I have been working on my website lately, and still trying to think of what to do for my logo. I was starting to think of doing a cute little animated person holding a large pencil. Since I end up drawing a lot, and hate how the just manipulated letters look, why not make a cute little logo that I can use as a thumb nail no matter what I put it for. Then I can also use it as the icon for my web bar. I am starting to pull information together to prep a presentation for me. I am still worried about it, but I have to kinda…nut up or shut up. With my portfolio, I need to stop at the store and get some book binding, 1/4 inch wood that I can carve in, clear coat or poly urethane, and some small slips that I can fit in there or cut down to put my work into easily.

Well I still haven’t gotten to intern yet  but since I have my license now I am able to start working with my intern in the upcoming weeks. She is really excited to work on the marketing side of their business, which is useful for me since I will be able to work on relating it to my mastery and starting the “what it takes to make a business” thing.

For B & C I am working on a piece about death. I want to make it kinda in a way to represent death as something that should be respected, cared for, and thought of, but not feared like most do. The girl is in drapery, making it look much more…Greek like, as if she is a goddess or even common folk, with a death looming over her, her hands outstretched to just almost touch the goat-like skull he had.

I have made a few pages, and I am going with what is normally used for like phone or other business websites from how the flow and ideas are placed down on it. I do have some small things I need to work out, like what to keep and put out compared to the others.

This week I worked a lot on the drawing side of my mastery, working on the ideas for Burrows and Chapin. I have been working on my website outside of school since I can download the assets I need for Muse for the websites menu bars and such. Other than that, I have been working on the idea for my logo and business cards. Sadly, I am still very unhappy with my logo, and hopefully in the next week or two I can finish that up and make a fully fleshed out idea that I can keep for awhile.

I haven’t done much for my internship for the moment. I did get the papers filled out for my other internship at Preston’s Auto, and am working on the logo design for Carolina Pines Realty for my internship. I really didn’t learn much since I  have been doing design and mostly finishing up paperwork. I wont be able to really do any onsite until after I get my license. Though I am excited to get my computer soon, that way I can be able to work at Carolina Pines on site and not worry about having nothing to do since I couldn’t work on any designs for them.

I decided to enter the drawing of the little girl holding the flower into Art fields. I wanted to put it in Burrows and Chapin but it ended up not being able to fit in my portfolio if I did. It is a charcoal piece of a girl holding a flower. It is one of my favorites and I know it will get in.

For Valentine’s Day I want to give Jared the stuff I got him, and also give nana the stuff I got her. I was always a firm believer in the idea that a person had a relationship Valentine, and then a family Valentine. I wanted to have something nice for the both of them anyway, and wanted them to both feel special for it. I also am planning on booking a nice restaurant for Jared and I for that night to be able to get something nice to eat and relax.

With my Senior Mastery, I am still stuck on the factor of a logo and a website. I am starting to feel my perfectionism appear and start to thrive, making it hard to settle on one thing. So I decided that I have to just make a base idea, and change it slowly to turn into what I want. I have started looking for places to house it, and now am working on getting a laptop so I can work outside of home and school without worry. I have been doing a few commissions, and they are going to be my base starts. When it comes to the website, I need to think of the best way to display and have an online “Purchase” set up soon. Other than that, I have been working on my business cards, and finding a start to my portfolio and the best way to store pictures of my drawings.

Well for my Internship, I ended up settling on two. One being the Carolina Pines Realty, the other being Preston’s Auto Repair shop. Carolina Pines is nice, but it is nearly impossible to have “onsite” for 60 hours. That’s when I decided to go for Preston’s. They are a small shop, so I end up understanding the marketing more, and I would be able to have a constant onsite hour regulation. I am excited for this since she seems to really like me, and already wants a commission later on. I am happy with Carolina Pines since I am making a logo for them, and I am getting decent off site hours that way.

With my recent Annotated Bibs I really didn’t learn many  new things. Making a small business of any kind is very repetitive and often something that doesn’t have a large data base since it is really just for one person or a small group. Though collectively, I have found it really helps  me out with my ideas and hopes for this business to be successful. I really just need to work on my procrastination, work ethic, and fix up my room (and maybe garage) to give me a proper work space for my art and recordings for the social media part. Then after that I am going to start pushing for my work to be on display in art galleries to keep it being looked at no matter what.

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First Semester was okay. I didn’t mind the Prob and Stats class I was in. The workload was insane and the stress was way too much. I ended with a low grade, but I passed so yay! Other than that, I had an Art AP class. There wasn’t any final exam, but it was more of a “creating art during the class”  I didn’t mind the AP class, it helped me work on my mastery and some of my art pieces I need done. AP still continues after the class is over so I will end up putting in a portfolio in a few months.

