Another week gone. Can't believe April is pretty much over.
Few more weeks left of classes for the semester! You don't even know how excited I am.

01. This week wasn't so eventful. I stayed in working on assignments and such. The exciting part of the week started on Friday. Joined my parents and their friends for dinner. We went to a Mexican restaurant where we drank loads of sangria and ate delicious food.
02. Now that the Aesop fable assignment is done and over with for my general illustration class, we were assigned to do a "memorial poster for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic". Quite a lengthy one sentence description, but it was made very clear that we had to stick to that for the assignment. These are my sketches for my idea.
03. The most exciting bit of this weekend was yesterday's event. RAMMSTEIN! I have been a fan of this band since middle school, and even though I don't listen to them much anymore, I HAD to see them. I wasn't able to attend their first U.S. show in 10 years, which was at Madison Square Garden in 2010 (I found out about the show the day after it went on sale, and from what I remember, the show sold out in under 30 minutes). I was bummed, but anxiously waited till they toured again, and lucky for me, they played a venue that is twenty minutes from my house. My brother came to the show with me and we had a blast.
04. Bought a shirt from bootleggers outside the venue. (We didn't have enough cash with us to buy official merchandise, but we were able to afford this!) So, why not?

Our seats were literally all the way in the back. Most photos I took didn't come out so great. I figured they wouldn't.
If you know how Rammstein works, you know they're all about their pyrotechnics. If you know me, you know I will avoid all shows with pyro; fire scares me. I made an exception for Rammstein, which kinda sucks because they have the most intense pyro-filled show out of any band I know. That being said, I didn't mind our seats being all the way in the back. The further away from the fire I was, the happier I'd be. But no matter how far back we were, we still felt the heat. I grabbed onto my brother whenever fire burst out. I've never felt a mix of excitement and panic at the same time as I did at the show.
Rammstein was insane, and my brother and I loved every minute of it. I'd surely see them again.

I was browsing through photos on my computer and found this that I never shared.

Finding the perfect present for my older brother, John, for his birthday, Christmas, or any other holiday is impossible. He doesn't like "collecting useless things", being clothes, books, tools, etc. His mindset the past few years revolved around "the essentials". What do you get someone like this?

Well, I didn't care what he'd say. I like making gifts for family and friends, even him.
For Christmas, I was stumped what to do. It dawned on me to do something Jeep related. He owns a Jeep, and he loves everything about Jeeps.

T-shirts are always an easy way to go, at least for me. I love decorating them. I thought to do a Jeep silhouette, but I wanted to make it more involved. I took a trip to A.C. Moore to see what my option were. I bought a black t-shirt, burgundy felt, and black felt. I thought that was a good start. Went through my fabric scrap draws to find a little more - found white mesh and silver fabric. I was set!
I drew out a simple Jeep as a template that I could follow. Cut the fabric out and sewed it on. It wasn't as complicated as I thought it'd be.
It's so silly, and my brother thought so too. He laughed when he opened his gift, and seeing him smile was enough for me.

Obscure 90s music time! Moonpools & Caterpillars. This song is so fun.

Hope you're having a wonderful Saturday!

I meant to post about this last week, but never did!
For my general illustration class, we were to choose an Aesop fable and illustration one part of the story. I chose The Lion & The Mouse, the one where the lion gets trapped in the net and the mouse saves him, you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, that one. (I mentioned it while it was in the beginning stages in this post)
We were given lots of freedom to take this where we want, but we had to create it in a way where you don't lose the story, of course.

My final result was the climax where the lion goes to save the mouse. I turned my mouse into a 'mission impossible' mouse.

I used a piece of wood as my base. Layers of cardboard make up the rest.
I decoupaged the background with pieces of different blue magazine scraps, and painted a thin layer of blue acrylic to make it a little uniform. I painted the lion, mouse, and tree with watercolor, and evened it out with colored pencil on top. I also used black ink for the solid parts on the animals. I glued fuzzy fabric on the lion, and fun fabric on the leaves of the tree. Glued on black thread for the net (took forever to do that bit!). And Youtubed a tutorial on how to make the pull tab. Surprisingly wasn't that difficult to do.

Here's an animation I made of the mouse moving!
(It's been a few years since I made an animation on Photoshop, so this looks a little rough.)

Fun times! I got a good reaction from my classmates, so I would say this project is a WIN.

I bought my THAT DOG tickets online today, so here's another video. I'm still so psyched!

