ninja mode

reading this makes me want to repaint tomato >D

This could be good, or very, very, bad….

…even though samurai and ninjas were enemies…

But anyway.

This is kind of a random thought I just had and felt like writing about, so let’s see if I can make anything of it.

I don’t know why it is, but having people (who are actually standing/sitting in front of me, as opposed to through the internet) look through my art or sketches makes me feel excessively awkward. I don’t know why – the actual act of someone looking at it or wanting to look at it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s when I’m watching them do it that I feel weird. I don’t know why, exactly, and it bugs me.

I could happily post artwork all day long online, and recieve commentary, and not have a single problem with it. The internet is my friend! It’s when someone is doing it right in front of me that I feel like a nerd. Not that I’m not proud of it…or annoyed that they want to see it…I dont really know what it is…

Like for example, (this was several months ago, for chronology’s sake) I was at Cliff’s with an almost-finished sketchbook, just sitting drawing stuff and kind of watching Cliff play some game, and Keith was just sitting there observing as well. At some point Cliff and Keith bugged (more like grabbed if I remember correctly) the sketchbook out of my hands and wanted to go through it. All I could do was cringe while he narrated the whole thing out loud to Cliff. *auuuuuuugh* (Though I kind of have to admit, some of the “dialogue” he came up with for certain pictures was amusing…) Another good example being both interview cases where I’ve had to present a portfolio. This is even worse because while they’re thumbing through it and asking questions about various things I can’t even REACT. At least with Cliff and Keith I can yelp and writhe to my heart’s content. And today, of course, when my mom wanted to flip through my most recent sketchbook ’cause she saw me working on a page for my weird little comic-type thing.

I do not get it.

I DON’T mind when people want to see my art; it makes me happy that people are interested in it. I DON’T mind that they’re looking at it – once again, having people interested in things I am doing makes me happy. But I just can’t watch. Maybe I subconsciously feel like they really think it’s dumb but are just saying it is good. Or that they’re thinking “Wow, how dumb are you,” or “What a nerd drawing this dumb and pointless comic like thing with such a dumb plot.” I mean…they’re probably not really thinking things like that… …but my brain likes to pretend they are for some reason. D:

Maybe the solution is to just start throwing things at people and saying “here look at this and say some words on what you think of it” to further traumatize desensitize myself. Because I know I never do that. Mostly I just draw things and put them away, or put them in a dusty old folder on my hard drive. I have probably drawn things that no one besides me has ever seen. And what good is that, now? But what the heck, critiques at school in front of entire classes of people have NEVER bothered me… …what is this game you are playing, Brain??

I guess that’ll be the solution then…show people things. I have conquered the school critique, and I have conquered the internet…now: actual people!

This is something everyone should read: iharthdarth

Wow, so today is graduation. It definitely does not feel like it’s been a year since I was there myself, at all.

I feel old.

I mean…I don’t know why. I’ve always this weird thing where I’ve never been able to look at people in the grade below me and think “peers.” They’ve always been those kids a year younger than me. Does this mean I never got beyond first grade?? “Oh dang, it’s those little kindergarteners again!!” D:

But yeah. It definitely does not seem like it’s been a year since I graduated. Enough stuff has happened between then and now… …but. I don’t know what. Maybe it’s the weather. Yeah, that’s it. It was warm then and it’s warm now, so I must just have forgotten all those other seasons and weathers between then and now. No, that’s not right. I don’t know. It’s a weird feeling. There are things I can still remember as though it might have just been this morning that I was doing them – sitting in my AP English exam in a room that fluxuated between too hot and too cold and sticking to the awfully uncomfortable chair and feeling like I was going to smack my head on the wall every time I looked up because I was sitting in the first seat, right against the chalkboard, and for some reason those kinds of seats always make me feel that way. Sitting in my corner in the art lab in those old wooden chairs and doing and drawing who knows what because I had the time and I could. The smell of backstage – yeah, I know that sounds weird – but it did have a smell. Like wood and dust and curtains and paint, and it still smelled exactly the same way when I went back there after musical to say hi. Some things will never change. Riding the bus on the last day of school in the heat and not being able to get the window open and, once again, sticking to the seat. Stupid bus seats.

I remember all these stupid things, and I don’t really know why. They aren’t anything particularly special, so I’m not sure why my brain is hanging onto them. But it is. Whatever. I’m happy for Keith and Heather and everyone I knew who is graduating, but I’m glad I’m not going. It’s just too weird a feeling to be there. It was weird before I was gone and doing lights at graduations before mine, so I can see it being just as weird now. Same kinda thing. Whatever.

Yesterday was Shelly’s birthday, so we went to Cliff’s house for cake and to give her her present (“Warioware Twisted” – looks like fun :B) and such. And a certain former friend of mine was there, and she didn’t bother to say hello. Didn’t bother to acknowledge I was there. Just goes to further prove what a fake she really is, pretending up till now that we were still friends when there was no way we really were. I guess it’s one thing when you’re just bored and talking to me online for entertainment value and another thing when I’m actually in front of you. Still, I feel bad. It must suck to have a mom who tells you everything you have to do and when and where and how you can do it and makes you afraid of absolutely everything. Afraid of life. She’s never going to get out of there. She is going to be thirty and still living at home because her mom says she can’t move out.

