ack. the weather here is nuts i tell u. it dropped by 10 degrees F from yesterday to today and it's BRR COOLLLDDD... this morning was like 5 degrees celcius. surprisingly, it is still pretty tolerable considering that all i have here is my hoodie, jeans and normal singapore clothes. 

so this week is rather crazy, with our insane art hist exam 2 coming on thursday and homework due during the week, which is really rare since most of our homework is given for the weekends. so it's been pretty tight :| nonetheless, i will survive! tis no sweat compared to the A levels ;p

so things haven't been very awesome. all my teachers have decided that i do not need help and their critique comments for my work has dwindled to a pathetic that's very good work and then moving on, which makes me irritated cos it's not mindblowingly great, but simply just skimming the surface of what is required. this is not why i go to school for. i go to school to learn and improve and be the best!!! grr...

sooo...after doing a few charcoal drawings for drawing class, i have thus decided to crown charcoal my favourite medium. graphite has been kicked off it's throne. though messy and outragously harmful to health, charcoal has been easy to apply, covering a massive surface area with one swipe of the hand, easy to darken, easy to erase, best of all, you can just smudge it easily :) it creates works of high contrast, giving it a more finished feel. so TA DAAAAA

work 1: 1st drawing class homework

2nd drawing class assignment/homework:

it's both soft compressed charcoal on newsprint. the only difference is the surrounding lighting. amazing how lighting affects the look and color eh? so after all that i still prefer my first charcoal drawing. think i got abit xianed-ded with all the stupid details in the second one. now that i posted the second drawing i notice a few problems with it. HAHAHA. oh well. i will edit it later on. i'm too clean to get charcoal on myself again. meh heh

there's such strange people here in art sch. i was on the bus on my way back to the dorms after drawing class when like this weird dude sits next to me and starts demanding in this rough, mean, gruff voice. this was our conversation:

dude: ARE YOU HAPPY?

me: i'm alright.

dude: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHY ARE YOU NOT HAPPY?

me: becos there's nothing much going on to make me happy or sad?

dude: BE HAPPY. SHOW ME A SMILE. AND NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAPPY FAKE SMILES

me: *smiles a REAL happy smile*

girl behind him: is he making you feel happy?

me: no

dude: SMILE!

me: *i smile*

dude: SEE. NOW YOU ARE GOING TO BE HAPPY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY

me: great. i will.

dude: YES. YOU WILL BE FANTASTIC

me: awesome. *thinking yeah right...now i'm just feeling weird cos of u*

dude: do you know ___ ___?? some guy's name la

me: nope (not thinking if there's any problem with not know that person)

dude: GOSH *shakes head with the what the hell is wrong with this world attitude and turns his back on me :S *

.....

so the ride goes on with him yelling at the top of his lungs nonsense rubbish, trying to be racist against the whites (ironically, he is white) and then forcing people to want to learn a song that consists of vulgarities.

what the hell man.... 

CRAZY PEOPLE. must be too much charcoal and fixatives in their brain. 

MASQUERADE BALL. 

had fun dressing up. the actual event...not so much. pretty boring since dancing ain't my thang anyway. nonetheless, it was cool to see people in their costumes. alot of indiana jones and jokers. there was one who was REALLY REALLY GOOD. walked and talked and ACTED like him. cool stuff. he did some creepy thing by fogging up the glass at the student centre and then writing on it with his finger and then signing off with the creepy joker face. 0.0

there were creepy zombies too, robots, elmos, banana and grapes, chronicles of narnia that half goat half human dude, sweeney todd, jack sparrows etc.

