Present Joys

• Turned in finals for package design; had a short crit and got out of class early!
• Did homework in the cafeteria before lunch. I was the only person there besides the staff. I did homework and silently rocked out to Transcendental Youth.
• Ran into M Stillion and talked to him for a while. A dream come true.
• Had a really nice independent study meeting with Lutz.
• On tuesday morning, presented the final for my first ad project. I created a new brand for a local hardware store. Glad to be done.
• Looked at wordless ads in copywriting.
• Made little progress in jewelry class but had a ton of fun. My teacher gave me a little piece of sterling silver to use for my project because I was having too much trouble corralling nickel.
• Went back to school tuesday night for a roundtable discussion on Art Spiegelman’s Maus (a sort of kickoff event for CCAD’s Mix 2012 comics symposium). It was ok. I sat with Dorian and Colleen and had fun with them.
• Watched more ad presentations on thursday morning. It would have been more enjoyable had the projects actually been good, but it was relaxing nonetheless.
• Drove back to school thursday night to watch In Search of Steve Ditko on the big screen with a very small handful of other people. It was lots of fun!
• Went to school friday afternoon to see a panel on “indie comics”, then I walked around with Dorian.
• Watched Chris Ware deliver the Mix 2012 keynote talk. He was great.

• Made pretty good progress in package design; I think I’m finally up to speed. The final project is due next week.
• Ate some too-salty soup in the school cafeteria. For the second week in a row.
• Talked about Jimmy Corrigan in my comics class; got let into the Canzani Gallery to see some of Chris Ware’s original Jimmy Corrigan line drawings, which were stunning.
• Didn’t have my independent study meeting with Lutz because I was so busy with other stuff. I know, I felt pretty delinquent.
• Hung out with Audrey K. monday afternoon; did a fair bit of grumbling about the marketing class we have to attend.
• Tried to hunt down Barb with Audrey so we could say hi, but she was running kinda late to her own class and we couldn’t wait around for her.
• Got a reprieve from Burleigh on tuesday morning: the process books and presentations for our final project aren’t due until next tuesday. Phew, that’s a relief.
• Spent all of copywriting looking at stuff under the opaque projector. On tuesday we examined real-life text-only ads, and on thursday we read the text-only ads my classmates had written.
• Got to wear my giant trench coat and orange rain boots on thursday. It rained all day which I enjoyed a lot.
• Had a good old fashioned knit-n-crit in Burleigh’s thursday morning class; we went over our finals for the rebranding project. I’ve really missed doing critiques like that and it was highly enjoyable.
• As I mentioned, in thursday’s copywriting class, we looked at text-only ads written by students. Of particular enjoyment were a series of hilarious, extremely violent ads about gun ownership.
• Experimented with lots of new techniques in my jewelry class. Did some more welding and a lot more cutting. I’m getting a little better.

To celebrate my first week back at CCAD’s Saturday Morning Art Classes, here is a video of my esteemed colleague, Derrick, doing a creative drawing exercise.

L–R: George Felton, copywriting teacher extraordinaire; opaque projector; Nigel. As you can see, we were just casually high-fiving. (Thanks to Amanda for the photo.)

• Left my knitting at home monday morning. Had to spend all day monday with no knitting!
• Continued to feel very behind in my monday morning package design class.
• Had friendship lunch as usual except for the charming addition of Colleen Clark!
• Had an abbreviated independent study meeting with Mr. Lutz, then did work on a picnic table outside the library and did homework.
• Had a class-swap crit in tuesday morning’s ad class; I got to show my work to some kids from Lutz’ next-door class, then I got to sit with John and Carly for the rest of class time. It was very nice!
• Got into a mini-argument with Amanda about lots of things.
• Broke about 20 saw blades trying to cut metal in jewelry.
• Ran into Ann Shifflet in the lobby of Kinney Hall where she gave me a donut.
• Danced with my jewelry teacher, who is inexpressibly cool.
• Soldered three thick pieces of metal together at the very last minute on thursday afternoon. Huzzah—progress!