life is all Bob Ross happy trees and such. Granted there are times in class when I spend more time on FB than InDesign, but it isn't for lack of work rather than a need to stop staring at the Applebee's menu redesign I'm working on right around lunchtime.

Multi-tasking chaos

2009-12-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here at my lap top with both Safari and Firefox open. A total of eleven tabs are up and running at the moment. Plus I'm slowly writing my paper for Print Production in word. I have iTunes open and Illustrator is open and on hold. Had to take a break from my artwork to blog about my current madness on one little screen. It begs the question, can this be considered productive multi-tasking at this point? I mean really, I am all for working on a paper and an art project with music going on and facebook up to cut the tidiness of homework. Then there's Google! I google everything, so there's almost always a tab open for that. Along with my gmail tab I keep open most of the time. Pandora of course, yes that is right I am listening to iTunes but I don't close my Pandora tab..just in case. This is the start of madness! The mere fact that I think it's good to separate my "important tabs" from my "temporary tabs" by utilizing two internet programs should tell me something. Alas, it all seems so normal to me now. I have been sucked in by my own over zealous need to multi-task. I don't confine this to my personal lap top either. When I am in Layout Design class, the first thing I do is open fb, gmail, Google and Pandora in Safari. Sometimes iTunes depending on the day comes up too. Then I make my way to InDesign to work on my project. I could be proactive and downsize..but due to my Libra traits I am horrible at decision making skills so that isn't going to happen! =)

Ribbons

2009-12-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was World AIDS Day and I was late for class. Left my little red ribbon at home. Had to make one from a scrap of red fabric from the Interior Design department's stash. Gave it to a friend on my way out of the building that evening. Sharing my artsy red ribbon made me smile. Got home and remembered my red ribbon pin is on my winter coat. It was sixty degrees yesterday so no coat. Would have also made it hard to locate had I been looking for it in a drawer, not on a coat. This is so I will wear it all winter long. Should buy another to pin on my purse perhaps, have one with me always. One day isn't enough for the people I love.

Art of Technology

2009-11-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

So my instructor for print production has this odd obsession with making us watch online videos. Sometimes they are interesting little movies on graphic designers. However, more often they are videos she finds on YouTube that she relates back to class. For instance, we watched several short videos on different printing processes and how they work or are made. Now if you choose to make us watch videos in order to take up some time in our four hours together, which is honestly another form of busy work, that's understandable. Four hours of one class is a little ridiculous unless it's a lab class; like drawing. Back to why I started this blog though. If you choose to use an online video in class you would think she'd watch them to ensure they have meaning. Or maybe not, because I watched a six minute video on pressing flowers..and another video covered printing in the sense of teaching someone to write the written word. Informative sure, but at eight in the morning it's a little much to have us watch nonsense because your links are wrong. The best part was when she left the room after starting the pressing flowers video and came back well after it had ended. She was all hyped up asking us if we found it educational and enlightening. She was more disappointed when we told her the nature of the clip than I had expected her to become. So while I can't tell you the inner workings of commercial laser printing; I can go press some flowers for you instead.

Power Pointless

2009-11-24T07:36:00.000-08:00

Through the years I have grown to hate Power Point; a hatred that has only grown since returning to college. While I understand how this program can be useful and make presenting easier, some have come to depend on it in an unhealthy fashion. Take school for instance. I go to an art school chock full of designers and creative, right brain individuals. Watching my teacher, who is a professional graphic designer, rely on pitiful power point presentations to get through every class is painful. Not merely because they are boring and dull. They almost hurt to look at! Here is a professional woman that has spent a good portion of her life getting paid to design great pieces for important clients..and she is degrading herself with a bunch of lackluster slides to help aide her in reaching a group of design students. It isn't bad enough that a woman we are to look up to chooses to demean herself in such a way, but when I watch fellow classmates do it I cringe inside. To see someone that in the past has blown me away with their eye for design make a boring and incidentally unnecessary power point presentation makes me crazy. Then of course the audience they choose to show this pathetic attempt at "communication" is our student AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) group. Which brings me to another point on reasons I hate power point. When it is used without purpose. If your power point consists of one word or sentence slides I have a hard time listening to you. I'm too busy trying to figure out why you didn't just jot down these notes on a paper or note cards. It isn't as though she wanted to give us something to look at; unless her goal was to make a power point of notes in the ugliest way possibly. Then by all means, forgive me for criticising such a brilliant choice..
Now don't get me wrong; for one reason or another I too have implemented this program. But as a designer and as someone who thinks (most likely too much) about it, I put a little extra effort into keeping it from making the designer in me want to slit her wrists.

Eighty Candles

2009-11-09T22:50:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything here mainly due to the fact that I self-edit as I write. I am, for whatever reason, far too critical of my thoughts being in written form. I tend to write and then rethink things and erase it all. I'm trying this new thing, just letting it flow and be what it is...we'll see how that pans out.

Today was my mother's 54th birthday. A lot of people her age dislike each birthday more and more as they age, often just another reminder of how old one is or feels. But my mother is different; she loves that she's another year older. It's inspiring to be around someone like that.

A little less than a month ago it was my birthday. This year I was in a funk about life. I remember telling a friend all I wanted for my birthday was for everyone to just go away. Not in the normal meaning of the phrase really, almost as though I was wishing for a strange deserted sort of alone. As though I could wake up one morning and leave the house and the city would be oddly empty, just for one day. Why did I want this? Who would wish to have a ghost town existence for one day? Even now thinking about it, it doesn't make sense to me now. The friend that I told this 'birthday wish' to took me to The Nelson, which is my usual form of peace and solace. So my hat's off to close friends that know what you want even when you are lost and unsure. :)

"Party Voice"

2008-03-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

On several occsasions when my dad has to travel for work, my mom will accompany him and leave me to take care of the home front. They of course call, nearly every day, to check in. On their most recent trip, my mother called and when I picked up she informed me I didn't have my "party voice" when I had answered. I responded that I didn't know what the hell a "party voice" was and she laughed it off. I guess I missed that joke. Then she preceeded to tell me my friends could sleep in the living room, in the event that they are unable to drive home. I raised an eyebrow to this one. I don't recall anyone I have over being unable to drive home. So now I'm curious to see what they think is happenening when they aren't here. I'm also curious what a "party voice" is if anyone can help me out.

I've always wanted to paint on a building

2008-03-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine came across this website; so I encourage you to go and set the little artist in you free. With tools like a paint ball gun and a Jackson Pollock paintbrush how can you resist.

http://www.wetpaintpleasetouch.com/

k-k-k-Katie

2008-03-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

I was standing by a shelf full of assorted coffee roasts and an array of travel mugs with the all too familiar Starbucks' logo imprinted on each. Waiting for my early morning pick me up; made on this foggy winter morning by a fellow Katie. Often the barista will sing along to either the music playing overhead or to the music in their heads; but Katie is known for sing-songing everything from general greetings to describing herself making your beverage. That was the first time I heard the very homey and nostalgic "k-k-k-Katie" song or rhyme that my mother's Uncle Ted used to say every time I saw him. Granted her version was much more humorous and a little erratic due to the unknown number of espresso shots she'd had by then. But still, the very same little tune. At first I was slightly upset by this occurrence, the idea that uncle Ted sang that for me; created a rhyme all for one little girl..gone. But then as I got in my car and headed out of the lot the initial disappoint faded. So what if a friend of mine knew about the little diddy of my youth, so what if it's not the big secret I told myself it was. I was still the only "k-k-k-Katie" in my family and I still had the sound of him replaying in my heart.

This seemed easier than listing a bunch of artists I like..

2008-03-08T23:10:00.000-08:00