more pictures on facebook :D

it's been a highly eventful day :D :D :D only bobo knows why. HAHAHAH :D :D

2d class yesterday which was uber fun cos it was superly slack. like half the class didnt turn up for some reason so we spent alot of time just CHILLING at the staircase and talking utter CRAP with maggie and ben tugging at my hoodie strings trying to strangle me. hahhaa. so we had our mid-term conferences with professor davies and she told me i had to repeat my 2d design class. She simply utterly loves me :D :D my mid term grades are amazing and i scored 4 full scores for my projects and 2 95s which is like all we have for midterm grades. i AM AMAZING. :D :D 

after my utterly boring art history class on the damn annoying greeks and roman art which span spam a whole load of pages in our text, kaleigh, jill, maggie and i (maggie and i tagged along) went around savannah area for house hunting since they were thinking of moving into an apartment next quarter cos they are such desperate housewives that love cooking. haha. i'm still thinking of whether or not i should move into an apartment but i'm still considering and weighing out options since i can't drive, can't/won't really have time/bother to cook although a break from scafe (tonight we dine in hell....) or JOs or the sub shop is definitely welcoming (hence we have chinese pizza nights!) . still..there's a need to consider the cost of living off campus and transportation and food (which really shouldnt be a problem. when is food ever a problem unless all we have left is vegetables...) so yeah. house hunting was pretty exciting as we checked out cute little houses with fireplaces and all that jazz >.<

drawing class next. kinda dragged myself to that class now that it's starting to get increasingly out of my comfort zone. sigh. we're finally starting on value and charcoal. and NOW I KNOW WHY I HATED AEP. cos i hate newsprint. it's disgustingly brown and rough and yucky to draw and make marks on. yes yes. and it's sooooo flimsy and fragile. ACKKK..

soo...the way we are using charcoal now is sooo different from what i'm used to (COS WILKIE NEVER TAUGHT MUCH ANYWAY) and like charcoal has to cover the entire span of newsprint and i have breathed in SOOO MUCH CHARCOAL DUST. i just blew my nose and out came BLACK mucus. THIS IS GROSSSSS.. but pretty cool at the same time. black mucus just shouts out the fact that i AM AN ART STUDENT :D :D gotta loveee it :D charcoal hands, charcoal face, charcoal lungs. which is why i need my doctor bobo <3

and thennnnnn....exciting thing on the bus..BUT IT'S SECRET >.<

and then and then....we went to savannah mall with the girls to do halloween costume shopping/shopping for masquerade ball....we were all planning to pon it until the girls saw pretty homecoming prom dresses and they were like all excited. BUT SCREW. I AM NOT WEARING A DRESS. esp when all those dresses are revealing so much flesh in the freezing 13 degree in the afternoon kind of weather. so anyhows....I AM GOING AS A CAT and i am sooo excited. MY FIRST HALLOWEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNie haha WEENIE ;P 

OH HAPPY DAY PACEY :D :D :D

i can't believe i forgot about Gender Bender Ball :( oh welll.....there's always next year. anyhows. gender bender ball is part of our halloween celebrations whereby guys dress as girls and girls dress as boys. now i know why dresses are meant for girls ONLY. it's just disturbing to see a guy in a girl's dress unless we're talking about kumar or hossan leong. but that's a different story. 

michelle and i were in the courtyard playing speed when we heard this strange female voice greeting us. i looked up and got t

he shock of my life. ok. not really the shock of my life, but nonetheless, it was a rude shock. a guy in a dressed. i was completely stunned, not knowing how to respond to that. any-o-hows....i will go next year..yes i will..meanwhile...i need to think about what i should do for haloween's masquerade ball. oh me oh my....in the past i 

used to be so sad that i can't celebrate haloween, but now i'm like oh me oh my...what do i wear and what shall i be?? zzzz...

this weekend has been pretty kickass, with drawing mid-terms out of the way, i only have homework for 2d design, out of which i already completed 2/3 of it during the week and i just had to do my characterisation and updating

 of my notebook work. :) got some of my midterm grades already, got an A for my drawing 

