Being Artsy Fartsy

Art has always been a big part of my life, from my baby days of drawing with spaghetti sauce on my high chair, to my college drawing classes and musical endeavors, I've dabbled in a lot of different things.  Some areas I'm better at than others, but with my wide range of creative outlets, I'm more a jack of all trades than a master at any one in particular.

Music

While I've dipped into multiple instruments here, my primary instrument is the Alto Saxophone.  My mother bought me a professional grade saxophone when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I played and practiced it quite frequently.  Sadly, I was never into jazz much, which was a set back for a saxophone player, resulting in me trying other instruments such as the oboe, piano, flute, clarinet, and trombone.  None the less, when I was asked which instrument I wanted to play in Concert Band more, the higher band at my high school, I chose the alto saxophone over the oboe, the two instruments I had auditioned on, and was the instrument I played until I graduated.

In college, I had one semester of being a music major, and in result, one semester of being in band.  I managed to get into the higher end band for the semester after an audition, but due to the odd schedule of practices and moving out of being a music major in my second semester, I no longer had an outlet of playing my saxophone.

After that, when my brother entered college, he ended up using my saxophone for band himself, and I haven't personally played for about 3 years now.  Even then, I still find my fingers playing scales on an imaginary air saxophone from time to time.

Graphic Design

This was covered in a previous post I made, so if you want to hear and see about my talents in this area, I'd recommend checking out the post.

Jewelry

Making jewelry is something I've always really enjoyed doing, picking up cheap, clearanced jewelry when I used to work in an accessories department of a retail store, and dismantling it for parts toward my own pieces.  Between doing that, and purchasing new beads, string, wire, etc from bead stores, I have quite a collection of materials for making custom pieces.

I have to admit, finding the creativity and energy to make jewelry has always been the hardest part of making it in the first place.  When I get started, there's rarely anything that can get in my way.  I just have to get there, being the hard part.

I would have to say my favorite pieces to makeare bracelets, followed by anklets, then dangling earrings.  Necklaces take a lot of time and effort for me, and are really the one piece that I tend to rush and end up with less than favorable results from.

This is the set of prayer beads that someday will make their way into the hands of my best friend!

Nail Design

I love painting my nails.  Usually I wait until they get long and strong, then I paint them with a solid color,  draw on top of them with another color in some nifty design before sealing it with top coat.  The most popular design I've had people notice and 'wow' over is my tiger stripe design, which I usually did with black nail polish base and then white stripes that crossed from the sides of the nails, tapering about 3/4 of the way to the other side of the nail.  Once I have decently long nails again, I'll likely paint them up and make a post showcasing them.

Art

I've always loved drawing, but I am quite terrible at anatomy.  I always get it wrong no matter how much I practice and study, so a lot of my art is 'chibi' or a kind of henna design esque sort of art.

My chibis are kind of derpy, but then again, what's better than a derpy chibi?

My other type of art started when I was bored at the 6 week long training at my old job.  There was a restaurant nearby that gave you styrofoam cups for your drink, and I had gotten one on my lunch break.  Considering there were more than a few breaks, pauses, and general down time during training, I started doodling on the cup.  This is what I ended up with:

Graphic Design

Graphic Design has been something I've been in love with since my mother brought home my very first graphics program way back in my freshman year of highschool.  Funny as it may be, I still use that first graphics program now 10 years later, but I can at least say I know the program like the back of my hand.

None the less, Graphic Design was the second major I had switched to in college, coming off my doused hopes of being a music major with my complete and utter inability to sing in tune.  There was a vocal class all music majors had to pass with at least a C, even the instrumental majors like myself, and after getting a D in the lower level of that class, I knew I was doomed.

I actually quite enjoyed my time as a Graphic Design major, loving the art history classes I went into and the multitude of Graphic Design specific classes I enrolled in.  I remember one of my favorite assignments was making a flash animation to go with any 15 second piece of music you chose.  There were plenty of snippets available for the class, but I ended up choosing the Synyster Gates guitar solo from Seize the Day.  I'll admit it was awfully rushed, since I was pretty sick at the time, but I still had fun with it.

Sadly, since it was a while ago, I no longer have it in my photobucket, or maybe I deleted it since it was a bit lacking, but who knows I guess.

Oh heavens, I found it, and I'm almost hesitant to post it, but shall just because I spent the time going through 50 pages of my photobucket.

Thankfully, that was probably the worst of all the animations I created, but yeah, I was incredibly new to flash at that time.

Another project I quite enjoyed was one where we had to make soda can covers encompassing a certain theme.  It was a branding project, where our labels would be put onto 3D cans in a special application.  One had to be for a subtle, gentle drink, while the other had to promote energy and hyped excitement.  My subtle energy layout didn't go over too well, being it was too full of light colors and the such and it was hard to differentiate one thing from the next.  My energy layout though was highly praised by my teacher, actually taking me aside to tell me how well I had done with the crazy neon colors against black.  It was a big deal for me then, considering my teacher was a hard ass to say the least, and never seemed to really get excited over anyone's projects.

Finally, my latest bout of graphics has come from my time on Gaia Online.  I make lots of graphics for users there, and usually will accompany it with a load of BBCode for the site.  Here are a few recent examples I've come up with:

Whether it's making something completely from scratch like the first 3, or simply editing an image like the last two ( and yes, I picked League examples cause I just freakin' love League ), I'm addicted to making graphics.  Sadly, the only reason I never stuck with the major was because of my Design teacher's repeated reminders of how hard it was to break into the world of graphic design, over and over, which eventually just led me to believe I was better off pursuing other things.

Still, the idea of freelancing my abilities, making logos for companies or pawning my abilities for cash on deviantart is always an option, although I doubt online soliciting of my skills would be much easier than the difficulties my teacher preached of in the real world.