l ' a t e l i e r a u t o p o r t r a i t

The self-portrait workshop week ended on March 21, and on March 25 there was an exhibition in our art school where we could invite our relatives/friends or whoever else to show them what we've achieved.

"Or.. not." 

said the curator and the students started to laugh nervously. The same happened when he said that he would give us knives when we were done.

"I meant, you'll have to accurately cut away all the unused space!"

During the workshop week we were required to work in the studios at least 7 hours a day, however, the doors were opened from 8 am till 10 pm. We weren't allowed to bring our works home or take a day off. And we must work in acrylic paint. The deadline was on Friday 12am. So, at the end we had to show the curators our at-least-30-hours-of-work self-portraits, and the least important requirement was... alikeness. So, the whole thing had actually nothing to do with drawing a self-portrait after all. Instead, we were tested on how well we can scale/grid a picture and mix colors:

Students had to scale a small photographic source to a larger format (aprox 90x120cm) using a specific 88-square grid to create a minimum of 352 spaces. Each required a minimum of two colours; at least 704 colour mixes overall.

It's funny how the text in the invitation said "the paintings of the Fauves were referenced". However, we still couldn't really work in fine fauvism, because as long as the grid wasn't clearly seen it meant that you would fail. Instead, they showed us an hour-long presentation which consisted exclusively of Chuck Close's works + the works of students from previous years. I didn't like this Chuck Close and it made me quite upset that he had to be our major source of inspiration. I still hoped that I could do whatever I want as long as it was up to all the colour mixing requirements. Then, the two of the curators showed up and started asking me not to forget about the grid, while I was working on my beanie in fine pointillism, the father of the fauvism! *Nope. Grid it.* And did I grid it. When the work was almost finished I drew a thin black almost invisible grid over it.

"It's look.. weird now. What do you want to do with it next?" 

"Err.. Nothing? Should I do something else?" 

"... Well, technically it's a grid, so.. I think, you are fine." 

"Yay, thank you!"

A little victory :) Because I liked what I was doing, and I saw that other people liked it too, students were coming to me telling nice things several times a day everyday (they still come!) which meant (means) a lot to me, really a lot.

Oh, I remembered a story (sorry!^_^): I was drawing in the same room with these two ~yo fuck man~ guys who never used headphones while listening to their ~music~ at school. But this time, they turned it SO loud, I couldn't stay in the room any longer. So, I just went out and sat on the floor to calm down and read a book for a while. And a teacher, v cute and V energetic woman, saw me and got worried. The boys turned the music off (without feeling uncomfortable to turn it on again the next day though), and I returned to the studio (I didn't ask the lady anything, it's just one of those boys was accidentally passing by while i was explaining to her why I'm not in the studio drawing).

Later, she came to me, asked if everything was alright, complimented my work, asked where I was from/where I studied before etc, and then she introduced me to the whole studio and even jokingly asked a girl if she said "hi" to me that day. Ha haa killmethatwassoemberrassing. But she is such a lovely lady!

When we came to the exhibition we saw my self-portrait hanging among the selected works! ^__^ Ahh, I love my/not-even-my teachers and [some of the] students from my college so much I want to lie down on its floor in a star position pretending  I'm hugging it.

P.S. Here are my favorite portraits from the selected works + mine in the end:

Where are we?

Kia ora, guys! (just google)

We arrived to Auckland  and having a jet lag and a cultural shock after Tokyo. The first impression was like "Too many aggressive extroverts. People on the streets want something from you? *Brain collapses*". However, i'm feeling better today (is it because i haven't gone outside yet?), and it already seems to me that things are going to be ok in the nearest future (and the whole perspective looks pretty good). I mean, look at this new zealand passport holders visa requirements map!

My mornings will start (earlier than Boyfriend's which is nice, i don't like to/just can't sleep more then 5-6 hours) with a coffee to go, gum and a long-long walk up/down hills to my university. I compare my ~passion~ to coffee and gum to drinking alcohol / smoking cigarettes habits. I especially like chewing gum when i drink coffee, like some people smoke only when they drink duh. I even suspect that i chew gum in the same situations as smoking person would reach for a cigarette.

My first day as a Fine Arts student is tomorrow, so when just arrived, we went to look at what our places of study look like. Here's our favorite spot:

The clock tower (Old Arts Building) on the City campus

And here's the emblem of the University of Auckland: kiwi! stars! book with a cute cover!

Truth is, there's always been a problem between me and socialization. Even if i don't find anyone who i could be friends with, it would be perfectly fine if i could just stay by myself. The problem is that people don't usually leave you alone. They start asking you questions/making fun of you + you risk to be remembered/treated as a creep. And that's just how every public educational institution work, *sigh*.

Anyway, tomorrow i'll officially be a student, so today i want to write about another favorite artist of mine (it's supposed to help me not to feel nervous so much) whose art Boyfriend showed me when i first came to his apartment. 

DINO VALLS

i realized, i saw his work once when i was 15 but i didn't know who the author was and there was no google picture search back then. 

His skills is the first thing people talk about when they talk about Dino Valls. Actually, it often upsets me when I see attractive ideas but the technique is lacking. For example, all Shintaro Kago's drawings from the "Art of Shintaro Kago" series (we have two complete collections of these little albums ^_^). He has several good looking posters, but the drawings from his albums are just 10-minutes sketches.

And sometimes, there's nothing but good skills which I also find depressing.

Dino Valls is nothing like that. He's a full set. He's flawless. I adore how he decided to imitate the techniques from the 15-17 centuries. He even uses egg tempera!

From now on I'll call myself a pagan, but only artists will be my gods.

Pink pigtails

Almost three years ago I bought my first pink wig. I came to a fancy dresses shop with a girlfriend and saw it and put it on and fell in love with it. But! I had no money, so I needed..

"MUM! I WANT A PINK WIG! MUM!"

hehe 〜(¬ ‿ ¬)〜 

However, there were several problems with it:

• I had long hair, and there was almost no space under the wig to fit them underneath.
• I couldn't make pink braids, because the wig wasn't long enough.
• It was getting too uncomfortable after several hours of wearing it.

And then ideas started to pop into my mind. Should I dye my hair pink? But how about ~all natural~ thing? Moreover, I'll probably damage my hair. And I also will need to dye my hair roots every two weeks.  So, I'd been postponing it for a v long time.

It was November 12 when I tweeted about my "future plans": 

• pink hair!
• braces!
• new rollers skates (I hope, they have size 39)!

But then again, I was scared. Boyfriend told me to think well about it, but he also said he will be ok with it if I decide to finally dye them.

We came to his favorite hair salon, where he always does his haircut, and asked them to dye my hair pink and pointed to the pink sampler they gave to us. They dyed my hair, they did. But what they did NOT do was bleach my dark blond hair first. I cried so hard when I saw the result, I didn't want to take off my beanie. I couldn't understand why, but Boyfriend liked my new hair. I still wanted to cry (and at the first time did) every time I passed the mirror though. 

Here's a picture from the after-halloween morning (I'm a rilakkuma girlfriend, if you didn't get it), you can see my i-don't-even-know-how-to-call-this-colour hair:

A couple of months passed when I woke up one Monday morning and told Boyfriend straight away: "I want my hair pink! But, like, for real this time."

We came to that salon again, but this time I took a picture with me, and Boyfriend made sure they understood that they need to bleach me first.

Bleached! Boyfriend said I looked like this (◕‿◕✿):

Everything seemed ok, so when Boyfriend said he needed to go, I said "Alright, you can go." He double checked that the colour I was going to be dyed was pink ("this is a pink hair-dye, right?") and then he left.

AND THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN. They dyed my hair, then washed it several times with shampoo and all the other things, and then I looked at myself in the mirror and saw this:

You know, there's this infinite question "Why do old women dye their hair purple?". Obv, I don't know the answer, but what I know is that I saw a purple-dyed granny for the first time in Moscow when I was 4. And the last I saw a purple-dyed granny was not so long ago in Tokyo. They're everywhere, it's not a myth!

When it was time to blow-dry my new hair, the owner of the salon came to me.

"So.. you think it's not pink?"  

WHAT? IS IT A JOKE? "Well, it's purple, it's grey, but it's definitely not pink, right." 

"Oh, it's because we didn't have a pink hair-dye, we only had this one, but your hairdresser thought it'll be ok." 

WHAT? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US THIS BEFORE YOU DAMAGED MY HAIR, YOU BITCH? "Oh." 

"You can come here every day, and we'll try to wash this colour off, and then we'll dye your hair pink on Friday when we receive the right hair-dye." 

WHAT? YOU KNEW YOU DIDN'T HAVE THE RIGHT HAIR-DYE, YOU KNEW IT'LL ONLY COME ON FRIDAY, BUT YOU DYED MY HAIR THE WRONG COLOUR ANYWAY?! "..." 

