Assignment #2 Partner Portrait

In class we paired off and had to take portrait pictures of our partner. I got to work with Toya and she is a very beautiful lady. Portraits display the expression, mood and personality of the subject. The focus is usually on the person's face, but it is also possible to include the person's body and the background if desired. I had so many fun pictures of Toya that it was super hard to choose only five to post on my blog. Some were in better focus, others had more natural poses and some just had more emotion evoked from the lighting and the subject. I may just post her other images on another day so y'all can see them. I had so much fun photographing her that I just want to practice portraits all the time now! Alrighty everyone, here are the pictures for your viewing pleasures. Please post a comment and let me know what you think. Don't hold back on your critiques ^_^

Here's my one shout out for the day---Thanks for letting me photograph you Toya! You rock! 

Rain Rain Don't Go Away

It's raining it's pouring
And Nina is scoring
She went to school and used the tool
to paint until the morning....

well at least it felt like she was painting that long. I hope you like my rendition of the nursery rhyme. It is actually super hard to find words that rhyme with pouring and that also apply to what happened to me today. Anyway, rain is lovely and there's nothing better than a Texas rainstorm :) Here's the latest on my painting project:

It is a lamp on the Chain Bridge in Budapest Hungary. I used to ride past that bridge all the time while I was a missionary.

What rhymes with 24?

Happy birthday to me! I have now been on this blessed earth for a grand total of 24 years. Not bad, eh? Looking back over the past 2.4 decades I think I've accomplished a lot. I've ridden a jet ski, owned a cat, sang in the choir, painted a watercolor picture, built a snowman, hiked the Y mountain, canoed down Lake Austin, made a pizza, changed a car tire, read a book... etc, etc, etc. And today to cap things off, I came home to my husband and a delicious Hungarian chocolate cake. He made it in the microwave (he's a skilled man) and also bought me the coveted Hungarian birthday troll that comes with your favorite flavored Martinelli :) We've named the troll Lila. Shout out to the Westsik family!

Boldog Szuli Napot Magamnak! Huszonnegy eves vagyok :)

Night Owl Nina

I rented out a camera from the checkout center today for our portrait project. It's been interesting playing around with the gadgets and settings. I was told that I've been the only known PHO beginning student to ask for a camera manual. Heh. I think it's pretty handy. Sometimes you make something really cool and other times you have a photo flop, but all-in-all you learn more from each shot. The instruction book does help you find the buttons faster. Anyway, today was the first time I had ever been on campus past 5:30pm. After taking our pictures, I left my partner's apartment and ventured through the middle of campus snapping shots as I went. Campus is a pretty deserted place at night:

Tonight I played with the aperture setting at F5.6 and used the tungsten lighting. Pretty neat. 

Charcoal is the New Black

In my drawing class we had our first critique of the semester. We drew a still life (which you can view on the Wednesday, September 5th post) in class and then we had it critiqued the following week. All of our drawings were pinned to the gigantic push-pin-board-wall, I don't know what you really call those, and then there was a number placed by each one. I was number 5 :) I just like that number because there are five kids in my family, five fingers on a hand, five members on the court for a basketball team, five days in the week...oh the list could go on forever. Yeah, five is just a good number. Anyway, after the drawings were numbered to retain anonymity we each received a number from our teacher and we had to critique the drawing that matched it. I'm glad we had time to write good critiques, because I always have a lot to say and sometimes there isn't enough time. After we finished and handed in our written critiques, we critiqued each piece as a class and for each drawing critiqued the artist was revealed.

Some would think that a critique is an awful thing because people criticize your work and say awful things about it. But in reality, they don't say awful things they just speak the truth as to what can be improved so that the student can more effectively accomplish the purpose of the drawing assignment. Mind you, they do address the things that you did well in the drawing, but the constructive criticism is always there. For this project we had to use charcoal and work on tones and if you didn't really get that concept down, you just received more useful information to utilize in your next piece. Personally I think critiques at school are great because they provide learning opportunities for you and your classmates. After learning about where you could improve,  you start to "see" like an artist. It was super cool to see how I could make my drawing more realistic by simply adding or subtracting more value in certain spots that I didn't see when I first drew them.

I won't include a picture of my drawing because it's already been posted, but I will post some funny comics that I found about art critiques:

ooVoo

No that is not an asian face or a smiley icon in today's title post. Please keep reading and I will explain :) Today I really started to feel old when I sat in church with the Beehives and they all whipped out their smart phones/iphones to read their scriptures. I got confused for a second and then realized what was going on. I just remember sitting there and thinking, "Huh, I remember back in the day when I was 12 and we held scriptures in our hands and they had turnable pages..." I just love the organic feel of an actual book in your lap and the smell of the pages. Mmmm... Anyway, afterwards I thought, "Wow, I can actually say that was 11 years ago...jaj I am getting old so fast!"

