Not so much fucked.

But I have a LOT of work to do.

You may not see me for a while.
Away I go.

I'm fucked.

I might not graduate because I'm missing 3 credits.


I'm doing everything I can, emailing ANYONE who might put me in their class. I'm really scared.

Fight Test.

Feeling sick today, mostly because I've been sitting in front of a screen since I woke up. When I wasn't in front of the screen, I was making art to put up online which would require editing and posting, which requires staring at said screen. But I made a lot of funny comics today with Lindsay, so that was great. :D Andy Fish told me to work on sequential art, so I think that was at least a good start. My Degree Project teacher mentioned to me that I make interesting characters, but I never draw them more than once, so I think comic-ing will help me with that.

It's not that I can't draw the same character more than once - I just find beauty in still images and using paintings to create worlds that can't exist. Maybe it's my background in portraiture crying out.

But I'm REALLY REALLY REALLY excited about making comics now. I read a lot of comics as a preteen/teenager, but not anything big name. I read every Roman Dirge/Jhonen Vasquez comic that came out because I liked the weird, twisted, horrifically violent stories. I liked the happy happy faces versus the horribly gored ones.

I read a lot of manga too, but nothing that anyone EVER should read. Too many cutesy stories. I'm still obsessed with CLAMP - I just don't tell anyone. It fits in with my aesthetic of well drawn characters with interesting costumes and cuuuuuute faces. <3


School's been cancelled both times I would have had Andy Fish so far. I bet he's pissed. But I would have liked to talk to him about my comic progress so far - there's only so much I can post on my blog, and there's only so much you can explain outside of physical human contact. So hopefully he'll have time sometime to listen to me. Also I'm his company's intern now! I wonder what I'll be able to help with. I'd pretty much do anything for Undercover Fish - everyone I've met from there has been absolutely fantastic, and I'd love to get their feedback on my comic, too.

Too much to talk about! I'm wasting time! I need some advil!

More boring crap.

Sorry.
I just would rather send links of images to people instead of the file.
Yay for using webspace!

I need to borrow this space for a minute.

Sorry for the boringness.

A Sorta Fairytale

and i'm so sad
like a good book
i can't put this
day back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you

I left Maine today. I cried on the walk back to Jared's apartment because I didn't want to leave him. I don't remember the last time I cried over a boy because I didn't want to leave them. Jared's different. I'm allowed to be a girl around him. I'm not a mom, or a wife, or a wallet. I'm a beautiful girl who he thinks is really talented and worth being loved for being just what I am and nothing more. He doesn't mind that I draw my eyebrows on, or that I can't accept my height, or that my head is always buzzing and can't stop.

We can see each other every 3 weeks. Money and time and school don't permit much more. I don't mind the distance - it gives me time to work out my life without piling my stress on top of him. Things will be easier after I graduate. Maybe he'll move here.


I feel lost, a little. It's easy to focus on work and not think about things and get by and worry about my diet and clean the house, but it's so much harder to miss someone.

He really is fantastic. I can't wait for you to meet him. I love him with everything I have.

TRJIGHDFKJGDFHLGUR

Tonight was Midnight Madness at Blick, which turned out to be closer to Midnight Sadness because nobody really showed up. Such is life. It doesn't affect my paycheck. The economy sucks. What can you do?

Around 11:00 pm the store gets a call - I pick it up to relive the person at the front. The guy on the phone asks, "Do you have a Caucasian flesh tint oil paint by Winsor Newton?" That would be a peachy-ish oil paint color. I reply, "I'm not sure, but I can go check. Were you looking for the student grade paint or the artist's grade?" He says he wants the artist grade, very politely, so I put him on hold and head to the shelf to check.

I find the color I'm looking for, and I tell him we have that in stock. He says, "Wonderful. Do you have an African American flesh tint?" Very awkward question, but I say, "I'm sorry, we don't. I know that the Caucasian flesh tints are really politically incorrect, and many different lines of paint have discontinued them in an effort to be more PC." He says, "I think that's ridiculous. We just got a new President." I said, "I agree, it's something that should have been done away with fifty years ago. "

To which he replies, "Well, you can take your company and shove it up your ass!"
To which I reply, "FUCK YOU" and slam down the phone.


