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How to avoid online distractions and focus on work

How to avoid online distractions and focus on work

As a college student you know I am almost always on my computer if I am not in class or at work. This leads to a ton of online distractions away from the homework I dread doing. It used to be a constant struggle that led to work being put off until later and later, until I finally figured out how to combat this.  What I found works the best for me is to use the pomodoro study method. What this…

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Heat Wave

Heat wave has been the first painting that I have done since I fell into a week long ‘art-funk’. These art funks mess me up, because I love my art. Anyway, this piece was heavily inspired by a skull man I found in Tressa Bowling’s book, ‘Portraits of the Dead’ (click that image below to see her facebook) The original image I was using as a bit of a warmup to get my hands to remember how to draw…

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How to avoid online distractions and focus on work?

How to avoid online distractions and focus on work?

              As a college student you know I am almost always on my computer if I am not in class or at work. This leads to a ton of online distractions away from the homework I dread doing. It used to be a constant struggle that led to work being put off until later and later, until I finally figured out how to combat this.                 What I found works the best for me is to use the…

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Trial of Dreams 4 of 4

Trial of Dreams 4 of 4

Sophomore year, second semester (Current Time): As we have seen in the past, Literally every semester here at this school I have changed my mind on what I ‘want to be when I grow up.’ It’s been pretty stressful, especially when you consider the fact that I am in fact married. I don’t remember if that is something that I mentioned in my previous posts, but I did get married. My second semester of…

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Trail of Dreams part 3 of 4

Trail of Dreams part 3 of 4

This is the third installment of my trail of dreams story. You can find the first part here, and the second here.

  Sophomore year, first semester: We’ve reached the current school year in this trail of dreams. It’s more current info. When I left you guys off, I was telling all how I was going to double major. I was going to major in the two fields I felt were calling to me. Computer Science and…

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 Pastel Dreams is a piece that took me about a month and some change to complete. It is a large (20 x 24) acrylic painting featuring some glitter, a unicorn, and a large cedar tree.

  The reason I started this piece is that a friend’s inlaw was showing interest in my work, and this is a woman I have never met before in my life.  My friend (wonderful woman by the way) was just sitting there talking about my work as if it was done by some professional or something. There was something she said about my work, ‘You can really tell if a painting is something she put her heart into.’ Something about that statement made me want to make something that I would love, not something I thought would look interesting, or anything like that. I wanted to make a piece I would like to work on and would want to own (Unfortunately it is far too big to live in my apartment)

Anyway, that’s the reason behind the piece here’s the how it was made portion of this post.  This first picture was taken around April 17, although I had started the piece around the 10th, I know that because it took a few days to the idea fully formed. Although I did start the background gradient before I had the final sketch roughed out, I think it was a good idea, so once I had the idea done I could just sketch it onto the canvas.

I chose a cedar tree because of how unlike my typical trees it looked. Most of the tree paintings I create have some sort of whimsy, mystical feeling to them.  I wanted this one to have a little bit more of a realistic shape to it.

About a week later and this is what I had managed to get done on the piece although I worked on it every chance I could, I seemed to be barely making a dent on this relatively simple piece. I was getting frustrated but I wasn’t going to quit on the piece I wanted to make.  After several hours I finally had most of the tree completed! Once I got the first layer of black laid down, I took another two days to darken up the black, so as to have the highest amount of contrast in the piece

As of April 26

April 24th

April 26th

Once all the black was fully complete and up to my expectations, It was time for the finishing details. Glitter!!

  The final piece is something I am pretty proud of, although there is a lot of things I would like to change about this piece.  I am hoping to go to some art shows or festivals to find this piece a forever home, although I don’t really know where to look yet. Wish me luck!

                Pastel Dreams – Behind the Scenes

 Pastel Dreams is a piece that took me about a month and some change to complete. It is a large (20 x 24) acrylic painting featuring some glitter, a unicorn, and a large cedar tree.

Pastel Dreams – Behind the Scenes  Pastel Dreams is a piece that took me about a month and some change to complete. It is a large (20 x 24) acrylic painting featuring some glitter, a unicorn, and a large cedar tree.