I worked on my website over this week, looking at tutorials from muse and began to really make it look nice and thought out. I need to take some photographs for it, which wont be too hard. I also need to work on downloading the widgets from the site that I cant reach while at school. It is very frustrating that working on a mastery involves not being able to get to the sites you need to be able to work on it. I can work around it, it just sets me back. I also fully thought out my portfolio by making my own “book”. I want to take two pieces of wood and bind them together while also taking fabric and putting it over the spine to make it look better. Other than that, I am just sketching out business cards, and trying to make a better logo.

I haven’t had the chance to get with my internship currently. Though, I have already been doing design work for them already. I created multiple cards and business cards. I hope to start working on it more in the future.

I choose the topic of “Depression in College Students” Since I am personally diagnosed with depression. That being said, I am able to relate to that better, and have more of a personal aspect when working on it. When I desgined it, I kept it with the black, grey, red, and white to get a darker color style to go with the flow of the information. I also ended up finding multiple social media and numbers to call for personal help.

I have been still working on pieces and branding for my business. I like the idea of being Elysian Draws, since it is straightforward and easy to think of when searching. I did a few more breath works, and since I am planning to put some in contests, I will need to add a few concentration pieces to the mix to send in. I plan to do some hand drawn animated pieces, and then maybe pull them up in Illustrator and do some vector art as a piece for it.

I didn’t mind thanksgiving break, it was relaxed. I really just played games and chilled out with family on Thanksgiving Day. Other than that, I just didn’t do anything.

I loved the Ginja card design. I liked the vector art I made for it since it was simplistic and easy to create and color. The other one is the postcard for Mrs. Jordan, I liked the placement of the images, and I liked the way the colors and fonts stood out from the background. I would’ve personally kept the background a nice matte red, with gold elegant lettering to bring a Christmas feel to it. Though, the client is first overall, so that is why I kept it a grey scale with red lettering, which still looks nice.

I gave a brief thank you, thanking for the courage and joy that they have given us. Since in reality, they are the reason we are able to be sitting here, celebrating, with no worry and fear of war creeping into our doors. It is truly a need to thank them for what they have done to us.

I learned a few new hotkeys for illustrator, and ended up starting to get more into vector art. It is a crisp, clean and nice look with the lines and it is rather easy to be able to color if you keep the line art on top and color underneath. I am actually tempted to do some sketches to put up on illustrator. It would be nice to extended some of my skills and try to move to a different type of artistry.

I worked on my pieces for the mastery, which are about 12 so far. I also started fleshing out my business cards and the theme for my website. With that being said, I think I will go for more of a relaxed and artsy aesthetic. I want to keep it warm and relaxed so people see some professionalism but at the same time they see the art side and loose nature of the subject. My micrography was challenging. It took a while from the method of entering and spacing that I took. Though, after I changed the color for shading and made the background a radial blue, it ended up coming together well. I was really proud of how it looked a lot like it was an actual picture instead of it just being words. Compassion and Kindness are needed. Some students do, some don’t. But that can’t be promised. It is how their parents raised them, and a school cant fix that with a few videos and a few meetings in a classroom. It is sad to say, but people have to end up growing a tough skin since parents are the main influencers in the problem of kindness towards people. If a parent is biased against a certain person or skin color, the kid most likely will too since they will grow up looking at the parents likes, dislikes, and personality. If there was going to be a change, it would need to start with us, but gear towards the biased parents who are influencing the younger generation. I get the intention for the video, and how it was to help people think a certain way, but they didn’t do it the right way. They just gathered people from theater. If they took real people, who actually were affected by the things they said, it would be different. It wouldn’t be goofy like they made it, it would be actually serious and important instead of a big joke. Sigh. I am thankful though. I’m thankful for the people who are around me that have supported and cared for me throughout my struggles that I have had this year. I am also thankful for the family I have, that in the little ways, make sure that I am happy and keep trying to make things as good as they can be with everything pushing us down.

This week I worked on business cards, deciding on a vertical card with one side showing one of my pieces, the other showing my title, a small illustration and my information. I have sketched it and plan to put it up on Illustrator in the next few days. I decided to name myself, “Elysian Draws” an Artist / Illustrator. I plan to make my illustrations more detailed and better to help match my skill as a hyper realistic physical artist.  I also worked on two pieces and have started the Baby boi I want to draw in prismacolor. With my micrography, I took every song made by Jaymes Young and took sections with color and made his portrait. I then went into Photoshop and used a gradient to make a black and blue background. I made it radial to have a nice draw to the actual piece. Since I have had actual experience drawing hyper realism and portraits, it really helped me out by making it easier to form the face and make it more realistic. I hate problems with the lips and eyes and some of the word shading.

