New Beginnings

We are now in the new year of 2010, which means a new semester has started. I am now in my second semester of freshman year at Memphis College of Art. Last semester I did pretty well, received all B's and an A. I hope to do better this semester, but will be just as happy if I can manage the same as last semester.
I made it through my first week of classes without any physical damage, not so sure about mentally. It was a lot to take in and I already have a ton of homework due next week. Again I have 3 sketchbooks to keep up with. I don't particularly enjoy doing assigned sketchbooks, especially 3 at a time, but they do help significantly. Printmaking class is sure to be the death of me. My teacher is Puerto Rican so there is already a language barrier plus I know very little about the process. I've researched the process of etching but nothing explains better than experience so hopefully after one run through I will be able to improve my sketches to match the process. Other than that she just expects a lot from us, more than other teachers(which is already a ton). A couple of the older kids in the class have had printmaking before so they have been checking up on us freshmen and giving advice when we ask, which has been very nice of them and I love them for it. My drawing 2 class was pretty fun. We are doing charcoal erasure, this is the process of blackening a white paper with charcoal and then erasing the highlights to get the image instead of drawing the shades to get the image. I'm not great at it but I do enjoy it. Photography was awesome. We made photograms. I'm not so hot at explaining this process but basically you place objects on this special photo paper, shine a light for 3 seconds, and then develop the paper to get a black and white photogram. My writing 2 teacher seems pretty cool. He is from Ireland and had very different views on teaching writing than any of my other english teachers. Art History 1 feels like it is going to be much easier than Art History 2 was, so that is a good thing.

These are the photograms:

Friday night me, Emma, and Izamar went to bowling night with the MCA crew. We had fun but we were all so exhausted from the week that we were tired after one game and we still had an hour left to play. We made it through though. When we got home we told Yao this elaborate story that me and Izamar had made up for Emma initially. The story included Izamar defending Emma's honor and getting slapped by a boy for doing so. Yao totally believed the story, unlike Emma, and was ready to find this tall, skinny, left-handed Joshua to give him a piece of her mind. We did tell Yao that the story was fiction and we all had a good laugh about it.

Next week is Trolley Night! I love trolley night. It is the last friday of the month, all downtown trolleys are free for the night and they take you to all the art exhibitions and galleries open that night. It is a ton of fun and is a good way for us younger artists to network with gallery owners and other artists. Networking is a huge part of being an artist.
Well I better get back to my homework. I will check back in when I have time. Peace.