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Trail of Dreams part 2 of 4

Trail of Dreams part 2 of 4

This is the second of my trail of dreams, you can find the first part here.

  Freshman year, second Semester: This is the semester that I did a bunch of random classes. I took a Psychology class, a computer class and a couple of mandatory classes. It was at this time that I fell in love with psychology, but I was still holding onto the idea of art. I figured ‘What the hell? Why not be an Art…

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The Trail of Dreams pt.1 of 4

Since coming to Berea I have changed what I ‘wanted to be’ when I finally grew up several times. I discovered this when I was going through the hundreds of emails that I had flagged as important since my freshman year. So now that I have been reminded of this, I am going to remind you, that it is OK to change your mind about something you swore up and down you were going to do. That is fine, that…

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Missing...

Missing…

Howdy ya’ll,

So when I had thought it had only been a couple days since my last post, a month flew by. It’s that new semester stuff, its always a little tricky trying to start the semester off without forgetting stuff; new classes, new schedules, new people. It’s such a pain.

So this semester I have a few more classes that are narrowing into the field of psychology. Although being at a liberal…

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Teatime

This is my newest piece! I absolutely love this little fella.

  I didn’t spend nearly as long on him as I would have liked, but there was little more to do with him. My favorite things that I did with him was the red/blue pattern on his skin. I really like the way that the wet on wet technique looks, I’ve just never

really had much luck with it in the past. It looks like my practice is finally…

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Shadow

A new bit of writing while I wait for feedback from a couple of beta readers for my two children books for NANOWRIMO. This isn’t nearly as good, nor has it really been given a deep revision, just enough to make sure it is readable. This is what I do for fun, the revising not so much.  The shadow is something that has followed me my entire life. It’s peeked from the corner of my vision for years.…

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So this is one of my newest designs on Redbubble. The one on the far right is the original while the other two have been altered. I’d have to day that the middle one is my favorite!

The original is a Mixed Media piece featuring watercolor, markers, and colored pencils. I was really excited about this piece as it is one of my first ‘toxic’ pieces that I have done in a while.

    Below are my two designs that came via editing. As you may know, the original scans never look as good as the original, so I decided to spice it up just a little bit. The one on the left is the one that I had a little bit more fun with so it doesn’t look as close to the original but  I really liked the way it turned out so I decided to sell both edits on my redbubble account.

If you are interested in watching the process of the original drawing you can watch that in the video below…

    Toxic

So this is one of my newest designs on Redbubble. The one on the far right is the original while the other two have been altered.

Toxic So this is one of my newest designs on Redbubble. The one on the far right is the original while the other two have been altered.

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Nanowrimo check in

I know. I know. It’s been sometime since I wrote about my book for Nanowrimo.  I’ve actually been really busy with revising this book and another one I wrote a few years ago. I’m now on my 3rd draft of both stories and I will hopefully be done with them by the end of the month. I am actually starting to get a little worried about my November 30th deadline, but honestly I have little to worry…

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DONE I may be done, but this isn't even my final project just a normal one. O_O

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Before the Show.

Here is a piece that I had done for the character design challenge. This character, whom I have named, Lill’ is a dancer. In this painting she is getting ready for one of her performances.

I spent several days thinking up what she would wear and how her show personality would be portrayed but each time I didn’t end up liking the direction I was going in. For this final piece I decided I wanted to…

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Bathroom Ramblings

Here is a random writing thing that I had whipped up while sitting in class… I know that it is a bit rusty but I am pretty happy to be able to fit in some time to write things that are more, ‘my style.’ 

‘I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 1 when I was young. I understand why, I was diagnosed. Although it is wrong.

I’m not sick.

I’m a prophet.

I know this because one, the medication doesn’t do…

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CSC 111 Animation in progress

So I’ve been working on this animation for a while now. Well, I suppose a while is 3 hours on story writing, boarding, and getting feedback. I have spent about the same amount of time on this animation.

  I am really proud of it but also pretty annoyed with the program we are using because it runs so slow on my school laptop and…