The SCAD speaker was okay, I really dont plan on going to SCAD from how expensive it is. She was kind and did have some good advice on it, along with showing some cool videos about the places you could go whilst going to SCAD. Meagan gave good advice, but her classes are insanely expensive and out of my budget. CCU was alright until once again, I saw the price of going there. EVEn with my grants, it wouldn’t be able to be achieved. So then I thought of Cape Fear, which is seaming a lot better to do than anything else in state. I liked my grades, my spanish, stats and major class were really good and I would like to have all A’s but with how everything has been going stress and life wise, I have been keeping them up quite a bit. I have been doing really well in DC, apart from the not getting blogs in on time.

I have been doing a lot of artwork, but I officially trademarked my name so that I can start on the business aspect of the mastery. I am starting on my business cards and logos, along with the titles and things I will call myself. Secondly, I have been researching galleries around my home where I can put my work up for most likely 200 dollars. ( I guessed that because most works were 150- $$$$$$) Then I can get that client base and maybe even a collector with time that would want to get each or most of the pieces I create. I was happy with that because it would be a lot easier since I don’t remake my works and it would be a lot of work to have a collector get the originals.

For Wake Up Carolina, I did try. I ended up taking a martini glass and filling it with pills, putting powder around the edges, and a needle as an accent piece. I liked it, but apparently when it went to the judging, it was mostly about pills not really the factor of heroine, other drugs that could cause more harm then pills. I didn’t really sweat it, since most design pieces I do aren’t really liked by the client.

Spirit Week was cool, I did dress up for as much as I could. Since it is my last year I didn’t mind it. It gave a good memory that made a lasting mark on our dc family. I liked being a greaser, and seeing the literal army of greasers that I ended up seeing during that day. With some of the stuff, I really didn’t participate in because I just couldn’t. I didn’t feel like spending money to participate..so I did what I really could.  Especially the IT spin off we made. For fall festival, im happy most of the juniors pulled out. Jared and I really ran it, jared doing the car and decorating, while I oversaw the juniors, kept track of hours attended, and took control of the activity we had for the most part.  a 

When we went to USC, there was more of a walk through with light conversations about each place. It was a useful and short trip, which I didn’t mind since it cut through a lot of the babble that goes into tours. Our guide stuck to the point and we got to see a gallery of expensive artworks. All by one artist. They had some…random abstract works that seemed to be overpriced for how they were made. Though, I guess that is how art works, since I learned that people value art by how much they pay for it. It is a strange thing about art, it matters more about the money involved than the aspect of the art itself and how it looks to the eye.

The art show was really cool, and since I was part of the Honorable Mentions, I actually had a ribbon! The funny and ironic thing was that the third place winner was a charcoal piece also, which made me happy yet frustrated. But hey, it was a really good piece so I am happy that it was what beat me. I always like looking at the flower section of the show, it is amazing how many people enter a single flower into the contest. The professional art section is really cool, and I always think about maybe putting my own works in there someday, and to tell the story of, “I have been in this show since I was as kid.”

So far with my mastery, I completed the first annotated bib, and have been lightly looking for articles and through the books I had checked out. It isn’t that hard to complete, and I have actually found some good advice for selling and marketing my works. The business books are constantly geared to larger businesses, people who will be working with a large team and have a huge space, all of the stuff I wont really do. So when I look for articles, I actually find more of a better message for me that will help me out three times as much since it isn’t filled with a lot of things that I really do not need.

I have worked on two pieces for my breath works, and finished up on my proposal.I also have been talking to people about internships, and furthering the social media parts by uploading speed draws, and starting to create an Instagram and Facebook.  I want to balance drawing and starting up my website work next week. That includes a theme, style and sketched out layout for how I want the interface to work.

It is terrifying. Overwhelming, and frustrating. Everything is going so quick, with piles of work that make me want to pull my hair out. But hey, many people in college tell me that this is the training for the coffee and energy drink fueled nights with the constant fear that when you get all of your work done-you haven’t. (dun dun DUNNN) Then dear…lord… EVERYONE ASKS ABOUT COLLEGE. “You should go here” “You need to go right away” “what? a different opinion-CALL THE PRIEST WE NEED AN EXORCISM” It makes me want to pull my hair out and give up on it in general –but I need college. Senior year is not relaxed, it’s not kicked back. It is insane and stupid and BAH. End of story.

I have to constantly balance exercising, work, and holy crap work. Mostly it is just too overwhelming for me to even focus half the time. I even ended up quitting a job that caused me to have no time after school to do homework or any side job work. It made it too hard to focus already within a few weeks of school. So now I am working on business cards, prepping upcoming bills. School is something that makes life harder to do, with the pressure of grades and then work then college then bills that seem to not give two fricks about how school takes a million hours of each day with homework.

I love the academy, I love school. Its just frustrating and aggravating. I don’t think I would change the decisions I made to get here for all the money in the world. It really did give me a new look on what I wanted to do with my life after high school.