Busy busy busy

Sorry it's been such a long time, I have about 15 minutes before math starts so I can at least add a newer small entry. I'm currently working on 3 projects-- here is a breif description of what they are:

1. Palladio's Plates: 12x18 Vellum, Pencil: It's basically re-creating an image given to us (in a much smaller scale), but it's almost like a maze to figure out the lengths of everything.. the sheet we're given doesn't give you any measurements. The building given is completely symmetrical, and deals a lot with geometric proportions: the basic set up across each of the sides is ABA, a's being squares and B's being 2A-rectangles. So getting the outside isn't tough, but getting the inside measurements is almost like solving a jigsaw puzzle.

2. Miami Studio: 2 Sheets of 12x18 Vel; Pretty self explanitory, we've been walking around taking measurements of our studio and by tuesday the 12th we need to have finished 2 sheets detailing the building, everything perfectly to-scale, including (but definitely not limited to) the floorplan, elevation, cross-section, aerial view, space-plot diagrams, etc.

3. Building research: 24" x 36" mylar/ink. We were all assigned a building to present to the class-- for me it was Villa Vizcaya in Coral Gables. I believe I was the only assigned to a building that was in Miami, so I took the Metro-Rail and took a tour of the actual building which made my professor was very happy. The final copy will have plans/sectional views of all of the Villa. This one is due Saturday night.

From today until saturday when we turn it in, I probably won't do much-- if anything-- outside of the studio, so I aplogize in advance for my lack of blog posts.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel for this deadline week, though! 2 friends and I are going to see the Dolphins Patriots game on Monday Night Football at Sunlife Stadium! It should be an awesome time!!

Love and miss all of you!
Norman

Very short blog!

Mostly for my mom-- I was browsing youtube for a few minutes and came across this gem. And I knew you would love to see it. (It's also cool that it was formed on Edward's birthday... in 1978). One of the few Bruce videos from the 70's that has great quality. It put a smile on my face, and I know it will put a smile on yours. Love you and miss you! All of you!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5buOHjOGiI

Part 2!

(Really quick before I start--- Edward, your birthday present is finally going to be in the mail tomorrow. It was tough finding time to get to the shipping station on campus- it's open 9-3 every day (and for the most part, I have class from 9-3 every day). But tomorrow I get out at noon and I'm bringing your present with me to class so I can just go right there. So sorry it took so long!)

So here's part two! As you all know we went to Key West on Saturday; and it was an absolute blast. We went on a big bus with 4 professors that lead us around (and as you could have guessed, they knew 500x more about the architecture of every single building we saw than a tour-guide could have told us). Aside from it being 108 degrees (and that's not even a joke, it was the 2nd hottest day of the year in the Keys), it was so much fun. Also, it was "Bike Week" in the Keys, so every street was filled up and down with motorcycles. Which was cool, no doubt, but it caused the entire day to be loud and smell like gasoline.

A fact I found interesting was the fact that it's actual name, "Caya Hueso", doesn't translate to 'Key West'. The only reason we call it Key West is because when Great Britain took control of the island they thought "Caya Hueso" (pronounced Caya wesso) sounded like Key West and the name stuck. The literal translation of Caya Hueso is "Key of bones", because by the time Ponce De Leon and the Spanish Army took over the island, it was littered with the remains -- bones -- of it's earlier inhabitants. (The fact that it is in fact the western-most Key is a coincidence). I thought that was pretty cool, so I thought I'd share it with you!

Alright, here are some pictures!




An old house we visited, they said the items in the house have been
kept in-tact for close to 70 years; Key West was the first place
to begin recognizing the importance of preserving history.





This is my friend Troy I've been telling you about. He's drinking a
Coconut. I love the taste of Coconut, but the Coconut milk is
definitely NOT the same thing... yuck.

This is what every street looked like. With a bunch of bikes,
obviously there were a lot of bikers. I felt like I was at a
Nascar race with some of the people that were there...
we literally had to spend 5 full minutes explaining to one of
the guys that we were here touring the *architecture* of
Key West, NOT the bikes. He in turn told us that he had
no idea what the word "architecture" was. We didn't meet the
brightest crayons in the box or the sharpest tools in the shed
on our tour. But it was still fun!! 