"You know my number? Call me and tell what time will be convenient for you." 

BITCH BITCH BITCH BITCH. "mmrrhmr" 

"Here, take this shampoo, it's a present from my salon! Call me!"

She even sent us a letter in english:

To Mikhail Svetov and GirlFriend:

"I'm Tagawa Misako. TimTagawa (the name of the hair salon) chief. 

This time is very sorry. 

Please you call me Friday.

Because, I work outside studio Aoyama on Wednesday and Thursday.

If Mikhail calls me on Wednesday or Thursday OK.

Because Mikhail speaks Japanese.

Please, call us. We'll wait your call us."

Of course, we never called.

"Why why why is this happening to me? What's wrong with this place?!" I got on a train and hurried to meet Boyfriend.

"Neeeeh .·´`(>▂<)´`·."
"What is it? What's wrong? I wasn't able to go online.""Look what they did to my hair! I look like a little granny!""... What happened? Why did they do this to you?""Neeeeh .·´`(>▂<)´`·." 

It was almost 8pm. Harajuku. Boyfriend was as angry as I was sad.

"Choose a place, and we'll go there, wash this granny-colour off and make it pink, ok?"

But it wasn't that easy. My hair were bleached and dyed an hour ago, and there was only one way to make them pink — bleach them again and then dye them again. How will my hair look like after all this?

We came to a hair salon in front of our gym, and Boyfriend explained the situation to the stuff. They said they'll try their best, cut off a lock of my hair (to try different kinds of dyeing) and asked us to come the next day.

The hairdressers were no less than magicians. They didn't dye me again but tried to wash the purple off with a special shampoo. Then, they dyed it pink without letting my hair dry, to make them light pink, as I asked.

I tried hard not to burst into tears right on the chair, because I was worried that the stuff will misapprehend the situation.

Now, my hair have a perfect shade of pink (lots of shades actually, because some locks still remained purple), not damaged at all. And I now can make pink pigtails! Because why to dye hair if not to make varicoloured pigtails!

P.S. Hmm.. This incident at the first hair salon. it's still a mystery for us, what happened there. Why, keeping in mind that they didn't have the right hair dye, they said they had it and dyed my hair purple? I know about this japanese feature not to tell the bad news till the dead end. For instance, a japanese guy won't tell you he can't go to Disneyland with you on  this weekend. When the time will come, he'd rather ask you to postpone it for a week and the next weekend he'll tell you that he won't go, apologizing a lot. Never mind, that every one would've win if he'd told that he can't do it right away. Was the situation the same with that hair salon? I will never know. But my hair are finally pink (no more purple/violet no no) and you'll see more pictures of my pink pigtails on instagram soon. OINK!

P.P.S. Another hair-dye colour I like as much as pink is Coraline's blue!

(I don't think it'll look good on me though. At least I have the same yellow gumboots as her!)

Me me me.

Today, I feel strange. I can feel either ok or strange, because I'm bad at reflexing. We're moving from Tokyo in three weeks, and it was only yesterday when I really thought about it. It was the day when I went to the new Trevor Brown's exhibition (it was not really his, but all exhibitions which he takes part in are his, really) and right after that, one more time (third) to his old one. I realized, that I'll miss Japan more than I thought I would. I'll probably cry at Azuma's birthday this saturday. I've been living in Tokyo with Boyfriend for almost a year and I honestly like it here. But I also know, that I can't stay here for any longer, because I want to study drawing so bad I want to cry (and I  often cried about it). The problem is, I can't do it in Japan before I learn Japanese and pass the exam. I cried like a baby repeating "I don't wanna study Japanese, I wanna draw!" So, yeah, New Zealand. An island country in the middle of nowhere with the population of 4,5 million people. So far so good! But also: "sigh".

here is a sneak peek into my portfolio which I had to send to my future uni a month ago (I think some people asked me to show it. I won't show the whole thing, though (=awkward)):

"las conquistadoras" [A3, black pen]

"hurrying to a party" [A3, black/white pens, black watercolor]

"dinosaur vs shark" [papier-mâché, watercolors, white gouache]

“a baby mermaid” [papier-mâché, nail polish]

the pictures I took in Bhutan. Part 1: "children"

“in a coffee shop”. 

This is a scene from the cafe where I buy coffee almost everyday. Only, I don’t forget to put my shoes on, staff members are not robots, people drink their coffees at the tables and no ghosts wait for their turns. The bear beanie is real though!

