Here I sit, warm cat on my lap, more caffeinated than is entirely necessary, fingers on my keyboard with my fishtank gurgling contemplatively nearby.
I should be content, nay, happy.
But what this gentle and happy scene fails to take note of is the pile of homework, just out of frame.
The quarter approaches it’s end and project due-dates grow closer. Honestly, I’m not in THAT bad of a place. I will probably be spending a few weekends in, and may, possibly, miss a night of sleep somewhere along the way…but I’m not horribly behind. I’m pretty current. I just need to stay the course, or keep my nose to the grindstone or some similar cliche.
I want to chuck the lot out in the snow. (The homework, that is. I still have occasional use for a good cliche.)
Every time I nod contentedly to myself and approve of the fact that I am, indeed, making some sort of progress in my personal work and my overall level of skill, I stumble upon something awesome that makes me long to ignore all my responsibilities and just work on getting better at plain simple art. Screw art-related homework. I wanna draw. I wanna develop original characters and do fan art and experiment with composition and style, and improve my skill with the human figure and with faces and with expressions and with poses and forshortening and perspective and oh yeah, backgrounds too, and having a foreground and a middle ground and setting scenes and use of color and use of no color….
I have been participating in a bi-monthly art challenge…super low pressure, not full of people so intimidatingly good that I’m terrified to submit art…just something that keeps my art muscles in use and makes me think about concept and presentation…just a small thing I can do in my spare time. Unfortunately, about now I don’t really have that, so my participation is on hiatus, which is frustrating me.
Honestly, the situation isn’t all that bad…I my partner on the photo book loves where I’m going with the design. I’m making more work for myself than I need to for my packaging graphics class, because that is who I am — AND the work I’m doing for the project is illustrative. If I want to or need to, I can always simply do the research paper for my art history class, rather than the giant, time-consuming project. And my lit class is going fine and has pretty minimal homework. I’m just feeling resentful of time I don’t have to work on my own projects, and frustrated that I’m not perfect. Yeah, hard life, right?
Hey, at least I’m posting. You should be more grateful.
<–frankly, I’m not fond of this design. Their 
