Gingersnap

I was thinking about the pros and cons of 2009 today, on the end of the year of course. I guess what I am thinking about mostly are the cons. Right now, I realize that I haven't done much work since the semester ended or started rewriting thesis draft number 3. It's due in mid January anyways, but still... it would have been beneficial to start writing or at least making some work to gather ideas about what the writing IS about. But the problem is that I am spending much time at Tien''s house and it's all fun and games here. I've been mostly watching TV, movies (we saw "Avatar" in 3D today), playing Wii Fit, eating to my heart's content (how much pumpkin pie have I eaten so far?), Internet surfing (my laptop has since crashed and burned! At home, I am computerless until school starts), and reading a lot of romance novels! (Hell, I have a new favorite author, Julianne MacLean, having just read just two of her books in 4 1/2 hours each!) I guess it i...

Lol!!! Tien was like, "I got you this, but I know you have all of these songs!" Not "3" though!!!!! I got the set with the blue soap and yellow rubber duckie inspired Hello Kitty of course!!!! :D It's so compact this dryer turns into a mini case with handle!!!!! Something Tan gave me!!!!! So sweet!!!! I As well as attending my first Vo family Christmas Dinner yesterday. It was more fun than I had anticipated. They had red lobster on every plate, but Tien's mom made a delicious veggie noodle stir fry, fresh asparagus, and red and golden potatoes. Lol, I had some of those leftovers with my Christmas dinner of macaroni & cheese with soy ground and a side of broccoli-carrot medley. Today I spent the morning with Tien having eaten a wonderfully prepared breakfast and opening wonderful presents. I gave him some little, humorous gifts and of course, he has to be bigger and better than last year. He always outdoes himself every year in the gift de...

Damn! My Life is Only Worth 26 Cents! Bad things happen to people. Pennies are supposedly worthless, one cent wonders that no one cares about. Sometimes I see people toss them to the ground or keep walking as a penny sits on the street, waiting for someone to pick it up for their savings bank. I even tell the cashiers to keep that one extra cent because I personally feel like I don't need it. I constructed this acrylic painting and collected pennies from the date of my birth to last year. Memories in a way are like pennies. We wanna forget that the awful memories are there, but we can't help but remember. They are supposed to be just as worthless, but it's those events that make us feel that way. I have the worse short term memory ever, I forget where my keys are almost everyday!!!! So for each year, I wrote something good or bad that occurred in Sharpie marker. Like the beginning for October 7th, 1983, "I was born in a USAF Air Force Base Hospital in South Carolina, f...

After I finish eating everything, it really is back to work!!!!! These last few weeks have been quite busy and stressful, but thanks to that wonderful holiday called Thanksgiving, I was able to pig out for a few days and forget about all the bad things going wrong with school and the studio. So tomorrow a few new colored pencil romance sketches will be revealed. Whoo hoo!!!!!

Happy 27th birthday Robert!!! Best older brother ever. School was a bust. I missed my internship, forgot my keys in the apartment, and forwent breakfast all for the sake of the thesis paper. Then I was extra late to class because the printer was jammed. Had I known we were going to be exchanging papers with students, I would not have worked so hard.

Thesis Savvy today. It's already November!!! And I'm writing a first draft!!!! It contains issues on race, finding my identity amongst my passion for pop culture, and my love for romance genre, especially in historical fiction novels and Days of Our Lives. Yes, writing is is fun. (sarcasm). And tomorrow Robert and I are no longer "twins." :(

Happy Halloween!!!! Tien and I are on a scary movie binge tonight. A lot of films were missing from the video rental shelf. The ones I really wanted to watch were classics like Freddy Krueger, Casper, Addams Family and such. We're watching "Friday the 13th," the first "Halloween," "Twitches" ( a cute Tia and Tamara Mowry film), and "Goosebumps." It's a mixture of the terrifying, frightening, and humorous fun. No candy or costume. I guess that's next year for me. I'm definitely going to be a duck.

So..... I've decided on making a "Days of Our Lives Bites" cereal commercial for the Bonnie Hunt contest. My friend Alex is going to help me with editing. Lord knows I'm so bad at that. So the premise is simple- very cheesy and bright. First it opens in a seemingly empty art studio with the cheesy music of "Days of Our Lives." Cheerios is pushed aside, slamming to the ground as the box of "Days of Our Lives Bites" is brought into focus. "Oh, the studio is my home away from home! Yeah! I eat my breakfast here as well as make art," exclaims the lonely artist, hungry for breakfast. The camera pans towards the decorated desk that contains an odd bowl of cereal that contains marshmallow hourglasses, a plate of toast, and a glass of orange juice. The woman looks at the box, exclaiming her excitement over the new cereal, "Days of Our Lives Bites," a non-nutritional cereal high in sugar and calories. The slogan says, "it can be you...