 "coffee princess guarded by ghosts"

characters 1/3: "before classes"

"ears"

"self-portrait"

I was impressed when the university didn't ask me to write why I chose them in the explanatory note, because this part of the applying process makes me sick the most. However, it turned out to be shitty anyway.

I enjoy all kinds of creative activity: drawing, making papier-mâché sculptures, taking pictures, writing comics. I like to go to the concerts, art galleries, travel to the new places in search of the new ideas for drawings. However, one of my problems is that I usually have several ideas in my head which I want to draw all at once as soon as possible, and sometimes it can affect the quality of my work (I was too shy to say always). But at the same time, I get a lot of satisfaction from spending days carefully drawing the details when I know it's worth it.

My favorite artists are William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Doré, Alfons Mucha, Trevor Brown, Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, Julia Pott, Sally Mann, Edward Gorey (Forgot to mention at least 20 more). Their techniques and ideas leave me speechless. I love everything about them, they are my greatest sources of inspiration!

Anonymous Girl 1990 ✿[gun control laws]✿

I've never interviewed people in all my life before (except of my biology teacher when I was 14. We were told to interview somebody from our school staff, and all I can remember is how she told me how she hates being a teacher. She also told me not to include this in the interview). Anyways, recently I found a tumblr written by an australian girl (I have a hidden love for australian girls), explored it a little and clicked "follow". What drew my attention, was the aesthetics of her writing. It's so popular to be hurt by the whole universe, to be depressed and offended by life. This girl was the opposite. I saw her showing the others that it's actually ALRIGHT to be joyful, that it's OK to be happy with what you have. I saw her being a happy post-teenager who tries to get what she can out of life (I have a hidden love for girls who are happy no matter what kind of life they stick to (until it violates other people's rights ^_^)).

So, HERE IS THE LINK (sorry) to the whole interview which we agreed to publish on M.'s brand new blog. And below is the second ~nerdy~ part of it. We'll speak about gun laws a little, if you don't mind.

Maki: You don't look like a politically interested girl, but even if you don't speak about, it doesn't mean it doesn't affect you or your opinions. So just a few questions: 

• Do you believe it's ok, that government has rights to interfere in your life, often leaving you no choice in such things like paying taxes, making abortions, being able to defend yourself with a weapon, doing drugs if you want to without overpaying ridiculously (especially if you need it as a painkiller), being able to sell things and offer all kinds of services you want to without having to get a special license (but of course, being honest with your clients about it) or at least, driving your own car without buckling up if you don't want to (New Hampshire passed this law not so long ago!)?

• Also: what kills people, guns or humans? drugs or bad decisions?

M.: I don’t know a great deal about politics, Australian or international. I’m pretty useless with this stuff. But it does scare me that our governments have so much power, especially when it comes to what we share online. People have been using the term "surveillance state" a whole lot lately.  There’s a lot of graffiti where I live, with big colourful slurs saying "the government is watching you" and ‘do you want to live in a surveillance state?’ I don’t know who the good guys are anymore. I disagree with a lot of what has happened in the recent years. 

But I can’t say a bad word against the Australian health system, it has saved my life more than once. I am still stumped that abortion is illegal in some places, and I can’t get my head around why gay marriage hasn’t been legalized yet. Is this really still an issue? Are we living in the Stone Age? Male politicians making laws in regards to women’s bodies and our choices? – don’t even get me started.

People kill people. People kill themselves and others with bad decisions. People abuse responsibilities and privileges and end up hurting themselves and those around them. The phrase ‘Everything in moderation’ seems to have been forgotten. And this so called ‘war on drugs’ seems like such a waste of time and money. 

I know very little about gun laws. I have shot a gun a few times before. It was really, really fun. You don’t see many guns living in Australia. I’m very anti-gun though, everything I hear on the news in relation to guns comes from America. It feels like every week there is another school shooting. When will they realize that the reason people keep getting shot is because everyone has easy access to a guns? I think their gun laws are an absolute mess over there. People walking around carrying guns every day, like it’s nothing. It’s just bizarre to think about. We don’t have that in Australia. Guns are for police men, hunters and farmers. It’s easier to get a gun than to get health insurance in America. What a mess.

Maki: My belief that the government has no rights to interfere in people’s lives is a pretty strong principle.

