Little Whinging

No, this is not a post about the fictional town in Surrey in the Harry Potter universe, it's a post of me whinging (or whining) about school and stuff.

Aren't you lucky?

The semester is nearly over, and through no fault of my own (cough - procrastination - cough cough excuse me) I have a literal mountain of work to do. And no, I'm not using the word literal incorrectly. There is a mountain of work I need to do. So there. Would you like to hear all about it? I thought not. Here it is anyway.

For Rendering the Human Head, simultaneously my favorite and least favorite classes, I need to complete a dual self portrait of myself (hence the 'self' part) showing 2 different aspects or expressions. My plan is to draw a carnival freak show, myself as the 2-headed artist with one face typical realistic/naturalistic looking, the other snarling angry evil Austin. It should be fun, I just need to set aside time to do it, but that's harder than it may at first seem. It's due in 2 weeks, so it's probably last on my priorities right now. What's first on priorities you ask? Funny you should ask that.

I took Creative Writing: Intermediate Fiction Writing this semester because I had the foolish idea that all the art and design classes would get boring, so writing would be a welcome reprieve. While true, I forgot that writing can also be an awful lot of WORK. I wrote the story I've been thinking of off and on for at least 3 years (yay!) but it reminded me I can be a terrible writer (no, no, it's true. Stop with your reassurances and raving at my brilliance, just stop...for now) and I have a LOT of work cut out for me to get it good enough to allow someone else to read it without worrying about the implications of them using it as a torture device or weapon of mass disgustion. That's due funnily enough on my birthday, and while I know what I need to do mostly to fix it or at least improve it, I'm learning that knowing I need to fix something and fixing it are two very different things.

Interactive Design began as the class where I thought I knew more than the rest of the class. Somewhere between then and now I now again feel like the dumbest kid in class. Everyone's site looks professional if not brilliant and mine appears juvenile and worse: non-functional. Hopefully by next Thursday I'll have a functional website with pictures of things I've drawn and designed and then I won't be the only one to know what a horrible artist I am. Yay! Seriously, I've really enjoyed the class, I'm just stressed about the amount of work I'm putting into a website I don't even like. Kind of like that girl I dated once, all that work and energy for someone I didn't really even...

So, last class is actually always the first one of the week (Monday and Wednesday mornings) I think it was the class I was most apprehensive about, though it's become one of my favorite. I am speaking of Typography and Layout. This class more than any other makes me think I could become a successful designer someday. I really like the teacher even though I'm not sure he cares for me, I really like the class and all the assignments. My last assignment is to design a brochure of... something. Most people either did places or events, I chose to do one on one of my favorite artists: Dave McKean. I'll post pictures of the brochure eventually, but it's coming along rather nicely, it's just, like everything else, will require a lot of time and I will probably need to take a day or two off of work next week and the week after, and possibly choose not to sleep.

From Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum comic, illustrated by Dave McKean.

This wouldn't be so bad but I also have a wonderful but demanding job and a inexplicable desire to advance within the company (odd, I know) but I find little time or chance to do it except near the end of the day when I'm so exhausted I can only sit here and blog about my troubles.

However, while school is taxing if not outright insane (it's outright insane) there are many wonderful things in my life, most notably my new video game just kidding my wife and son. Thank you Tracie and Morgan for bringing me back from the brink of insanity, and to Morgan, for sending me there in the first place but your smiles and giggles make everything worth it.

Thanks to you readers for reading my blog even when I whinge or whine and I apologize for not writing as frequently as usual, and I amend to write more, once this semester is over.