Sunday, August 29, 2010

Goin' to the Chapel and They're Goin' Get Marrrrried!

Well it's official. I'm officially living with a married couple. The wedding was beautiful. A short (only 20 min!) ceremony followed by a party is the best kind of wedding!


Best wedding kiss ever!



We had a pretty good time too.

Since then my roomies have left for their honeymoon in Myrtle Beach. (I refused to be at home the night the got married since they weren't leaving until the next day. I stayed at a friends house instead.) Without the roomies I've had plenty time to re-evaluate a lot of things...grad school...job applications...what I want to do with my life, all the big questions. It's a lot to think about and I am starting to understand why all my friends were stressing about it last year.

In my own way I've decided to go all or nothing.

I have requested information for graduate schools from:

- Pacific Northwest College of Arts (my favorite so far)
- Academy of Art
- University of Washington
- Maryland Institute College of Art
- School of Visual Arts
- Art Center College of Design
- School of the Art Institute (Pittsburgh, Seattle, Portland and Chicago)
- Marywood University

If anyone has ANY insight into schools for Illustration or Graphic Design PLEASE do not hesitant to share. I could use any advice I can get during this process.

Until that whole ordeal is finalized, I've decided to do what I can to further my career. I figure there's no point in just lagging around at my dead end job waiting to go to a school that I haven't picked yet and have no guarantees of getting accepted. I do not do well without deadlines or structure so I've decided that I will apply to one design studio a week minimum while continuing to enhance my portfolio.

I highly recommend reading How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul by Adrian Shaughnessy. It's super enlightening and focuses on helping recent graduates and people just going into the design field. 



In addition to this I finally got the balls to open an Etsy shop. You can find me HERE. I'm really excited to start this business. I only have one print up so far. Today found me doing a lot of additional research on how to run a successful shop. I'll be sure to update you whenever I add more prints and original pieces.

One last thing for tonight. I'm finally getting back to illustrating the book I started during my last quarter of school. It's all written (it's about dinosaurs!) and about half the pages have been illustrated. Unfortunately it got put on the back burner once I graduated but now I'm vowing to finish it (including photography and mockup) by Halloween. That's about 8 weeks to complete over a dozen pages in addition to everything else I have decided to do. But here's a taste of the book. I based the whole story on some illustrations I did my sophomore year for an English class. The new story is done with cut paper and marker. I'll have more for you to see in the next few days so be sure to check back soon!

Friday, August 27, 2010

Wedding Bells!


Today includes my roommates getting hitched. That's right, after this TONIGHT I will be living with a married couple. I know to most people that seems a bit strange, and it is, but it's going to be great! 1) They're getting lots of awesome stuff that I get to use (ie. a new bath rug and shower curtain, plus all the new kitchen appliances/nifty things a person could dream of. 2) Daniel mows the lawn and is our mr.fix it guy. 3) I'm just happy for them in general. So for they're wedding present I bought them a houseplant that could go in their room. Not super original but I didn't want to get something that I would use all the time too and it's what I could afford. However, to make that gift less lame I created this mixed media piece. 

Here's a shot of it after all the newspaper has been attached and paint applied. 

 
These next shots are the final product and a close up of the figures. 


In addition to this, I just dropped off some more work at A Gal Named Cinda Lou. Tonight is the Fourth Friday Festival in Westerville with the theme "the Dog Days of Summer" so all dogs (on leashes of course) are welcome to come out and check out all the shops and vendors that will be out.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Well That Was Ridiculous

So after almost an entire month I'm back on the blogging board.

The past several weeks have been busy indeed. Still on the job search but in the mean time I've been painting and playing lots of frisbee.

For those of you who don't know, I'm an avid Ultimate Frisbee player. This was my second year playing for the Columbus Ultimate Disc Association. My team on Monday nights were "the Underdogs" and unfortunately I don't have any pictures. But my Wednesday night team was "Aubergine Regime" which is German for "Eggplant Diet" hence our eggplant we decked out for our tournament games. Neither of my teams had the best season ever but we had a great time and made a lot of new friends.


For pics of my latest paintings tune in soon!