i'm in a rut.

a big fat rut.

oh, musical theatre.

i've volunteered to be the costume designer for the musical "thoroughly modern millie". the fact that it's set in the 1920s makes it too appealing to me to resist, and i want to start building up some experience if i'm going to start my yearly applications to the national theatre school (i don't see the point in trying until at least next year, but my mother insists i start out early).

musicals do really make me happy, so do clothes. it's really a perfect match. a trip to halifax last week has made me think a little more about exactly what it is i'm doing. imagining what i'd be doing now if i had gone to nscad rather than mta is a strange thing. until the very last second, i had always known i'd go to nscad for textiles and fashion. but here i am in sackville doing sculpture and photography. in theory, the nscad program would have gotten me more training in an area closer to where i'd ultimately like to end up. at the same time, the experience at an art-only school would be very different, and i wouldn't have the chance to work on something like costuming for the musical, and also taking a theatre production course next semester.

generally, i don't really know what my plan is. the national theatre school thing would be great, but i'm not sure if it's just my pessimism saying that i'll never get into a program that accepts eight people per year, of if i would ever actually have a shot at it. and if not, what's my plan? i can't see myself being an actual practising artist full-time, obviously. and though photography is something i really enjoy, it's not really something i could make a career of, especially since i'm pretty sure i'm going to stick with film until perhaps it goes the way of the polaroid.

i am going to bed, and i will leave you with some costume sketches, done before a thorough reading of the script. i'll be updating costuming progress until the show in late january.

i'm finally beginning to get a grasp on quickly drawing an accurate figure for clothing sketches. they're starting to have more natural-looking poses. these ones were re-traced, obviously, but the original figures were mine.

i need to work on the males.

sculpture class.

sculpture. i think it may kill me.

my problem is getting a certain idea in my head that will not ever be able to be completed in the time we have to do the project. our first project was to make something out of paper, and i must have spent at least 2o hours on it, in one week. not a ridiculous amount of time, really, but it took much too long for what i ended up with. i may get some photos of it if it's still intact when i next see it.

the next project is to make something out of a 4'x8' sheet of plywood. we had two lists of words to choose from to base the project on. i'm unsure of the first word, maybe "fluid", but my second word will be "garment".
that image will not leave my head to make room for something less ridiculous and time-consuming. that would involve cutting an entire sheet of plywood into little sticks, drilling a hole in each of them, and somehow stringing them together to create this cape-thing. i really want to do it. i'm insane.

i'm considering a simpler version, which would be basically a solid version of that, without all the sticks, just a dome-cape-thing made of solid pieces, maybe fastened with hinges.

this is difficult.

terraria.

i made a terrarium. two, actually. terraria (thanks grace!)

i went for a nice walk in the waterfowl park yesterday to gather moss. i made a larger and nicer one with a deer in it, in a nice corked bottle. i happened to also have another jar and a bag of animal figurines, so i made a smaller one with a bear in it, which is messier and harder to see.


i'm kind of addicted. next up will be a large one under a wide glass dome (providing i can find one) with rolling hills of moss and a bighorn sheep.

so much fun.

some thoughts on the first few days of second year.

the quality of meal hall oranges has gone down. they're much harder to peel and less juicy.

single rooms are great because i can dress up and listen to showtunes without the girl on the other side of the room thinking i'm crazy.

having six hours of sculpture on fridays seems like it will be okay.

my social skills have not improved as far as meeting new people in residence goes, but i'm content with the acquaintances i have.

it is going to be so cold in the winter.

i'll be nineteen in three days, and i'm not sure if i really care.

having a functional light meter in my camera would be nice.

straw boater hats are fun.

i now have adequate closet space.

back, at last.

i sit here in my new residence room, nothing unpacked except my computer. it's great to be back, even though i haven't even seen any of my friends yet. it's just a great feeling to have my own room that i can fill with whatever i'd like and not have to worry about a stranger showing up later and claiming half the space. the single life is good.