This is the original novel. It's So in Love by Karen Ranney. There's that insinuation that it is more than a man simply putting on a necklace for a woman. He is shirtless and though she is fully clothed, the decolletage is happily displayed!!!! She is sensuously blissful and expecting the inevitable. He is honing in on her, close and breathing in the intoxication of her scent, her femininity. Yep, they're about to....... I read this twice by the way, lol!!!! I guess I'm showing some kind of appreciation. These are almost finished!!!! I'm so proud!!!!!! I mean, I feel like I have accomplished something with these drawings/paintings that the others didn't. They're not realistic, but they are rendered to my satisfaction. I realize that I can't impress everyone at school, especially the ones who want art to be in a classically, masterful skill. The first, I have to finish polishing up her braided hairstyle, the fabric of her dress, and I'm still tryin...

I'm making new celebrity portraits tonight!!!! Taking a small break from the historical romance appropriation. I think it's confusing me so much, these hurtful comments about rendering. I don't have a classical technique or have such precise attention to detail. In fact, I'm bad at this as I keep saying, but it's what I got out of the special Hank Willis Thomas critique today. The visiting artist said that the drawings were more successful than the paintings due to their boxiness, harshness, and brutality. That the line work was strong and angular which in turn added to the texture. Then he mentioned that perhaps I should explore other materials, especially color ones on the textured paper as opposed to canvas. The weaknesses were of course the rendering (romance novels are traditionally successfully realistic and very glossy), to clarify what I want the audience to feel (is it humorous, celebratory, or loneliness?), that the background takes away, and that the cont...

Crit was so damn horrible today. And I had two of them. One for my Figuration class and one for Advanced Tutorial. My school definitely loves to stress the academic part of its name. I am not the best rendering artist in the world and my drawing isn't classically correct. It's stylized and expressionistic which I don't like to keep stressing over and over again. I hate critiques anyways. I don't like to talk about art at all. I'm sorry. I just don't. Heck, from my badly written "art" papers, I can't even comprehend the language of articulating what my work is about. Geeeeesssss!!!!!! I feel so much doubt right now, so in the dumps. I think I may have to take up painting celebrity portraits again! I am almost wanting to quit. I hate having to suffer through harshness. Sure, I do get some positive feedback, but it just isn't enough. I feel like my heart is not into this semester at all. I'm not going to be surprised by what grades I'll be...

It was the best birthday yet!!!! It started off with a great interview at Artworks, a nonprofit arts organization. I got the internship! I'm very excited about it because I get to do all sorts of things like deinstallation, prep work, helping my new boss Amanda put up the big SecretArtworks Show, and I get to see what goes on in Monday meetings as well as help Artworks move into their new offices very close by the Art Academy. I think this may aide me into figuring out what I want to do after graduation which is a big blank at this point. Of course I took a nap. Birthday girls deserve naps. Tien left his shop early to pamper me, lol!!!! We had dinner at Shanghai Mama's sharing vegetarian potstickers and vegan spinach raviolis. I had the fried rice with added broccoli and Tien had chicken pad thai. Yummy yum yum!!!! We played a quick game of Trivial Pursuit. LOL!!!! Umm.... we really don't know much alright!!!!! I was surprised with Bob Evans pumpkin bread!!!! (Now, I gotta ...

We had some fun times together. Remember? How could I forget? 25 was a helluva ride!!!!! 1.) We had Mexican and margaritas the night we met on October 7th of last year. 2.) That Thanksgiving was even the first with no relatives. Just us and Tien on November 20th. 3.) That Christmas, Tien still used the same snow penguin wrapping paper on almost every treasured present we got, lol!!! 4.) We watched the ball drop for 2009 at Tien's house! 5.) We didn't get the million (or thirty) snow days that I wanted in January and February. 6.) But we did travel to Paris from March 5th to the 10th in our first plane ride ever!!!!! 7.) Going to the Louvre on March 9th was just an amazing, awe-inducing experience! 8.) April 16, we signed up as ejsami77 on Forbidden Love website to support the best soap couple in ages- EJ Dimera and Samantha Brady! 9.) We skipped the last day of class to see Britney's "Circus" concert in Columbus!!!! So awesome!!!! 10.) We had our last conversation...

