Crib to Coffin

For an art assignment where we had to use text as form, I created a watercolor painting illustrating a verse from Emery's "Crib to Coffin". Great song!!!!

The girl in the picture is a super awesome stock provider on deviantart: http://clickypenpixiexstock.deviantart.com/
check out her site!

There was a bird
whose wings were crushed
by a windshield.
So fast to the ground
the roadside it found
as its eyes closed.
I heard the driver say,
as she pulled away,
"What could I have done?
The worst now is over."
I thought to myself,
with risk to our health
No one ever offers me help.

Happy Halloween!

I carved my first pumpkin!!!

You see, we don't really have pumpkins in the Philippines. I have considered trying it with a squash, but rumor has it that it's not quite the same. We did, however, have squash pie at one point, which was quite delicious.

I suppose that my dear little pumpkin friend is a little...unusual. Seeing as he is a panda... I'm not really sure why my roommate and I decided to carve a panda. But hey, everyone likes pandas!

He started out way too cute. Not to say that he isn't cute now (I for one still find him very cute) but he was happy and had a little smile. And my roommate reminded me that jack-o-lanterns are supposed to be scary. So I decided that scared, if not scary, would be more appropriate.

As for tools...

We didn't have any of those high tech little pumpkin saws, only a butter knife, and a slightly sharper but unserrated knife.

And chopsticks.

Chopsticks should be appropriate for our arbitrary Asian theme...

Tagged and Treasury!!!

I was tagged by Chokingonstatic Designs! Sorry it took me so long to respond, haha. :)

Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their name as well as links to their blog.
   
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are the 7 random facts about myself:

1. I have two passports, Philippines and U.S.
   
2. I have eaten bat, dog and lizard. Bat and lizard are YUMMY! :) Dog makes me a little sad...
   
3. I played three years of touch rugby in high school.
   
4. I made a self portrait of myself using sand and glue. So much fun!!!
   
5. I have played football (soccer) on the Women's Philippine National Team. And I scored a goal in an international tournament. :D

Now check out these super duper blogs that I've tagged! :D

Inspiration Point
Angelic Adornments
AMomentAMemory28
SillyLittleLady's Spot on the Web
Dragon in Knots
mattscraftywife's blog

Graceful Moments

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My photograph made it to a treasury! This is my third treasury item, yay! Hurry and take a look here, it expires tomorow! :)

Music

Music is the language of the soul. In the fullest of joy one can only open their mouth and sing at the top of their lungs, and in the deepest of sorrow one finds comfort in bittersweet strains that echo the tears of the heart.

Music is divine.

God weaved music into the very frame of the heart. A beautiful melody tugs at our core, a single song triggers a flood of precious memories. Music heals and revives broken and thirsty souls. On the other hand, a symptom of a dead soul is immunity to the power of music.



With music we praise kings, and with music we ride into battle.

With music a mother tenderly rocks her child, and with music we lay our dead to rest.

With music God speaks, and with music we bow to Him and worship.






So.

Sing.

At the top of your lungs.

Falling in love with fall

Fall! I love fall. We don't have it in the Philippines. It just doesn't exist. I love all the leaves and the glorious crunching sounds they make when you jump on them. Because you simply have to jump on them. And it's getting colder but it's a nice kind of cold. It's the kind of cold that allows you to wear a scarf and fuzzy boots, the kind of cold that is perfect for playing soccer in.

And I hope I'm not just another California girl with Ugg's and a black and white scarf, because I'll have you know that I bought my boots for $4 at Goodwill and I wear the scarf because I miss my friends from the Czech republic who have the very same one (and Europeans know how to wear scarves).

I bought my first pumpkin yesterday, coming back from Santa Barbara. The closest I got to buying a pumpkin in the Philippines was either a squash or canned pumpkin pie filling. I can't wait to carve it!

I just posted these fall photographs along with a couple others on Etsy if you like them. :) They were all taken when I was out buying the pumpkin. Enjoy!

AAAAHHHH!!!!

AAAHHH! Yes. That pretty much sums it up. Life has been pretty crazy hectic lately. Biology is killing me...blech.... It's only the second week of school and I just took my first bio midterm. At the same time I'm trying to stay up to date with Etsy and also fit in my sports medicine club.

This weekend I'm off to Santa Barbara for a soccer tournament, woohoo! I'm definitely bringing a pillow for the car ride...

Last note before I head off to bed:
I have a new assignment for my Art 1: Visual Cultures class, and I'm so excited! We're studying the use of text as/in art, and our assignment is to make our own art incorporating text. My idea is to have a stanza from Emery's From Crib to Coffin (an amaaaazing song!):

There was a bird
whose wings were crushed by a windshield.
So fast to the ground,
the roadside it found as it's eyes closed.
I heard the driver say as she pulled away,
"What could I have done? The worst is over."
I thought to myself with risk to our health.
No one ever offers me help.

And in the left frame of the picture, in the foreground, I'll have a girl looking down, a lot of her in shadow made mostly of the text. The text will run into the background, and the background will actually be the focal point. In the background I'll have the fallen bird and the lyrics around the bird will be in drippy red paint, like blood. And maybe I'll incorporate some shattered glass in there. I'll post pictures as soon as I get started. :)

Oh, and the picture of me yelling here is a self-portrait I did my sophomore year in high school using oil pastels.

The Underlying Lines

In black and white we see the smudges
The stains and splatters of ink
The fingerprints and scratchy pencil lines
It's wrong, it's all wrong, and we scream
We scream for the injustice, the disappointment, the shattering of dreams and expectations

Unless we see in color.

Layers and layers of blood and light
Glorious streams of beauty
No less painful and no less harsh
But we realize that the black and white
Was simply the outline underneath the paint
And suddenly we see the masterpiece over the sketch.



Note: I wrote this peom back in June, but I just finished an alchemy request for someone on Etsy, to paint their boyfriend as Mal from Firefly (which is an amazing show and such a tragedy that they cancelled it...). For the first time, I recorded all the steps in my process. I never like it when people watch me work, because it always looks ugly in the beginning, and they, unknowing, tell me that it doesn't look right. Well, of course it doesn't look right. I can see it in my mind, where everything will go, how it will work out, and I fix things up as I go. It's part of a larger process, but the casual observer only recognizes what is right there before them. Well, to me, that's encouraging. Because with God as our artist, we are simply the ugly sketches and first puddles of paint thrown on the paper, but He sees the masterpiece He is making, the finished product.