Anyway.

Tried to draw some things in Painter earlier… …but it seems that either something is eating the laptop’s memory like a starved alligator CHOMPCHOMPCHOMPGULP or it’s just getting too hot. (all the labels on the bottom of the laptop have basically melted off by now) Not sure which it really is, but it is annoying. It would probably be more worth it to get more memory for Papaya, anyway, which I’d like to do eventually. Which is why I got the board that could support 4 gigs…even though I couldn’t afford it just yet. :B A second hard drive could be handy, too, since I’ve already filled half mine. And fan covers. And one of those fancy lighted IDE cables…. [/wishlist.]

It appears I’ve run out of things to write about. Yay.

Oh what the heck. Windows does it again!

I’ve gone since…sometime before school ended…without shutting Tomato down. And then last night I closed it, thinking it would go into sleep mode like it’s supposed to, and flipped the lights off to go to bed.

About ten minutes later, I hear the Tomato fans kick on. Hmmm, thinks me. That shouldn’t happen… So I flip it open to see that it’s hung itself halfway into the process of going to sleep. I was forced to hit the power button.

Darn it.

I haven’t got anything worth writing about much today. I feel like I should…but I just can’t come up with anything.

Lately I am feeling like I am tired no matter what. No matter when I go to sleep, how long I sleep, when I wake up…it is all the same. Just…blah. Half my throat/mouth/neck feels all swollen and sore-like which is pretty unpleasant at the moment. Eating and swallowing hurt quite a bit.

Tried to paint a little today having found most of my watercolors as well as my most favorite brushes, but it seems that having not painted in quite some time, I have forgotten all the good things I picked up on back when I had time to paint more often, and did. Which was during the time I lived at school, and even then was mostly for projects and stuff, but it was something, at the very least. Now I’m back where I started again.

I started working on a different layout for the blog, which was up for a while, but not entirely finished and didn’t look quite right, so we’re back to blue while I figure out what it was doing with the pictures. :B I like this one, but it doesn’t show up properly outside of Firefox. Which is confusing, because I can’t find a single reason why it shouldn’t. Which is frustrating. So, having given up on that project temporarily, I started trying to finish re-building the art gallery page I started working on waaaay back when I bought my domain and space almost two years ago. (Two years in August!) It’s mostly almost finished, I just have to finally decide exactly which things are going in, because I’d like it to be sort of like a nice online-type portfolio with some of my better things in it, as that’s the “thing to do” when you’re artsy and have a website and whatnot. This is all because I’ve been visiting a heap of various sites for various artists lately for no reason at all other than I just like looking at things. Seeing other people be creative makes me want to be creative, too. It’s actually a pretty good motivation. Like after going to the art festival… I think that’s what started the whole “I want to paint something” thing that’s been in the back of my mind for a while now. :B

So, anyway, the whole looking-at-art-online-thing is fairly interesting. I’ve gotten a few interesting ideas for web layouts from here and there that I may implement in the next design for MK.net (which has also been on my mind for a while) as well as other ideas. Areas to improve and how to go about doing it. Which involves practicing various things more often than I already do. Also noted various places, as well as chitchatted about with various art-doing friends online – is the idea of doing art commissions or prints. I’ve always been kind of weirded out at the idea of selling art – I mean, how can you put so much time and effort and energy into making this thing and then just sell it? The way I am, I would have a very hard time selling or otherwise ridding myself of any of my own art that I currently have. But this is why I find the prints/commissions concept interesting, since you’re either not getting rid of the original or you’re making something to someone else’s specifications and desires, therefore being just slightly less personally attached to it. I like the idea of this sort of thing, because what good is art anyway if you’re just going to keep it to yourself? There are people out there considerably younger (like 6 years younger) than me doing this kind of stuff, and it makes me feel like, “where have I been? I have missed some kind of idea-boat here.” So…I guess… More ideas to add to the idea-list, though probably not anything I’ll ever actually do anytime soon. :B

All this makes me want to work on the gallery and blog stuff now. Or draw.

Or actually, try and sleep.

So today was my first day of work. It was fairly interesting, I’d say. Learned a few new things about CorelDraw. CorelDraw is nice, but I think I still really prefer Illustrator for making stuff. I feel like I have more control. It might not have been quite as fun as working at the school last summer with the little children, but then again, what would be? :B It’s not a bad job at all, considering I’d be doing basically the same thing if I were sitting at home working on my website or something. I sure do like fonts. Just not in combinations two sans-serifs. Conflict is not pretty, people! :O

So I worked and worked and had lunch with grama and then worked some more and then I came home. And then Cliff came over and we downloaded things. Because downloading things is fun. And then Cliff went home and I finished Lemony Snicket’s The Bad Beginning because I was almost done with it anyway and I like kids’ books. Hush, you. I’d like to get the second but $12 again is kind of a lot to spend on books for one week.

