Having a stuffy nose is one of the most frustrating things. Most specifically when you are eating or sleeping. Eating is horrible because you have no choice but to chew like a cow with your mouth wide open so you can breathe. And sleeping with your mouth open just creates an interesting morning with your tongue wearing a sweater of dry saliva and your lips cracked with pain from lack of moisture. My body needs to kick this cold before I lose my mind. 

Here's a preliminary sketch for a project I'm working on:

And  a self portrait I did in watered down gouache washes:

I live in a box of paint.

Paintings from the last semester:

This was our final in-class painting. Two week pose. I was really happy with this model, she was incredible. And I love her skin tone. I want to begin painting more dark skinned subjects. 

Jessie, my little lady. She's always a good model for my homeworks.

Zach, my new roommate. This was a homework. I didn't put too much work into it, I was kinda catching up with other classes.

This was my final homework for my class. Took me forever. Don't forget you can click on the image and make 'em bigger. They're better bigger.

Kisses.

Hot child in the city.

Here is a couple of my advance ceramics pieces. I sort of gave up half way through the semester because I couldn't complete one of the projects I really was hoping to get done due to some unseen misfortune. But all that aside I kind of pulled these out last minute. And they turned out pretty cute. My band-aid installation:

The last picture is more true to the color of the band-aids. I put this great crackle glaze that a graduate student lent me. I had to fill the cracks with india ink after the last firing to make them stand out a little more, like so.

And this guy, my personal fav, is the mustache wall! 

I wanted to make like a million more, but time restrictions held me back.

Professional!

This is the desk I was making for my furniture class. I used soft maple, with a mortise and tenon joint. No hardware is used, all maple and wood glue. I didn't use a stain, just a protectant on the surface called "The Good Stuff". She's a beauty. These pictures are from the photo shoot I had. My teacher had connections with the photographer who takes pictures of the art work at the de Young, so he came in and helped us out. These particular ones are from my camera, however. 

Rolling rock blues/in for a late night.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about working with decals that can go through the kiln without being warped, etc.. Well, here's one of the test runs. Look at that little guy, ain't he cute! The colors are very limited, pretty much only maroon, light and dark. But it's nice because you can print it from a regular printer. I love messing around with this kind of stuff. I'm just working with small tiles now (aka beverage coasters for my room!), I think I might try and incorporate a bunch of them into a piece of furniture, that would be amazing. Like a table top, or maybe into a bench or chair. I guess I'll figure it out later on.

I'm going to get started on a painting for my clothed figure painting class all night. It's due in two weeks, but I'm really excited to work on it. 

Maybe maple.

So here are the desk pictures, finally! 

This is before I put a finish on it, because of course I wasn't prepared and my camera died before I could get the after pictures. Way to go, me. But I'm getting pictures professionally taken sometime in May so I'll be able to put those on here too. My teacher has the hook ups with a good photographer, so we get a really great deal. (Don't forget to click on the pictures to make them bigger!)

This is a close up of the knots in the wood. SO beautiful! Nobody wanted the knotty wood so I had to take it. It was so perfect the way the darker grain straddles it, all within the whiter grain. I'm so happy with how it turned out. 

the BOOK and my travels.

Here's a little preview of this book thing that I'm working on. It's just drawings of children, and memories of youth, and loss of memories. It's kind of all the place right over but I'll be able to pull it all together eventually. (If you click on the pictures you can see the full size and all the details, very encouraged!)

Here's the front page! 

This is not a part of my little book, but it is something that I did and thought was cute. I love journalist notebooks that flip over like that. I always keep this in my back pocket.

These two pages are of pictures that I took with my fish-eye camera and cut the people out of them.

That's all I've got as of now, but I'm slowly adding more. 

Those are my niece and nephew (Cooper and Chloe). 

Anyway, I'm working way too much at my job right now, even though its all computer work from home, its just so easy to log in 9 hour days. I'm going to try and cut back and work on some painting stuff. Also, I've got to start getting sketches together for my furniture class this summer. I think I'm going to make a small one person bench with a drawer or something of the like. 

Oh and I'll post pictures of my desk later tonight. Hurray! 

