112A sketchbook

Hey y'all. Here is a little quickie I've done for my daily sketchbook for my ART 112A class. I sort of used life reference so I won't get points knocked off for drawing right off the top o' my head/from imagination.

The sketchbook of my paper is terrible like it didn't get dried enough and is really soft. I want crisp paper! It was eight bucks anyway , so... no, it's not okay. I get pissed off every time I draw in it with a ballpoint pen because paper isn't crisp enough. It's like the paper is perpetually wet, but it's obviously dry and real soft. What's even worse is that I'm stuck with it for a year. I might as well go switch to a new sketchbook, but it might be too much hassle. Whatever, it's cool, I can deal. :)

I've been listening to the Black Keys and The Battle of Land and Sea as of late, over and over, and again and again. Forever. The typeface of the body text in the blog really bothers me and I don't know how to fix it. :/

bluesy rock from Akron, Ohio: The Black Keys

indie folk from Portland, Oregon: Battle of Land and Sea


I'll try how to do fancy streaming mp3 posts on here, someday. For now, click on them myspace links...

book crushes and paint paints

So today I thought I'd take the liberty of completely gussssshing about a favorite book of mine, and of course, I had to go with "Norwegian Wood," by Haruki Murakami. Now, I know that Murakami is kind of the hip and socially-acceptable author for college students to rave about, but oh my gosh, this book! So emotional, so beautifully (and simply) written. I've reread it twice this summer alone, and I still love it. Still, still, still.

I have the biggest lit-envy about this book -- I want to be able to write something this moving. It's a good summer read too, incredibly enjoyable and engaging. It goes by like nothing. I keep picking up other books this summer, but I only get through a few pages before I go back to this one. Maybe I'm over-hyping it (I probably am). So dont't take my word for it -- go pick up a copy yourself!

In other news, I've been paint-paintin' like a child some more. Girls and pets. Hoorah! Eliot's so good with the music posts -- I'm sorry I've been a little absent, but I'll make up for it, I promise.

marissa nadler again

I told you I am obsessive: this video is much better than any of the previous ones I posted.

"Fifty Five Falls / Annabelle Lee" at the Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco, 2007.



(man, the youtube interface is so outdated and ugly! I hope it gets redesigned and gets as pretty as the other video services out there.)

the cruxshadows; marissa nadler

Hello. Instead of doing more important things, I am blogging again. :)

The first song I have for you is one I recall downloading off the internet when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and it was totally fleeepin' awesome. I knew a friend who was into "darkwave" music (actually a much older sister of a classmate) and so I decided to venture out on the internet and listen to that kind of stuff. You know, remember goth people?

The Cruxshadows, "Deception," 2000. (Yes, I know it looks tacky, but it was the post 90s...)



The next video is a folk song made out of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Annabelle Lee." Back in 7th grade, I stumbled upon that poem in my english book. Being new to American literature (I had lived in the Philippines when I was five to about eleven, or maybe four to ten years old, but I am not sure anymore), I thought Annabelle Lee was the most awesome poem ever that I still experience a sort of catharsis whenever I read it. So when I saw this live video of folksinger Marissa Nadler, I fell in love all over again.

In this live performance she mixes together another song of hers with "Annabelle Lee", and brought a whole new dimension to the poem. Joan Baez also made a rendition of "Annabelle Lee," but I've yet to hear it. It must be awesome...

Marissa Nadler, "Annabelle Lee/Fifty Five Falls"performed in 2007. Ignore the noisy people. The video may not be much to look at, but the audio is excellent:


Since I am a total freak and obsessively listen to versions of the same song, click here for another performance of "Annabelle Lee." I used to listen to different live versions of Tegan and Sara's "Living Room" so I hear the stylistic changes they made during live shows. Also, I totally lied about posting artwork again, but I won't give any excuses. Excuses are lame.

- Eliot

Who is Laura Marling?

