a² + b² =

Unfortunately, there’s a lot that hasn’t been going exactly — finger-quote — according to plan. Life has been kicking me in the back-end to the point where I am now wearing my buttocks as a hat. Let’s see:

1. There is a most foul odor emitting itself from my dishwasher. Not sure if it’s harmful, but where’s a canary when you need one?
2. My thermostat has developed a sense of humor — and not a very good one, mind you — because it constantly turns itself off now.
3. There are sugar granules making a cozy home for themselves beneath the very keyboard I type on, which makes my attempts for proper grammar as difficult and time consuming as finding a way to travel back in time so I can tell myself NOT to put the laptop next to the sugar bowl that would have contributed to a delicious batch of M&M cookies.
4. If I see one more Bring it On movie, I swear… I’m sure most would consider a digital plague of high-pitched hotties worse than the locusts in Egypt a fortunate thing. For one like me, however, who actually seeks out plot in a movie, hour and a half installments of cheerleaders just don’t cut it. That and I’m in a relationship; I don’t need to ogle. I actually enjoy sleeping next to my lover and not out on the ice slab of a couch. My thermostat is broken, remember?
5. I don’t actually have a couch. I can’t afford one. But if I could it would be heated.
6. And tragedy struck when I lost the only cherry flavored jelly bean in my bag to the bowels of my garbage disposal. Can you tell now that cherry is my favorite flavor? See? We’re learning more and more each post.

But what has proven itself to be not a complete disaster now that I’m finally putting everything together is my latest Design I project: the Repetition Grid.

_____

There were a few more phases involved in order to set this plan into motion. Phase 1 being 75 different motif designs:

I didn’t travel too far outside the walls of Castle Boring, I realize. These are all basic shapes with another basic shape taking a rather basic bite out of them all. It wasn’t my original intention. In fact, I wasn’t even 100% sure what my original intention was supposed to be. I sort of just floated around this assignment in the beginning waiting for inspiration to come up and take a not-so-basic bite out of me.

_____

Well, it was Phase 2 of the plan and things weren’t seeming any more successful. As interesting as it was to feel like I was in kindergarten again trying to fit my triangle inside the hole made for the square my inspiration was still in conference with my creativity and a lot of what was being discussed sounded something like “BLAAAAAGRGH“.

So it probably wasn’t a good idea to reunite my brain with math. Either way, here was the result:

This shape was to be the fuel that would propel the little legs of my mental hamster in its wheel forward in this grandmaster plan at a rate that (hopefully) wasn’t so unstable that it would snap each of its femur bones off and send them skyrocketing into orbit.

_____

So here we are now at Phases 3 and 4. Armed with some tracing paper and a couple of sharpies I set off to save the world, or rather, my grade. I had to come up with five different design options using this BLARGH-shape and from there produce a set of three inking possibilities. One of which would, inevitably, become my final project to present embarrassingly before my peers.

Phase 3:

Phase 4:

And I’m sure you’re wondering at this point, “Didn’t you say this project wasn’t a disaster? And why do you only have two inking designs posted, you dolt?”

Right you are, ye-audience-who-pays-attention. Because it was at these phases that things took a rather dramatic twist. Professor Waldvogel definitely understands. She saw me struggling with what I had come up with. It’s not that I didn’t like the designs, it’s just that they reminded me of patterned quilts that grandmothers put together with feeble hands because to embark on anything more inspiring would result in an exploding aneurysm.

I made my way out of Castle Boring, traveled through Boredom Forest, only to wind up in Safe Town.

I didn’t want to play it safe. Not this time. I thought I was already challenging myself by sticking to the 25 piece 10×10″ grid instead of the more flexible 100 piece one. But it still wasn’t enough. One of the biggest reasons I’m here at SCAD is to, again, do a little soul-searching. I’m not going to find out what I’m really made of if I don’t push myself. Even if pushing myself meant abandoning my previous designs to come up with a whole new one… in class… when I was supposed to be working on the FINAL phase.

This is what (roughly — and I do put emphasis on roughly) came to be:

_____

Phase 5 — FINAL PHASE

I had managed to make some small shred of magic; I pulled a rabbit out of my hat and to my delight and infinite surprise it wasn’t dead. I had an idea pulsing with life now all I had to do was give it a new body.

Inking is one of my favorite ways to express a-r-t. It’s a complete pain and requires copious amounts of patience. Good thing I have some of that said patience and that I’m a bit of a masochist:

Critique notes: I was actually able to show myself in class and present a piece that finally, finally felt good to me. My fellow classmates seemed to agree. My focal point ploy worked — most everyone had their eyes hit exactly where I wanted them to (hopefully others have the same effect). The negative space was used well and there was an overall successful balance.

One of my favorite comments was that it was stated that the motif chosen was, you guessed it, boring. Because it was. Though they seemed to believe I did a good job transforming something boring into something slightly more appealing, which was totally a big point of the assignment for me. Even if the damn thing wasn’t a success I still presented myself with a challenge and learned so much because of it.

Some personal critique notes (as if you haven’t gotten enough of me already) would have to be that I didn’t completely allow isolation and concentration to come to life like I wanted. And also about craftsmanship yet again. Craftsmanship and I, we did go to couples therapy and managed to work out some, not all, of our differences. I still had a couple of little blotchy spots on a few of my edges and I should have gone over some of the bigger black areas with another layer of ink to give it a more solid finish. But it’s out of my hands now (literally, the professor has it), so before I file it away I’ll stamp this report with a nice ol’:

Mission accomplished.

And to all of you who have commented on my blog thus far, this is the part where I give you a wink, a thumbs up, and say, “Thanks for the support!” Really, I mean it. We’re all in this together, after all.