I had all intentions of posting this week.
I don't know where my head has been lately. Been so overwhelmed with every single little aspect of my life recently, but I'm hoping this will pass soon. I'm anxious for the end of the semester to come. There's so much I wish I could do, but it's always one assignment after another preventing me from doing so, which I guess has been bringing me down.

I've been trying to look at positive parts of my days to get me through this stressful point. I think I've been doing okay at not letting it get the best of me.
Here's how my week has been.

01. On Tuesday, I saw Neon Trees at Bowery Ballroom in NYC. My phone was dying, so I unfortunately wasn't able to document any part of the performance. Took this snapshot right before the show while walking around. I thought this wall art was so cool.
02. I finished that self-help book for my psychology class. Very encouraging! I feel so motivated to try harder on not letting the little things get to me (the book is called Don't Sweat The Small Stuff... and it's all small stuff. The title itself is motivating!) This is one page that I took into consideration for the future.
03. Friday I decided to take a break from all homework and relax a bit. I had these unfinished decorated cardboard pieces that I plan on using for future book making. They needed spraying with my Krylon glaze, so I took care of that finally. They've been just sitting around waiting to be sprayed.
04. Whenever I find my way to the train station to come home, I always consider getting a smoothie from Planet Smoothie. I was craving my usual 'chocolate chimp' smoothie today, so I made my own version. Came out yum.

I have done so much school work during the week that I'll admit, I slacked this weekend. I became so motivated to work on my other websites that I haven't done much else (which is probably another reason I haven't updated this blog). Fixed a new layout and did some major updating in each page in the website. Haven't officially put the layout up yet because it's still being worked on - probably sometime this week it'll be up and good to go.
If you're interested in checking it out at all, the site is http://vrock.org - it's somewhat a directory guide to female musicians. So much time and research have gone into this site. I love it.

Anyway, so while fixing up the site, I came across news that made me stop dead in my tracks and put a huge smile on my face: That Dog reunited and are playing their first New York show in 15 years.
I can't wait to see them in May! I have been listening to them non stop. NON STOP

Been pretty absent this week from blog-world. Been a busy bee!
Since break has been officially over for a week now, reality hit me again and I've been really occupied finishing up assignments.

Here are the pleasant parts of my week though.

01. On Monday, Serina and I took a trip downtown to check out the vintage frames store Fabulous Fanny's. We ended up getting there an hour before they opened, so we wandered around trying to pass time. She stopped to get coffee in this cute little coffee shop.
02. She took all of five minutes to find the perfect frames she wanted. I, on the other hand, took much longer. My intent was to find cat-eye frames that I really, really, really like and would have no later regrets buying. After lots of contemplating and convincing that these frames are perfect for me, I finally bought them. I'm officially a cool-cat! (hardy-har-har).
03. For my personality psychology class, we are to write a book review on a self-help book, of course chosen from a list given to us. Borrowed this from the library. I'm actually really looking forward to reading this. It seemed the most interesting from the list of books, so I guess we'll see!
04. Oh yeah, today is Easter! Well, Easter for the Christian Orthodox religion (Happy Easter to all y'all Christian Orthos!) I tried my super hardest to finish as much of my assignments to bake cookies yesterday. Classic Spritz Cookies made with a cookie press. These cookies can be frustrating sometimes because they don't always work well with the press. Unfortunately, yesterday was one of those days it didn't want to work well, but I tried my best to make it work. Either way, they taste delicious.

I came to a realization today. Have you ever had art projects you worked on where you had a specific image and idea in mind that you wanted to draw out, but your final product did not come out the way you wanted, and you were a little disappointed? Story of my life.
I realized this is the semester where that changed. Two recent projects I've done, one being the "seeing is believing" project, they came out the way I imagined it. Pretty much almost identical, which is amazing. Maybe I'm taking baby steps into illustration-land, where everything is magical and art comes out the way you want it to and everything is bright and happy...
Well, anyway, I'll hopefully find time to post about my other perfect project tomorrow.

It's been a pretty long Easter-y day. Time to call it a day. A happy day!

These are some tops I worked on during spring break - obviously had to keep myself sane by working on things I enjoy while working on projects that had to be done.

