Classes.... Part 2

So I just got back from film, and I’m using up my semi-free time Monday to get all this down for all of you! We don’t actually have to record anything this week unless we want to because I was right, we’re editing next week. So we watched our short films as usual, some were really lame and boring. Some were neat. I thought mine was one of the better ones because I had a whole ton of shots, most people only had a few longer ones and they really had no meaning, they were just random. So we learned a little about editing. We’ll be using Final Cut Pro starting next week! And we’re just going to use the few small projects we’ve already done for footage. Should be good fun! Oh, and I was really worried that as film and photography picked up in terms of work I would be more than swamped, as I am now, I would be drowning in lack of sleep, but it turns out I don’t think much will pick up. Sure, slowly I’ll be getting more work for everything and projects and finals and all that, but not quite as much more as I was dreading.

So now time to tell about LCD! And by that exclamation point, I really mean “I HATE LCD!” For those of you who already forgot, LCD stands for Light, Color, and Design and it’s a foundation class almost everyone has to take, writing majors and architecture majors have all different classes than the rest of first year students, so they don’t. And most foundation kids have to take 3-D and 4-D, which I don’t because I’m a media arts major, so I take film and photography instead of those two. So LCD is essentially everyone’s least favorite class, unless they happen to have a teacher who’s a drag in another subject, but it’s hard to beat in terms of being pretty horrible. My professor, I can’t remember his name…. Professor Sayler, he’s an old white guy too. But he’s much more in the past than my English teacher. He’s not old fashioned, that’s not what I mean, I just think he’s forgotten what it’s like to be young. And the subject itself is pretty ridiculous. I mean, it’s sort of self-explanatory, it’s exploring light, color, and design. That’s all, simply put. So we have to do all sorts of color grids only using red yellow and blue but have to create tons of colors and we have to paint in the same way and also ue this paper called Color Aid, which is 314 different colors and it’s uber expensive so everyone complains about it. Basically, it’s a million hours of work only to produce a piece of work that he rips apart and you have to re-do it often because he has a major problem explaining what he wants. I think that’s because he wants to do the whole “let us discover it or ourselves and make mistakes” stuff, which only works if you even know how to attempt the assignment! It doesn’t work when you have absolutely no idea what he wants in the first place! I mean, yea, I’m learning some cool stuff on my own and slowly I understand what it is he’s looking for. All in all, I really wouldn’t mind the class so much if he wasn’t so hard to understand and if it wasn’t so TEDIOUS! That’s basically what it is, agitating and tedious, both to be there, to listen to him, to understand, and to do it. And it takes way too long. It’s annoying. Between it and my other classes, I sleep.

So then Drawing, which I have on Wednesdays. My professor is actually quite good. I’m learning a whole ton from him, which is refreshing. You know, teachers? You’re supposed to learn things from them? Did you know that? Yup. So he’s not necessarily a person I’d love, he’s an okay guy, but as I said, he knows what he’s doing and how to teach it. In the mornings we do general drawings of still-life type things, like chairs and then cylindrical things with ellipses and then box things with scaffolding to place it and then shoes combining everything we learned. I did really really well with all that stuff because it related directly to everything I learned in the Engineering Academy, so he liked my work! At some point I’ll try to borrow someone’s digital camera and post my best work so far from all my classes, and now that I’ll hopefully be writing regularly, I’ll post pictures regularly too. So then in the afternoon, we draw from the figure, usually using what we learned in the morning by applying it to the figure. So we did ellipses and boxes reflecting the figure three dimensionally in space. When I post some pictures, it’ll make more sense. And of course, for any of you who knows how a figure drawing class goes, you always do quick 30 second to 2 minute drawings at the beginning called Gesture drawings, and boy, do I suck at those! But with practice I’m sure I’ll get better. That’s the whole point, right? I’m not in the class because I’m already a master! After the quick drawings, then you do 5 minute, then 10, and sometimes 20, depending on the goal of the lesson. Figure drawing is extremely difficult and exhausting, but I like the class pretty well. The problem is that this teacher, Professor Webb, also give tongs of homework. He makes a point of assigning 6 hours of homework for the 6 hours of class, and on top of that we have to go to open model sessions at least 10 times throughout the semester. So that’s about 8-9 hours of homework for his class. It doesn’t seem too bad right? But it is, piled on top of so much other homework. This week, we had to draw shoes, which turned out okay on one of the assignments I did, but the other was crap, and I either need to re-do it now or have him tell me to re-do it when I turn it in, because I know it needs to be. *sigh* I just don’t want to, because the first one was done in pencil, which I like, but this one is charcoal, which I HATE! I don’t mind charcoal pencil, and even compressed charcoal can be okay, though I don’t like it either, but no, this was vine charcoal, which deteriorates under your fingers and it sucks and is really hard to use. So Drawing verdict: learning a lot, good teacher, exhausting, tons of work. Tuesday nights I generally go to the open model sessions, which is just a figure for 3 hours for you to practice from.

