You don't need anyone to tell you (the cyber bird edition)

what you are. If you love drawing...draw! Stop waiting on a class or a teacher to tell you you're good enough. IN SPITE of their saying you can't...just do it. This is my doodle because not every freaking drawing needs to be technically proficient. In fact, it's often quite boring if it is. Pe@nuts (the comic strip) wasn't the most technically proficient drawing; neither was the F@r Side or C@lvin and Hobbes, and I LOVED that stuff to death growing up. The stories visually were better than any of the overly stiff academic stuff I see coming out these days, anyways. The stuff is timeless.
I saw the work of this famous, Emmy winning designer when I visited my home country. He's a certified genius. The guy was drawing, designing, painting with everything from brown paper bags to wire to clay to highlighters. And it was interesting!
This drawing made me smile (yes I'm narcissistic go ahead say it). It's a nerd joke; dual c0re, etc LOL. Sorry, I'm corny like that :)
It's an emotion that people connect to; we connect to stories, characters, the human condition; let's not forget that the rules are just there to help the tools serve us better, NOT to make the tools control what we do.

It arrived!!! Booyah!!!

Excited to put this little guy together! I'll post pics of the process once I have everything hooked up. Spent my weekend installing software on my laptop for this class. Should be FUN!!!!!! And..it's MEANT for designers!!!!

Unfinished work

Made this on Thursday; I was out sick on Tuesday, when I usually have class, and took the Thursday class instead, and am permanently moving to Thursday class, because it's awesome. I made my first mortise and tenon, and it's not perfect. I'm really happy with my mortise (even though that's not perfect, either), and my tenon, but I got sloppy at the end because I LOVE the Japanese saws (they're really light and precise and feel great in my hand) and got carried away sawing too deep. So my fit was about 1/16" too long on the tenon.
I really want to get the tools to keep making mortise and tenon joints on my own, and will be getting these soon; a 1/2" chisel (for the actual width of the mortise), a 3/8" chisel (for digging out the wood), a machinist's square (for measuring), a  Starret slide caliper, a mallet and the Japanese saw.
As expected, the Japanese and the Swiss make incredibly precise, long lasting tools. I have to live in Switzerland one day! (yes, those who know me are tired of my saying that). Also, I'd like to visit Liechtenstein, another country that makes incredibly precise, beautiful things.
I learned not to get too caught up in measuring, because measurement is relative, anyways, and differs from one tool to the next. But I love it; there is really a great feeling from working with actual raw materials or just making things in general. I don't think I can be a purely pencil and paper gal, although drawing every day is absolutely a must to sharpen the eye and hand and mind and improve. I've also been learning coding, which I think every serious designer should be making an effort to learn; and no, not the light 'web development' type. Serious processing because more and more programmes are using parametric algorithms as a design tool. So it's been a lot of derivatives and matrices, but I've always loved trig, and the two teachers went on to work at G00gle and F#ceb00k resepectively. One is currently at a booming Chinese company, the Chinese G00gle. And for those who think woodworking is just for retired hobbyists, let it be known that TWO of my teachers recently were hired by @pple. Yes, two. We're sorry they had to leave but good for them!
Oh, and I did get into my metal machining class and my digital fabrication classes, which start at the end of August. I got the last spot in both! So I'll def be posting work on that soon.

more exploded views..cont'd

I still have to label the dovetails and mortise/tenon joints, but for some reason when I had been trying to export on Sunday it was not doing such a great job; the computers were just BOGGED DOWN that day. Anyways, this was FUN! Plus it tied into my w00dworking class. I'm also learning another software platform that is very much complementing my metalw0rking classes, and it's a blast! I need to put labels and dimension these, but that's it for now!