What Even is Sleep Anymore?

*Disclaimer: I'm just letting you know now that you can skip over this blog post because it's just me rambling about how stressed I am. Possible side effects for the reader may include confusion and boredom. 

I know this blog is supposed to be about my senior project, but I want to tell you all about my senior year in general because 1. So you'll know what I'm busy with when I'm not painting or drawing and 2. I find spilling out the stuff on my mind help reduce my stress in a way if that makes sense. Anyways classes consist of: Drama/theater for Extended class, African American History (1st sem), The History of Rochester (2nd sem), Pre-Calculus, AP Environmental Science, AP Literature, Sewing/Textiles (1st sem) another art class next semester that I'm currently forgetting the name of. I'm allowed to drop some of these classes that I already have credits for because I'm taking at least one AP course, but all the classes that did have an option to drop, I wanted. Like I love art, math and science so there was no way I was going to drop those. In return, I just have a bunch more work to do. That isn't even the problem though. The problem is that I don't have any time for myself anymore. I literally haven't had time to read a book for my pleasure since August and it's already almost December. I've only been to the gym ONCE since June and I used to go almost everyday. Like that really is so annoying but what is more annoying is that it only gets harder after high school. Senior year is to college what pre-k is to elementary school. Basically, it only starts after high school. Also I get home around 7 everyday on average because I do work at the Rush Rhees Library almost everyday. Currently on Thursday, I take my watercolor class. On Sunday I do community service at my local mosque from 10am-2:00pm where I co-teach Arabic with my sister. I just recently started taking Quran classes on Saturdays and Sundays. All these things are just additional to all my homework that I'm not even going to talk about. Since I work on a college campus, I'm familiar with the work load students have and it's like my work x100. I really hate complaining but it's the only way I'll keep my sanity lol. So on a positive note, I am proud to say that with all these things going on I'm meeting/Exceeding everything at school as of now. Thank God Honestly. He's blessed me with so many awesome supportive people in my life that I'm so thankful for!! If you made it to this point of this blog post, thanks for hearing me out. Have an awesome day/night. Whatever it is you're struggling with, trust me when I say, it'll be okay. It might be just a blessing in disguise as cliche as that sounds. It's all in God's plan. 

Watercolor Still Life

I completed my first still life painting in  my water color class. A still life is an arrangement of inanimate object which commonly include fruits and other household objects. I think I did a pretty good job because I usually draw inanimate objects anyways so it was definitely not out of my comfort zone. Also, we practiced drawing and shading areas based on where the light source is coming from in my drawing class as well, so I used some of those tips when working on this piece.

Practice Drawing

My drawing classes ended, but that doesn't mean drawing ended for me. So yesterday, I got "lost" in my drawing which is something I haven't with drawing in a very long time. I did use a reference photo to kind of get started because my skills aren't good enough to just draw on my own yet. I didn't make it as detailed as you probably saw in the reference photo because 1. I'm not that good lol and 2. I didn't want to spend more than one day on it.

Watercolor Clouds

Watercolor clouds, I think, might be one of the trickiest things with this form of art. Since the watercolor paper is the white of the painting the shadows that make up the clouds are what get painted. Today, we learned the blotting method. I started out by painting my background with a very pigmented mix of a couple Windsor Newton shades of blue. After it completely dried, I wet the area where I wanted my moon to be with a wet paintbrush and gently rubbed on the area to loosen the paint. I then used a paper towel to pick up the water now mixed with the paint. I pretty much did the same thing for the clouds except I only blotted out the areas where I wanted the highlights of the clouds to be. I also splattered on the stars with white gouache which is an opaque watercolor paint. My instructor said that it looked "lyrical" :) So sweet of her!

Last Drawing Class

I had my last drawing class and it was a lot of fun. When it comes to drawing, I usually avoid figure drawing because I'm not really good at it. That's what we practiced today and it turns out I'm not as horrible as I thought I'd be. Our drawing teacher, Joe, had us draw people in different poses in 30 seconds and after that 3 minutes. Our final piece was drawing our instructor in 10 minutes. 

We also did a 2 point perspective drawing of a city landscape.

And a 1 point perspective drawing of a house in the country side.

This is a perspective drawing I did in one of my previous classes as well. What I now realize about this drawing is the door at the top of the stairs should've gotten smaller at the top to give it a more realistic look and it annoys me how the two bottom steps are lighter than the rest but it was still fun to draw lol.