The Final Finals of 2010!

Finals ended today!  And as if that wasn't awesome enough, this news is made even more exciting by the fact that it's my last finals of the year!  Because there's only one class I can sign up for this fall semester and I only have my scholarship for two more semesters, I figured I'd get more bang for my scholarship buck if I deferred this coming semester, and used the scholarship for Winter and Fall 2011 instead when there'll be more classes available for me to take.  So I'm currently facing an entire four months without school.  I mean, I guess it's the break I would've had if I hadn't taken summer classes this year, but I've never not gone to school during fall before, so it's kind of a foreign feeling.  And there won't be any finals right before Christmas to stress me out!  I don't even start classes again until after Christmas!  Weird...

Anyway, as part of my end of finals tradition, I'm posting some of the stuff I've been up to this semester.  Let's start with head painting.  Because they don't employ as many models during the summer as they do during fall/winter, we ended up having a lot of repeat models in both my head painting and figure drawing classes.  Sometimes the lack of variety was kind of annoying, but the cool thing about it is that my very first painting and my last painting were both of the same person.  Let's compare, shall we?

Before:

After:

Much improved, thankfully!  Now, if there's one model I never got tired of painting, it's Sharon.  We only got her about once a week, but I loved it when we did, because her face was so interesting to paint, and relatively easy as faces go.  Some of my favorites of her:

Colors always show up better in real life, but oh well.  For my final, I painted Amanda:

Fun fun.  This picture was taken with my cell phone, so again, colors.

I feel like I got a lot better at figure drawing this term, too.  I don't have many pictures of my artwork from that class, but I do have my final drawing that I did:

I enjoyed figure drawing a lot more this semester than when I took it last year, which is probably a good thing, since you do so much of it in the illustration program.  The class was still kind of stressful, though, and the anatomy test at the end was a beast.  I'm glad to have it over with!

Finally, my favorite class of all, bookbinding!  I have a few more projects that I've finished since I last posted.  The first is this papercase book:

I was a little bit nervous the whole time I was making this box, because the paper for it costs $10 and I didn't really want to have to buy it twice.  It all turned out okay, though.  Actually, it was a lot cuter than I expected it to be.  I might even make another one someday, if I ever feel like buying more of that paper.

Next is a clamshell box that I made to hold the coptic stitch book I made earlier this term, since the edges were getting a little worn:

I lined the inside of the box with more walnut ink paper.  The image on the front of the box is this painting by Annie Henrie:

Believe it or not, she just barely graduated from BYU, and this was part of her final BFA project.  Amazing, right?

Finally, for my final project I made a caterpillar stitch book:

Ta da!!  Here's a close up on the stitch:

I used my sink art for the paste down, and I painted some paper with gouache to encase each signature.  It made the spine look pretty cool.

And... that's it!  I am super excited, and a little overwhelmed by the prospect of so much free time on my hands over the next few months.  I figure I'll probably work on my portfolio and sketchbook in case I decide to apply for the BFA program, and maybe even cook dinner every once in a while.  And Education Week is next week!  So, lots of fun stuff going on.  However, I'm running off of 2 hours of sleep right now, so good night! :)