So The Bonnie Hunt Show is having a colossal competition. They are looking for the biggest Days of Our Lives Fan!!!! The winner will receive two tickets to L.A., including round trip airline tickets, hotel accommodations, food (lol!!!!) and a chance to mingle with ALL of the cast members at the "Day of Days" event as well as interview them for Bonnie's show as a special correspondent!!!!!! All I would have to do is...... "Send us a video...no more than 2 minutes long explaining why you are the biggest fan of "Days Of Our Lives." We also want to see if you have any reporter skills. Show us how you would interview your favorite soap star from "Days." And you need to show-off your vast knowledge of "Days of Our Lives." You can tell us about the story lines, maybe dress up as a character or have a friend dress-up as one and you interview them...these are just ideas! Have fun with it!" Videos are judged on creativity, enthusiasm, humo...

This is my first large scale litho crayon drawing from my series. It's about 20" by 24" or something like that. I'll have to measure it later, lol. This is an Afrocentric woman all ready to be in the throes of love with her shirtless beau. I'm still working on this one, wanting to push the values even more and wanting to figure out how to incorporate text. One person suggested that I take the actual novels and cross out words like "pale white skin," "rosy apple cheeks," and other phases. But how would that correlate with the drawings? Most people favor the drawings when comparing them to the paintings. I think its due to the textural quality of the Arches paper. The format reminds them of novel pages. My instructor and another student agreed that the drawing seems much more thought out and organized. I'm looking and researching the Marie Antoinette period (heck no! I'm not watching the Kirsten Dunst film at all) to inspire the fashions...

Well, I'm officially excited about this historical romance project now!!!! One of the faculty members suggested that I actually blow up the image of one of my novels and trace it onto the canvas just so I could get the proportions exactly right. The two acrylic paintings that I have been working on are looking so disproportionate that it's not even funny! I showed them at the in progress crit on Tuesday alongside a large scale litho crayon drawing. It seems like everyone likes the drawing more. Hmmmmm........I don't know what to think about that. I love it myself, but painting is very fun, especially mixing colors and imagining what these fancy clothes will look like in the end. I guess, we'll see what develops over the weekend.......

WOW!!!!!!!!!!! THIS NEW LAYOUT IS SOOOOOOOOOOO AWESOMMMMMMMEEEEEE!!!!!! Thanks, Jels. I love it. Really, really love it!!! Funny how this is so much more personal and unique to me than its shabby predecessor!!!!! The purple dots are very chic and the duckie under the umbrella is such a riot!!!!! OMG!!!!!! I'm just not over how insanely cute it is. It's the best pre-birthday gift ever!!!!! Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

Happy birthday to my dear friend, Heather Caulfield!!!!! You're one of my bestest friends and one of the most talented painters that I've ever had the gracious opportunity of meeting. I enjoy your humor, your warmth, and your delightful personality!!!! I hope you're having a wonderful, spoiled time in California, but I do miss you immensely!!!! Love ya much, Janyce Images from www.myspace.com/heathercaulfield

(actual image of me and my tissue piles) I am sick as a dog. My throat is sore, my voice sounds horrible, and my nose is red from the constant wiping. The minute my nose runs, I feel a tingly sensation above my lip. (What is that area called anyways? The roof?) I greedily drank all of Tien's orange juice. Sadly, I still need more!!!! I missed two important school appointments because of this sudden affliction. I was supposed to meet with Emily to discuss internship possibilities (I have her for Fine Art Internship and it's week 5, I have yet to find a place to intern) and a studio visit from Matt D. @ 5:00 PM. But due to this sudden nastiness, I was forced to reschedule. Ugh!!!! But this email from Emily had me in high spirits today. You have been selected to be in a group crit with this year's Lightborne Resident Artist, Hank Willis Thomas. You can find out about his work at www....

