19 posts tagged “artwork”

After the High Renaissance and right in the beginning of the Baroque era of painting, there was a young upstart named Annibale Carracci. It was said that anyone who could marry Michelangelo's and Titian's respective, opposing styles would bring in the next big wave of Italian artwork. This man succeeded, using a fusion of Michelangelo's 'disegno' technique and Titian's 'colore' technique. He was very popular in his hometown of Bologna, but to really get famous, he would have to go to Rome.

In Rome, Carracci got a commission by the Cardinal. It was for the gallery of his private palace, called Palazzo Farnese. Look around for pictures of his work in the vault of the gallery. It is truly beautiful. He put himself in direct competition with Michelangelo by using the quadroriportato organizational method, which had the look of framed pictures facing different directions, but the frames, the fake architecture, everything is painted. Michelangelo used the same technique in the famous Vault of the Sistine Chapel. On top of this, Michelangelo designed the palace that Carracci's fresco was to be done in. Also, Carracci parodied Michelangelo's ignudis by having the same type of naked men, but in rational poses rather than ridiculous ones. He threw some potshots at other painters too, but the main idea of this paragraph is that this man was brilliant.

However, Cardinal Farnese barely paid Carracci for his work. Carracci couldn't really say anything about it because, well, the Farnese was above the law. Carracci would soon still his brush and fall into a depression he never escaped from. It is more or less unknown how he died.

Brad was in town from Sunday until like right now probably. It was an amazing time as always, but I must say, this was an especially awesome time. I made two new friend, his girlfriend and his friend Adri who has talked to me on MySpace before but it was cool to actually meet her. We have SO much in common, it's scary. We're a perfect 'match' for each other and it really makes me wonder how our friendship will progress. ;D

We went to Raleigh last night and it was a LOT smaller than I thought it would be. Greensboro's downtown is larger than Raleigh's. Raleigh is the capitol of NC, if you were unaware. It's unimportant. Anyway, any time Brad and I have been to a new city, he has always had to go in every fuckin tattoo parlor. This time was no different. The owner of this particular parlor was a really cool, tall, black guy who was missing a lot of fingers. From what I remember seeing, he had both of his thumbs, the middle finger on his right hand, and the pinky on his left hand. That was it. The rest all looked like they were cut off and healed over at the bottom knuckle. We came in and interrupted his movie. He had this tiny TV but these huge, kickass speakers. I noticed that he had an N64 and while Brad and his girl were checking out his books of art, me and this guy were playing Mortal Kombat 4. The guy completely kicked my ass with not even a handful of fingers!

So, my online friend Dylan's band is recording an EP. Why is this important? I made the cover for it! Their band is called The Para-medics and you can listen to their music and see my cover art at their MySpace. At times, they can be a lot like The Mars Volta, which is amazing for two kids who are younger than me.

Anyway, I'm running on four hours of sleep and I have an exam in half an hour, I should go. Expect another post soon!

So it turns out that my campus internet dilemma was due to my password for their Novell system expiring. It's happened before, but when I was in the superlab, it gave me a warning. Since I don't have to print off any papers in a hurry this semester, I haven't had to use the superlab and therefore was NEVER TOLD about my password expiring. For some reason my email was still working even though it was on the same system. So yeah, I changed my password and the internet worked. WHAT THE FUCK.

Design class is fucking stupid, by the way. Did I ever mention that? My teacher gave us a really small assignment to do that took me an HOUR to do. He gives us three weeks to do it. In three weeks, I have six of his classes, the classes are each three hours long. 3*6= ~17 wasted hours. Attendance is mandatory. Someone needs to send me Earthbound so I can get that started up again. I've been wanting to play that and this is the perfect opportunity to do so, since he lets us use our laptops.

I put on a little art show in one of the hallways in the Graham building. I was making a new piece in Apophysis and people started crowding around watching me, so I eventually showed them my other stuff and there was a bunch of "Woooaahhh"'s going on. No one tipped me, figures. There's new stuff on my DeviantART by the way, I'm still working on more.

