Today's lesson/lecture/tutorial/whatever was...very uninspirational, to put it in a slightly better tone. Drawing Essentials, a nightmare. The lecturer was particular about anything and everything we did. Plus, he was contradicting himself.
I never knew drawing could be so complicated and filled with tons of unnessecary steps until today. There are, let's see, 5 steps actually...5 very nessecary steps in his opinion. My mind was troubled just thinking about it. Steps: sketch, object, proportions, details & final lines, and finish drawing. Whatever. For the sake of passing my course, I'll go with it anyway.
Sketching includes action lines and basic shape. So um, we started off having to draw the person next to us. Kinda fun at first. Started off with drawing a circle (for the head) and rectangle thing (for body) etc...I suppose it's easier in the end. I totally skipped with basic shape & action lines part (which consists of stick figures) basically cos I forgot all about it.
THEN came the guy scrutinising each and every one of our work pieces. He took this girl's sketch book and showed it to the class and said something like 'This is NOT what I want' or whatever. So irritating. I mean, all she did was follow his instructions and drew a stick figure first, then along comes mr. im-contradicting-myself saying that it's not right.
Throughout the class he picked out about half of the students' sketches and showed it around saying his favourite words 'This is not a sketch' or 'This is not what I want to see'. Luckily mine wasn't picked or I wouldn't have the mood to even pick up a pencil ever again. I kinda understand that it's not harsh critisism or anything, but isn't doing that a little...discouraging? I'd feel really bad and simply mortified.
I was like, 'oh shit oh shit oh shit' when he came up behind me and stayed there so freakin long. I was bracing myself for the slam when he said 'Which process are you at now?'....Um. Speechless. Then, 'Uh, the details'....'The proportion is off, the head is too big'....Dammit I know, but you won't let us erase ANYTHING. You said it yourself. I just asked him if I could erase it cos I was NOT gonna start all over again like some people had to do. He was like, 'No, you can just draw over it'. I was soooo relieved. But I still think that drawing without erasing anything at all is just...not my style. Haha. I'm an erasing freak.
Haha...andrea was totally defying him and you could see eraser shavings all over the place.
Okay, and he has this habit of tapping people on the shoulder and saying, 'Don't draw, sketch'. We were told to sketch a car that he flashed on the screen. I was in the middle of it when he told me that. I was friggin sketching! How simple can it get? I was practically drawing the OUTLINE of the car, and he calls it a drawing. I'm confused. Maybe should check the dictionary for the meaning of sketch and draw. All around the room, you could hear once in a while, 'Don't draw, sketch'. Phff...
Man, I'm really unsure about the whole sketching thing. That's not even the worse part...he expects every one of us to get better after today's lesson. He cannot expect people to get better when all he does is tell people that they're wrong and goes on to the next student.
I dislike his style, his contradictions, his expectations, his teaching. And I thought lecturers were supposed to be a bit more fun than secondary teachers. Anyway, there're bound to be some like him...I'm just so bored by his lesson. I enjoyed the drawing bits but not the lesson in general. It's so hard to appreciate art when you're bombarded by people telling you what's the (supposedly) *right* thing to do. Design is subjective, but it's basically the point. You have to be a critic and you have to be subjected to criticism. We're not there yet but 3 years will pass really quick. Already the 1st week has gone like a breeze...
Tomorrow's another day trying to get to know new people again. Getting other people phone numbers and names just makes me wonder how the hell I managed to do that in secondary school. I don't remember doing anything like that. But now, I don't have a fixed class. No one does. Eveyone has to walk from place to place at different times. Sad case.
Good thing is, design people don't have books to carry around. Omgosh you should see business and engineering students. I wonder how they cope through that.
Sigh...lots of drawing, and there's a subject for IMD students about communicating design ideas which involves creative writing. I find that I'm doing everything that I like. Drawing, writing, designing...but I'm not happy. It's great, everything, but there's no real feeling yet. No dedication yet. Maybe it's the uninspiring lecturers. The Idea1 lecturer is really nice and not subjective...she thinks everything is an original idea in itself, and that just makes people so happy. Eh, me, that is. Other lecturers are just the plain old, 'do this like that, this is wrong' kind of people.
Everyone has their own way of going about with what they do...bah, no one understands.
Very very sleepy now. Not only did the lecturer not turn up today and I wasted my energy dragging myself to school, but I had violin lessons later on, which sucked cos I was too tired to play a decent crappy song.
Sigh. So, orientation was nothing, bascially cos I didn't go for 4 out of 5 days. It rained on the second day, so no games anyway. Um, sad to say, it was boring. I expected more, especially out of a Poly.
Lessons have started, but I don't think this week is considered in the semester. And they'll be changing our timetables again! It's SICK!!! I hate this. Now need to go find out people's names all over again and think about who to meet and when and check if anyone has the same timetable as you....GGAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!
That aside, things have been going more smoothly than I thought it would. Maybe the tough part is not here yet. Cos if this really is how it's gonna be, then I think I might just scrap through one day at a time...and it'll be alright.
