19

Well, hello everyone. It's my birthday today, I am now 19 years old.

It has been lovely to have my grandma here for the last few days. We managed to do quite a lot around my classes. And today I didn't have any classes so that was perfect. We took a bus tour out to Peggy's Cove which is sort of the iconic little fishing village with a light house perched on the rocks. I don't have any photos of that because I took Jenn's film camera there instead of my digital one. The best birthday present would be if those photos turn out but I really don't think it worked because when I went to rewind it there was no resistance. I don't think the film was even going through the camera. I have been loving film photography but it's things like that which make me not want to switch over from digital. I'm not saying nothing goes wrong with a digital camera but at least you know it's gone wrong.

We had a beautiful day which was even more appreciated because the last two have been cloudy, rainy, and foggy.

We went out for dinner at Economy Shoe Shop(yes it is a restaurant) but neither of us had much of an appetite after the delicious gingerbread we had at Peggy's Cove. I ordered a cider and they didn't even ID me.

Yesterday we went to the citadel which is in the centre of the city and I walk by it every time I go downtown. It was interesting and it is nice to know what's up there when I glance up at Citadel Hill.

Thank you to everyone for your birthday wishes, it has been a lovely day.

Colour & Lines

This is #1 of sixteen assignments on colour to be completed in the next two weeks.

This is the first time I have worked with gouache and I am not a fan so far. The colours dry so much lighter than you expect. This colour wheel is far from perfect but it is as good as my patience would allow.

This is a three and a half hour line drawing for drawing class. We were supposed to be trying for accuracy and varying line weights. I'm not sure how well I did on either of those fronts but I like it. And I am sure I will treasure it when I am no longer living in this house.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

So, last night I went to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a Terry Gilliam film. It was a very different crowd than the night before for Bright Star. For that it was mostly an older crowd and the theater was maybe two thirds full. Last night, however, it was a very young crowd and the announcer declared us very lucky because there were over a thousand people who tried to get in. I did not feel the film deserved this huge popularity difference as I felt that Bright Star was by far the superior film.

Let me explain for those of you who don't already know the story of this film. The Imaginarium was the last film that Heath Ledger worked on and it was incomplete when he died. Some of his friends offered to step in and fill his roll in order to get his final film finished. These friends are, in order of appearance, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Ferrell. Now you might think it would be difficult to pull this off but this film actually lends itself to this quite nicely and I don't think anyone who doesn't know would even guess that this wasn't the plan all along.
The story is of Doctor Parnassus(Christopher Plummer) and his traveling Imaginarium. He is immortal as he has made a deal with the devil(Tom Waits) to give him his child(Lily Cole) upon her 16th birthday. The devil comes to collect but being fond of betting he offers a new bet as a chance to save her. I will say no more of the plot as I hate spoilers myself.

There are a lot of things that I like about this movie. Sets, costumes, characters, the premise. I would not give it a high rating, though. It lacked focus. There was a very strong plot and that should have been the driving force behind the whole film. I think the makers got a bit sidetracked by the wonderful fantasies they were creating and neglected the story. I don't think it would have made any difference if Heath Ledger had been the only one playing his character. I would not have liked it better.
I am not saying you shouldn't see it, because it is far from a failure. I just feel that there was so much waisted potential, that it was so close to being something really good. It just fell a bit short in my eyes.

Bright Star

Last night I went to see Bright Star, the latest film by Jane Campion (The Piano). It was playing at the Oxford Theater, just down the road from me, as part of the Atlantic Film Festival.
The story is based on the three year romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. As such it is a delicate tale filled with poetry. I did not find it slow or boring as it had the potential to be. Perhaps the old man snoring a couple seats down from me would disagree but I suspect it was just past his bedtime - the film didn't start until almost 10PM.
Though there was much reciting and quoting of poetry in the script, the cinematography was also visual poetry. I could have done without the woman beside me gasping "What a beautiful shot!" regularly but she was absolutely right.
I do not wish to give any of the story away, but if you know about the life of John Keats, then you will know how it ends. Though not a fairy tale ending, I did not leave the theater feeling sad or depressed, but moved. Moved by the beautiful tale, the inspiring filmmaking, and the amazing acting.