LOL!!!!! These are so anatomically incorrect, but I'll fix them eventually. These are the first three I'm doing on a series based on historical romance (I read a lot of them!). I have appropriated some romance covers and have drawn Africans in the sensuous roles of virgin and master. I thought that it would be interesting to see "skin dark as coal with eyes the color of midnight" illustrated instead of "creamy milk white skin with wide-eyed blue eyes of clear blue water." The backgrounds are in the beginning stages, but they will be set in Africa with a significant animal, plant, or tree (or all) in the area. I imagined what the African world would be like if slavery hadn't been introduced. What if the English and Spanish invaders had taught them their language, their behavioral ways of eating, drinking, political thinking, socialization/romance, and of course clothing/fashion design? What if these conquerors let the Africans remain in their beautiful c...

I have a new idea for a series of drawings. I haven't done any black and whites for such a long while. I love sensuality and romance. Well, illustrated in books. I have read so many historical novels over the past few years that my mind has finally softened with touchy feelings of sinful pleasure and delicious decadence. Ideas just came into fruition after rereading this softly erotic novel by Virgina Henley. This old woman (not to be mean! It's cool that she is still doing what she loves and I only hope to do the same in when I get up there) is notorious for her scandalous sex scenes and passionately worded love play. I thought wow! I love corsets. They push the boobies up nicely and give an illusion of the tiny waist. I started thinking of beautiful African American woman with huge afros or sleek back, huge decorated hair buns and they're all wearing these richly adorned gowns with those corsets and shifts and whatnot. Would this manifested idea somehow be a part of my th...

I'm not good with these things. Of course our three instructors would say that that the most confident students go first. That statement is very true. Except well, I went last and I must say that though I showed much enthusiasm, I had none. I was nervous as hell and sprouting incomplete sentences left and right. Plus I wasn't looking at my notes correctly. I kept making sure to look at the audience, smile/laugh, and tell the wacky tale of what happened at the Days of Our Lives Charity Event. I made sure to talk about crazy women who cried, sweated a lot, and nearly fainted at the sights of the celebrities (I gained a lot of laughs when I said I was one of them). I received a lot of flack for not talking directly about my work and putting it far away from view. I was cursing myself because I knew that the best idea was to pass that small painting of James around, but I didn't. Big mistake. The way the teachers scored us was by numbered cards. Each of them had a pad from zero...

Party Time!!!!!! In celebration of completing the first week of school and moving in a lot of my art supplies and drawers into the studio, it's time to pantry shop for sugary inspiration. Well, the healthy sugar inspiration. The ones that don't feature corn syrup. It still isn't good to pop them in your mouth like a crazy binger! Moderation is the key here. (But it's so darn tough!) That would be all kinds of nuts. But I burns my calories by painting and staring at all kinds of cool art on the Net. The Sweet Side of the Studio Pantry 1. My new sweet thang. Yummy!!!! Eat it on top of toasted blueberry waffles, on cinnamon sprinkled apple slices or as frosting for cake. Really good out of the jar though!!!! Have to have one at home and the studio. It's so good. Perfect gift for chocoholics!!!!! Tastes so luxurious and rich that your buds are thinking that you've died and went to chocolate induced heaven! 2. These are just divine!!!!! I know they may be animal cr...

Jaime, a friend of a friend had commissioned me to do portraits of the bride and groom's respective dogs. Their wedding just so happens to be today. I finished these on Wednesday at Tien's house on 12"x12" canvases that were very nice (especially at $18.99 original price) with acrylic paints, oil pastels, and a thin coat of glossy mod podge. It was ten hours of mind numbing labor (the fun sort of course!!!) and the kiddies came by to "help." I'd also like to thank Tien for bringing that Butterfinger milkshake from Steak & Shake. I didn't need it at all, but that sugar had me buzzed and ready to deliver. She liked the top one more. That was understandable. Retto, second doggie, was one I had major problems with during my initial black and white sketch process. It all worked out (fast and quick!) in the end. I was very grateful that she chose me to do this project. I do hope that the bride and groom love their gifts and hang them either in their ho...

I made these last semester as a part of my final Drawing VI project. This time I'm ready to explore doing more of them. So my studio is armed with various paints and a box of oil pastels. As well as the Almighty Toaster Oven. That's how these babies are made. I acrylic paint on 4 1/2" by 8" plastic sheets and oil pastels go on top. A few hot seconds in the oven make them melt, distort, and take on interesting forms. I'll move on from the half supermodel, half cat faces to something else now. Not sure what, but at this point I'm loving shrink art and the chance operations that come with it. It is usually a kiddie craft, but I think that some amazing results have came through for me. I'll continue my exploration and see where this takes me.