My Artwork

This is my final for this semester. It was to create 3 figurines out of random cutouts from magazines and then redraw them in colored pencil. And as you can see, I had to put Lady Gaga in there.
This project was from this semester, it was "Self and the City" I decided to take on the temptation to do wrong and "sin" in the city and the prevalence of superficiality. I put in a mixture of two quotes by Kurt Cobain, which is "Our friends are nothing but known enemies but today we found our real friends they are in our head."

This was my very first project from first semester, which was a still life project. It took my 3 months to finish and it is secretly my pride and joy.

I don't have a picture of this fully rendered but this is a self portrait of my mom and I that I gave to her for Christmas. The assignment was to do a 3/4 self portrait with colored pencils but I decided to add another person. I'll put up a picture of it completed another day.

This was my second semester mid-term which was to use text in a new and innovative way. So I took the idea that if you could shake someone's hand and tell them everything about yourself in that handshake what would you say or write? I of course put my name, my favorite quote by Kurt Cobain: "I'd rather be hated for who I am rather than loved for who I'm not." I also put my favorite Bob Marley quote: "In this bright future remember your past." And then I put music notes because I absolutely adore music and I put "Music frees your soul."

So this piece was my final project from first semester. We were supposed to reference three different artists and then make the piece our own. So the girl in the middle is me and each tattoo has a special meaning. The dragon represents my personality and how vivacious and passionate I am. The claw represents the things that bother me and that "hold on" to me. "Write Love" is in dedication to my favorite organization, "To Write Love on Her Arms," which is an organization that educates and combats the issues of suicide and self-mutilation. "Lie to Me" just represents how people can lie to you all the time and we won't even know it. The web with "Forget it" means how life is so intricate and everything intertwines with each other and how sometimes we just need to forget it all. "Christ Saved my Soul" literally should be taken as written. I dunno where I would be without my religion and faith. The figures around "me" are supposed to be the "bad parts of me" that I'm letting go of. This piece is by far my favorite piece to date and is my most personal.

My Keyboard

Heyyyy there....so I haven't posted in an INCREDIBLY long time due to the fact I've been busy volunteering at Teen Line and working at school and everything but the end of the year is coming soon.

So lately I've developed an intense addiction to my keyboard, which is getting sort of bad. But for anyone who has a passion for music, you can relate to my urges to play constantly throughout the day, despite my emotions. I mean music is so absolutely amazing, I feel like its so constant, ever changing yet dependable, and evokes emotions that we don't even know. I dunno if anyone who reads this understands what I'm saying haha. Perhaps if you listen to the song "Bleed" by Cold, the frontman wrote his lyrics based on how he feels about music-- and it can relate to so many different situations but its really an incredibly moving and beautiful song....check it out.

Quote of the Day: "I wanna bleed, let the blood flow that keeps me alive, and I wanna scream show all the world what I feel inside."- Bleed by Cold

Gaahhhh

Well the internet has been down for a couple days so forgive me I haven't been able to post. Nothing new actually...for once. But I'm almost done learning Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from this guy on YouTube-- so much more difficult than I thought (but definitely worth it). For the most part, life is pretty boring....smeh.

Quote of the Day: "You can turn off the sun but I'm still gonna shine"- Jason Mraz

Found Myself a New Baby

Went to this guitar store today with my dad and HOLLLYY CRAAAPP I found this beautiful beginner's electric guitar that's Candy Apple Red, White, and Beige and it's absolutely beautiful. I have to save up my money for it so hopefully I'll be able to buy it within the next month but I already have some ideas of what songs I want to learn:

-Smoke On The Water: Deep Purple

-Smells Like Teen Spirit: Nirvana

-I Love Rock N Roll: Joan Jett

-Higher: Creed

-All The Same: Sick Puppies

-Dirty Little Girl: Burn Halo

-Between Angels and Insects: Papa Roach

-Last Resort: Papa Roach

-Scars: Papa Roach

-My Derailment: Adelita's Way

-Hero: Skillet

-Crazy B*tch: Buckcherry

-Edge of Desire: John Mayer

And there's PLENTY more trust me....but that's just a few.

Quote of the Day: The night is fading my heart is racing, now just come and love me like we're gonna die- Animal by Ke$ha

Everything Lifehouse Skit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA/

Please Please Please copy and paste this link and watch this video. It's a Christian dance skit to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse. It's basically just about a girl who originally walks with Jesus and loves him but as different temptations envelope her she finds herself further away from God to the point to where she contemplates suicide and then she decides to find her way back to God...it made me cry the first time I watched and it's literally one of my favorite songs of all time. And I feel like all of us have been in one or more of the situations the girl is faced with so even if you aren't religious or a Christian I just ask you to watch this video because it's SO powerful either way :)

Quote of the Day: "If you're not good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone else since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't giving yourself."

Men Need To Stop It!