I had seen Ben Wishaw (Keats) once before in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and have found both of these performances outstanding. Abbie Cornish (Brawne) was new to me but her performance was breathtaking at times, raw and genuine. Scratch that, I just looked her up and she is not new to me at all. I suppose it is a testament to her acting ability that I didn't recognize her. I saw her just a couple weeks ago in Candy which is also a wonderful film with Heath Ledger (warning: do not translate wonderful to uplifting, I have yet to see a film about drug addicts that isn't depressing). I have also seen her in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I also enjoyed the performance of Edie Martin as Fanny's young sister Toots.

I'm not sure when Bright Star will hit theaters but I highly recommend it. And you will get the full effect of those amazing shots if you see it on the big screen.
I am off to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus tonight so you can expect another review tomorrow.

Slow Motion

Hi Everyone,

I feel like ranting so you all get to hear about my day.

Photography was really good. It is a much more complicated process to develop film than I thought. Somehow I thought the complicated part would be printing(maybe it is, we haven't done that yet). There are so many different washes and stages and finicky temperatures and no light allowed and whatnot. It was really hard learning how to wind the film onto the spools. It isn't that difficult of a task, a bit tricky, but we had to get good enough at it that we could do it in the dark. We split up into groups of four to develop and I think my film turned out really well. Some people had big chunks where there wasn't anything on it but I only lost the first couple photos that I knew I would lose when we had to open the camera because the film wasn't loaded properly. I have to shoot another roll of film and develop it on my own before next class so we'll see how that goes.

My group was done early so I went downstairs to the art supply store and spent a fortune on photopaper and film and a big pad of newsprint for drawing class. Photography is such an expensive class! But very rewarding.

My next class was studio practice which is where my rant comes in. Instead of regular class we joined a workshop by a visiting artist. He does walking art. It is way too out there for me. We walked up to the Public Gardens (on the way I talked with a Korean boy named Daniel who is in all of my classes and is really nice). When we got there we began this walk. The Public Gardens aren't huge, just one city block. We didn't even enter the gardens, we stayed on the sidewalk. The idea was to take fifteen minutes to walk each side, no talking, just walking incredibly slowly. It was fun at first because there was a huge group of us moving down the sidewalk in slow motion and everyone was staring at us and asking us what was going on but we couldn't talk. But an hour is an incredibly long time to spend walking around one block. And we were supposed to do three of these in three different places. So after that one off we headed to a small block right downtown. This time we went in single file so that we were surrounding the entire block and we went incredibly slowly because we were spending the same amount of time on a block half or a quarter of the size. This time it was torture. Nobody was enjoying it, everyone was getting cold. It was terrible. And then it finishes and we head off to the next one. But there was no way I was going to do that again so I was relieved when my teacher said she couldn't stay for it and didn't expect us to. I am now incredibly sore, incredibly tired, and a bit confused as to what we just did and why.

So what crazy things did you guys do today?

My New Favourite Cup

I was sad to leave my favourite mug at home when I left but it has been temporarily replaced.

Jenn made this mug and I really like it. She said that it was an accident that it got that shape but that's what I like about it.

This is our small and humble kitchen.

All My Classes

Hi everyone, sorry for the long silence on my end. Busy, busy, busy!

So now I have had all of my classes at least once so I know what I'm in for. My favourites are drawing and photography. Intro to Studio Practice is so so and Writing for the arts is lagging way behind. Essays! Papers! That's not what I'm at art school for. I am sure it is good for me but I have been slaving over a "Description as Argument" paper on Rembrandt's The Philosopher in Meditation so I am not feeling particularly fond of that class. I was having fun with it until I realized just how long it was supposed to be and have been spending hours trying to flesh out my ideas.

This is the painting (my choice).

The amount of homework is appalling. I understand now why I only have classes three days a week. I need all the free time I can get to have everything done on time.

My room is looking much less orderly now with supplies and papers all over. And I now have a large easel which I am borrowing from our neighbor.

You can see my NSCAD bag in the corner there.

The bag had my foundation kit in it. I quite like it despite the fact that everyone has it and it's not waterproof (I discovered this in the absolute downpour on my way to class yesterday). It had a variety of basic art supplies in it. Not nearly all that we need but it's a start.

I'll try to be more regular with this but it ain't easy. I also don't like posting unless I have some sort of photo to go with it.

First Day of Classes!

