As mentioned in a previous post or two, I have started doing my drawing a day again, and while I find much of what I produce depressingly, well, sucky, there are one or two things I have liked well enough:
Archive for the 'art' Category
22
Apr
Drawing a day
It has now been about a month since I graduated. Since I don’t have a job, this is kind of like…a really long spring break during which I send out resumes. And though I am house-bound and occasionally lonely and always broke, I am rarely bored — quite the opposite, as, despite having all my weekdays free, I still never have enough time for all the stuff I want to get done.
There is yardwork to do and walks I want to go on, though rainy chilly weather keeps cooping me up and derailing my plans to get back in shape now that I’m out of school. There is cleaning to do and baking and making dinners, catching up on a blog or two and blogs I keep forgetting to write and a couple stories that have been on LONG hiatus that I should really get back to, and, of course, job searching, searching, searching.
And the art I’m trying to get better at.
I know that graphic design is a more marketable skill and I was better off in a graphic design program than an illustration program in regards to getting a job some day…but a part of me wishes, a little, that I had gone to school for illustration, especially as most of the attention my work has gotten and my most promising leads have been for illustration, and my skill level is not where I want it. As I have free time, I’ve been wanting to start on some larger personal projects, but I just am not where I think I need to be with my art, and it is super frustrating. At the same time, I know that I spent whatever personal time I had at AiP working on my art, and illustrated as many projects as I could and took every illustration class I could, and I am miles from where I am when I started, and it’s a process and takes work and I won’t get better overnight.
So, I’ve been doing exercises to try and improve.
I started back up with my drawing a day. A lot of times I hate what comes out at the end, and other times feel indifferent at best, but occasionally I have gotten something I like. As my days are full with many projects and pursuits, many nights I don’t get started until after dinner, and don’t have as much time and inspiration to put into my work as I should, but heck, I’m drawing and working on stuff that needs work, so that’s progress. I feel like my artist’s block and burn-out are maybe fading. Maybe a little. I’ve been frustrated by the skill of others. I hate how cranky not producing art I love makes me, but love the narcotic bliss of producing something I love.
I managed to get my hands on a collection of Andrew Loomis art books in PDF format and they are amazing. Just the glances I’ve taken inside the covers so far have sparked my imagination.
I’ve been trying to look through my inspiration galleries to relight my mental pilot lights.
I’ve been letting myself put my creativity where it wants to go, like into baking and (hopefully soon) some writing and crafting (I still haven’t broken out my awesome embossing set i got for my birthday!)
I’ve been making an effort to occasionally actually WATCH visually stunning shows, like Pushing Daisies, instead of just having them on as background noise while I work on other things.
I’ve been trying to remember to read, because beautiful prose inspires beautiful pictures.
I’ve been trying, without success, to get my blogs to go where I intend them to, and actually talk about what I’ve been up to and the book I might have the opportunity to illustrate, if the writer is willing to pay what illustrating actually costs, and about how excited I am about the new season of Doctor Who starting this weekend and the Who party I’m going to and the Who cupcakes I intend to make, and about the exciting journey i took to West Virginia.
Maybe, if I write a little more often, I can actually write about my life rather than my feelings of inadequacy.
31
Mar
Now What?
I wrote these words on my kitchen calender followed by an arrow jetting off from the day after portfolio review into
the foreseeable future. (Or at least, to the end of March and a few days of April, because that’s all the page showed.) I wrote them in a combination of jest and trepidation, a nod to my new freedom and a slight exorcism of the fear brought on by that lack of known purpose.
Today those words caught my eye. Now what indeed?
Today marks a week from my portfolio review, and I find myself despondent. A week since three and a half years paid off in a day of bustle and stress and hearing AiP students say the words to me that I had spoken to countless previous graduates at the portfolio reviews I had attended as an undergraduate. I’m done. That’s lovely. I’m the proud owner of a ‘Best of Show’ trophy made of plastic and a heaping pile of student loans, and now spend my days sitting around the house, hoping to hear back from potential employers…a task that was rather enjoyable for a few days, but has certainly lost it’s glamor.
Of the employers that expressed interest in my work at portfolio review, I have heard back from one. I will admit, the job she is offering seems interesting, but I would begin as a benefit-free contractor and she referred to the rather mid-range compensation I proposed as ‘the big bucks’ (that I would not be making yet)…and my employment is in no way guaranteed — my next step is to come in and do some ‘test’ illustration to see if I can work in the styles they want. Which makes me sure I will choke.