01. This was a hand-me-down from my mom. She had two velvet long sleeved shirts she gave me. This one fit more loosely and I thought it would be more comfortable if I took it in. Besides that, I kind of wanted to do something fun to it. I bounced around different ideas in my head and then came to the conclusion of turning it into a tuxedo-like shirt. I've seen some around and I wanted my own. Plus, it looks nice on a velvet shirt. Cut out the black fabric, sewed it on, and added buttons and a blue bow.
02. This was a spontaneous shirt I decorated. I went through my fabric-scrap draw to find some material I needed for a school project. When searching through the draw, I saw these scraps and thought they were a pretty color combination. I found a plain gray t-shirt, turned it into a v-neck, and sewed on the patches. Looks like a strange geometrical planet to me.
03. This originally was a long sleeved wool shirt. This shirt was so annoying. I had it for a while but never touched it. Then I decided that it was too big, so I took it in. Then it looked unproportional because I didn't take the sleeved in and they looked too large for the shirt. I didn't care and added these floral patches to it. I wore it probably once, and it really looked awkward. During break it occurred to me that I didn't have any vests. This shirt popped up in my head for some reason and I thought to turn it into a vest. I used the same floral patches and turned them into triangles. I think it came out pretty successful.

As weeks pass, I slowly become more happy with my wardrobe. I've really literally been making it my own, and I'm becoming more comfortable with my style. My confidence grows a little more everytime I wear something that I fixed up for made from scratch. What a wonderful feeling that is!

Anyway, it's a Kevin Shields sort of day.

Spring break is officially over. I have to say, I'm not bothered by the fact that I have class tomorrow. I say bring it on!

01. Serina gave me this floral button down. It's HUGE. I can't decide if I want to keep it oversized or take it in just a smidge. I probably will end up taking it in. It's way too large for me to be able to pull off the oversized look.
02. As I discussed in the previous post, I went to a book signing for Eric Erlandson (ex-guitarist of Hole) and Mark Yarm. Was definitely a good time! Nice little book store too. Wish we spent a few minutes browsing through the store. Probably would have been tempted to buy more though.
03. Been busy working on school assignments this entire week. Was able to pull it off since it was Spring break, but at the same time, it's a little sad that I didn't take advantage of the free time to go out. I don't regret any part of it though. I won't be pulling all-nighters next week. That's what I tried to prevent.
04. Today I decided to use a little bit of my purple hair dye. It may be a little pointless since my hair is pretty dark, but I was mainly aiming for a purple tint. Plus, I don't know when my hair will be light enough to use it again, so I want to just use it up and toss it away.

I've been on a School Of Seven Bells kick this whole week.

Yesterday, my friend Gabby and I had two awesome things in mind we wanted to accomplish in the city: a visit to David Lynch's gallery exhibition in the Upper East Side, and to attend Eric Erlandson (ex-HOLE) and Mark Yarm's book signing in Brooklyn.

Turns out things didn't work in our favor, so we came up with a plan B.
We had to skip the exhibition. So we planned to walk downtown, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, and walk to the book signing. Before we knew it, was 6:30 and we had half an hour to get to Brooklyn - we weren't even close to the bridge. We hopped on the train and hoped for the best.

We stepped into the book store EXACTLY at 7pm, so we were technically on time.
The event started with a conversation between the authors. It was interesting hearing Eric's side of the grunge scene, stories about Kurtney (a.k.a. Kurt & Courtney), and his Buddhist ideas and how it got him through everything that he was surrounded by.
I'm definitely looking forward to reading both of their books. (I skimmed through both books on the train ride home.)

Getting home after that was quite an adventure in itself. Honestly one of the most aggravating things is traveling through Brooklyn to Queens and vice versa. But I won't get into that.

Even though our original plan didn't fully happen, I'm happy we brought myself to attend this. I really enjoy book signings and definitely want to attend more in the future. I'd say the day was a win anyway.

Here's one of my favorite HOLE songs.

Two years ago I finally finished this Robert Smith piece. When I finished high school, I was given canvases and paints by friends and relatives. I never knew when I'd get around to using them, especially since I was living in the dorms and focusing on my major which was NOT art related. So they sat around.
Oneday I started experimenting with collage and decoupage, and came up with an idea. I was inspired by the cover for The Cure's greatest hits album.

I collected magazine pages with dark blues, decoupaged them onto the canvas, and covered a light coat of blue paint to blend in the different blue shades. I drew out Robert Smith's hand and colored with colored pencils. After that was done, I collected black magazine scraps and pieced together a silhouette of Robert Smith. I glued on the hands, cut out stars, and glued them on followed by the string. After it was all done and drying, I wrote the quote from The Cure's song The Dream with fabric paint.