I met a dude who goes to 4chan and we hit it off super well. We talked about SSB: Brawl for a while. Nikita's throwing a party either the day of or the day after its release. :D

March is going to be a fun month, why is February being SO BORING?

Thanksgiving break sucked. Except for Saturday. And half of Sunday. That giant moment was quite possibly the most meaningful moment of my life.

Highlights of the party:

Setting up the X360 to play downstairs was a pain in the ass. Will saw the whole thing. It took me and my dad half an hour to figure out how to get the video through the TV, but the audio to come out of the home theater system. Once it worked, it was amazing.

Will was the only person who came on time. I think everyone else was at least 30-45 minutes late.

Joe stole the party. Will also kind of did.

There was a group of us that bonded extremely well and were constantly crazy, then there were a short few who were extremely quiet throughout most of the party.

I thought everyone would be bored within two hours of my party starting, technically, it lasted until noon, Sunday. No one was really bored at all, but there were moments where we stood around talking about what I had planned next. I had nothing planned. I figured that with 17 people in the room, the party would run itself.

It did.

We played games for a few hours. We ate. Will, Brad, and Joe traded off stories in front of my camera. We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail (it was a vote). We thought about what we were doing next. We looked at theaters to see if there were any movies we went to see. We decided to go to Blockbuster. We didn't rent anything, but ended up discussing where all of us would branch off and get movies from. They brought Eurotrip, Sin City, Just Friends, Ong Bak, and several other movies over. We watched Eurotrip. People started leaving. Will and Joel stayed for the night and left around noon.

There was a 10+ person pileup on the couch that started as a Rachel sandwich.

Dad put a candle in my cake and then Will said "Wait! I think I have candles in my car!" He ran out and came back with a '1' and an '8' candle and put them in the cake. He didn't even know why he had them. What the hell.

Brad gave me a Playboy magazine as a gag gift. Michaela had to leave at like 5:30 to go on a date with Nick. Nick lives right down the street from me. The plan was either to have Michaela give the magazine to Nick (she was completely willing) or that one of us stick the magazine on his windshield. We ended up doing neither, as when we got to the house, we all thought that the other person grabbed it and it was still at my house. XD So basically, Michaela rang the doorbell and the handful of us that came with all shouted obscenities at him from his driveway and bolted home. It was liberating.

Me and Joe pretended to be gay lovers for the whole night. Right in front of his girlfriend, Cecile'.

My parents learned that Will can rap.

Will, Joel, and I all stayed up very late to fill in the gaps with stories. The three of us haven't been able to talk at length since forever ago.

That's about it.

In my pictures, I uploaded a few senior pictures (I picked my four favorites, they all look awful to me). There's also a draft of a picture I'm working on in oil pastel.I am never using this brand of pastel again. They're so hard to work with and I got a blister from trying to make them cooperate.

Okay, some interesting moments in my life.

1) I honestly don't know whether I am single or not right now and I do not know what I want. Just so as not to confuse you, this is as of yesterday, not today.

2) I got an Xbox 360 last night along with the Gears of War limited edition. I am insanely happy with my purchase, aside from a random moment this morning where the audio wires weren't working correctly and making weird, very loud noises out of my TV speakers. That seems to have fixed itself. I'll write more about Gears of War later.

3) I went to the movies with Nikita, Bea, Tyler, Stephanie, Vanessa, and a few other people I don't know and didn't catch the names of. Aside from Vanessa, these are all newly acquired friends and I consider them to be nearly everything I have right now. So yeah, Stranger Than Fiction was one of those movies that I don't know how to rate. It does its job cleanly and walks away. Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk's excellent writing, this is most likely Will Ferrel's funniest movie. Mainly because he's not constantly trying to be funny. Rather, it's not the characters themselves that are funny, but how the plot is that draws constant laughter. Just like any Palahniuk book, the plot is barebones and serious, but bitingly sarcastic. I loved it, and I think it's something everyone should see.

4) I'm working on a new image in charcoal and giving up on the painting for now. I hate it. THis new one is of an old, beaten up TV. The glass is cracked, but you can still see the image on the screen in a kaleidovision sort of way. It's a good idea that Mrs. Coggins helped me think of.

