Present Joys

• Drew Kelly to kick off this semester’s figure drawing class. A good beginning.
• Resumed the Worst Class of the Week, which actually wasn’t too bad this week. Just a serious waste of time.
• Complained about Sylvia Plath in my American lit class.
• Wore a bedsheet as a toga for extra credit in history of fashion. It made knitting difficult.
• Made an outfit for a Barbie using only a scrap of fabric, metal wire, nails, aluminum foil, and silver tape.
• Endured a super-long crit in my illustration class where we talked about animal drawings.
• Got my friends to wind my yarn for me during the aforementioned crit, which was fantastically good.
• Consumed giant giant giant portions of food at friendship lunch and was then really sleepy all afternoon, making it difficult to draw more animals.
• Spent a long time on the phone with Amanda agonizing over papercraft things.
• Endured torrential rain on thursday; wore my orange rain boots!
• Continued to complain about Sylvia Plath in my American lit class.
• Looked at tons and tons of great paintings in my 19th century art history class. I’m thoroughly enjoying my ability to sit in the dark, look at good paintings, talk about history, and eat elaborate brown-bagged lunches.
• Had one of those thursday afternoon classes where there is no actual teaching, only three hours of random sitting around and “working”. During which time I: talked to a bunch of classmates about my work; held an uncannily productive team meeting; almost went shopping for half-price muffins but didn’t actually; had one meaningful conversation and a bunch of silly ones; danced alone; hugged a bunch of my friends.
• Continued to knit at a furious pace.

• Didn’t have school on monday, meaning I didn’t have figure drawing or electronic publishing (the worst class of the week). Instead I went thrifting and bought a half-naked Barbie doll for 90¢.
• Began the semester with a 9:30am tuesday morning class (which felt super-luxurious compared to my usual 8am start time).
• The aforementioned 9:30am class is readings in American literature. The teacher is nice but doesn’t seem to value good things. Also: she uses unnecessarily vulgar language while teaching. Lame.
• Kicked off my tuesday/thursday-lunchtime history of 19th-century art class with Ann Shifflet, my freshman art history teacher and one of my favorite people ever ever ever. A bunch of friendship lunch gang people are in the class with me! it’s going to be literally unbelievable and wonderful.
• Reunited with M-Tabs and all the other people in my team class. There are only 16 of us at this point and we’re as tightly-knit as I suppose an ad class could get.
• Got sorted onto a new team for a half-semester-long project. Not excited, but not upset.
• Stayed late tuesday afternoon for a three-hour history of fashion design class. The teacher is kinda boring but it should be a good experience. Lots of weird things on the horizon.
• Brought my half-naked Barbie to the fashion history class because the teacher told me to.
• Resumed my wednesday schedule with the 6-hour-long illustration methods class. There are a bunch of new people in this class that nobody knows.
• Wednesday friendship lunch! Got to see all my food-service friends.
• Drew animals! Ate chocolate cookies! Got reprimanded for speaking too loudly! (all the usual wednesday afternoon things.)
• Had to endure an utterly painful second American lit class on thursday morning, during which I realized none of my peers know anything about American history (“Christopher Columbus? he landed in Massachusetts, right?”).
• Listened to my American lit teacher misrepresent and criticize the Puritans—and argued with her about it.
• Gleefully resumed my thursday afternoon ad class (the best class of the week) and looked at a bunch of super-dated direct-mail things.
• In general: got a lot of knitting done.

This is an illustration for a fake magazine article about the UA Library.

This is a series of drawings I did as a semester-long project for my figure drawing class, rendered in ink wash. It had to have an overarching theme or narrative, so naturally I chose tea. The second drawing in the sequence is my favorite; the first and third are overworked. This was a real learning experience. I’m much less afraid of ink wash now!

For this project, we had to make up a brand and then make up a character to sell the brand. Doing this forced me way outside of my comfort zone, but I’m happy with the result!