*deep breath*
To have someone swear at me is not something I deal with very well - I feel I dealt with this pretty well at the time. I ranted to a manager and asked if I'd get fired for saying "Fuck you" to a customer, and they told me I had the right and whatever.

What truly bothers me is that for someone to know the difference between artist grade and student grade paint (they never hesitated), to know a particular brand that would carry such color (when that company is one of maybe 2 that still consider it a "flesh tint"), and to be so patient as to wait on hold while I actually gathered all that information. You'd assume that someone who could think that far ahead would realize that I have nothing to do with Winsor Newton, or making paint, or naming paint for that matter. Fuck, if we had an "Obama Umber" it would sell out in a flash. We even had Obama merchandise when it came out.

But to call and swear at me just to push my buttons when that person was so well educated in fine oils, it pisses me off. Waste of my time. Especially on a night we're open late.


I could end the rant there, but it hit me a little harder than I had planned. I grew up as one of 3 white families on my entire block, going to schools where the white population was fewer than 10%, and finding myself at the back of the classroom with no one to talk to because I didn't belong. I know what it's like to be harassed because of your skin color. I've had people follow me home and throw rocks and tomatoes at me because I'm white.

I just don't like that someone wouldn't expect me to sympathize with racial bullshit just because I'm white. Racism is something I grew up with, and it just makes me so sad to know that some people haven't evolved beyond it yet.


So fuck that guy. He can stick his flesh tint up his ass.

The Ice Cream Man.

I've decided that when I grow up and have a big pretty house of my own, I want an adult-sized swingset in the backyard. Somewhere I can think and enjoy the trees. Somewhere I can go barefoot, with maybe gravel underneath so I could walk around barefoot.

Until I moved to MA, I wasn't allowed to leave my driveway, really. Except once a day. I don't know how I got the money, but every day, I would listen and wait for the ice cream man. It was always 80 degrees, so it was always ice cream weather. And I would always get two scoops of Oreo ice cream on a double cone, not that prepackaged crap with frozen bubble gum eyes.

The ice cream man was an asshole. He would often pass my driveway after seeing me standing there, not wanting to stop for just one kid. So I would book it down the street after him barefoot, the pavement well hotter than 110°, rocks, broken glass, it didn't matter as long as I flagged that fucker down and got my ice cream. Because of that, I had the thickest callouses on my feet as a child.

So I wouldn't mind walking over the gravel in my swingset.

Better than getting sand stuck in between your toes.



(That's a picture I found of the house across from mine in CA. That was where the foster family lived who robbed us. They were 13751 Sproule Ave, and my family was 13748.)

First post.

I wanted to make something separate from my regular blog so that I can be moody or excited without worrying about what the rest of the reader of my blog think.

Today, I'm slightly moody. I worked my ass off all semester, and I got little to no credit for it during my review. Given the people who reviewed me haven't said more than one thing to me in years - one person I didn't even know. I make a point of reading my written review over about 8 times, then set it down and read it again in a few months. That way, all the important things stick out as opposed to the "Well what did they mean by that?"s and "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"S that I'd normally obsess over.

I don't want to say that I was looking for compliments so much as recognition. I've never taken on so much work in my life as I did this semester, and I'd like to think I held the weight pretty well. I feel empowered by my successes this last semester, and to have my reviewers not share these victories with me is a little disheartening, but they weren't there, so they couldn't know. I honestly can't blame them for not seeing all the good things, and, in my eyes, when someone points out only the bad about something in a piece, it's because all of the good is speaking for itself.

So I'll take what I can and try to improve, but I'm only going to do it for myself. I'm listening to my own advice and my own aesthetic for once, and that's been working well for me. I like the way I've been working and so do all of the important people in my life. I'm not opposed to learning new things, but when are they going to see my pieces as finishes instead of practice? This is how it will be, and whatever changes is my choice.

I don't want anyone to think I need a pat on the back every 5 minutes to stay sane. What I draw may not be everyone's cup of tea - that's all.


Yet I can't help feeling I have something to prove.
And maybe that's the motivation I need to get better.