Good news bad news

Bad news first. I ended up forfeiting my competition... I started falling behind on my body of work and was pushing back my kanji studying to the last minute every day... I had to refocus my priorities. But.... oh....  the humiliation. I think my ego has whiplash from driving me forward so fast and then coming to such an abrupt halt.

But,the good news, I did get back on track with my school and six of the ten posters are done for the most part. I may touch them up after the rest are done, but they're finished for the most part. Enjoy! Sorry that these aren't cropped, now my laptop is having issues with my photo editing program... time for a tech upgrade.

Motivation and Determination

So, I'm three quarters of the way through this semester and things going great. I've never had a semester that was this laid back. I'm right on schedule with my work and I've had time to relax as well. I just have to say, I'm very stoked!

On a different note, I've started a competition to get in shape with my friend. She is going DOWN! Granted, I haven't worked out in like 6 months and even then, I wasn't doing anything hard core, but my determination and my ego are not forces to be taken lightly! I may go down, but I'll go fighting, and fighting HARD.

An awesome thing happened though, at church I normally don't work with the babies, but on Wednesday (the day we started this challenge) I was asked to help in a class that had a little boy in it who was freaking out. When I got in there he was fine, but the other lady who was helping I knew was a PE teacher! So she gave me a bunch of advice on working out and then I got to just take off. I think it was totally a God thing. Hahaha! Sorry, friend.... God wants me to win. Oh yeah!

She told me to jog for 45 - 60 minutes, and I was amazed because I was actually able to do it! Today I jogged 40 minutes and yesterday 45. It's really amazing what you can accomplish through sheer determination. I've never been able to run more than 15-20 minutes at a time. On top of that, I'm doing all of the core, muscle building exercises as well, so I'm sore... very sore. But I've got the resolve to work through it this time. Win or lose, I feel great and the results are going to be great. So, wish me luck!

On an artistic note, I've finished two of the ten posters for my body of work. I'll edit and re-post this with pictures if I am able to take some tonight. I will work on a third poster after I post this, hoping that I'll get it done to photograph as well, but I wanted to be sure I posted something before I worked on it. I felt bad that I didn't post anything last Saturday. Big slacker!

I am also working on a top secret project that I can't give details for but just want to talk about! The goal is to have all the art finished by June. I'm only working on it Sundays, but hopefully it will be enough time. 

@ First Glance

So yesterday, was the reception for my class's collaborative gallery show, "@ First Glance"! I participated in TWO interviews and talked and talked and talked! It was an incredible evening full of energy and excitement! 27 people I know, including family showed up to support us! And best of all.... drumroll... my piece in the show was purchased!! YAY!
This is very exciting for me and I'm so appreciative to everyone who helped make it happen, especially Danielle Rae Miller. It's awesome to have a teacher like her, who cares so much about the success and well being of her students!

My piece is the far right.

Cherry Red spilled on the floor of my soul...

Here are the pictures I've been working on. Gotta say, inking with color has become fairly frustrating for me. I suppose it's because I really want flat colors, and though I think I'm starting to get a handle on how to layer the transparencies to created some cool textures, but over all it's just... ugh! Getting a bigger brush helped a bit... just a bit though. I still can't get just a flat wash of color without wetting the page first. Maybe that's just the nature of ink and I need to come to terms with it; find a way to use it rather than change how it works.

Mixing colors has also become a little frustrating and I've started putting colors down straight from the bottle as frequently as possible. 

I spilled cherry red all over my floor today.

All that being said, here's the work. The exposure is a little off. I'm still getting used to this camera.

This song is how I feel about the way most of the coloring is coming out.