17 hour days...

Things have been crazy lately. But in a good way as usual. I didn't get in my normal sunday/monday post because monday we had a field trip for photo and we were gone from 9:30 til 8:30 and then I stayed at school to work until 12:45. So I started my week off with quite a bang and we are still plugging along. I have lots of different projects going on and my day usually just consists of either going to class or working on my pinhole camera, drawing for my advanced drawing project or researching/working on my next mixed media assignment. i.e. I am at school all the time. Which is wonderful. It has totally changed the way I look at working and creating. To have so much time to dedicate to my work and myself is amazing. And what is even more amazing is that I get to share it with everyone else here who is also working just as hard and here for just as long. That is a lot of time to spend with everyone and certainly makes for an interesting and hilarious bonding atmosphere.  

I thought quickly I would just talk a little about my advanced drawing project since it has its roots in the place I am in, The Burren and Ireland. I was awestruck from the first day of driving into Ballyvaughan as I saw the landscape unfold and I noticed all of the stone walls. So my work kind of took off from there.

The picture above was taken from up on the mountain about halfway up. I put it in photoshop and enlarged it to the size of  apiece of A1 paper. Which equals about 8 sheets of paper, and taped them together. Then I stuck it to a big window and put a blank piece of paper over it and traced/drew the stone walls. What resulted is shown in the picture below.
It is a small picture and hard to see but if you can blow it up you can see the walls really define the landscape and the town. There is so much to explain behind them I couldn't possibly do it here but this is kind of the jumping point of my exploration of the walls and Ireland so we'll see how it goes. 
This is a detail of the stone wall drawing.

Additionally, shown below, I have been starting to work on a larger scale. So as you can see this is my whole studio wall taken up by this drawing. Again bad picture but try to blow it up and you'll be able to see. It is in its very early stages and I don't really know where to go with it yet but I've got ideas. :)

Below is a detail of the large drawing. Again, another stone wall. Its just a contour drawing of the stones. So far it as been my way of representing the stone and trying to structurally break it down because rocks are really hard to draw. You'd be surprised.  So I've just been exploring different ways of representing them on paper. These line drawings are just the beginning, or maybe I will develop them further. We'll see. 
It is a hard task to update on work that is the opposite of a finished body of work but I wanted to give you guys a little view into the work I'm doing. And now, Uncle Martin, you can see how I have been inspired by the place I am living in and how I am responding to it creatively. Love you guys. Pictures of the house and this past weekend to come. :P