Elephant Fact #26: The ears of the African elephant are thought to be shaped like the continent of Africa.
Hello, all!
Man, I haven’t updated my blog in a long time. I wanted to, really, but I was always deterred by a ton of little things-- my old Dell laptop broke down and died in my arms, Graduation, Christmas, New Year, my seventeenth birthday, laziness, etcetera, etcetera. But I have finally pulled myself together to write this first (real) update of 2013.
What to say? What has changed? Well, I’m going to college/university now, which is great. I take the bus and the train every day, which is a pretty far cry from my old routine of being driven around by my wonderfully patient parents. Public transport is much more convenient, I’ll admit, not to mention more interesting-- although I still feel slightly uncomfortable sitting next to complete strangers. There were also a few memorable moments: that time I missed three trains because I didn’t realize I was on the wrong platform, that one time I ended up in motherflipping Shorncliffe trying to get home to Petrie (I still don’t know how the hell that happened) and that one time at Petrie station where I got yelled at and called a ‘slut’ by this nice old man.
That was very uncomfortable. Especially when I had to turn the corner and find all these schoolchildren sitting at the bus stop gaping at me. Wow.
(I think it was the boots, to be honest.)
But other, than those spectacularly exciting events, it’s been alright so far. Going to college is an experience that is familiar, but not quite. After four month of holidays, it was physically painful to look at educational things again-- and an amazing trigger for post traumatic flashbacks of the IB-- but on the other hand, I have much more leeway to study less, and have more free time than I had in high school. I suppose one of my favorite things is that I can just up and walk out of a lecture any time I want (even though I don’t because I feel terribly guilty afterwards, but it’s nice to have the option). Not to mention all the places you can eat at around there. Oh. Baby.
One of the more irritating things, however, is that the places where we have our lectures are ridiculously comfortable. The seats are cushioned, it’s air conditioned-- holy shit, they even dim down the lights to create like, I don’t know, a seductive mood or what and more often than not, I’ll find myself face down on the desk in the middle of a lecture, a puddle of drool steadily growing larger on the floor.
Normally, I’d draw a comic about that, but surely the mental image is disturbing enough without any additional help.
Speaking of drawing, someone recently asked me if I still drew. Well, sure I doodle occasionally. Just…during lectures. All over my notes. Psh, who am I kidding? My notes ARE doodles.
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| Was watching Disney the night before. |
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| Harry Potter feelz. |
Lunchtimes at the Great Court spent doodling random people:
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| After watching Avatar the Last Airbender. |
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| Harry's been turning up in a lot of my notebooks these days. |
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| "It's not the end of the world, dude..." |
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| After people watching on the train. |
I found that lately, my drawings have become more cartoony? At least the anatomy's better, though. I was flipping through my old sketchbooks and found this drawing of my friend in Psychology class in Year 10:
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| Dat ass. Dose lack of feet and hands. |
And I also found this Valentine's Day card I gave to my parents this year.
I guess it's just been interesting to see how my art has been progressing over the years. It's pretty uplifting to see some sort of improvement. A few days I was actually thinking about what sort of career I would go in if I didn't want to go into medicine-- I think animation would have been it. I was watching a few of my old Disney CDs the other day and it just hit me how amazing that the animators managed to capture the movement and facial expressions of the characters in these really clean, simple lines, and in the most human way possible. Movement is pretty hard to capture, I've been discovering, at least for me. I really wish I could get into a figure drawing class or something just so I could practise more of the realism aspect, though.
Ah well, enough of the thought diarrhoea. That has been my year so far, and it was fun writing on this blog again.
Until next time,
The Unlucky Elephant