5) Monday is my birthday, in case I haven't mentioned it.

6) Smile and be happy! :D

Yesterday, me and the parents hung out with Tiffany and the runts again. They're nice people. We're all really close family friends now, something we've never had to this extent before. I wonder how long things will stay this way.

So today, from about 1pm to now, 8:30pm, I've been working rather hard on a painting. I'd take a picture, but what I have going so far isn't really worth it. I do have a study of a wolf uplaoded here, just so I could get some help on it. The version that's on the canvas right now is a bit skinnier, just to make it not look as bear-ish as it does (to Alan). I have 3/4 of the canvas covered in paint, there's a section that I just cannot get into with the only brush I was able to find from two years ago. I need a much smaller one for details and I wasn't able to find any. Now that it's drying, I can see several areas that I can improve tonight. I feel horrible that I just cannot finish this picture tonight, even if I had everything I needed. Grr!

I'm getting FFXII tomorrow, or at least whenever Circuit City gets it in. It's $37 there. Thanks, Tony!

And I'm hitting a little weirdness in my Wii decision. I'm starting to think that I want an X360 instead. I feel like it's too much money for me to push it back. I could get just the system and a game between my birthday and Christmas, and then maybe buy another game and controller with the Christmas money and save the rest to buy the Wii by summer. That makes more sense to me.

I just don't know. The only game I want in 2006 for the Wii is Zelda, so I can wait. I just want to be sure I get it eventually, you know? I have a money-saving problem. XD

And that's all for now.

The past two days have been insane. Mostly a good thing. Man, what a great way to close such a shitty chapter in my life.

I have a real problem with just shutting down when I'm extremely stressed out. Some of you may remember that when I started my MyOtaku, I was suffering from random blackouts in school and emotional breakdowns at home. I had a horrid time in the first semester of 11th grade getting over her and school wasn't helping. Mrs. Bergman is still a fucking bitch, I ran into her yesterday and she didn't even remember me. I was the student who almost got her fire last year, and apparently she's still in hot water because of what I started.

Anyway, so I cried myself to sleep Thursday night, breakdown, whole bit. I woke up, promptly reminded myself of all the shit I had to accomplish and blacked out in the shower. Luckily, I wasn't hurt. Mom still didn't fucking wake up when I woke up an hour later. So I woke her up once I got clothes on to tell her I was running late and she'd need to drive me. I ended up getting to school just in time to run to US Hostory to take my exam. Then me and a friend walked out of guitar class to eat at McDonalds and came back and found out later that Mr. Chamis didn't even realize we left! :D It was relaxing. So I crept my way upstairs to Art class and stressed like crazy over my picture and basically REDID THE ENTIRE PICTURE and didn't finish. I was worried out of my fucking mind.

So, I went out to the trailers to breeze through the easiest Spanish exam I've ever taken in half an hour and rushed back into the art studio to finish the picture. Biggest success story ever. OMG. What a load off of my shoulders.

I got home, celebrated, and basically chatted with Rachel and then John online and drew little design ideas for my next picture. The idea is trash-burning. Ohhh yeah. :D

So todaaaay, I went out to lunch at The Loop really fast with a friend and then well, this next part requires some 'splaining. Basically, there's this girl named Tiffany who worked for my dad but she stopped receiving her paychques for some reason. So, she raised hell at the employment agency with rightful cause and got fired. She is nearly bankrupt with two kids, and now jobless. Some of her utilities have already been cut off because she cannot afford them. So yeah, her, her boyfriend, and her two daughters, one seven and one a young infant, came by to have dinner with us. Well, Rachel came over, and we went out to eat at Lubrano's Italian Restaurant. Then, me and Rachel got dropped off at home so we could watch Fight Club and the rest of the gang went to Chuck -E- Cheese so the tots could be entertained. Me and Rachel always have fun together. It's grand.

Also, we got in contact with Shane's mom and Shane's going to call us at some point. At least he has both of our numbers up there.

:D!