(WHOOOPPIIEEE) and a B for my art history..not bad considering how i hate it though i could have gotten an A if not for my carelessness and lack of details (COS HE BLOODY SAID THERE WASN'T A NEED TO PUT THAT DOWN!!.. GRRR) 

anyways...for this week's 2d project, we have to create a book. at first i thought she meant like design a book cover cos it's 2d after all and i'm like COOL. i can give this to my pacey when i;m done for her journal! and then my bubble got smashed when she told us we were going to create characters for a story :( i suck at creating imaginary things :( not good for someone going into creative arts..so here was my shot at creating characters. ... MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO.MONKEY HOO HOOO HOO HOO HOO ;D

initial stage...i wish more of the basic skeletal marks could be seen cos it really made me feel like i'm going into animation, which after this exercise i have determined that though i dont really suck at creating cartoon creatures...this is not what i want to do cos i had such a hard time struggling with this..grrr....

after inking...we weren't allowed to make them all uniformly coloured. hence the alternation

highlight of the week....

LOW COUNTRY SHRIMP BOIL with 180 and downpour @ the Bamboo Gardens!

bamboo gardens...how cheesy is that?!?! sounds so cheena-fied like it comes from china. lol. didn't really see much bamboos though :S 

pumpkin patch...see that pile of orange? that's the pumpkin. the patch is pretty much a patch now cos there's nothing much there anymore. 

naomi, rachel, heather, orlando and i played frisbee on the grass patch next to the pumpkin patch :) great time to run cos it was soooo colddddd...it's getting colder and cold-errrr....michelle is even wearing her winter coat. eekkssss...

you can't really tell how much food there is on the tables, but it's ALOT. not everything is out at this point of time anyway, but joe bought all the corns in savannah for this and that was aloottttt..he bought over a 100 corns for this and it was still not his target :S

so we had more than a 100 pounds of sausages, a 100 pounds/number of potatoes. 90 pounds of fresh shrimp. YUMMYYY...the shrimp/prawn had uber soft and thin shells, not like those we have in Singapore that cut ur hands cos it's so hard. it's super soft like the epidermal layer of the onion. just push and peel it off the prawns. easy peasy :)

after we ate we danced to the music. yes. i danced too. haha. jill, naomi and michelle dragged me to the dance floor and most of the time it was awkward. i don't know what to do with my hips, hands and legs. lol. there was this jumping song and like everyone was CRAZY jumping and you could see the whole platform bend. IT WAS SOOO SCARY I WAS SOOO WORRIED IT WOULD BREAK AND WE WOULD ALL WALL INTO THE WATER. aye-yai-yai....

twas was my week. i had fun :) 

Being an international student is my excuse :) 

when you're a yellow among the sea of whites and blacks especially. 

if you don't pronounce words properly, you catch things slower than others etc, professors will just think that it's because english is not your first language ;p 

which was the case with me during yesterday's 2d design class critique. we had to rate our classmate's work for each of the various criteria within a range of 0-4 with  4 being the best and 0 being the worst...apparently professor davies found it rather amusing that i kept pronouncing "three" as "tree". and she was like what?? tree?? tree again? very soon we are going to get a FOURrest (forrest). I FELT SO EMBARASSED I WANTED TO BURY MYSELF IN A HOLE AND NEVER SEE THE DAYLIGHT AGAIN. i could feel myself blushing and i am very very thankful that no one pointed it out or that would have been even worse. i guess she realised she embarassed me so she immediately tried to soften the blow with "but it's alright. i think your english is amazing. i can't even speak your language) and my friends behind her are like giving the "haha. what do you know" kinda smiling face cos they all know that english is my first language. LOL. 

so hence. i am asian who needs extra help and attention :) be more lenient with me pls! ahahaha

i'm kinda half excited and half scared about our new 2d project. we are to make a little illustrated story book with 10 characters that are visually united. sounds fun eh...only that i'm worried about creating the characters. i kinda suck at imaginary drawing and making them look nice :S oh woe is meeee :(

i am going to get muscles by the time i graduate. the portfolio and supplies we have to lug to and from class everyday is heaaaavyyyyy. and it's annoyingly big for small little me. now i know how it feels like when chrystal's dog tasha had the loudhailer collar around her. poor thing...poor us. i keep banging into things and getting stuck as i walk carrying my drawing board, portfolio bag with my drawing pads and my supplies kit. -__-'''

