Everyday I’m trolloling

Haha. I keep looking at this and laughing.

The inspiration behind this?

I was talking to my sister Laura about “Game of Thrones.” I have only watched 2 episodes so far of Season 3. My sister was ahead of me in watching it and threaten to reveal spoilers!

I told her: “Keep it secret, Keep it safe!”

Her response: You sound like Dumbledore.

Me: You mean Gandalf? LOTR?

Laura: Same difference.

Thus the Troll quote was born! 😉

ps. YAY FOR DS106 ART!! It’s been too long.

Portrait Project: Erin

I have always wanted to take a portrait of strangers  ever since my #DS106 class in the Spring of 2011. 

I myself was asked by Tom Woodward to have my portrait taken 2 years ago. I had just met him for the first time, and after a really nice conversation he asked if he could take my photo. I am terrible at smiling for photos [I always give a fake smile], but this was for #DS106 and for art so I decided what the hell! Game on.

But I never have attempted to ask strangers if I could take their photo. This, in large part, is due to the fact I only had a point and shoot for the past couple of years. It would be weird to rock up to a stranger and ask to take their photo with just a point and shoot camera. However,  if I had a DSLR/ more professional looking camera that would be a different story entirely!

This January I finally decided it was well past the time to get myself a good camera. With the help of a photographer friend, I bought a Canon Eos 650D.

My new baby

Although I have had this camera for two months, I’ve hardly had the time to play around with it. I decided I needed someone to model for me as I adjusted the settings. I managed to convince my friend Erin to be my model and we had a photo shoot along the river. Out of all the photos I took that day this is my favorite:

 

Red hair, not blonde

I love Erin’s face in this shot. She seems so carefree and happy. I also love the contrast of her beautiful red hair with the blue sky and the water.

In Korea, people are unused to seeing red hair. People tell her all the time: “You have blonde hair!”

This makes me laugh because if you compare my current blonde shade to Erin’s hair you have to wonder if the Koreans are colorblind! Or maybe it is just they  can’t think of the right word to say…..

My photo shoot with Erin marked my first step into Portrait Photography. I need to keep playing with my camera to find the perfect setting, but I think I am almost ready to take it to the next level and start asking strangers if I can take their photo.

However, I am worried how this will work with the language barrier. I need to learn some handy phrases in Korean that basically say the following :”I am doing an art project! Can I take your photo?” and then show them the link to my blog.

Actually, there is one person I already have in mind for this project. He is the security guard at my school and I see him every morning and every afternoon.

He never talks to me other than saying “Hi! how are you?!” but his big smile and enthusiasm at seeing me makes my day! I want to share his big smile with the rest of the world!

 

Day 117: Troll Quotes

Day 117’s assignment was “Go out of your way. Travel somewhere you wouldn’t normally go today specifically to create something inspired by that location.”

Today I was going to adventure to the library so I decided to put something funny in one of the books. Continue reading

Day 60: Bad Photo, Vintage Effect & Helvetica challenge

Day 60’s assignment was: ” Make something that casts a shadow and document only the shadow.”

After procrastinating on this assignment, I finally dragged my friend’s sister into posing with me for a shadow photo. Then, since all the photos were kinda terrible, I decided to do Visual Assignment 52 where you take a bad photo, add a vintage effect and then add a silly phrase in helvetica.

I edited the photo  in Pixlr (amazing free photo editing website!) then asked my friend for suggestions for a phrase to use.  One of them is slightly negative and the other one is more positive. I couldn’t decide which one I liked more so I ended up posting both:

 

caption by Aitak M

lyrics from the song: We are young

Day 30: Seven Deadly Sins- Greed

Day 30: “Play time. Work with toys: If you don’t have any, borrow some from a friend with kids, and maybe even work with the kids!”

For this assignment I was inspired by Colleen and her Visualassignment97: Using a Barbie, take a picture of a scene with 1 or more Barbies demonstrating one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, and Envy.

I have no idea where my barbies are, but I do have some trolls that I bought for some projects last year.

Troll Invasion

I decided that for this project I wanted to focus on Greed.

Day 27: The Inferno

Day 27’s assignment was: “Dreamland. Use a recent dream as inspiration for what you do today.”

The night before, I went to bed wondering what crazy dreams I was going to have this night. The past few weeks I’d been having ridiculously vivid dreams and thus assumed that this night would be no different.

I was wrong. I woke up in the morning and couldn’t remember having a single dream. :/

So for today I decided that I would paint a recurring nightmare I’ve been having lately where I am trapped forever in the hell that is retail work. To me, there is nothing worse that dreaming about work because generally when I dream about work I sleep very fitfully and wake up more tired than I was before I went to bed.

In this recurring nightmare I am trapped at working at Macy’s for the rest of my life in endless servitude to all the ungrateful customers. I never able to leave the store and the pile of clothes that the customers try on and throw on the floor always grows larger and larger and larger.

For this I used acrylic paint on a canvas and also an image of Macy’s that I got from online.

I was tempted to throw it in the fire and let it burn, but decided it probably wouldn't be that good for the enviroment

Actually since I made this painting I haven’t had a nightmare about Macy’s…

 

Stardust: 4 Icon Challenge & other #ds106 photos

I ran into some problems in creating my video essay for the movie Stardust since I couldn’t get all the clips I wanted frrom the movie.  🙁

As I continue to work on my video essay tonight, I decided to leave you with a 4 icon challenge I created for the movie. This will prepare you for what I will talk about in my video essay which will also briefly cover  the novel written by Neil Gaiman,  which is the basis for the movie. Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer who I am currently studying right now in my Fantasy class at UMW (we read the book Neverwhere and watched part of the series; currently reading Stardust now) and who I studied last semester in my Graphic Novel class (we read one of the books in the epic Sandman series).

Looking forward to finishing up my videoessay!

 

 

 

Also, here’s some photos taken while I and others were  working on the project:

 

 

Visual Assignment: Normal to Extraordinary

#2 Assignment for #ds106 is up:

Normal to Extraordinary:

Take a friend and turn him/her from a normal looking person to an extraordinary looking one. Put the shots side by side for comparison.

 

For my example I used two photos that I’ve taken of my suitemate Karen (she is a #ds106 superstar now, haha):

Creation Process:

Okay so I didn’t actually take these photos consecutively. I took the photo on the right first in a random photoshoot that happened with Karen and Elena( my suitemates) because we were bored. The crazy makeup, hair and wardrobe was done by Elena. Don’t quite remember why we decided to put crazy makeup on Karen, but we got some really good photos out of it! (I may post some of them up later, depends on when I have the time). I really like this photo even though she looks kind of sad and tragic (Karen isn’t the biggest fan because she thinks she looks too “clownish”.) I messed with the colors in photoshop then ran it through the Poladroid maker to get the final effect.

Then the photo on the left was from another photoshoot, this time taken from when it was flurrying/slushy outside. It was cold and we didn’t have a lot of time to take photos although Karen did have time to throw on some more glam clothes that what she was originally wearing. I enhanced the color a bit on this one, but the lighting outside was so good I didn’t have to do much.

I like both of these photos together because I think it expresses the idea of how with a little work (i.e. clothing, makeup, hair) someone can completely be transformed into someone else entirely. Side by side, obviously it’s the same girl in the photos, but in each photo she is a different character. This holds true with most of the other photos I’ve taken of Karen who has a great range of expressions. I like exploring the different personas people can have, which explains why I end up with photos like Karen’s or the Rainbow Brite set.

So thanks to Karen who let’s me create art for fun 🙂

 

The Many Faces of Karen: