Painting the Human

Here is an interesting article about a woman with an interesting painting style...

Amazing Photography

I just keep stumbling across these insanely amazing photography articles, so I figured I might as well keep posting them here. Here is the link to an article about a father taking photos of his autistic son. It started out as just a father and son activity, but eventually they used it as a way to describe why he did things the way he did them. The pictures are absolutely amazing and inspirational.

Spray Art

So today was a good day. I've been working on this project for AP art that involved me sitting and cutting out a stencil for two hours, give or take, for a spray paint piece I came up with. I brought it into school today, we have a progress check each week on these projects, and this guy came up and hugged me. "Its great," he said. "I'd buy that. It's so cool." And then more people drifted over and everyone told me how cool it looked, and I could tell they meant it, because in art we don't really hand out compliments unless we really mean it. It was just a nice reassurance that I'm good at what I do and that everyone loved the idea and the time I put into it.

Photo Therapy

This is such a cool article and a really short clip about the most interesting conceptual pictures I have ever seen. The article is here.

What is even the point of school anymore.

A Narrative

Everyone would come to her. Her friends, her family, a few acquaintances, for advice. It wasn't as if she was known as "that" girl,but when the cookie crumbled, what she predicted would usually become reality. Elle was, by no means, a black and white thinker. As time passed, her world seemed to expand into more shades of gray, leaving less room for anything absolute. When people asked how she knew so much, Elle would simply shrug and say, "you have to view things from their point of view."

That was it, wasn't it? Losing herself long enough to analyze someone's thoughts and action to come up with a probable explanation or outcome. It wasn't always easy, but Elle liked to understand things. She wanted to know why. Like a toddler, always asking, "why, why why".

The problem was, sometimes she lost herself. She couldn't always distinguish the grays in the world from the few bits of black and white in her heart; her morals. She could make a decision and then realize she had been so far gone in thinking like someone else that she forgot to draw herself back in. Each time, she would pick herself up off the ground, brush away the dust and say, "I'll take this and learn from it." Because anyone can take something away from each day, each experience, that they can piece together with other experiences to figure something out in the future. Anyone can do this. Especially Elle.

Although she does make mistakes; she shares some of them with her friends as freely as she does her successes. With each mistake comes an abundance of knowledge. Because she has done some stupid things. Some mistakes have turned into things she does on purpose. Some mentalities have disappeared into walls of gray, now overlooked by her eyes. Elle is in no means perfect, she feels as though she slips more from that standard with each passing day. Yet she does nothing to change that. This, she recognizes, is a choice.

Choices. Oh so easily masked with the words "mistake", "accident". and "coincidence". Choices that people refuse to own up to consciously, partially because some do not even realize they have made a choice. Elle has seen people run from their choices like scared dogs, unable to accept them for what they are. Elle has done her fair share of running, too.

You Are Not

Feel Good Drag

"We can just pretend.
Lips that need no introduction
Now who's the greater sin?"-Feel Good Drag, Anberlin

I remember the first time I heard this song. My friend had told me about a band called Anberlin, and that this was an amazing song. I started listening to it, figured it had a good beat to it, and looked up the words. I didn't buy it, because I didn't like what it was about. The only reason I buy songs nowadays is because I can relate to part of the song. That or it's Hannah Montana. What can I say, she was my childhood idol, old habits die hard.

Anyway, I ended up buying a couple of Anberlin's albums a few weeks later, and low and behold, this song was on one of them. But this time, when I listened to it, I realized I liked it more than I did before. And that kind of freaked me out, because my life had taken, more or less, a 360 in only a few weeks. Needless to say, I've been listening to it quite a bit ever since. 

Last Day of Summer

I have...less than eleven hours of summer left. Up until today, just like every year, I was kinda OK with the thought of going back to school. And now, I feel like I'm about to get my constitutional freedom revoked. Quite an exaggeration, I know, but it's a weird feeling. Because I know once I start school tomorrow, it's kind of going to be the start in the next point of my life, especially after everything that happened last year. I know so much is going to change this year, and thats exciting yet scary to me...but it doesn't matter, because either way, I'll be waiting for the bus tomorrow at 6:35 AM with a bag strapped to my back. School. Yay. And I won't be done until next June, and by then, I'll be a different person, that I'm sure of. It's just weird, going back to school. It's all so different from summer. And this was such a busy summer...lets see, I

• Went to Wyoming
• Went to the beach, Maine, and New York
• Stayed with my cousin, Carli, for a week
• Had a 2 week art class at Temple, things really changed after that haha

Everything just happened fast. And everything is happening faster and faster. I dont know. It's weird. That's all I have to say.

Line

When we're drawing, we tend to use line. What other method is there? Don't we have to distinguish one object from it's surroundings? So say you draw a picture, and it looks great, but you're frustrated. It just doesn't look...right. It's flat. And no matter what you do, you can't fix it. Unless you're using multiple lines of varying weight and size, your picture will remain flat.

Think about it this way: does anything really have a black line dividing it from something else? No. It's simply different variations of color that contrast against another object, giving the illusion of a line. So, in fact, there is not a huge black line around your soda can or your flower. You need to create that "line" with different values of whatever media you're using. Then I promise you, you'll be much less frustrated.

Last Day

Yesterday was my last day of school. I'm DONE. Well, for 3 months anyway. But still. And my mom is letting me get Lucky Charms for all the hard work I've done. (Thank you wikipedia and yahoo!answers.)

You don't understand. This is a monumental event.

My mom never lets me get Lucky Charms. Why? Because I only eat the marshmellows. The actual cereal is like cardboard with a dusting of sugar on it. Who would want that? So that's why she doesn't buy it, she says she's paying full price for something I only eat half of. So every time we go to the grocery store, I ask if we can get them, and she says no. Every time I leave home, for a camp, or vacation, or whatever, I have a small bowl of Lucky Charms with every meal. I sound like some sort of crack addict. I'm not ashamed.

Echoing...

"Things don't always have to be 'just fine', Sara."

Just fine.

What is "just fine"? We use the word "fine" a ton of times each day, whether it's to describe how we feel, how something went, and so on. "Fine" has become a word similar to "average" or "okay". Which is ironic, because according to dictionary.com, it can mean "of superior or best quality" along with "excellent or admirable". But that one sentence stopped me dead in my tracks. Because everything doesn't always have to be 'just fine'. You don't always have to just make do with what you have. You don't always have to compensate for other people. Sometimes, you can make the choices you want to be happy. You can rise above being fine. Those words echo in my head. Because once they were said, it made me think about the way that I was living my life and about the choices I was making. A situation can be better than ok. Everything does not have to simply be average, but you have to set yourself up for success. You have to want to live a life that is more than "just fine". I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Frozen

Sometimes you just experience that feeling, whether it's after a thought silently passes from one person to another through a single glance or a moment that causes time to slow to a standstill. Something that was not entirely planned yet not completely unexpected. When you can walk away and someone can tell you that you're all "smiley" and bright. A feeling that can never be described, yet one that you always long for, whether you have felt it or not. Then suddenly there are those days where you feel it all the time. And you realize it's a day you will never forget, whether something important or not happened. You just will.

Just playing around with some new ideas...

Friends...

You know what sucks? When you have an irreplaceable friendship with someone that just falls apart. And you know you will never have another friend like that. Going from days of not talking each other, to months, and then eventually to years, until they become a stranger to you. Sometimes you want to ask them how they're doing, or what's new in their life, but that wouldn't be the "acceptable" thing to do. The worst part is getting to know the person they once used to be, then watching that person disappear and turn into someone you feel like you had never known. And you never have a chance to talk about it.

Goodbye!

I can't wait to get out of this town. Sure, I love it here. But there's thousands of other places to explore. I can't for the life of me understand how some people stay here their entire lives. Everything is just so similar. And small. Then I think about all of the people who will be coming back here after college, and that makes me sad. Because I probably won't ever see them again. They have to come back to take over their parents' businesses. They don't realize that they can make their own way, wherever they want. The world is so large, yet we all seem to be confined to such small areas. I think it's because we hold ourselves back. All I know is that I'm jumping at the first chance to leave. The first chance to explore.

Chances

Has it ever occurred to you that you could change your life right now? You could stand up in the middle of class and yell at your teacher. You could buy a plane ticket to California. You could place yourself in the way of death. You could do anything. We simply do not do these things because of the consequences that follow them. But sometimes, it's worth the risk. Sometimes, we overlook trying something new because of what might happen. If our lives are as bad as we say they are, we would be taking these chances.

Irreversible

Honestly, the Boston bombing really freaked me out today. I was sitting on the track, my giraffe legs splayed over the red rubber, when one of my coaches said he had an announcement. He had just received a text message from our head coach, saying that he was okay. OK from what? OK from the two bombs that had detonated at the finish line of a 22 mile marathon in Boston that he was attending. In the time I had been running my 15 minute warm-up, two people had died and a couple dozen innocent bystanders had been seriously injured from an explosion that should never have happened.

My teammates were shocked for a total of five minutes. After awhile, everyone returned to talking about what they were wearing to prom, how much our workout sucked, and how everyone wanted it to be warmer. 

We're all getting numb to these things.

What else can you expect? With bombings or shootings plastered all over the news every other month, people will begin to overlook it. Sure, it's news, people are big on spreading awareness, but nothing is changing. We act too late, giving aid after a tragedy occurs instead of working to prevent it.

I guess what struck me the most was the fact that there is no known reason why this happened. It doesn't seem like a group of terrorists who are trying to get a point across, this seems like a random act of destruction. Which makes me feel like it could happen anywhere. What if that was my race? What if when I was crossing the finish line, bombs began exploding around me? What if one moment I was cheering on my teammates, and the next moment I was gone?

I just find it interesting how much our society depends on all of us to follow the guidelines and rules that they set out for us. And that it only takes one person to cause chaos, to which no one else knows how to respond to.