Oh man, it feels so weird. First off, my lectures are like, 3 hours long. I don't even know how I managed to pull through THAT. But anyway, the teachers/lecturers/what the HELL do you call them people squeezed some tutorial thingies in the lectures. Erm, it really seemed like tutorials. Maybe just little testing our abilities and all that crap.
First lesson of the week was what, Idea1. Yeah. Nice nice teacher with an unpronouncable name, I didn't know if it was a guy or a girl (it was a girl). I seriously thought it was a printing error. I mean, letters like G and I don't look normal together. Uh, never mind, I forgot her name. But it was an interesting lesson. In groups of 3 we had to draw 100 different lines. Yup, lines. Other groups came up with creative stuff...uh, a few only, and my group probably had the corniest lines ever. Worse thing was, we had to name them. Hah! Starry line, bomb line, grass line...you name it.
Okay so that was lame.
Second lesson was C&E (culture and expression). It sounded so interesting to me at first but uh...we have this monotonous lecturer that totally put me to sleep. His voice is like a lullaby. In an un-sweet way. But he was good, a little funny, sensible, blah. Made us watch a weird video on McDonalds. It was stuff contemplating about why the logo and food has caught people's attention so much...and they had scary music playing in the background....sounds cheesy? It was kinda spooky...haha, I would never look at a Fillet-O-Fish the same way again.
Then we have this individual assignment to complete. Deadline somewhere in June. It's like, to do STUFF on an A3 size paper about things 'Uniquely Singapore'. The hell... Wasn't paying attention to the details, and he STILL hasn't emailed us the information about the assignment. I wanna complete it before other work starts to pile in, man.
IMD students also have 2D and 3D Art Fundementals class. Interesting, no? Yeah, first class in 2D art was to take 3 objects in your possession and draw them. Must concentrate on layouts and shading. For my class. The class before us had to draw 5 objects (do not shade) and paint them later on. Sad case.
It was kinda fun, doing observational drawing. Me liked it. Haven't drawn stuff like that in forever. Drew my mailbox key and dolphin ring. Didn't draw the 3rd one cos the teacher asked me to stop and complete the shadows. I was like, crap, cos I never draw shadows. They seemed....unnessecary in my life..haha. Tones on objects, I can understand. But shadows? I was at a standstill. The drawing still sits in my room collecting dust. Not completed yet. I'm not used to having homework. Grown out of it.
Lecturer for Communicating Design Ideas didn't come today, the sicko.
Sigh...so far, it's been great. Met new people, though it might take a LONG while for me to get used to them. Some of the girls are really sweet. But the guys...are just being guys, although there's one of them I can really talk to. Know 2 china girls. They're genuinely nice people, but the language barrier...yup. I'm chinese-impaired. But fortunately, they DO understand what I'm saying to them in chinese! You know what, when they start writing their names down for me to see, the first thing that popped into my mind was 'calligraphy'. I mean, it was like SWISH and there appears a character on paper. Scary. And to think that we have to write stroke by stroke. I feel so handicapped.
So...the food's good. Even though the canteen is usually crowded.
To tell you the truth, I'm kinda looking forward to projects and assignments. It's nice, the feeling of achievement after you're done and satisfied with your work. It's the same as completing a drawing and every proportion is in place and every tone is perfect.
It's a long 3 years to go. But 4 years in secondary school seemed short enough. Maybe I can get used to this. It's not like I'm suffering already. Gotta brace myself for staying up late at night (later than I usually do) and rushing with last minute work. Life's got its ups and downs, yeah?
Well um, we've got 9 months before we eventually have to move out, if 80% of the estate agrees to the en-block crap. It so happens that more than 80% of the people living here are senseless assholes.
It works like this: a price for the apartments is negotiated, we move, the stinking developers come to demolish this lovely place, build a new-looking thing (where each apartment is probably gonna be 1/3 the size of my house now), and sell it again for a higher price (duh).
First off, this house has sentimental value. It's PRICELESS. I lived in it all my life. All 16+ years in it. I'm NOT gonna give in to shit like this. It's totally unlucky for us that there are smelly old people living in this estate who want the money for bloody RETIREMENT. The hell? Didn't you, like, WORK your ass off to GET retirement money? Do you NEED someone else's shit?
I don't get people. Some people say it's 'a windfall'. Laugh in their faces. Either you ain't got no heart beating in you, or you've been a nomad for the most of your life and don't mind going through trouble moving. Then go [due to the disturbing and violent content, blogger has refrained from disclosing it to the world of Internet where someone could eventually sue the user...]!!!!!
For those who have no clue (and I bet most of you fit in that category) I lived my whole life leaving every morning from this house and coming back from school to this house for 10 years. It's bad enough that now, I have to take 2 buses to get to my new Poly. Now some ass comes up and says we have to move (IF it is successful which it obviously would).
My parents spent their life savings on renovating this place. We practically lived in our store room for months before it was completed. Hell, I endured ear-splitting drilling and knocking and pounding for MONTHS to eventually see this house furnished into the hotel-like apartment it is today. I don't want that money to go to waste. Even if you offered 1 million I would tear every note in your face and tell you to #@*$ off.
No one can BUY this house with money. NO. Give me your blood and sweat and tears and 10 million and MAYBE I would accept. UM, probably NOT, stupid.