I have English again Wednesday nights. Wednesday evenings tend to be happy days, like Tuesdays are bad days, because the week is basically over and I know I have the next day off. As I said Thursdays I sleep in and do homework and usually run errands, like buying food and supplies or mailing letters etc.

I have Photography Friday mornings; I usually develop my film Thursday night. My teacher, Paul McDonough, is ok, not good or bad. He really wants us to figure things out for ourselves with a small bit of his guidance, in terms of composition. Technique in the darkroom he’s not too concerned about. I dunno, I haven’t figured him out yet, or quite what he’s looking for. Mostly, we’re leaning the basics, which I already know, as do most, but some don’t, so we haven’t printed much. In two weeks we’ll have our first critique. Out assignments so far are portraits, ‘found’ still lives, reflections, and night pictures. I have tons of reflections and night shots because I was already taking those anyways because I was interested. In fact, I have nighttime reflections! I’m fascinated with figuring out how to take pictures with the right exposure at night but of course with out a flash. Flashes are all bad, unless you’re using them on purpose for a certain effect. I have zero found still lives and a fair amount of portraits. When I went to buy all my supplies for photography I was super excited! When I was getting the supplies for the other classes, it was so lame and frustrating because it was so much stuff and so much stuff that I didn’t even know what they wanted or what it was, but photography was great because I got paper and film and my own lupe (magnifying glass) and developing tank and reels (for the negatives) and filters (for printing with the enlarger)! All my own! I realize now that I probably didn’t need to because you can always rent them, but I really just wanted my own, you know? And I figured I’d need and use them forever, when I have my own house and make a bathroom into a darkroom and get an enlarger, I’ll need em anyways, right? Right. So there’s not much to say about that class, not too much work yet. It’ll slowly pick up soon just like film will because as we learn more, there’s more to do. Makes sense, right? So soon I’ll be in the darkroom more than just Thursday night and Friday morning in class. I worry a lot though that I just get lucky with what I do, that yes, I know technically how to do everything, but the pictures themselves aren’t because I’m good but because I get lucky with a few pictures. I dunno. But of course, I love that class! Not because the class is anything special, but because it’s photography, duh!

And finally, Art History. yay! yay?! yay? welp, it’s the history of art, a whole bunch of the important piece of art starting with the Paleolithic era, mostly the Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras, nothing from was back in the low and middle Paleolithic eras. So about 40,000 BCE at the oldest. We say BCE by the way, but it means BC. The cave paintings and trinkets from way back in the day! And we did Ancient Near Eastern, a.k.a. Mesopotamia, right? And Egypt. That’s so far, and this week we’re reading Aegean as we are studying for a test on the first three. We have to memorize about 90 images so far, and Professor Albert (I believe) is only testing us on 3 or 4 of them! But of course, the point is that we don’t know which three so we have to memorize all of them! The name, date, where found, the artist if known (which isn’t in any of these cases so far), materials, and a little bit about it. It’s not actually that bad, but it was really helpful to have mom helping me yesterday. I’m now procrastinating and it’s harder to memorize on your own without someone to quiz you. We did Paleolithic last night, but I didn’t quite finish, so I gotta do that as well as get started on the next round tonight. And I also should do that drawing assignment…. But boy, do I NOT want to! So we sit in a lecture hall watching slides along with the teacher and his little lecture. It’s a sleepy class, but not bad. I think it’s sorta interesting actually, but it’s all memorization. I’m not too bad at memorization, though. But I gotta get on it… my teacher’s kinda silly, he makes little corny jokes which makes the time go by a bit better, and he’s not bad to listen too, either.

So there’s my classes! Hope you enjoyed reading all that, because I’m bored of writing about it. I’d rather write about more current things, and now that I’ve got almost all the background information out of the way, I soon can!