Awesome looking old church.



The house shown in picture 1 from the outside.

Part 1!

Sorry it's been such a long time. We had a ridiculous amount of work to do, and because I was in Key West all day saturday, losing 1 weekend day that should have gone to 4 or 5 hours of studio work takes a lot of making up to do.

So I'll start with last friday, where we had our critiques. I'm sure many of you have heard, but it went extremely well for me. The professors, hired art critics, and guest artist all loved my work-- and they weren't nice to everyone. The girl before me was told point blank by a critic: "I'm not here to compliment your work, I'm here to tell you what's wrong with it. And I honestly don't like a thing about your composition". Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled with the reviews I got for mine. One of the professor's said that they were elated to have a copy of this in their possesion because "It will help show future students that tackling a composition this difficult can result in beautiful results". Down the line, every critic loved my map. I was elated beyond words. If you haven't seen it yet, or haven't seen the entire thing, here are some photos:

This is the composition in it's entirety. 24"x36" mylar covered in teeeeeny tinnnnny dashes of ink. The basic idea is that this is Bruce Springsteen, and being that I consider him a "reflection" of my hometown-- someone that is distinctly New Jersey, not just a "large suburb of New York"-- his reflection is cast over the map of Monmouth County. Behind Bruce in the background are the lyrics to a few of his songs, including 'Thunder Road' and 'Sandy'.

The picture on the right gives you an idea of the amount of lines used to make Bruce. Nothing on the entire page, excluding the title, is made with more than a 2-3cm long dash with a tiny pen.







So I have to leave now, but I promise more pictures and stories very soon!

I finished!

With about 2 minutes to spare earlier today, I finished. The project, for the first time in a month, is no longer in my hands. I'll posta picture sometime tomorrow, but for right now I'm going to sleep before 2am for the first time in weeks.

Lots of love,
Norman

Blog #11: Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

Sorry I haven't been up to date on my blogging. This week is deadline week; my hometown map is due thursday at 8:00 and I have another project due tomorrow morning. It's been hectic, (which is probably the most commonly used word in my blog posts), but I've managed to stay up-to-date with most of my projects. I'm ahead of everyone on the Hometown Map, so I can still do my lift-abs-racquetball routine with Troy every MWF, and now I'm starting to go to the pool and log laps every tuesday and thursday (please send goggles mom!). It's awesome because I'm havig a great time and getting a crazy amount of excercise as well, and I've already moved up 20-pounds on my skullcrushers and 40 pounds on my bench.

Miss you all so much, once thursday passes I promise I'll be back to regular blogging.

Norman

Blog #10: Sorry!

I have been so busy, it's not even funny. I'm soon off to the studio to begin inking my final hometown map copy, which I'm very excited about starting. (When I was at draft 1 of 6, this seemed so far away). The inking is difficult, though. The pens we're using are ridiculously thin (A normal ball-point pen would be about .6mm-.75mm diameter, the pens I'm using range from .13-.18. And using the pens at all requires you to change your style of drawing completely; you need to hold the pen at a complete 90-degree angle to get anywhere. Also, I'm "hashing and stippling" the entire project- or, in layman's terms, I'm making .13mm dots cover the space of a 24"x36" piece of mylar. To say I'm going to live in studio this week is the understatement of the month. It's due a week from today (gulp), so please wish me luck!

Besides the studio, I've been doing a bunch of fun things on campus. My friend Troy and I have been going to the gym every day, working out and playing racquetball. Between 2-3 hours in the gym per day, 8-10 hours in studio a day, and 5-10 minutes eating per day (just kidding. more like 15 minutes), I don't have much time to do anything else. But I'm still having a blast. I'm going to go stipple until my hand falls off, so I'll post a longer blog tomorrow. Sorry it took so long to post this one.

Love you all and miss you all!
Norman

Blog #9: I have pictures!

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my studio, so I'll share those with you in a second! Yesterday was spent almost entirely in the studio, my letters project is due on tuesday so I had quite a bit of work to do, I'm happy to say that I finished the entire thing for the most part, minus a few more darkened lines and some cleaning up. My hometown map final rough draft is due friday, and then we start the hard part-- inking. Here are a few pictures from my studio!