Ill-equipped.

Paul took this of me with some type of low res camera a while ago. He lives in New York now doing his photography thing. You should check his flickr here, his stuff is real nice:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kydrey/

I'm currently in Seattle visiting my sister and some friends. The weather is great, reminds me a lot of San Francisco but a bit colder. They've got some amazing little shops here. We stopped into this vintage shop called Twenty-twenty in Ballard and they had these precious little wallets made from vintage newspapers.  Also, we went to an incredible joke/trinket/random unless stuff shop called Archie McPhee (http://www.archiemcpheeseattle.com) where I got a bunch of really great inexpensive wacky stuff to mail off to people. Rachel, Ivre, JSN and I took photo booth pictures there too, which I will post as soon as someone scans them and hands 'em over.Y Yesterday I crashed on PJs couch and in the morning he took me to this amazing vegan donut place called Mighty O's. They had all these inventive flavors, like French Toast and the like. They were so delicious I wanted to buy a dozen and bring them home. 

 I've been taking some pictures too, mostly of my sisters' kids. Which hopefully I'll get up on here when I get home on Tuesday. So expect an image heavy entry.

And, hey! If you're bored check out www.designspongeonline.com. Pretty much one of my favorite websites as of late, its a great resource, hosts a lot of great guest blogs, tons of good artwork, and really brilliant design-based stuff. I highly recommend heading over and taking a look. Also, if you're into that you might also want to go see http://blog.littlepaperplanes.com/, too. Kelly Lynn Jones runs this blog along with the online store www.littlepaperplanes. The blog shows a ton of great art and has links to a bunch of good artists, websites and galleries. And for the more post modern (ha!) folk: vvork.com is magnificent, also designboom.com is on my top ten too. Do it!

Meaningful combinations.

I got a new job doing graphics for a company that my dad's company works with. They flew me down to LA for a 24-hour business trip. It made me feel all grown up. I stayed at my dad's boss' house (whom are family friends) and slept in their sons bed. He was a big high school football hero, his entire room was covered wall to wall in old trophies, letterman jackets, MVP awards, medals and other various badges of honor. His mom told me he gave sports up after graduating. She said he'd decided to go out in a blaze of glory. She also mentioned that he joined a frat and was living in a frat house. Hah. This is just a picture of one of the walls in his room.  I like it. It's pretty sad, you know that whole memories collecting dust, sitting there just so we can have the occasional nostalgia trip. Old concert tickets, postcards/letters, articles of clothing. All the useless stuff we hang onto because there's nothing else. 

So, I decided to give you guys a little present. It's the entire 69 Love Songs Box Set by the Magnetic Fields. It's my favorite thing they've released. Hurray!:

www.mediafire.com/?znt9rmmm9nm (Disc 1)

www.mediafire.com/?n3jy3h0ycsn (Disc 2)

www.mediafire.com/?jvjn2nzdva0 (Disc 3)

Also, my hard drive crashed a little under two weeks ago and I lost EVERYTHING. We're talking all my pictures, music, documents, programs, every last thing. It was pretty traumatizing, however, I've recovered and realized that it's okay to let some of these things go. It's sort of a mini-theory I've been testing for a while. I mean, I know I'm not the originator of this, but I guess its something that I've been trying to put into play for a while, that whole--if you love something let it go--deal.  I want to feel like it's made me a better/stronger person. At least, I hope it has. 

My desk is almost finished which I'm super SUPER duper excited for. I assembled it yesterday and it stood up all on its own. It was like my little baby, my love child, my creation come to life. I'll put pictures on here soon. 

I also need to put pictures on here of my recent ceramics projects and especially my mail art projects so ya'll can see what I'm getting into. I'm sending Paul some totally amazing things to New York. Very sentimental and mushy stuff. Hah. Mail is one of my favorite things in the entire world, so I feel like I should share that with people. 

Anyway, I'm gonna leave you guys with some pictures of me at the office in LA. I think everyone should know what I look like nowadays. These are kind of silly cause I didn't know that my computer was going to take four pictures in a row, so they are sort of spontaneous, but not really. Mostly, they just make me laugh. 

I'm underneath the ground.