My first class was photography at 8:30 this morning. This is the kind of camera that we will be using. We will only be doing film and only black and white. Our teacher will give us different assignments every week but we always have to shoot a roll of film a week as homework. They supply the cameras but you can only take them out for 24 hours at a time. Lucky for me, Jenn has this exact camera but with a wide angle lens so I won't have to sign them out. Just today because we did it as part of the class. My teacher is very nice and she was saying that she likes to cram all the information into the first few classes so we have the most time we can doing the practical part (being in the darkroom). She did a whole lecture today on the basics of the camera. It's really good because she is teaching as if none of us has ever seen a camera before.

My next class was Intro to Studio Practice. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much but it has potential. We did a few projects and the teacher(perhaps I should be calling them professors) gave us homework. The biggest homework is just gathering all the things we need to bring to next class.
She did a slideshow and before she started, she asked if anyone knew the artist... I was assuming I wouldn't because I don't really know very many but then she said... Andy Goldsworthy. And I was shocked to see that nobody else knew who he was. I had seen all the images that she showed us but I am hoping we will be using him as the inspiration for a project.
She let us out 2 hours early today (normally a 4 hour class) so I went and bought film and then made the long trek home (it's not so long but when I'm tired I swear it doubles).

I don't have any more classes until monday. So I have lots of time to get my homework done.

Today I made the discovery that every single one of my teachers this semester is female. I was surprised by that but it will probably change next semester.

Here are a couple more shots of Halifax.

The Port Campus, where the majority of my classes are, is right beside that big cruise ship. And that is the boardwalk that runs all along the waterfront.

Self-portrait

Here are some more recent drawings. I did not use a grid on these ones. I took pictures with photobooth on my computer and then sketched them.

Please don't read too much into them. I know some of them are a bit dark.

An Old Sketch

Here is a sketch I did a while back.

(sorry for the poor image quality, I don't have a scanner right now so I had to take a photo of it)

I am happy with it but it wasn't incredibly hard as I used a photo and the grid method to transfer it over. It is much easier to make an accurate copy of something when you are only working with little squares of it at a time.
I have been doing some without a grid recently which I will upload soon.

The Long Journey Home

All packed up and ready to go.

This was a return journey with a lot of steps.

1. Take a shuttle to the port on Santorini.
2. Catch the boat back to Piraeus.
3. Take a bus from Piraeus to the Athens airport (at midnight).
4. Sleep in the airport until our flight.
5. Fly from Athens to London Stanstead.
6. Take a bus to London Heathrow.
7. Spend 36hrs(? I can't remember exactly but it was around that) in Heathrow airport.
8. Fly from Heathrow to Seattle.
9. Say goodbye to Willow, and go to Linda and Michael's(my grandparents).
10. Spend the night in Seattle.
11. Get the bus from Seattle to Port Angeles.
12. Miss the last ferry and have to get a hotel room
13. Get up bright and early and catch the first ferry.
14. Meet my Mum and Grandma in Victoria, and drive my Grandma to the airport for her europe adventure.
15. Drive home.

Whew!!! What a long time that took.

This was out of the large glass wall we slept in front of in Heathrow.

It was lovely to have some trees in an otherwise concrete, metal, and glass world.

Our flight from Athens was beautiful. Taking off, the city looked like a rock covered in barnacles because the buildings are all white. And we flew over the Swiss Alps. Willow brought up the valid point that they were not really much more amazing than the Rockies but they were beautiful anyway.

And now here I am, sitting in Halifax, on my next adventure. But this one will be a wee bit longer. And luckily all in english.

The End

Santorini part2

This shot shows part of the ruined city on top of the mountain beside us. It believe dates from around the 2nd century B.C. It was really amazing to see how advanced they were. There was even a theatre.

We took a bus to the main city, Fira. It is beautiful, perched up on the cliff top.

There were lots of cruise ships and tourists riding the donkeys up the cliff. It was very small and didn't take us long to explore the whole thing. We only went there once. I felt like we were supposed to go there again because that was the reason I had wanted to see Santorini but we were happy with our little routine in Perissa. And I don't think there was much more to see.
We were really done with sightseeing and ready just to relax.

This is the beach right in front of our place. It does have black sand but it looks especially dark here because it was raining.