This is one of my fellow classmates, with a view of most of the studio to the right. There's about 12 desks in the studio in total.

This is my desk! I got lucky and got a corner desk, which gives me the oppurtunity to hang research, photos, etc on the wall and tape deadlines, WIP's (works in progress), and other things on the window.

This is the early stages of my NK drawing done on 24 x 36 paper. Each letter takes about 2 hours to complete, the entire thing has to be done to the exact specifications given (ratio-wise, we had to figure out the size on our own). The great thing is each letter has a 4 paragraph description with tips on how to draw the ltters. The not-so-great thing is that each paragraph is written in Latin.

A closeup on the amount of construction lines needed to fully construct the right side of a voloute for an ionic column. This took about 4 hours in total to construct.










So there are some pictures! I debated on whether or not to show you some preliminary drawings of my Bruce hometown map, but I'll just wait until that's done to show you. Love you all and miss you all so much!

Norman

Blog #8: Nail-biter football game!

Sorry I haven't gotten around to updating this until now! So, I don't know if any of you caught any of the nail-biter Canes game last night, but it was SUCH a blast. The game was dead-locked in a tie right up until the ref flipped the coin-- and from then on Miami was the only team playing football. They were up 35-0 at half, and won 48-0. (If you were curious, I sat 3rd row in the student section-- behind the endzone-- which were incredible seats). If you tune into any game during the year, you'll see the student section do a couple cool chants that I forgot to mention.

For example:

Whenever The U picks up a first down, the PA Announcer says "And that's a university of miami--" and the
fans all yell "FIRST DOWN".

On opponent third downs, all of the students make the 'U' with their hands to pump up the defense.

On kickoffs, the sudents all yell "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh" until the ball is kicked, when everyone yells "WOOSH!"

The band plays "rock you like a hurricane". A lot.

And finally, my favorite thing, when the 4th quarter starts every student holds up 4 fingers; reminding the players, coaches, fans, and other team that the 4th quarter is when Miami takes over and wins the game. It was awesome being in a sea of orange yesterday, I loved it so much and I already can't wait for the next home game, October 9th, when Miami takes on their archrivals Florida State. If you're a Cane, there's only one golden rule- you HATE state. "State week" is the student buildup to the game, and it gets pretty rowdy around here.

Today I spent mostly in studio, aside from 2 different raquetball sessions (the game is addicting). I brought my camera the first time, and realized it was out of battery. So during lunch, I took the battery out and charged it. When I went back the second time, I took the camera and forgot the battery. So, no pictures today. But tomorrow or sunday, I promise, you can all see my studio.

Love you all and miss you all so much! Enjoy the long weekend!
Norman

Blog #7: Trying to make the midnight cut!

Hey everyone! Spent the day, for the most part, in the studio again. Helped a bunch of classmates learn how to use photoshop to give themselves a general layout of where they want everything on their image, all of us are getting to be really close (Seeing eachother (we have 12 in our studio) close to 9 hours a day helps that, of course). Some day next week we're all going to order a pizza to the studio, eat it AWAY FROM OUR DRAWINGS, do work on our projects, and hang out.. that should be fun! Also got a nice compliment from a professor today, he said he was "amazed at how quickly and precisely I work" -- it always feels good to get acknowledged!

Tomorrow I have drawing (my least favorite class so far, the stuff we're working on makes me want to bang my head against the desk-- we're drawing the letters of our name in "perfect" font, on a huge piece of paper. You have no idea how complex a normal-looking N can be.) After that I have math; and I was delighted to find out that this will probably be my easiest class. We spent the entire hour and a half on tuesday going over 2 "limit" problems, which I learned the first week of my junior year in high school. Granted, it's only the beginning, but I don't have the "brightest crayons in the box" in my class.

Tomorrow is the first football game! Classes end at 3:15, and the bus leaves at 4! C-A-N-E-S CANES!

Also, bridgey, this is for you:

Don't cheat!!

Love you guys so much and miss you all so much!
Norman