The other emails I sent out have gone, as yet, unanswered. To say nothing of the graphic design want ads I have been answering for upwards of a month.
During one of my early quarters, a teacher spoke of a former student who, to her frustration, hovered in the ‘C’ range. Determined, she buckled down and re-worked previous projects, made multiple variations and did many times the work required of her. At her portfolio review, an employer was so impressed with her work that he asked her to come to the city in which his company was located immediately, the following day. When she waffled, he insisted, offering to pay moving expenses if she only were to come join his company right away.
During my time at The Art Institute, I worked hard (most of the time, at least.). Partially due to inspiration from that story, partially due to my over-achiever nature, I regularly did two or three times the work required. My teachers liked me, held me up as an example to my peers, kept my projects to show later classes ‘how it was done’, as they say. I was in an honors class, I won scholarships, I was student of the quarter.
I admit, I there was a little part of me, in the back of my mind that kind of thought, maybe I would have a company so desperate to have my work that they would pay for me to move to their fair city. Or that perhaps, I would have employers fighting over me, wooing me with bonuses and perks.
That I would get more than three solid expressions of interest, at least.
That more than one of those employers would get back to me.
Despite the fact that my scholastic performance was excellent, only one of the employers I spoke to was interested in my graphic design skills…and yes, I did focus on my illustration abilities, but that certainly isn’t all that I am capable of and I have been told that my graphic design skills are very good as well. And it is exciting to have people interested in 
my illustration abilities, but I would have thought that at least a few people might have liked my graphic design work, my advertising work, my web design. But despite teachers telling me that I’ll “do fine”, “have no problems getting a job”…I seem to be off to a lackluster start.
And perhaps it’s just the weather…the snow and cold that is hanging on at the very bitter end of March and killing my freshly bloomed daffodils that is making the future seem gloomy. Maybe it is the hormones I accidentally threw out of whack, or the personal art project that I started today that isn’t going as well as I want it to — a dependable source of bad-moodiness. Or being broke or being cooped up in the middle of nowhere all day or the weight gain a couple months of being couch-bound with homework resulted in that is bringing me down. Maybe my long afternoon nap messed up my head.
I don’t know how to end this journal. I feel sad today.
…still I can’t let go…
One of my classmates was playing 90s music in class today and it made me all nostalgic. To be fair, she was playing some late 90s tunes, but she was playing what was out when SHE was in high school, and I was going for the same vibe.
Which is all irrelevant and beside the point.
Because THAT class, that was my LAST class.
Not of the week.
Not of the quarter.
Not even of the year.
Of the like…ever.
I am done.
After three-and-a-half years. After my initial struggles to even get the student aid to get into the school that so aggressively insisted that I enroll (it wasn’t just me…they do that to everyone), after my ups and downs and my math book that never arrived, and a demanding English teacher, and my frustrations with type and layout and hating teachers one quarter only to really like them fairly well the next and the surprise the first time a teacher that was new to me told me that they had heard of me, and the way that surprise lessened each quarter when it happened again, after classes I couldn’t wait end and classes I wished could have lasted a full year, after huddling happily under the heaters on the smoke deck with the surprisingly mostly drinkable school coffee and a clove, and discovering my anxiety disorder, and rediscovering my social awkwardness, after scholarships and a student show and Student of the Quarter, and occasionally completely phoning it in, after moving, after loosing a car, after occasionally watching a sad movie just so I could cry the way I wanted to, after jealousy over the youthful freedom of my classmates and superiority over their haphazard studying, after freshman flutters, sophomore studiousness, junior cockiness and senioritis.
After an utterly grueling quarter, in which I largely abandoned hygiene, exercise, cooking, eating healthy, posting blogs, reading blogs, seeing friends, housework, calling friends, or anything that wasn’t related to getting my giant pile of schoolwork finished, I am done.
I still have one more big thing to do, before I will REALLY consider myself finished, and that is my portfolio review, at which we display our portfolios and be-suited selves for prospective employers, teachers, classmates, family and friends. And, although I had intended to get my whole display ready to go over winter break…well…that simply did not happen. So, there will be a little last minute scrambling. Portfolio review, however, is voluntary. It’s a good idea, certainly, but not something we are required to attend. It is for us, not for them. If I decided to blow it off, I would still be done. I’m not going to, but I COULD.
This is a strange feeling.
I celebrated by coming home and intending to work on portfolio review stuff and grill delicious salmon for dinner and instead passing out on the couch.
But now, I gotta get ready for the real world. (Yeah, yeah, I gotta grow up.)