Upon returning from my mission, I have been plunged into the latest technology of the 21st century. So just a little explanation for those that are new to the "mission" term. When you are a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you move from home to your mission area and you live according to specific missionary rules and regulations for the 2 years (boys) or 18 months (girls) that you serve. One of those rules entailed the limited use of technologies.  We only used the computer to email our families once a week, then maybe if we had to make fliers for some event we could use a computer at that time too. Even then, that meant we only used simple programs like microsoft word. We also used cell phones that were assigned to each companionship, but they were just the ancient Nokia ones that you used maybe five or seven years ago. Anyway, it helped us steer clear of doing things like updating our facebook statuses, mindlessly surfing the net, playing video games or playing games on our phones. This technology rule was of course in place so that we would focus more of our time on teaching people about Jesus Christ because that's why we were there in the first place.

While I've been home I've had to readjust to the technology dependent lifestyle I used to live. I got a new macbook from Jeffrey and figured out all the keys on that (I had to readjust to the American English keyboard), then there was my new phone I had to play around with among other things. Mind you, I was a savvy tech kid before I left, I knew how to use all the little toys, programs and gadgets that every college kid uses plus some and then I came home and the little kiddies in elementary school had cell phones and my 2 year old niece knew how to use ooVoo. Do you know what ooVoo is? Yeah I remember when my 18 year old sister asked me if I knew how to use ooVoo. I thought she was speaking a different language or had something caught in her throat. Below is the logo, maybe it'll jog your memory of this new program:

Tonight I tried to put my ooVoo skills to use so Jeff and I could talk to my niece Skyler Rae and my sister. I thought it would be easy since I saw my kid sister do it once to show me, but for some reason I couldn't get the program to work properly. Ugh. Finally I got it to work and we got to see my cute niece and my sister. My favorite thing is to pinch her checks through the screen. My sister kindly transfers my pinch to her little child and Skyler Rae just gets a kick outta that and smiles super big. Here is that cute kid at our wedding tea party:

So if you don't know how to use ooVoo you should check it out. It's one of the many video chat programs out there and hey maybe you'll be all the more tech savvy for doing it.

Also, photo credits go out to our great photographer Athena Danoy. You can check out her work at www.athenadanoy.com. Pictures from our wedding and wedding tea party will be posted up later this month :) Be excited!

Do you know these artists?

So today I had an intense homework session of about 4+ hours...I don't know exactly how long, but it was too long and too much since I can't count past four. Anyway, there were some fun things that I got to do and one of them was to look up work by contemporary artists. Once again, I just have to say that I love being an art major. Ok, I said it. I think I might say that at least once a day or maybe once a week because I really do just love all of it.

Today I stumbled across this fun list of contemporary artists and thought I would share. It was made by an artist on her personal blog, so the list is obviously biased, but there are still a lot of fun artists and art to check out. Here is the link: http://jaimelyerly.blogspot.com/2009/10/100-contemporary-artists-that-you-need_26.html

Do you recognize this guy? Maybe you've seen his face in your art class or in an art book. He's on the list:

Yeah, I felt like I was enlightened today. Now go on, make a list of all the artists you know and then compare them to this 100 contemporary artists list.

Assignment #1 Self Portrait

Going back to school as an art major is so much fun. Instead of dreading the hours I'd have to spend in the physics lab and pulling my hair out because the forces still don't make sense, I get to run around town with a super cool camera and capture everything the eye can see. Now instead of too many equations I just chase after the sun to snap shots in the golden hour and decipher symbols on the camera dials. Here's our first assignment in my photography class - the self portrait. A self portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. We looked at some awesome examples by different artists like Frida Kahlo, Francesca Woodman, Duane Michals, Lucas Samaras and then we had to come up with a couple of our own. I still have to decide what I want the titles to be for my images, but for now just sit back, relax and scroll through them. 

Let me know what you think :) 

Daylight

Today starts and end with daylight. This morning Jeff and I woke up early to catch the first rays of daylight so I could take some cool pictures for my photography class. It was awesome. There really is something special about that golden hour. Then the usual Thursday things happened - drive to school, keep an eye open for cops in the brush, speed a little, cruise a little, pass the slow Ford, stare at the pretty blue sky, make up equations and number tricks from the road signs, drop Jeff off at work, listen to First Aid Kit, drive myself the rest of the way to school, squint my eyes to see the other cars on Live Oaks Street, park, walk with too many things in my arms, sit in class, art a lot, walk back to car, pick up Jeff, get excited because it's almost Friday, go home, eat dinner, party at the laundromat, etc etc etc. oh and sketch a little and work on the blog a little. Now the day is coming to a close and I'm jammin' to Matt and Kim's Daylight. Not bad for a Thursday.

