wordstock 2 - stock de mot - wortlager

after about two months of insanity, i have checked my email and received a letter from wordstock, the annual literary festival in portland, congratulating me on being one of the ten finalists! i already have secured a place in the wordstock 10, an anthology that will be available at the festival, by being a finalist, but i have to wait until november to hear the final word.

i am ecstatic. wish me luck!

stingrays - pastenagues - stechrochen

again. i am sorry for the hiatus, but i just finished the second week of school and am literally exhausted. i try to get over eight hours of sleep every night, but at the end of the day, i am always completely drained.

anyways, that's not your problem.

my dad sent me this awesome fowarded email of the golden stingray migration:

"Looking like giant leaves floating in the sea, thousands of Golden Rays are seen here gathering off the coast of Mexico .

The spectacular scene was captured as the magnificent creatures made one of their biannual mass migrations to more agreeable waters.

Gliding silently beneath the waves they turned vast areas of blue water to gold off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula

Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer, stumbled across the phenomenon while looking for whale sharks.

She said: 'It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm

and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.

It's hard to say exactly how many there were, but must range in the thousands.

We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too.

'I feel very fortunate I was there in the right place at the right time to experienced nature at his best.'

Measuring up to 7ft (2.1 meters) from wing-tip to wing-tip, Golden rays are also more prosaically known as cow nose rays.

They have long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads and give them a cow-like appearance.

Despite having poisonous stingers they are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.

The population in the Gulf of Mexico migrates, in schools of as many as 10,000, clockwise, from western Florida to the Yucatan."

infidel - infidèle - ungläubiger

 

i read "infidel" by ayaan hirsi ali in less than 48 hours, which is good for me, considering it was a memoir. it was absolutely fantastic - to be thrust into the extremism of tradition muslim culture is astounding. it is an amazing capture of life and survival. recommended. on the scale of one to ten, this one goes to eleven. 

plan - avenir - zukunft

so, i was going to post another drawing today, but then i kind of fucked up the picture, so i have to restart it/move on to a new picture. anyways, i thought that i would do a post about colleges, because it's the weekend before school starts and i'll be writing my college applications this fall. that's crazy scary.

anyways, i have six colleges i want to apply to:
(ranked in order of desirability)
1. goucher college
2. colorado college
3. hampshire college
4. reed college
5. pitzer college
6. bard college
7. university of nebraska (go corn huskers!)

no, wait. just kidding about that last one...

so, yeah. i've narrowed it down and am scared out of my mind because it's coming up so fast. i mean, i'm taking a couple really tough courses this year that i hadn't been planning on taking (ap statistics, for one), but i'm also going to go all out on my academics this year to make up for last year.

i'm also planning on starting an art appreciation and experience club at pchs with two of my friends (the finer things club - american office reference) and an underground zine with another friend (the bullsheet). also planning on learning how to dive (maybe).

so, yeah. that's my bare-bones plan for this year.

boycott - israel - video

again, sorry for the hiatus. i've been working my ass off to get ready for school (which starts in exactly a week!). anyways, i received this video from my good friend bonnie and found it funny and extremely depressing at the same time. enjoy.

0 - the fool - attempt

so... this is my first attempt at actually drawing. the inspiration was of the zero tarot card: the fool. sketched with a 2h faber-castelle pencil, inked with faber-castelle pigment liners (black), and colored in with 7 prismacolors (three of them skin colors). i think that this came out well - the pose is a little awkward and the anatomy isn't all there, but i think that the colors and techniques are good, for the most part.

critique, or not, but i just wanted to share this first step into the world of markers and "real" art.

(sorry for the shitty image, but it was the best i could do - the colors are brighter in real life and the lines are crisper)

goucher - college - future

(i couldn't get the video embedded correctly, so go here.)

i have found a college. i know this may come as a surprise to all of you, seeing that i've been extremely undecided about what i'm going to do after my high school graduation, but i have (officially) found my 'perfect' college.

it's a small school (under 2000 students) that has independent study and required study abroad. i could see myself going to goucher and will do my best to get in.