twas the night of chinese pizza. or so we call chinese take out meals simply because u order it and it gets delivered to the dorm...like pizza. all thanks to our dear kaleigh who miss-named it by accident. lol. we love chinese food so much that monday nights are our chinese pizza nights >.< 

and it was also partly a celebration for finishing our 2d design project after 5 weeks of working on the same thing. and also becos we're all suck obi wan kanobi's that create EPIC pieces. lol. my 2d class rocks! i got all 4s on every category. ahhahaa i am powerful!! FEAR ME FOR I AM ASIAN!!!!! I AM SINGAPOREAN. all the more to fear me. heh heh heh ;p simply because we are such kiasu and kiasi people and we are used to working our asses off ;p

any-o-house...for the first time, we found out that chinese pizza comes with fortune cookies too!!! mine says.."You will be showered with good luck before your next birthday" that is kick ass awesome! sadly though..my birthday will arrive in a few months which means i only have a few months of good luck. haha. nonetheless...better than nothing!!! 

once again..i repeat myself...NO PHOTOS of me in the dress and heeled boots that michelle the fashionista put me in okk.....she got them for me to TRY ON. i refused to let her buy them for me even though she offered. meh heh. 

anyhows. though this is the week of mid terms, professor davies for 2d design postponed it cos she has no time to mark it. hahahaha. and prof hamilton for art hist cancelled class last thurs. apparently it's because he was building a tree house for his son. haha. so sweet. i can't help but wonder whether that makes him a good mad cos one...he is putting personal stuff before his job..which will determine OUR jobs even though we wont complain if he cancels more classes ;p but it's also so sweet that he loves his son so much. haha. cant imagine him playing with his son though. he is such a monotonous bore in art history. he DRONES on and on and seriously puts the whole class to sleep. everyone confesses that they try to stay awake, but somehow they can't force their eyes open! he should just change his occupation and go be some sleep therapist for people having sleeping problems. any-o-hows...he let us out early today so it was good. no more waiting in line for the stupid scad bus :)

ohh...so with no mid terms for 2d design and art hist...all i'm left with is drawing. ack. drawing the same bloody still life 3 times for ramsey. nonetheless..i still love that guy. oh i'm nervousssss.. :( 

wish me luck..wish me joy..wish me marry me handsome boy..hahaha OH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POETRY. 

i should rephrase what i wrote in my previous journal. michelle got me a pair of boots and dress to TRY ON at the store. no photos. sorry loves. 

so...after talking to debby about the wonderful sunny weather here, on the very same day, it's been pouring up till now. it stops and rains stops and rains and due to waiting in the rain for the stupid scad bus, i have caught a cold :( 

tis is bad. especially since this week is mid-terms. oh hallelujah :( awesome shizzaz. 

sooo...this few days/weeks haven't been much except for the occasional texas-hold'em or poker game with the girls (jill and michelle) which was fun cos we ran out of poker chips so we used food instead..like the old animal cookies and sweets cos jill's church sent her a care package full of sweets and goodies (not very caring considering how sweets are bad for health and jill's a health nut anyway. so she didn't benefit from it at all. lol) 

and then there was chinese take out night where the boys (mark, ben and zahari), the girls (maggie, kaleigh, jill, sydney) and myself ordered 50 dollars worth of chinese food and ate to our great delight! yummy. free delivery too. ain't that awesome?!?! one of these days we're heading out to sushi zen to get good sushi. :D

