drypoint etching!

So this is my latest project from my printmaking class; I just learned how to do drypoint etching on plexiglass and ran it through the press.  It's such a fun process!  I enjoyed myself today and will definitely print more of this image.  Maybe I will eventually get to the point where I can clean it properly, too; that's what all the smudges are.  >.<  

I will definitely do more of these: you take a sheet of glass, and an etching stylus, trace your design and then coat the glass with ink when you are done.  After that it's a simple matter of wiping away the ink and then pressing the bad boy.  The paper is given enough pressure that it picks up all the ink in the grooves of the glass from the scratches, and then when you are done you have a lovely reverse image!

Also, If you will excuse me, I just picked up Terry Pratchet's latest book from Amazon: "Snuff."  I'm going to go read it now!

Paste Papers and Ponyo

So, today I went to the library on campus and checked out Ponyo!  It's a Studio Ghibli movie and one of their latest, so I knew it was going to be fun; I had already seen some of it online, but the fan "translation" is really BAD.  Not so bad you can't understand it, but not great, either.  Misspellings and bad grammar, etc.

In other words it's worth it to see it on DVD even if you've already seen it online.  I watched it in English Dub (not something I usually do with anime, but Ghibli movies are the exception because it's usually very well done) with my brother, and enjoyed it a lot.  I'll watch the original Japanese with sub sometime soon as well, of course.  :-)  It's a great family movie and mainly for a younger age set than any of Miyazaki's other movies, but it can still be appreciated by even adults like me who still enjoy watching animated movies.  Beautifully animated water and a sense of movement in everything.

The dub was all right; Sasuke's voice actor was a bit too old so I jolted out of the movie a bit whenever he said anything more than "PONYO!" which is 80% of his dialogue; there's of course the strange technical details of matching english dub to Japanese words which cause a few odd sentence pauses as well, but overall it was definitely worth watching again, even with the English voice-actors.  It's not the best Miyazaki dub, though.

Anyway, as for the story, Ponyo is rescued by a boy named Sasuke and ends up wanting to become human; when she runs away from home she messes up the balance of the world and has to choose between having magic or love.  Cute, cute scenes and gorgeous animation.  I liked this movie better than either Kiki's Delivery Service or the outdated-feeling Nausica: Valley of the Wind.

OKAY, enough Ponyo!  At the library I also got a book on making paste papers since it's a project I've been wanting to try!  I'm going to attempt to make some at school next week in the print lab; we'll see how it goes.  It can't be that hard, after all.  http://lilbookbinder.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/paste-paper-tutorial/ and http://www.inward-bound.us/pastepaper.html look like good resources online as far as tutorials are concerned.

7 Wonders!

Found this image on Board Game Geek for 7 Wonders-- the newest game I have played so far this year! Exciting indeed.  I've wanted to try it for a while, and my sister had a 40% discount for any game at Barnes and Noble.  They've got a decent game section so we had fun browsing and deciding what to get.  

So far we have only played this with two players, but I'm looking forward to playing it with three because the 2-player version requires a dummy city that each player controls every other turn.  

The basic idea of the game is to build up your city with resources, science, military, and your wonders; at the beginning of each turn you have seven cards.  You pick one card to build or turn into cash, then change out your hand with another player.  It seems like an extremely strategic game, and I'm not sure I've wrapped my mind around it yet since I have only played three times.  The first time I lost miserably, the second time I won with military, and the third time I tied but my sister had more coins than I did, so she won.  I'm not sure if the game will prove to be fairly even or wildly erratic as far as scoring is concerned, but there are several different strategies to winning and they seem to be fairly equal as far as the amount of effort in them.

Ceramic Coil Pots!

So this weekend on Friday I finished my pots and smoothing them out; I thought I would post pictures so you guys could check it out.  The first pot we had to do was symmetrical, had to be as large around as a basketball at the widest point and have a 4-inch closure. 

You can see all the other pots in the background which are HUGE.  My pot is one of the smallest in the class. 

The second half of the project was to build an asymmetrical pot; the rest of the requirements still applied.  Here it is, but you need a couple pictures to appreciate what I did with it since the back does not equal the front at all. 

Anyway, I think it ended up looking pretty awesome, if very female in shape.  (But still much, much better than my friend's concept, who deliberately chose to design her pot in the shape of a specific abstracted male anatomy. *.*) Other than my pinch pots at the beginning of the semester, this class is the first time I have ever worked with clay.  If you get a chance to take a ceramics class, go for it!  It's great fun, especially if one has a great professor.

Easy Homemade Printing

This is actually pretty amazing.  We saw this short video in Printmaking class and I want to try it, because it seems like items that one would usually have around the house or obtain fairly easily and cheaply: foil, handsoap, vegetable oil, soda, brayer, and ink.  If you made your image smaller you could run it through a pasta machine to print, too.  Except I only have ONE item in that list.  Go figure.  I never drink soda and we always use liquid soap instead of bar form.  :-<   *SO SAD.*  

I'm wondering if the soda could be substituted for a corn syrup/water mixture, since that is all Coca-Cola is anyway + fizz.

Random Sculpture via "Mess"

Yeah, it's not much.  The assignment from "Mess: Manual of Accidents and Mistakes" ran as followed:

There was a page with an empty nine by nine grid; I was supposed to pick out nine items which I had around my house and pick three of them at random from a hat (I taped an envelope on the cut-out page and stuffed the slips of paper in that) to build a sculpture.  Among my items were nails, q-tips, foam board, Popsicle sticks, nails, etc.  The three that I picked out happened to be wire, q-tips, and Popsicle sticks, so this is what I did with them.

Actually I was surprised how well the paper wire held together the sticks and q-tips.

If I were to add to this I think I might draw on the sticks to give them more umph.  As it is, here be Random Sculpture.