Dead end.

This morning I had the peculiar thought that, contrary to childhood aversion, teaching might have something in it for me after all - if, perhaps, not the traditional profession of it - for the first thing that comes to mind when wondering why I'm persisting as both half-baked musician and artist is so that if I find some measure of fulfillment down this path, perhaps someday someone will hear of the tale and think hey, maybe it's not hopeless after all. Or that could just be my lack of mentorship speaking. As a friend pointed out recently, somewhat accurately: "I always hear about you teaching but I never hear about your teachers!"

Anyway, o eljay-land, I bring thee greetings from the University of Oregon, Term #2 (Spring) where life is starting to look more normal (I am presently skipping a lecture to do work for another class - just like home!), except that I am spending huge blocks of time in 3d modeling/animation/digital art/drumming. It is like living for the first time. (Oh, and other exception: there's a pretty decent buffet just downstairs. I am eating too much. Let's just say belts are unnecessary these days)

It also means I do not have enough hours in a day, thus, like probably some legions of bloggers have attempted, I'm currently on polyphasic sleep of the flexible variety, coming to the end of week three. This essentially means averaging 4-6 hours downtime a day instead of 8-10 but without feeling like death, plus the days don't speed by quite so fast and I get the lovely productive middle-of-the-night hours when everyone else is asleep. Mmm.

Right, breakfast over. Back to work! One last thing - art posts (some school-related, some not) are goin' up on my tumblr. I may also occasionally be livestreaming but I'll probably just announce those on facebook.

"Had a crazy long extended dream in which I was wandering around some desert-like location with someone (can't remember who) and found these old"

--restoring saved drafts comes up with strange tidbits. I can't even remember having ever written the above.

Today I went off gallivanting to pay visa application fees and take a photo for it, and met this interesting lady at the photo studio. She was all quiet-like at first, especially in comparison to her somewhat stereotypically loud and confident male colleague, sitting there click-click-clicking away at photos in Photoshop on what looked like Windows 95. A bit apologetic about the wait, at most; so I offhandedly told her that I used Photoshop a fair bit myself, and all that. After the shot was done she asked if I'd like to go off for lunch or something first, since the retouching would take her a while, and she had three to do already! so I told her the raw would do, there was no need to retouch anything (what do I care about my visa photo anyway) or resize the digital copy since I could very well take care of that myself.

As I was making the payment and she was chopping up the photos (she accidentally put a bit of a dent in one - I told her it was fine, after all, she'd squeezed in six pieces when they'd usually give four) she suddenly caved and started talking in bits and pieces of how she was too old for this newfangled computer-learning business, and too slow at clicking at things; if her boss was here he'd be yelling at her, if her colleague wasn't around she'd "drop dead standing" (a unique expression if ever I heard one). She'd rather handle the bridal services, but what to do, no choice given, so she'd to force herself to pick up the photo retouching skills. Wistfully, said she wished she'd the opportunity to further her studies too, then of all things she thanked me for being gracious--and how often does someone specifically thank you for that?!--and not being fussy and snapping at her, then proceeded to knock six dollars off the bill since there was no resizing done (six dollars to resize a shot, what is this: if there was demand for such I'd just whip out Actions in PS and be fairly rich on mouseclicking alone). She seemed resignedly sad, I almost wished I could've stayed to talk a bit more but hey, there were those three photos waiting for her to clone tool and dodge/burn at, and her colleague was also constantly asking if she was done with things quite yet.

Mrr, eljay is being pretty laggy these days.

Late last night I had inexplicable urges to write prose. Needless to say, I'm about as good at it as I was when I was ten, so... eh, weird passing whims it is. I've been having a messed up sense of time post moving into RC, also possibly thanks to the abundance of really long working hours--had twelve hour stretches for both work and resident assistant duties--it occurs to me with some surprise that it's ten-thirty on a Sunday evening. Huh.

The only sort of regular movement I make so far is migrating to the air-con lounge with laptop and cintiq and bag of related wires in tow when it gets too hot and humid in the room. This I did in the afternoon, though it also led to some annoyance when a visitor walked in and turned on the lights without asking. I mean. I don't turn off the lights when someone else has 'em on in a general space, what's with this switching on for no apparent reason?! (Okay, okay, not everyone is trying to cut down on screen glare when working on low contrast painting, I give)

Real reason for this post: AUUUUGHHHH PAINTING NOT WORKING AUUUGHGGDFHHHHSADSFLAAEDZ;FBKNV.JCX

Finally got some art done. O frabjous day! It is a baku/tapir hybrid.

Took quite a while to figure out how to approximate a watercolor-ish effect and the glowy bits, neither of which turned out like I wanted, but ah well. How does one make things glow convincingly :| I don't have a clue what's going on with the "mane" either. My concept of shading for that bit was pretty much: when in doubt, add bounced light!! Gotta learn how to do light/shade properly one of these days.

I cannot tell if the cruddy mood is random, because of stress, due to people, or because I haven't art'd for weeks at this point. Whatever it is, it's not helping me finish essays 1, 2, or 3, or study for tomorrow's test. Hurrah!

In true tradition that I only ever blog to procrastinate or to post art or to promote something, let me hit all three by including the following:



Guitar club concert this Friday! Alternatively, if you aren't particularly anywhere near NUS, this may instead register as: Poster design art with weird perspective!

I'm possibly both drumming and singing for all four songs I'm performing, which is havoc on the coordination, but fun! Though I am terrible at memorizing Japanese lyrics, urgh. Am hoping I've got the pronunciation passably right, goodness knows once I'm playing it's all a slurred mass. Drumming for the following is giving me some pain, but also new callouses; symmetrical lumps above and below lower middle finger joint, of all places.

Psst, guys. Finally got m'self to set up a doodleblog for quick arts so you don't get spammed by unpolished nonsense over here; feel free to add if the fancy strikes!

The internet over at PGP keeps spasming, huh. Must make sure I never do any upload-at-deadline-type assignments at the eleventh hour! (Or twelfth, or whenever. Twelfth doesn't look like a word. It is like... twink, and elf. Twinky elf.)

Lately I have been utterly ignoring arts, so... figured random junk is better than nothing at all. I was working on a painting but it has been refusing to cooperate one bit, so have some anatomyless ten minute ( floating heads )

There is painting here!

( If you want to hear some process ramblings, do proceed )

In the process of which I realized my Cintiq has a dead pixel, right in the middle-top of the screen. Nyaarg.

And here we have the finished product!

So that was some Jarltreri art for Tiffany, whose birthday it is today; interestingly, a few days after I sketched the ideas for this she uploaded a doodle of the pair sitting back to back as well. Creepy, almost! Reminds me of the time in '03 or '04 when I was standing outside the Nanyang gate waiting for the bus, and had the random thought: "What if Tiffany ran up and pushed me from the back now?" as she was wont to do in those days, and braced myself accordingly. Not a few minutes later, she did indeed! and I was saved from a stumble. Ah, fun times.