Spring 2010 Semester Start

 

Flower Mandala in progress

Finished my first week back at school. I learned I will only have 3 classes this term as the Advanced Drawing class didn't make, only 4 students signed up for the class and that isn't enough to make a good study environment. I am not happy about this but hope to be able to utilize the live model studio time that the Drawing instructor holds in his studio on Tuesday evenings. I didn't this week I was too exhausted but as I recover from the bug I had picked up over the holidays I am hoping to be able to go and do this.  He has live models that will hold poses for quick studies, I need the practice so really want to go some evenings and draw.

My digital photography/Photoshop class should be a good one for me, hopefully I will learn how to better edit my photos and even take better photos of my work, both would be a plus and make the class well worth my time. 

The Intaglio class should be interesting, and starting next week I should have some images for the blog from that class. Our first assignment is to do a bug in dry point. I have a beetle picked out but need to finish my drawing of it. I plan to show the images of the drawings and the final prints. You might even see images of the proofing prints if I think them informative.

Graphic Design has us doing a brochure for the Non-profit organization that we did the logo for in Intro to Graphic Design. That one should be interesting and demanding. Later in the term we will be doing another poster, this one will be personal. Also we will be doing a book cover. I think I have my book picked out. Right now my plans are to do a cover for Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend.

The only a couple of images for this week. The top one is another in-progress shot of the flower mandala I am working on, but as you can see I am out to the penultimate ring, and have even started coloring it in so have actually made some headway since I posted the first image. The drawing of the older woman is for another project I am working on outside of school. She isn't finished and there will be another figure to go with her, but so far I am pleased with how she is turning out. 

I need to get my act together and head down to Providence, I still need a tool for my Intaglio class and the store at RISD is supposed to have what I need.

Comments welcome, let me know what you think of the mandala. The yellow background is really more intense, I should have done a bit more color adjusting with the photo, I will try to remember to do that with the final image.

January 2010

This is my last week before School starts up for the spring term. I was going to get so much accomplished during this break. Ah well so much for the best laid plans of mice and men. Not that I am either a mouse or a man. The "cold" I caught in Chicago has stuck with me, and even now I still have a cough and some sinus, and tire way too quickly. On the plus side I am finally getting some energy back enough that I have been working on a small mandala that I started in Chicago and put aside when I got sick. It is still a ways from being finished but I at least have something to show this week.

Otherwise my energies have been split between reading Little Dorrit, and trying to get my portfolio web site on-line. The Web site is up and available. I still have to finish the scripting for the Contact Info page so that it will actually e-mail me names and e-mail addresses of those who are requesting information. But the Portfolio pages work, and all other links work so if you are curious you can go take a look.

kathleenawalker.com

Please let me know what you think. Comments are always welcome. Now that I am feeling better I hope to try and get the quilt I started before Christmas finished so I can show you an image of that. I can't believe that it almost time for another FFFC group challenge. I have been so bad, I haven't finished even one of the new challenge year challenges. Hopefully this next term won't have me quite so overwhelmed with school work so I will have more time for quilting.

Happy New Year 2010

Here is wishing everyone a happy, healthy, prosperous  2010. My new year started off with a cold/flu so I hope everyone else is feeling better then I am. I really haven't been that sick, but the cough is getting old, and my poor nose has peeled once already so I am more then ready to get over this. Other than getting sick, Chicago and Christmas with my sister and her family was good. We managed, prior to my getting sick, to visit the Field Natural History Museum and see their special exhibit on Diamonds, some very beautiful and inspiring designs in the jewelry section of the exhibit. Though I have to admit some of it was a bit over the top, that is just my personal taste of course, lots of folks seem to think you can't really go over the top with diamonds. The rest of the exhibit was full of information about where diamonds are found, what they are made of, how they are mined, how they are cut and what they are used for. Course for most folks the highlight of the exhibit was the jewelry, esp the huge yellow diamond at the center of the vault. I would recommend the exhibit to anyone who has the chance to see it.

I did start a new Mandala while in Chicago, but put it aside when I really didn't feel well so hopefully I will be able, now that I am home, to get that finished so I can post it here. I am also still working on the November Fast Friday challenge quilt, and now have the December challenge quilt to do also. That one should be fun, a still life using colors found in an advertisement.

By now you are probably wondering about the image I posted at the head of this blog, that is my cover design for my final Graphic Design project. I didn't have time to update the blog before leaving for Chicago so I will post the images for my booklet now even though it is a bit late. Remember my subject for this booklet was Arms Control.

First spread is above.

2nd spread

3rd spread

4th spread

5th/final spread

I sort of cheated with the last image, the Chair memorial is for the Oklahoma City bombing. I would have preferred to have used an image of the Columbine School shooting memorial, but the Columbine memorial while moving and meaningful to those who were there or lost family members or friends, isn't that well known, and isn't obviously a memorial to those lost to violence.  Empty chairs on the other hand are a powerful symbol so I went with that. The title I stole from George Bernard Shaw, he used it to title his play about a soldier who carried chocolates instead of guns to war. Page layout and design work was done using Adobe InDesign software. 

Anyway here it is for your review. Hope to have something a bit more cheerful to post soon. My next term doesn't start until almost the end of January so hopefully between now and then I will manage to get some of my other projects finished and posted. Per usual comments are welcome.

Oh, one last note, I have received my grades for the term, 3 A's and an A-.  I am quite pleased.