went to the mall with michelle and jill on saturday..or was it friday...wadeva. i've lost track of time. haha. and it was pretty fun. the 2 of them shopped while i just wandered around being the usual shopping me. haha. michelle was like u sure u dun want anything and i'm like uh-huh...i dun shop. and she's like oh no...we need to change that...she stared at me and her fashion brain started ticking away and she zipped me around the shop and got me this dress and a pair of UBER HIGH BOOTS ON UBER HIGH HEELS. i am now in love with boots cos they are gorgeous thanks to that girl. she is now my fashionista consultant. hahaha. she and jill will give me a makeover and teach me make up and they are excited about it cos i'm like their little doll that they could play with..and i'm like them in....what....5th grade?!?!? i am stuck in my childhood. haha. i'm such a lil kid! nonetheless...i am coming home the same way as i used to be in my wonderful jeans and comfy shirts. hahahaha. i have no money to invest in clothes. oh ya...i walked into victoria secrets with them and i got cute undies. hahaha. i can't believe i found them cute...i got pink undies now. hahahaa. oh no...what is gloria becoming?!?!?! rest assured. i am still who i used to be....i think ;p (even if some people think i have an american accent now......hmmm...)

anyhows...then there's bible study and cell grp which has been awesome. it truly is a rock-tumbling session (rock tumbling is where u put unpolished rocks in a rock tumbler and you shake it such that they rub against one another and polish each other). i'm not much good for a rubbing and polishing of other stones cos i just sit there like a sponge. inactive and simply absorbing. the girls in bible study and cell group are uber inspiring as they share insights and how God has spoken into their lives and stuff. i've been utterly blessed with a wonderfully enthusiastic cell leader - jenna. uber sweet and uber happy :D gotta love that girl. and  then there's wonderful joe who cooks us wonderful meals every thursday night and he's really passionate about what he does as well. he reminds me of the coach in facing the giants..i keep expecting him to say "take a knee" when we are going to pray..but nah..we don't. joe is a wonderful man...courtney is a lucky lassie :)

i am thankful for all my friends here. the occasional movie nights where we sit in my room and watch a movie on my 20" mac screen or just watch friends on the china youtube - youku or smth.. while we do our work :) that's what happiness is. doing work together in a grp so we can all complain about how lousy we all are (when in truth...we aren't. we are just trying to be humble/fishing for compliments.) lol. welcome to art school where everyone thinks/pretends to think that they suck when in truth, they know/want to know that they are amazing. 

i must confess...i am one of them. oh we horrible artist. what i make makes who i am. this ish bad. i must not let my work rule my identity and self worth. bad bad bad. utter rambles. i am stuffed up my head with a cold. forgive me! 

if you've been wondering where i have disappeared to..be it disneyland or in the bed of a guy...it is neither. i have been a very good girl and art school nerd and doing my work all week long. the following pictures are from my 2d design class. i never knew i was capable of such things so i am really as talented as people have been telling me and it's not because they are nice even if it is party the reason why they tell me i am gifted. hahaha. 

we had to do a project on positive and negative sp

ace where we had to use the viewfinder and draw and object close up and cropped. it was meant to be abstract, but mine obviously isn't since the bloody object was so small and anything nearer would mean nothing to me. and me being the realism person likes things looking what it actually is. so because of that and abit of craftmanship, i got 87/100 for this one :( sad. thankfully..my prof says this will be my lowest grade. 

so brudders. if u remember the yakbone necklaces that anne marie gave us...this is it! done on bristol paper in pen and ink (prismacolor black marker and micron technical pens)

after which, we had to practice our value scale thingy..as shown last entry...and apply it with texture to our work...we had to come up with 5 different ones....so this shows a progression..my first one is really cluttered and crappy cos it was all experimental so i was just playing around to see what suit best. 

Texture 1:

Texture 2: Equally experimental..though i learnt a few lessons from the first one. DUN SHADE TOO MUCH....

texture 3: 

this was fun. this was actually my first one that i worked on. i was patient then and had a vision. the first 2 experimental ones was when i knew not what to do.

texture 4: played abit more and got pretty decent results >.<

Texture 5: My final piece. DAMN HAPPY with this one. i am the obi one kanoby for this class. BOW DOWN TO ME LOSERS!! hahaha. yeah. i was the only kid in class that didn't need to work on the project. i moved on in life and to the next phase which was patterning. FUN :D

you gotta wait for that though ;p