My art is not like your art

I was supposed to be working on Directed Studies last week, and blogging like a regular person, and then realised I had three assessments with a combined weighting of 100% due in five days. And had not really done any work on them. So the armour had the brakes applied, to my chagrin, and then it was a week later.

I guess one of the more exciting things I can say about this week is that I should be able to start with the foam soon. Like, next week soon. I may have been aiming to have the whole thing finished as of last week but hey. Better to do a good job than to do a quick-and-sloppy. Especially with the materials I'm using.

Just saying. Cutting corners is all very well, but if you're paying a stack for materials regardless, you may as well do a proper job of it.

So I have the belt and the handplate to finish, and then all of the paper is done. It's an exciting prospect.

See the breastplate? That's more than 12 hours worth of cutting, folding and gluing. I didn't actually believe the guide when it said it'd take about 300 hours to make.

I take that back. I'm fast with the construction, but not incredibly so.

What can I say to get back on topic?

Ironfest was last weekend, but I wasn't able to go. No time and no money, and 70% worth of assignments that I wasn't ready for on Monday. It bucketed rain in Newie, and my housemate was out, so I kind of shut myself in and worked. Jim got to go though, and enjoyed it.

Fun fact?

Ironfest 2012, I went with three mates and we dressed as Weeping Angels. I blogged that visit, actually.

But the 2013 program leaflet-booklet-thing had us in it. It was essentially this picture, taken by someone else, so it was from a different angle.

So yeah.

This week. And last week.

Wait, was it the weekend before?

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

I had to try and explain Cosplay to my Directed Studies supervisor, and we stumbled across a few different things that make a Costume Designer in Fine Arts make a little more sense.

See, most of my classmates make the standard kind of art. Photos, sculptures, paintings and drawings. Things that you can hang in an art gallery and actually sell. And there's stacks more to it than that, but it's the basics. They make stuff and it's good stuff and it's quantifiable and looks good and sells.

And I make costumes by shredding old pairs of pants and sewing them together differently.

Pictured: Watt Space's Open Show project 2012

I worked a straight week on this

and barely slept

Result: finished thing. Got nowhere in the comp though.

It's been an odd peeve, but in spite of my being in Fine Arts, I've not ever felt like the typified 'artist'.

Maybe it's because my outlook on life is different. Maybe it's because I cannot draw as well, or make typical art as well.

A note to the artists reading: I am aware that the art world is trying to gravitate towards non-traditional art. I am also aware that it's usually traditionally-presented art that actually generates an income, and accolades and awards and attention.

But yeah. Cosplay.

Miranda asked me if the Halo armour I was making was original.

But that's the odd thing about cosplay. It's something that is original and not at the same time. The design is established by someone else, and the idea is established by someone else, but you still have to figure out how to make the flipping thing work.

And what usually happens is you end up checking out how everyone else did it as well, or if anyone else has done what you plan to do. You find out from others whether or not things worked for them, and how to make things kind of work for you too. And then you contribute to the circle of life and tell the internet how you did it too.

I don't think cosplay would have worked as well in the world before social media or the internet. Manga and Anime and video games all existed, but less people would have thought about replication to the Nth degree and then going to a convention where everyone else was doing the same thing and interested in the same thing and been super friendly with complete strangers.

But I digress. Cosplay is odd because it's original and it's not.

And it's my art form, but it's not like traditional art.

I wouldn't naturally hang it in a gallery, as it's not traditional art. But the equivalent would be taking it to a convention - it gets to be seen and interacted with a bunch of people who are interested in it.

Will I actually put in in a gallery?

I'm planning to in first semester next year. And have a bunch of cosplays wandering around in the gallery space. Just because my art is not like that of my cohorts doesn't mean they shouldn't get to see it.

I'd be nice to actually have people from Fine Arts get to see my stuff as opposed to just being the shut in that I am.

..

What else can I cover in this post?

There was the last week. And my art is not like your art. Um.