a goal:
actually meet people in harper and not be that girl again.

i am so excited for class to start, i need to get back in my art vibe. especially photography, i'm looking forward to that. even though thaddeus will probably make me cry.

les macarons!

everyone gets baking urges once in a while. my sister is the baker in the family. she makes cookies or pies, or a cheesecake for a special occasion. i get a baking urge now and then, but i'm never satisfied with chocolate chip cookies or an apple pie. no, i make the complicated things.

that's why tonight, i had an urge to try macarons.

after i got over the initial disappointment that it was not possible to make one in each flavour (i tried that with icing on cookies once, it was much more time-consuming than it was worth), i settled on a nice, easy chocolate-mint. the pastel colours are, after all, the thing that attracts me most to the art of macaron-making. i was too impatient to pay attention to the finer details (measuring by weight rather than volume because i don't have a scale, sifting twice because i don't have a sifter, aging the egg white for three days because i wanted macarons NOW), but they still turned out okay.


a little brown around the edges, but my oven does that to everything. they also baked up taller, but flattened a lot when they cooled. this could be a result of my using fresh egg whites, or too-coarse almonds, or simply not being careful enough while taking them out of the oven. i've left out some eggs and i'm going to try to find some almond flour, so i'll try again in a few days. i think i'll try lemon next time. mmm.

other than baking, here's what i've been doing for the past few days:
that's my baby-painting setup, horrible lighting included. there's not much open space in my house, so i've taken over the living room. which has lots of good window-light in the daytime, but only one lamp at night, which is when i do most of my work. but the babies are coming along nicely. i have two dresses pretty much done, one about halfway, and one that i have yet to start (i need to get the measurements of the guy who will be wearing it). in addition to that, i have a scarf, a tie, a pair of shorts, a bedspread, and a bassinet to make. this is turning out to be quite the commitment.

costumes.

i'm now unemployed. i have three weeks or so before going back to school. i have found one thing to do to amuse myself until then.

a friend is directing a play, "baby with the bathwater" by christopher durang. a very absurd piece of theatre, and it needs costumes to match.


yes, i'll be painting the babies on the fabric. it looks like in addition to those two dresses and the tie, i'll be making one more dress, a pair of shorts, and a bassinet that can hold a teenage boy. and maybe one more dress and a few aprons. i'm quite excited for it, really. i just need to get some fabric and paint.

also, i still do that knitting thing every once in a while. i stopped at a couple of yarn shops last week while we were in cape breton. i got a book i've been eyeing for a while, "boutique knits", which features a lovely cloche-like hat pattern, for which i picked up some teal alpaca. i also experienced, for the first time, malabrigo. i got two skeins of lace in "water green". i've been loving this colour lately.

and a few things from my sketchbook lately:

one week at work, i only had one kid sign up for class, so we did some more involved things, like making dolls. that's what i made. no, the kid didn't know who liza minnelli is.

and a little stamp i carved from a piece of linoleum:

i'm going to do a series of posts of things that make me happy. i'm really a pretty materialistic person deep down, in a way, and i love buying things. i'll be posting some things i own that make me happy.

note: future project.

i only have two weeks left of work. after that, i still have a whole month left before i'm back to school. therefore, i am going to force myself to do some art.

today, while cleaning the third floor of the gallery where i work, i found a bag that contained some fabric. i wanted some fabric to cover my sketchbook with, so i looked through it and noticed some that was white, with very faint traces of where there used to be small purple flowers. i thought it was a bedsheet, but it turned out to be a dress. with several holes in it.

i want to collect a bunch of old clothes in an extreme state of disrepair: dresses where the fabric is thinned and falling apart, jeans with holes everywhere, moth-eaten sweaters. and repair them. patch the holes, maybe embroider the faded prints.

finding the old clothes is the hard part.

fashion, day two.

i'm liking the big-ass sketchbook, but it's bigger than my scanner. this almost didn't fit.

acrylic, watercolour, and ink over a magazine cutout. i like doing this.