You wrote, that the fact that "the government is watching you” scares you. But then you wrote, that the government must disarm all the citizens, only leaving itself armed. Why are you scared of "the government is watching you” thing, then?

M.: Hmmm, I guess I don't watch much TV, or listen to the radio or read the paper. I am mostly in the dark when it comes to this. I only see headlines every now and then. I don't think the government should disarm its citizens, but coming from a country where there are few guns, my instant reaction is 'ban the guns' I guess. In the dream world in my head, citizens shouldn't feel the need to defend themselves. I think about the state of my own country and then imagine how much worse it would be if you added guns to it. Then again, It's just what the media is feeding me and I am not greatly informed on the subject. Guns aren't something you see around here very often.
The whole 'government is watching you' fear really boils down to me being overly-influenced by my friends and the media, and attempting to form my own opinion about something I don't know a great deal about honestly! I have watched a few documentaries, and also the recent Australian Prime Minister's Indonesian phone tapping scandal brought to light the power of government officials. It's not a real concern of mine though! I don't worry that to government is reading my blog or anything (haha).

Maki: You also said, that “It feels like every week there is another school shooting” because they have a freedom to have guns in US. But look, Australia takes the first place for total crime victims. And look where the States are. Because you can’t disarm a criminal. Criminals have always found and will find the ways to kill. And what the governments do is disarm the innocent citizens, making them unable to defend themselves. Not to mention, that all these school massacres are happening in the gun free zones.

M.: I did not know this! I have never really looked into this sort of thing before. It doesn't surprise me at all, Australia is a crazy place, we are an alcohol-fuelled country with a lot of drug and alcohol related crimes. This leads me to believe that the problem isn't guns, it's drunk dick heads. That's a separate issue on its own. I agree, that it is near impossible to disarm a criminal. If someone wants to hurt someone, they will always find a way! 
There was another group of statistics that I saw a while ago, which stated that from 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from accidental shootings. Based on that, I always thought the less guns, the less people getting hurt by them. Sorry, I'm not really informed on this subject..

Maki: Please, have a look at this article. And I quote:

“States that allow registered citizens to carry concealed weapons have lower crime rates than those that don’t. 

True. The 31 states that have “shall issue” laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Remarkably, guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns."

P.S. why do you frightened by the people with guns more than by the armed government? Because, no armed man killed as much as the governments have killed. USSR? Germany?

M.: I think my gun fear comes from living in a country where you never see them or hear of them. When Policemen or security guards walk around with guns on the street, I always stop and stare because it is an odd sight, to see a gun.
I know that the US School shootings are rare, and that when one occurs the media flock to it like a bird to a worm. I guess it just saddens me in generally, that children were ever hurt at the hands of a crazy man with a gun. Therefor, like a lot of people, i've developed a distaste for guns based on how sad those few crimes were.
I wish we didn't live in a world where citizens felt the need to be armed, so my view on this is really just based on a dream that I don't think society will ever achieve. Sometimes I try to be unrealistically optimistic about terrible things to make myself feel better about society. 

Maki: You look like a good person, and I know, that this is a pretty tricky question. But the things you’ve said about it mean exactly that it’s guns what kill people from your point of view. Ban the guns and it will be ok. But it doesn’t work like this, and I tried to show it to you. What do you think?

M.: I'm not sure, I'm on the fence. The fact that there are so many accidental gun deaths is sad, It's sad that anyone dies from bullets.
On one hand, I wish for guns to be banned and crimes to be lowered but I know this is not the case. On the other hand, I know these statistics and that gun ownership does not instantly equal more criminals. If we could ban people from being assholes that would be great!
I wish that banning guns was the right answer but it probably isn't by the sounds of things. You don't see people committing mass-school-murders with a knife, or a baton. So I guess that's where most of my arguments stem from. There is no stopping a mad-man from murder, It's just interesting that their weapon of choice is usually a gun.

Maki: Thanks a lot for such detailed answers, it means a lot to me! Ok, so my last question is… 

You said yourself "I wish that banning guns was the right answer but it probably isn't by the sounds of things” but ended up describing the dream world, as you called it. But we are not living in a dreamworld (?)

M.: Yeah. I feel like the sad reality of the matter is that there is no right answer to this one. Guns will always be around and who's to say whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. At the end of the day, Everyone just needs to look out for each other.

Yess. That's it, everybody, I lost the argument. I've always been useless in defending my position, so I'd better go and draw some girls now. Vote for banning gun control laws and have a nice day y'all.