Kcai day 1

​July 20th was the first Official day of KCAI's PCAL program and MY BIRTHDAY. I did this program last year, but this year I decided to do it with my friend Sonia/Indie/Hoover, her blog is linked here. 

I chose the illustration studio, and my first couple classes were screen printing. Here are photos from my first day!

Here are some sketches for my first screen print design. The assignment was to design a Chimera! I LOVE monsters, especially designing them. I was dead-set on creating something phallic, inspired by mollusks, and 'The Thing'-esque. The final design is on the left.

Photos of some she-shell ladies. 

Look at this conch, he so expressive and COOL.

Have you ever seen a snail siphon before? I had a pet snail named Silver who would always do this and it fascinated me. I'd sit, snotty-nosed and pressed against his tank, watching this invertebrate wiggle his.. siphon at me. 

Just a mess.

The final design on clear plastic film, ready to be kissed up on some photo emulsion!

I'm in love with the final design I made, the three animals I decided to 'chimera' together were a conch, two loving humans, and an elephant! I love the squirrel detail, kudos to my professor for that idea, I wish he stood out a little more from the tree though! Every time I brought this piece up to my professor for critique, she'd stare at it for a LOONG while, I'm not sure if she was just confused, perturbed, or both- I certainly was. The hatching I used was so satisfying in the final product, but cramped my hand after a while.

I will probably begin printing and will post my prints tomorrow!

Besides art- TODAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY! 18! 

Sonia and I celebrated by opening gifts and attempting to have a Cheesecake Factory picnic. 

It lasted ~2 minutes? We had to get back to class. 

A lot went wrong when we went to pick up our $80 doordash of fried macaroni balls and pasta. We got locked out of our dorm and had to inconspicuously ask for help, while holding a laundry bag of ALL the food, AND make it to class on time. The pasta was crap by the way, we hid it under Indie's bed because we aren't allowed to eat in our dorms. Everything smells like cheese. gross. 

GOODER NEWS- Indie bought me a SQUEE shirt, I don't have a picture- but just LOOK. Cutest character on earth. I wore it immediately- and a nice girl in my paper puppets class noticed! We told her we were huge Jhonen Vasquez fans. 

I ate this lemon cake to celebrate. 18 years old, officially WITHERED. 

Thanks for reading :)