I'm pretty sick today so I was even more careless about my appearance (I rocked the big baggy sweatshirt, skirt, tights, and pretty worn out Nikes with hot pink laces- cute yes I know)... But as I was getting out of the car obviously groggy, tired, and having an "I'm mad at the world" type of look on my face, and blasting my music, I see a man staring at me in a car behind my dad. That's not a great way for me to start out my day. I continue to walk and meet up with my friend Catherine, and we decided to count the number of men who stare at us in the 5 minutes while we wait for the bus (not because we think we are cute, because we are annoyed as to how many full grown men do this). Can I just say in that period of waiting time for the bus, which is 7:20 to 7:25....10 men in 10 different cars stared at us and their necks practically screwed off their stupid heads from looking at us...And you know it's not like we were TRYING to look cute, we looked like a truck ran over us, yet FULL GROWN men were staring at us...I always have this desire to go up to them and say "You know you have a daughter that's my age at your house, so turn the other way bud." But seriously, why do men look at teenage girls this way!?! I mean we LOOK like we are teenagers, we are wearing school uniforms and we don't look like we are 20 years old....and even if we did it's so inappropriate and lewd.

I feel like it goes back to how women are objectified ALL the time through the media and teenage guys and full grown men think that we are just animals in cages to be oogled at... well I have some news for you men who think you can do that to me....NO WAY and I WILL have something to say about it. And you know what bothers me more than anything?? I'll tell you, when teenage boys think it's cool to cat call at you, make animal noises or kissy noises at you, or instead of asking me my name they describe me to get my attention. Scenario: I was with some of my kids while I worked at this camp over the summer and a group of guys yell out to me "Girl with the stunna shades on! Look over here!" I literally wanted to say "Okay firstly, THANK YOU for telling me what I was wearing because I had no idea....and you really think describing me is going to make me all of the sudden be filled with this desire to walk over to you and talk to you....WRONG." I mean this type of stuff happens to my friends all the time and so many girls and it's so ridiculous!

Women are not disposable, sexual objects, that are only meant to please men. I want to start a whole new way of thinking among girls, especially teenagers- I hate girls who complain that they don't have a boyfriend and they are so unhappy about it and it's ruining their lives and then they will dumb themselves down so they can get a guy... A) Boys are a WASTE of time because they only have ONE thing on their mind at this age and I think you know what it is B) If you need a boy or a man to make you feel better about yourself...we have a problem and C) Any boy who'd rather have a girl as stupid and indecisive is truly intimidated by a woman who can voice her opinion and not take crap from anyone and he's not worth ANYONE'S time--- Let's start a whole revolution! A revolution that tackles the idea that women are ditzy, stupid, need men to make them happy, overly emotional, and are only in existence to please men...how about we start having people believe that we are intelligent, future leaders of America, that we can be independent but we do like the company of a man, we can handle ourselves, and we do NOT condone being oogled at and seen as sex objects....it's all up to OUR generation to stop it and not condone it....Make a difference.

Hallucinations

Sorry I didn't post yesterday everybody! I'm not going to be able to post everyday during the school year because I need to focus on my school work. However I will be able to do it 3-5 times a week.

So two days ago I went to go visit my Granny, who was having hallucinations. I walked into the room and she was propped up in her bed as happy and lively as she could be and just talking 1,000 mph. Now she's typically really laid back, calm, doesn't talk a whole lot, but she was still funny. So as my mom and I are putting on these yellow coat thingys because she once had something that was contagious, my mom asked her how she was and she said, "Oh Shaun I've been on this train all day but at every stop the people say 'Hi Ms. Lewis how are you' but I don't have no quarter to give 'em." And my mom slightly frustrated said, "So I see we are still on the train." Then my Granny looked at me and said "Ooo Katie that's such a nice coat on you, where'd you get it?" Mind you, these are practically yellow Snuggies, and if you've seen Snuggies you know that they aren't the most attractive items of clothing.

Then, later as I am sitting next to her she tells me how her house was changed into a clinic last night and there was a party there and she went in her hospital gown and all these people she knew were there, and they named it after her ex-husband. I asked "Why didn't they name it after you Gran?" She replied "Well I'll tell you, when I left that house, I left everything with it, I'm not going back." Then she began seeing people and children and I said "Well what kind of children do you see are they white or black?" She said "Oooo they're quiet, no shouting or nothing, but they're black...that's unusual for them." She also claimed she saw 3 bears, a crab, 2 trains, my dead grandmother, and that she lost her fork all within a time period of less than a hour.

Then she would do this thing where she'd fall asleep in mid-sentence then wake up talking as if she were in the middle of a story. She apparently fell asleep and woke up 2 minutes later all frantic saying "Shaun! We need some syrup!" And my mom slightly confused said "What??" "We need some syrup you don't see all these pancakes!?!" So basically my Granny has been a mess these past two days, BUT TODAY she was completely fine and normal and acknowledged how crazy she was acting....isn't that one of the strangest things you've ever heard? And she can only remember some parts of her hallucinations....but that's about the craziest thing I've heard all day!

Oh and I have the beginnings of a cold- I think it's from visiting the hospital because whenever I go I get some sort of illness....other than that all is well :)