Here's a fun sneak peek into what may or may not be posted for my project. This was a fun picture I took this morning. Gotta love self-timer:

Crap or Crap?

Ever since, I came home from my mission I've had to readjust to the English language. Speaking Hungarian for a year and a half will take a toll on your grammar, spelling and listening abilities. Oh how it pains me to spell words incorrectly nowadays *sigh* Despite the inconveniences of having to readjust to being home in the motherland and hearing my mother-tongue, there are a lot of funnies that come out of an overly trained Hungarian ear.

Today's focus is on the word "crap". We hear it often in conversation among teenagers, sometimes around adults and we hear it on the bus, at home, on the street and just about anywhere and among any group. This past week I've heard it quite often from not only my peers, but also from my teachers. Personally, I say it a lot,  but it still amuses me to hear the older generations use it as nonchalantly as we do. Today in class one of my art teachers said, "I don't want ya'll to bring all that crap in here." In this situation she was referring to students who were working on homework for other classes during her class. Later while explaining a future project she said, "Just go through all your crap at home and bring whatever you find and we can get ideas from it." Someone, to be funny, asked her if he literally could bring crap. Oh high school... I mean college kids. Anyway, to my surprise she actually considered it. :) I heart art teachers. Then she went on to tell us about a performance artist who actually used crap in his piece by covering himself in it. True fact. So, these were just three examples of people using the word "crap" in one setting.

Afterwards I went to another class and while we were drawing a still life and the teacher says, "I want you to draw everything you see. I don't want you to crap." Wait, WHAT?!? I was so confused. What on earth is she saying? My English-turned-Hungarian-brain told me, "Yeah, she just said that in perfect english." Then my left brain told me, "No Delz, you heard it correctly. Of course she'd say crap. She say's 'shut up' all the time and it sounds so funny because of her accent. Remember when you had an accent? Just listen harder. Maybe she actually said 'I don't want your crap' or maybe it was a reaction to something and the 'crap' just interrupted her thought." Well if Hungarian brain says yes and left brain confirms it, then I really have no idea what she's talking about. So while I was contemplating and trying to figure out what she was saying, I heard it again, "Don't crap this side because you like the box, make sure you draw everything. Everything, everything, everything." I turned to the girl next to me and she gave me one of those looks with the raised eyebrows and said, "We what?" Thank heavens I wasn't the only one that was hearing that. Then my Hungarian brain turned off the British English mode it defaults to when among foreign english speakers and we both realized that the teacher was saying "crop".  

Can you see how this would be confusing? I think we've all learned our lesson - don't crap or crop at school, especially in art class.

First still life drawing for 2012. 

Taco Tuesday

Celebrating life with loved ones is such a fulfilling thing. We have holidays that come and go and birthdays that only occur annually, but every week we celebrate Tuesdays. Why Tuesday? Well Tuesday just needed something special. We all know that The Bangles made a song about Monday, ya know where they sing "It's just another manic Monday". Then there's Wednesday, the hard one for foreigners and little children to pronounce. Everyone knows that Wednesday is Hump day since it's the hump in the middle of the week. Thursday is the day that means you're closer to Friday. And Friday means it's time to party and they have that acronym TGIF. Saturday is your special sleep-in day and Sunday is the Sabbath. That leaves us back where we started - Why Tuesday? We know that Tuesday is the second day of the working week and that alone makes it better than Monday, but only by a small margin. But really, the actual answer is that Tuesdays are for tacos! The alliteration in Taco Tuesday is perfect and everyone needs a little Mexican food in their lives.

We like to frequent this place: 

Also, if you're ever teaching the alphabet to somebody please be sure to remember what "T" really stands for :) I heart this shirt. 

Happy Taco Tuesday! 

Happy Labor Day - Year One

Because it is Labor Day and the typical celebratory food for such American holidays is the American hamburger, Jeff and I decided that it was best to dine at Whataburgers. The burgers there are gigantic and perfectly appease the taste buds that crave American cuisine. Pre-hamburger feast we plotted out our master plan for the day:

1) Adventure through Dallas for all types of supplies - paint supplies, camera supplies, stuff-your-face-supplies etc.
2) Find legit graffiti
3) Photograph the legit graffiti
4) Take a stroll by the lighthouse
5) Home for Family Home Evening

Below is the graffiti art that we found today:

Minus One was a Dallas graffiti artist that recently died from unknown causes. The wall we found is a tribute to him from his fellow taggers.  You can read more about it here: http://www.wfaa.com/entertainment/Dallas-Graffiti-Artist-Mourned-Through-Public-Art-132028183.html

Nothing says "Happy Labor Day" like a burger, graffiti and a sunset by the lighthouse :)

Ghettocaching

Ghettocaching [get-oh-kash-ing]
noun 
the outdoor sport or game of searching for ghettos by driving slowly through dark and poorly lit areas of town or using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates posted on the Internet if you're unfamiliar with the area

In my photography class we've been talking about our first project - the self-portrait. We have to submit five finished images and ever since we got the assignment my noggin has been going crazy. I've been brainstorming and doodling in my Hello Kitty idea notebook and one of the things that I realized I desperately needed in my life was some good graffiti. I have seen beautiful works of art and ultra cool stuff in the ghettos and downtown areas of LA, Austin, and Hungary and while all of this is fabulous,  it does not help me with my project. If I wasn't a muggle I would simply apparate to the XXI District in Budapest and take my self portrait there, but since I don't have those kinds of skills we had to do something else. My sweet husband and I decided we needed to participate in a little ghettocaching. Since moving to Rockwall I haven't seen anything super ghetto or any graffiti, but we were determined to use Jeff's tracting senses he'd acquired from the mission to find something; anything. And that something was found on Industrial Blvd:

These taggers are nice and sweet. They decided to wish everyone a Happy Halloween a month early and even added a jack-o-lantern face on the first letter. We were on the verge of loosing hope for our small and perfectly clean town, and then we found this stuff. There were a couple of other ones and those will be pictured below. I was pleased that we found something in our little town, but I think we can find something better and without railroad tracks. We like ghettocaching so much we're gonna head up to Dallas and check out some stuff by real taggers manana. If you'd like to play along, grab a camera, bring some water and ghettocache in your local area :) Don't forget to post your pictures so we can see them!

*Please imagine the accents on any and all of my foreign words. Most of them will be spanish or hungarian.

**Please also note that on yesterday's post I meant to say "Angel Moroni" and not "Captain Moroni". I just don't know how to edit on this blog thingy and don't want to risk deleting anything... ~*BoMproblems and RMproblems*~

I think I'm Turning Japanese

Happy three day weekend everyone! We celebrated the festivities with an Asian food night. Jeff and I like to try new foods and different foods, so dining in the Orient was the theme this weekend. We ate delicious Lo Mein noodles and egg rolls. For dessert I introduced Jeff to the fabulous Pocky Sticks. I ate these all the time when I was a kid and loved savoring the chocolate flavor by eating them exactly one stick at a time. It was fun to celebrate together and he enjoyed them. We also had Coke Zero because that's totally Asian too. Right?  ^_^

We also celebrated with a trip to the Dallas Temple. We have a monthly temple date and this was a great start to a new month ^_^ (Today I have to use the asian smiley face in honor of Asian food night).  This sweet old lady took the picture for us and then I tried to get a good shot of the temple. Those spires are so gigantic. Can you see Captain Moroni on the top?

Once a Lion, Always a Lion

Wow, it's been ages since I've last posted. Hmmm..since March I have lived in the anatomy lab, sequenced grasshopper DNA, learned to play some tunes on the ukulele, lost my car, eaten a foil dinner, cut my hair, biked at critical mass, found my car, moved back to Austin, cut my hair again, went to a hockey game, traded my pants for skirts to become a missionary, learned Hungarian, moved to the great land of Hungary, rode on a train, ate kaposzta, taught english class, cut my hair again, saw castles, flew back to Austin, got engaged, married my best friend, became a Richards, had a tea party, transferred schools, and became a...lion. Hmm... De Leon > Richards > Lion... Well, once a Lion, Always a Lion.

So yeah. :) This week was the first week of school. I traded in my BYU blue and gold for some....oh wait, blue and gold. Heh, looks like I can keep the clothes in my wardrobe after all. So, I think I pretty much upgraded from the BYU cougar to the A&M-Commerce (note the commerce, because we're different) Lion. Lions are intense. 

We've had some interesting assignments from my art teachers. My painting teacher told us to bring in 20 images next week so we can gather ideas for our painting projects. He said to just bring in images of things that capture our eye and well, after sitting in the library for two hours pouring over Anthropology I took a break, walked over to the shelf and grabbed a random book, flipped open the pages and found this beauty: 

Ok, I know what you're all thinking, "Oh my gosh, seriously? Nina, those are gross!" But let's be real, blood cells are sooo cool looking. And these are healthy. I have recently started a photography class, so hopefully my pictures will look better than this one. In real life they were really quite lovely. Just tilt your head to the left and you'll see what I mean.