And I wanted to paint today, for the first time in quite a while, but I guess I didn’t get around to it. Maybe tomorrow.

Guess who just got a rather thick envelope from UB full of information about transferring and credits and an acceptance letter??

Guess who starts their job Monday??

And on a completely unrelated note, guess who has a silly little AI program on their computer and is trying to teach it the meaning of “yay”?

So yesterday we went to the Allentown Art Festival, which ran all weekend. Unlike the last time we went, it was slightly less than a thousand degrees out, and it actually rained like I kind of hoped it would. Although not when we were leaving.

We got up early Sunday morning so we could get there early, and arrived at ten o’clock. It was a good idea, since things were just starting to open up when we got there and the crowds were practically nonexistant at that hour. Even though all the tents and such weren’t set up yet, there was still plenty to see, and without being pushed and shoved by a huge, noisy crowd of people.

We walked around for quite a while and saw quite a few different things. We stopped at a tent full of these neat little handmade glass animals, and I got a blue and red dragonfly which is now hanging in front of one of my windows. (I’ll take pictures tomorrow when the sun is shining – it’s too late to get a really good picture of it today.) There were all kinds of things – lizards, bugs, seahorses. They were all really cute and unique. Actually…here is the website of the guy who makes all those things. Apparently he makes a lot of other neat things, too, though I couldn’t find the dragonflies on the site. There are some other similar things, though. I’d like to get another one so the one I have has a friend. He looks lonely by himself in front of my window. I always thought it would be cool to know how to make things out of glass or metal like that. Very pretty stuff.

So after that we had to find a snack of some kind, since it was still kind of early and we hadn’t really had breakfast before we left. We found a stand selling lots and lots of different baked goods, and got this tasty raspberry pastry pretzel thingy that was pretty good, but I just wasn’t in the mood for sweet stuff like that. It was good though.

We walked around some more and saw quite a few other neat things. Lots of different watercolor paintings – that seemed to be a fairly common thing, some crazy glass sculptures, and these nifty doodads! (Mom thought that one of those would have been handy for all the little “flowers” we used to pick in the yard for her when we were little! Though I think this one is especially cool!)

After a bit more walking, we decided we were really hungry, so we passed up our usual lunch at Gabriel’s Gate (too hot for the soup – our favorite thing) and instead stopped in the Towne Restaurant for breakfast/lunch/snack/something. Mom got a ham-n-cheese omelette and I had a beef souvlaki which was pretty tasty.

Upon leaving the restaurant and immediately noting the sharp increase in temperature, we decided to try and see as much as we could as quickly as possible and then get outta there, ’cause it was gonna get hot. And there’s nothing worse than crowds combined with heat.

So we walked up and down another street, admiring this and that, but not really finding much, when we ran into some friends of my uncle, which was interesting. I guess they are into jewelry and stuff, and make some of it themselves, though I guess I am not quick enough to have noticed a website or name for them. All I know about them is that they have several very cute and small poodles, one of which is especially tiny, who visit sometimes when my uncle is dog-sitting. :3 After a lot of picking around and looking for one that fit, my mom bought me a little ring from their stand which is neat with little stars on it.

After we left their stand we basically headed for the car, because we were at the very of things and the car was all the way back across the whole festival area. And it seemed to be getting ever more hot and humid out.

While we were making our escape, we were glancing over the stands along the way, and we spotted one with photographs of the Amish going about their lives. Now, if you know my mom, you know she loves everything about Amish people. Well, maybe not everything, but it’s still an interest for her. So we had to stop and look, and I was expecting something really boring, because if you know me, then you know I practically require electronics to survive and have at least one electronic device on me at all times, so the Amish lifestyle would not suit me at all. However, I was fairly surprised by what I saw. These photographs were truly interesting to look at. Some were just small representations of them through objects – a horse and buggy, or some dresses on a line. Others depicted actual people involved in barn raisings and other activities of the like. They were such lively images. It’s too bad the prints were so expensive, otherwise we could have gotten one. I wish I could find a link or had remembered the name of the photographer to look up later, because I was really fascinated. The picture of the dresses was probably my favorite. I’m just curious to know how he got the actual people to allow him to take pictures of them, since it’s against their ways to do so.

On the way home, we came to the conclusion that in general, the artists selling stuff at the festival must just want to contribute their art to the world, because some things must be really hard to sell, and between the cost of materials and the amount of time spent working on any individual piece is so much greater than the price most were charging. I know if it was me, I would be pretty flattered that anybody would want to buy anything I made, so I guess I can sort of understand that.

All in all, it was a pretty good day and a really good festival. I am glad that we got to see more of it than we did the last time we came. It was so hot, none of us could stand it, and the crowds were awful. I guess the key is to go early, and hope for rain.