Drawing With Feet

I was drawing things with my feet today...Just doodles, nothing from life.


I'm pretty unhappy right now. Things are sort of falling apart and I'm just ready to go home and stuff my face and see all my old friends.

Revised Artist's Statement

With the advice of one of my old teachers, I decided to rewrite my artist's statement to be a bit more formal and aimed towards the objectives stated on the calarts website.

"Please use this statement to discuss the issues and concerns that inform your artmaking practice, your reasons for applying to CalArts and your artistic goals"

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One of my favorite forms of art is graffiti. I don’t just mean the big colorful pieces that we envision when we think of graffiti in our minds. I mean all aspects of it, from the simple black tags that line the streets of a city to throw-ups, pieces, and legal works. There is something about the type of people who do graffiti that makes me really respect them as artists. To be a graffiti artist you must devote your entire self to what you do, it must become your life and who you are. To be respected in the graffiti world, you must be willing to draw outside the lines and go where no one has before. You must be original on top of your dedication. This is why I love graffiti.

I try to apply these principles to my own art making. I feel if I work as hard as they do, and I give it as much thought and practice, I may be lucky enough to find myself creating work as beautiful as theirs. I value their passion, and I wish I could be like them. Unfortunately seeing as I grew up in a suburban community, I was never really given the opportunity to be a graffiti artist. But I found that there was an alternative practice that required the same values as a graffiti artist needs, and that was animation. Animators work incredibly hard to complete their “pieces,” and only a truly gifted and thoughtful animator who works this hard will come out on top. I respect animators just as I do graffiti artists, they are artisans unlike an others.

I lack a strong voice in real life, often mumbling and stuttering over words, but hopefully I can develop one that people will listen to with their eyes, and hopefully it will truly affect them. I am drawn to any expressive media or subject matter. I believe the more I delve into my art the more I will be able to convey on paper. I want people to stop in the middle of their busy lives and take a moment to look at what I create, just as they do with graffiti on the streets.

Meredith Burgess

Character Animation

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Thoughts?

Final Working Portfolio

This is what my drawing teacher would call a final working portfolio...Feedback would be very much appreciated!

Also, I am really, really sorry for the poor image quality. I wanted to get it up as quickly as possible for feedback. When I post the final one it'll be good, I promise.
























I'm going to add something really super duper extra awesome to kick ass at the end...but I just have to think of it and then do it first....

Sketchbook Dump

So above are recent paintings from color theory class....it's super hard to finish a full painting in less than 3 hours, and she gives me such a headache every time she walks by. I dunno, I rather liked my drapery study but it's "not finished" according to her. Oh well, turning it in as it is anyway, because when I feel finished with a painting, it means I'm finished. The full still life was just a disaster...
Then there was imaging systems, where we had to do a still life, first as a line drawing, then with values. I liked mine pretty alright.
In life drawing we've been doing longer poses. I turned in my only decent ones for marks, so I can't show them at the moment. This is the only drawing I have from the past two weeks of extra life that I actually kind of like...ever since NPD I have been in a slump. I just don't know what to do....I also haven't been going as much, because of NaNoWriMo. Which I just finished. Hooray!
I have decided that the novel I wrote this year is pretty awful, but it sets up for a really good story, which I think I am going to write next year. So it was a learning process I suppose.
Anyway, for your enjoyment, here are some sketchbook pages from the past few weeks I have liked. I managed to go about 40 pages in one week, so hopefully I will be able to send two sketchbooks in by the deadline.





































































As for the rest of my life....

-I am driving home for Christmas break with my mom, who is flying out to come back with me. I actually am kind of looking forward to this, for several reasons. First it is a good excuse to go out to dinner on the road. And considering my whole two different meals that I know how to cook I am really ready for some variety. It is also good because it means I will have a car to go to work for during the break, and I can also take a little more time with my portfolio because I don't have to worry about taking it on a plane. Yay! Also I get to spend some quality time with my mom, which is cool too.
-Unfortunately I will not be able to get back to work until after Christmas due to such a hectic schedule, especially because I am driving out there and I have family coming from out of town...so now I have to make that phone call and I have the irrational fear that they are going to hate me or fire me or something....Gaaah I hate thiiiis.
-This week has been incredibly dramatic, I think everyone is kind of reaching a breaking point. It's really irritating. My parents are playing tug and war with me, my boyfriend is being a drama queen about EVERYTHING, and on top of that I went to a party friday night that was mostly one of those "lets just get drunk and tell everyone how we really feel about them" kind of things. I kind of sat around being the referee until about 20 slutty girls showed up and everyone I knew high-tailed it out of there, because no one knew who they were (seriously...where did they come from??) Anyway...the week has taken a lot out of me because I have had to mediate and participate in all these different fights between people. Ugh.
-On the bright side we got to tinfoil everything in one of my classmates room while he was away in Chicago for Thanksgiving. I can't wait to hear about his reaction.
-Oh yea...I totally missed Thanksgiving. It was super depressing until my neighbors invited me over for a steak dinner and wrote me (half of) a thanksgiving poem. I put it on my fridge.
-Nanowrimo! I spent 6 hours in a coffee shop yesterday pushing to 5,000 more words with one of my new friends and a friend of hers. It was a good time. Bonus: delicious waffles.