I remember finishing this up on New Years Eve while waiting for the ball to drop. I was watching Eternal Sunchine Of The Spotless Mind with my brother. We had to put it on pause two minutes before midnight. And then it was 2010.
I love how this came out. It currently hangs in the living room.

Here's a Cure song to end the post. One of my favorites :)

Been working hard this week to finish up assignments; hasn't been much of a Spring break, but you got to do what you got to do. Took a five minute break to finish up these pages for today.

These are pages 03 and 04 from my 002. Ursa Major Space Station art journal.
Sketch from a model I drew in a figure drawing class cut in half and pasted into both pages, plus other scribbles from here and there.

Hope y'all are having a wonderful Thursday.
Here's a song to end the post. Saw them open up for The Joy Formidable and I fell in love. Hope you do too.

The second project for my concept class is about "Seeing Is Believing". We had to create an image that isn't physically possible but visually believable, and base it on human conditions. We were told to look at René Magritte for inspiration.

Was SUCH a hard project to work on because there are endless possibilities. Where do you start, you know?
My professor ended up telling us to scratch the human conditions part, and just work on the idea of creating something visually strange, I guess you could call it.

I had trouble in the beginning - I was stuck. But as I started sketching, I had ideas of brick people - ignorant people. So I worked on ignorance. I put a brick man on top of a galaxy mountain, claiming it with his flag. So I worked with the phrase that ignorance is taking over the world. The Earth makes up the sky, and the galaxy makes up the ground the brick/ignorant man stands on.

I used ink, watercolor pencils, and pencils. Glued some pieces on cardboard to elevate them. I like working with different levels. The sun in the background is a closeup photo I took of my wool sweater, and manipulated it on Photoshop. All on illustration board.

One of the weirdest things I've done, but hey, the assignment was asking for it!
There are a few things I wish I could fix, but being that they're glued on there's no way I could go back. Do love how my galaxy looks. It's like a cotton candy galaxy. Yum.

Somebody, love this song with me!

While surfing through the web today, I came across a DIY tutorial on how to make a disco ball helmet.

(source.)

That had me thinking, when will I need a helmet? OH YEAH, when I buy a Vespa!
I have wanted a Vespa for SO long now. The only thing holding me back from buying one, besides financial issues, is the fact that I need to get a motorcycles license to ride one in New York. I probably should focus on getting my driver's license first though. But still, obtaining a Vespa is one of my goals in life.

My dream Vespa would be turquoise, where I plan on painting pink cherry blossoms on the sides. Oh it sounds perfect! And of course, wearing that disco ball helmet will make everything better.

(source.)

Funny thing is, while thinking of all of this, I noticed I was wearing my Vespa t-shirt!
My friend bought it in Italy for me a few years ago. I wear it all the time, the graphic is starting to crack and peel.

Birthday week summary!

The school week was really light and easy. Two classes were cancelled, and the rest were laid back and stress-free.
My birthday celebration started on Wednesday with The Joy Formidable concert. Went with five friends, and we walked out of the venue amazed. All bands put on a great performance, especially The Joy Formidable. They blew us away - they had great energy and sounded amazing live. The opening band, A Place To Bury Strangers, were not what I expected. I have known of them for years, but never gave them a chance. After seeing them live, I instantly became a fan. I would say that night was absolutely amazing.

Stayed over some friend's apartment that night, and then we all went to class the next morning. After class, I checked out a local thrift shop with my mom and bought a few things. Came back home, ate pizza, and watched Twin Peaks. Being that that day was my actual birthday, I was happy being home with my family - I had some good quality mother-daughter time.
Last night I went to dinner with friends I haven't seen in a while.
Today, my brothers + my older brother's girlfriend brought me to Medieval Times. LONG day, but SO much fun. Our knight won! Blue knight for the win!

The top photo includes my brothers John + Niko, and John's girlfriend Serina.
Bottom photo is me and Serina enjoying our Medieval Times drinks! Excuse the crap phone-photo quality.

Now for the quick photo summary:
01. This week was pretty chilly, so during one of my days off, I made some hot chocolate. Cinnamon + whipped cream + sprinkles = PERFECTION.
02. My friends bought this shirt for me at the Joy Formidable concert. The graphic collar is so cute!
03. On the way to Medieval Times drinking iced tea/lemonade while doing sudoku and rocking out to Gorillaz.
04. The cups we bought at Medieval Times. Can seven of the same cups be considered a set?

Being that I've been on a Gorillaz kick all day, here's a good song to end this already long post.