I get to try and explain everything that I'm doing to the rest of my class next week. So this is kind of like a precursor to that. Biggest challenge with that is explaining everything that I'm doing for Breaking Down the Fourth Wall in five minutes.

Yeah, good luck.

It's actually my hope to have a timelapse of a paper pattern done before I'm finished with all of them. Can't tell yet whether that'll actually happen as I only have the handplate as something that isn't finished yet, and it's not the most amazing thing. Maybe we can have a timelapse of a transfer to foam?

Time will tell. I'm going to go get the next thing done.

Brooke out.

Halfway to Life, the Universe and Everything

So.

This, I have noted, is the season of life where almost more of my friends are married now than not. This can be slightly understandable in some circumstances. I mean, some of the friends got married to each other.

But yes. We enter our early twenties and the season of 'weddings and twenty-firsts'.

When most of your friends are at least a year older than yourself, the process gets accelerated a bit. I've been witnessing frequent matrimonies for the last four years or so.

ANYWAY.

I'm not talking about Weddings yet. But Twenty-Firsts, yes. Sounds good.

It's forty-five minutes to midnight, and I've made it back from the trek out to a mate's property for his 21st celebration. Ate a lot of food and enjoyed pleasurable company. And caught frogs, and tried to avoid the mud. Only one of that second set of statements was true.

[it was the one about the mud. SO MUCH MUD.]

And then I drive home in Dad's car because mine is missing most of the doors at the moment (maintenance). Dad's car which has no functioning stereo because it locked up after Jack ran the car flat. This is not the point.

The point is that I spent about equal parts of time, driving silently because I had to concentrate and avoid the potholes, talking to myself and singing as loud as I could because I was driving through the middle of nowhere.

Am I tone-deaf? Partly. Yes.

Can I do anything about it? Not really. But this way was alright. There was the curved road, damp under the recent rains, and the soft glow of Navi the GPS and me bellowing out Florence + the Machine lyrics like it was kareoke and I was intoxicated.

I wasn't intoxicated. I was trying to think of an allusion that involved little inhibition. Because it was me and about 800kg of car.

And when you drive at night, with no stereo, you start thinking lots. Some of it is trying to tell yourself that the bark hanging of those powerlines is not a body. Some of it is trying to rationalise other parts of life in general. Some of the bits are devoted to whatever you just experienced.

Turns out I was musing over what I'd just experienced. And realised where it was in relation to myself.

I do a lot of comparison. I think it's a firstborn thing. You and Second spend a lot of time trying to be noticed by the parents more; the firstborn because you have to do all the trailblazing, and people expect you to be awesome and successful, and the secondborn trying to top that with something else.

Jack does it with personality. He's the people person at a party. I'm the person that chills over next to the guacamole. Guacamole girl. Until it comes to making something cool that might explode. I can do that too.

But.

I've never been able to pick up a proper job. At the moment I'm still trying to plug these painted shoes I'm working on. And they do look cool. I'm just not very good at marketing.
I've had work patternmaking before; once. I had a second one lined up for the beginning of last year, when I had almost a week between landing in Sydney from London and then moving to Newcastle. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that that one fell through. I had the guy adding more and more and more things to the order. Which was insane.
The rest of the time it's been deskwork, cleaning or popcorn. None of which are very fulfilling.

I'm hoping to find employment when I head home again. Maybe. Maybe I'll just get swamped again and spend my days hunched over a computer, sniggering at Red vs. Blue shorts. It seems to be one of the few things I'm good at.
Getting paid to do some art; that would be nice. Being able to sell my art would be nicer.
Ah well, artists aren't usually famous until they're dead. Unless they are Picasso. But Picasso was a genius.

pfft. Yep. Not famous 'til dead.
I guess that shouldn't be long on a student's diet.

...


this is a really positive blog post, eh? I'm sorry if it was not to your liking. It's probably the rum talking.
Well.

Rum can't talk.

It's probably the removal of inhibitions. Which I'm attributing to the rum.

Now, back to the best idea I had while driving. Go and find my old Hanson CDs. And listen to all of them.

90's boy bands with bad hair, here we come.