Anyways, that has been life of late. It's getting a bit crazy, and we are starting on all of our final projects so the pressure is on.

A lots has happened this week...

Here are some nicer pictures of the final finished product of my head, in a nice pretty format.
WHOA. TOTAL DE JA VU.
Anyways. I think I'll be including that in my Calarts portfolio, it came out rather nicely.

Also, I decided to redo Queen of Awesome Page 1 in a hard copy format, and I like it a lot more with the copic markers. I also redesigned the page, added a panel, redid some poses and writing.
I am much more excited to do the next page.
I also finished my sketchbook. Upon the advice I received at NPD last week (more about that later) I am deciding to include another one, which I will have to race to finish, but hopefully it will show a little bit more crazy, expressive stuff. I started doing that a bit in the end of my old one.
I also did some animal sketches, because I know they like those.

I crumpled up each page several times, each time adding a new color to the tops of the wrinkles. Then I flattened it out and found an interesting image. I guess I was in a caricature mood, because that's all I could seem to see


I also did some work where I closed my eyes and moved my pencil along to a song. I went back and colored it a bit. The following are "Hard to Concentrate" and also "Don't Forget Me" both by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
They took a lot longer than you think. I spent maybe 1-2 hours on the 2nd.
And also, here is my finished fall emblem project for 2d design. It's not perfect, I messed up a few values, and you can't fix gouache once you put it on the illustration board :( I didn't really mean to do pink, I was thinking red, but it came out very, very pink instead. Oh well. October is Breast Cancer month. That works with it, right?

I didn't really do any figure drawings I liked this week, besides some gestures in class that I need to turn in next week. Next week I will get some more done, but I think I like what I have in my portfolio right now, for the most part. I am going to go back and cut some out and compose them on colored paper to brighten up the portfolio a bit.
So last weekend, highlights were:
-Christians Birthday party in his condo in Mississauga. All his friends came up for it, and I got drunker than a hillbilly. Whoops. I guess that is what happens when you don't drink for over a month. Anyways, that was bad because my ride left randomly in the middle of the night while I was asleep. Thanks.
-National Portfolio Day! Ok so, interesting experience. Last year I went right after homecoming, and this year I was in very much the same state as I was before. Hardly any sleep, feeling very sick. I got sick several times on the way there. It made me feel very trashy. Anyway, we went with Christians friends Brian, Dylan, and Alicia, along with Brian's mom, who drove us to Yorkdale where we could take the subway into the city, which we did. Then we walked to OCAD and stood outside in line for about two hours. It was cold. And miserable. I kept saying I was going to die. Because that's how I felt. Anyways, the door finally opened a bit before noon and we went straight upstairs where I hopped right into the Calarts line. It was in the same room for Nova Scotia CAD, so the line was long, but a lot of people were there for that school. I was the 2nd person in line for calarts, so that was nice. Libby was the rep again. She didn't recognize me at first, and it took her a little while to realize I had applied and met her last year. She mostly told me that she thought, A.) I had a competitive portfolio B.) She recommended composing some of my drawings, cutting them out, arranging them, etc C.) She talked a bit about caricature and expression of the human form in my sketchbook. D.) She talked about being creative and experimental with media. She said I should have more color in my sketchbook and to try to include that however I could. I only had about 20 pages left in the one I showed her, which is why I am added a 2nd, hopefully. I didn't have any of my 3rd part put together yet, so she didn't have any comments about that really, besides explaining that is was my chance to include anything else that didn't fit into the other categories. Afterwards we made our way back to and I got dropped off at Christians, where I crawled into his bed and slept.
-The next day I realized I really had no way of getting home. Urp. So I had to take the GO bus, which dropped me off at a carpool lot 6km, about 4 miles, away from Sheridan. And I spent over an hour walking home on the shoulder of the road, past farms and such. It sucked.

This week:
-3d we critiqued and began talking about our next project, which will be to design and build a sort of armor for a human "frailty"
-Life drawing we did more of our basic shapes drawing, which is basically just using different techniques with sticks and plumb lines and such to get proportions and angles correct
-Drawing Systems we are working on a simple still life of 3-4 objects. It's due next week. I'll post it once it's finished
-Color Theory we are continuing painting still lives in class quickly. Last week it was a full color still life. Mine had a hard hat and some fruit. It looked terrible, so I turned in my lemon assignment instead. This week we did drapery. I'll post that too, when I get the time
-My mom announced to me she is no longer going to pay for my cell phone and I have to either buy my car from her or take it home so she can sell it. It's some dealio between her and my dad that is really annoying, but I'm really upset. Hopefully my dad will help me buy it, otherwise I will have to quit my job, and thus I won't have any money, which means no freedom or independence :/ Which I really value. I like being independent, I like providing for myself.
-2D I believe we are starting a new project today about designing a logo for a non profit organization.

Yep. So that is the latest with my life.

LESS THAN 1 MONTH TIL I SEND IN MY CALARTS PORTFOLIO. AAAAH.