Santorini

From Venice we took a train down to Ancona. I didn't get any pictures there because we only stayed overnight and it wasn't a particularly picturesque port city.

From there we caught a ferry to Patras in Greece. It was a long overnight trip and sleep was hard to get as we were in the nightclub/disco. We took a bus from Patras to Piraeus, the port of Athens. There we got on another ferry bound for Santorini.
On that boat we watched soaps in greek. It is amazing how easy it is to figure out what's going on (sarcasm, incase you didn't guess).
We arrived at 12:30, or so in the morning. It was very nice that we had booked accommodation and they sent a shuttle for us.

Anny Studios was a great place. Incredibly cheap, thirty metres from the beach, swimming pool, and we got our own room with a kitchenette and private bathroom.

The bathroom was one of those ones where the whole room gets wet when you have a shower so we always had to remember to take the toilet paper out first.

This is Perissa, the "city" we were staying in. It is very small but nice because it's on the side of the island with beaches whereas the other side is steep cliff.

We lived under these mountains. We hiked to the top a couple times. They smelled wonderful as wild oregano and thyme were growing there. We gathered some for cooking.

It was incredibly hot and we basically lived in our bathing suits. We would read in sun chairs by the pool and jump in the water every few minutes to cool down again. Here's my tan by the end.

The Graveyard Chipmunk

Today I walked over to Rogers to try and get a phone plan. Turns out that my cell isn't compatible so I'm not sure what to do now. Buy a new cell or get a landline or something else I haven't thought of yet.

On the way there I was stopped by a policeman on his motorcycle along with a group of grade 9 girls and he proceeded to explain to us how to cross the street properly. Apparently you are supposed to put your arm out in front of you to let cars know you want to cross. Have you ever seen anyone do that? I haven't. I was glad I didn't have to cross the street in front of him because I would feel ridiculous doing that.

I walked through the public gardens on my way home. It is really beautiful. A bit like Beacon Hill but small.

The graveyard is right beside it so I meandered through there. I was delighted to find chipmunks there. They are so funny. And so fast!

Venice part 2

This was the inside of a makeup and perfume store. You weren't allowed to take photos so I had to be sneaky.

I swear the seagulls there are almost twice as big as ours. It's the first time I have felt intimidated by a seagull.

This is the Basilica di San Marco. Opulent and magnificent. The entire ceiling is done in little gold tiles.

We had to enter on temporary boardwalks as the entryway was flooded. Apparently the whole Piazza San Marco can flood but seeing as everyone has boats I guess this wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Venice

I am absolutely in love with Venice. I have a hard time believing that it is a real city despite having been there and seen it with my own eyes.
It is very small and incredibly easy to get lost in. It is a pedestrian city which was a new experience for me. If you don't want to walk somewhere you have to take a boat.

By this point we were in good shape from all the walking we were doing so I was surprised to find my legs hurting in Venice. Eventually we figured out that it was due to all the bridges that we had to go over. (that made me curious how many bridges there are: according to wikipedia there are about 400)

The streets were mostly narrow alleys but sometimes they got so narrow that you had to turn sideways to get through. And they often came to sudden dead ends when they reached a canal where there was no bridge. I was careful to pay attention as it wouldn't be too hard to walk right off into the water sometimes.

The water was this milky blue, slightly more beautiful than this picture shows but also it was obviously quite dirty.

I often caught myself glancing down side streets, that in any other european city would have been cobbled with little cars parked on either side, and realizing that instead it was water with boats moored alongside.

Yes, even the ambulances are boats.

Roma part 2

This fountain is outside the Pantheon and we ate lunch or gelato on its steps a few times.

A silhouetted cityscape with St. Peter's right in the middle.

There were so many beautiful statues, especially angels, throughout the city.

I was quite taken with the Trevi Fountain. It is magnificent.

This is the only time I saw this sight but it pleased me to no end.

A brief note on Italian style: yeulch!

I was surprised to find I don't like it much at all. They are very fond of shiny materials, sequins, and have an infatuation with purple. Perhaps this is something that has lasted from the days of the emperors.

Haircuts are often very choppy and waaaay too much eyeliner is worn.

These last two pictures are from the area called Trastevere. We stumbled upon it while trying to find a gallery or museum. We never found what we were looking for but we had a great time exploring the neighborhood.