This is Laura Marling:

"Cross Your Fingers/Crawled Out of the Sea"


... and she's only 18! She's a real good singer (obviously!!) and I dig her music. I had no idea who she was until a good fifteen minutes ago, but that time reference really doesn't matter because it doesn't. Nope. She belongs to a major label in the U.K., apparently. According to Wikipedia she is associated with the band Noah and the Whale, whose song appeared in a commercial, probably. I might be making that up, but my cousin showed me this crazy video of the Noah and the Whale song "5 Years Time" because he wanted to play the ukulele part and show it to me, and it was probably the song that appeared in the commercial. That's a long sentence. Felix will probably cringe reading this. My high school english teachers would probably be giving me big fat "Fs!" for my grades. But ahhh don't caaaaaaareeee. No, sir.

Also, I lied: last post I said would post some artwork, and it's obvious that I didn't. Maybe tomorrow. :)

Radiohead "Nude" remix by James Houston / Bikini Kill circa 1992

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

This was all made with: hard drive disk sounds, a Sinclair ZX spectrum (I'm too young to know what exactly that thing does), an old Epson dot printer, and an HP scan jet scanner. Personally, I haven't heard the original "Nude," but dang! I cannot stop watching/listening this video/remix. I've pretty much lost count as to how many times I've watched it, and I'm supposed to be doing something else.



Bikini Kill, "Feels Blind," Live in Washington D.C., April 4th, 1992.

I love this video too. The girl that the camera focuses on for most of the song is so awesome. She's so into it the song! I want meet her/want to know what she is doing nowadays.

I'll get to posting some art tomorrow. My homework load is still freaking me out, but hopefully I can deal with this.

pour le petit ami...

C'est le garcon dans ma vie... il est mignon, non?

In case you cannot tell, it is an Indian elephant. Hoorah for watercolors and animals and bright colors and all such wonderful things.

Here's un plus --

Je suis un girafe!

In other news, today I was at the library at 8 a.m. and stumbled across "20th Century Ghosts," a collection of short stories by Joe Hill. I only got through the first story and found it a bit too explicitly gruesome for my tastes - I've never been one to enjoy descriptions of people being maimed and tortured - but the writing was pretty engaging and from the reviews I've read, the other stories are more subtle.

If I can find it again when I go back, I might try another short story -- we'll see.

Tomorrow's Thursday! I can't help but live for countdowns to the weekend, sigh.

ART 112A assignment: comic #1

This comic was for an assignment I turned in earlier today for my Intro to Illustration class (ART 112A for all you SJSU fiends), and this is one of the first "big" assignments. Eventually we'll get tougher, tedious assignments regularly that will keep me up all night. Frankly, I'm kind of scared of this semester because I have tons of work not just from my art classes but from my academic classes as well, but I hope everything will turn out alright.

I kind of "cheated" on this because the storyline was created in when I was in high school (I reworked the last half because I am never happy with it). I'll post my old versions later, but for now, here it is:


PS:
This version has all the pencil lines on the page (taken at 4 in the morning, probably). I'll update with the final version when I get my comic back. :)

8. i love ghost world and i am totally freaking out

my blood pressure is really high for no reason. well, maybe it's because I still have homework to do and i have a one-minute speech tomorrow. Yes, a one-minute speech. It will be about zines, and I will bring in a zine that Felix, a couple of friends, and I made back in high school. It makes me happy, but I am worried that no one will know what the hell I'm talking about and will look at me confusedly.

okay. now i am doubly freaking out because Fantagraphics is coming out with a Ghost World special edition, a comic by Daniel Clowes. It's so witty. I heard the movie was different from the comic, and i've yet to see it. Ghost World starts out as a story between two girls who are best friends that just graduated high school, and by the end of summer, they start drifting away from each other because of different roads they want to take in life. It was also drawn and set in the 1990s. I love the 1990s. Most of the comics I love are set in the 90s, and I thus have this odd penchant for the decade (comic works by Adrian Tomine and Los Bros Hernandez's Love and Rockets contributed to that). I will stop gushing now.

here is a little video that fantagraphics made of the to-be released special edition of Ghost World, featuring the original comic in addition to other special fun ... special... pages. Yes, I'm not very descriptive, but it's "special." Oh, I'm freaking out: