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Archive for the 'work' Category

Aug

Doors, opening, closing, and remaining ajar

By rei 3 Comments

Categories: art, my cats, Travel and places and work

As many of you (or the one of you who reads this) may know, my life has undergone some changes lately.

Most notably, my boyfriend of the majority of the last 9 1/2 years and I broke up. This has lead to further changes, and decisions and choices.

Despite my first post-break-up instinct of immediately running home to my mom, I ended up deciding to stay in PA for at least a while. I have a great job that I love, and I JUST graduated…I spent the past few years lamenting the fact that I was too busy and broke and living out in the boonies to enjoy the city in which I was living. I didn’t want to leave just when I could finally experience Western PA — socialize, and go to coffee shops, and maybe go to the Schenley ice rink this winter, visit the zoo and the museum and Lulu’s Noodle Shop and maybe even attend some art events. And at 31 years old, running home to mom after a break-up doesn’t show a lot of backbone.

Also, it turns out that despite no longer being a couple, we are still besties after 9 1/2 years, and it would be silly to run across the country from one of my best friends just ’cause we don’t get naked together anymore.

So, I’m getting an apartment. My first. I’ve never had my own place before and I’m a little terrified. The apartment I’m moving into is kind of tiny, and though I find it charming, I just hope my stuff will fit. And my three cats. Because I don’t have it in my heart to abandon the stray that adopted me. I’m going to have to buy new stuff too, and half of it hasn’t even occurred to me yet. I know I’m going to get a loft bed because 1) space saver and 2) I have wanted one for ages. I fluctuate between dreams about my charming apartment where I curl up in the tiny living room with tea and watch the snow fall, and nightmares about my messy, cramped apartment that smells like cats, and bills I can’t pay.

One of my soon plans is looking into more illustration freelance. Perhaps even the kind that pays market prices rather than what I charge the design partner of one of my professors from AiP.

It feels weird, at this stage of my life to just be setting out on my own, choosing the smaller, pricier apartment in town over the larger, cheaper place that has a friend living right downstairs in order to really dive into my independence feet first (also I’ll be closer to work and there’s a Trader Joe’s on my way home). I’m terrified and excited. The world is full of possibilities and who knows what will happen.

It could be awful.

It could be awesome.

Either way, it will be an adventure.

Aug

Can we pretend that desk chairs in my office are for sleeping on

By rei 0 Comments

Categories: work

‘cause I could really use a nap right now.

I don’t know why, but I have been hitting this incredible WALL around 8:30am that makes it incredibly difficult to do anything other than just lay my head on my desk and sleep. The first couple hours of work are not too bad — it’s too early and I’m not thrilled, but not at risk of loosing consciousness. After 9/9:15, I’m okay again — it’s not like I am so exhausted that I nap on my lunch break or anything…it’s just these past couple weeks, for some reason, this time of morning comes and it’s like I took a sledgehammer to the head.

I have rehydrated.

I have recaffinated.

I have found something to get up and do.

I have shaken my head to clear the cobwebs (it just makes me dizzy).

I have even power napped with my chin propped up in my hands while my super slow computer opens Acrobat.

I am, honestly, posting this right now because doing something a little different that forces my brain to engage seems to help, but geeze, this is ridiculous.

This is not cool, brain. Not cool.

Apr

Life after college, or, still unemployed

By rei 0 Comments

Categories: art, rants and work

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.

Mar

Now What?

By rei 5 Comments

Categories: art, rants, school, weather and work

I wrote these words on my kitchen calender followed by an arrow jetting off from the day after portfolio review intothe 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.