Every year our Chem E department has a t-shirt design contest. The design then goes up for sale for everyone in the department. Our AICHE officers are getting frustrated because nobody's submitted a design. I felt like screwing around with Photoshop, and came up with this:



For those of you who have no idea what this is, it's a graph. It basically defines everything about the chemical in question (air, in this case, hence the O2, N2 and CO2 molecules).

I spent forever playing around with the distort features in Photoshop. Half the time the stupid thing wouldn't let me do it because I was in the wrong color mode or had selected the wrong one of three identical options, etc. I also had to figure out how to change the grayscale image to the blue contrast (a MAJOR pain in the ass, because I couldn't just magic wand all the shades of gray at once), and there are still some fuzzy areas from the fact that I pulled the chart off Google images. I was a smart girl and kept the layers, though, so it'll be easy to get rid of the fuzz or change the font if the department likes my design.

As always, I completely lost track of time, and so now I really should attempt to get a full night of sleep. But now I"m psyched that I accomplished something.

Okay, first things first:

Izumi, you are either a very good guesser or you know me better than I thought. <333 Oscar Wilde quotses. Thank you! ^____^

I still have to get your card in the mail...I've been a very very bad Caelan with regards to procrastination.

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Some of you are aware of this little project I've had going called "House of the Rising Sun." Those of you who have not seen The West Wing may not quite get the reference. To put it in blander terms, I'm creating ambiance.

(Those of you who know the song, no, I'm not planning on turning the place into a brothel. I just don't have that kind of time. Although the prison interpretation may not be entirely out of the equation.)

It started like this: there is this hideous, way too bright fluorescent light in my dorm room. Because I am a fairly light-sensitive individual, I wanted to do something to tone it down.

Enter The West Wing. I pretty much stole the idea (and the project title); put paper or cloth over the light source to give it a tint and hopefully cut out some of the light intensity.

The first attempt was with red tissue paper. It ended up looking like, as one of my friends described it, "as if [I] were trying to recreate the womb." It was indeed intensely pink, but I liked it. It shone out into the hall and drew a lot of attention.

Too much attention, as it turned out. The RD walked by and immediately ordered me to take it down, because it was creating a fire hazard. On a fluorescent light, with a plastic shield that had never got above maybe 80 when I'd tested the flammability theory. Screw her.

As it turns out, I am allowed to use cloth on the light. So I decided to try what one of my freshman year roommates had done. This particular roommate was from India, and had brought with her to college a sari that she had strung up on the ceiling. So I bought myself a nice red, brown and gold sari from one of those excessively cheap eBay auctions.

When it arrived, I tried to put it up, only to discover that it did almost nothing to alter the intensity of the light. I had, however, brought back from home a smaller gold silk shawl that I'd acquired from somewhere. I taped it up to the light, and then strung the Sari around in a wider arc.

The final effect is kind of multi-colored: dark reddish brown in the center where I layered up the sari because it was drooping, more orange where the shawl is most visible, and brown on the edges that are tacked to the ceiling.

It's great mood lighting, and doesn't mess with the eyes as much as the tissue paper did. The only thing I'm not quite so happy about is that the shawl is fairly thick, so it knocks out quite a bit of the light intensity - more than I intended. Still looks fucking awesome though.

I took a picture, but it looks kind of weird because of the way I had to do the exposure (no flash). In any case, here it is, behind a handy ( cut: )

I'm up waay past my bedtime, so I should probably end the entry here. Hopefully I will have more things to recount from my small-yet-insanely-busy life quite soon.

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Quote of the Day: "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." -Tom Stoppard

Ok, I'm going to organize my thoughts and make a larger rant/post, but first I wanted to brag about ( this )

It's the first fully digital image I have of this story I've been working on...Book of Fire, for which my journal is now titled. If you're wondering, I don't think I've posted any of it to read because construction is still kind of fuzzy.

Total work time: 5 hours, including pencil sketch, various scanner issues and groping my way around Photoshop. Also there was a lot of backtracking due to layering mistakes and color rethinks. All in all though, I'm pretty proud of it. I'm finally getting my money's worth out of this tablet.

For those of you that are wondering about what I mean by ( scanner issues... )


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Quote of the Day: “It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-level art, twisted imagination and a chainsaw.” - Damien Hirst.

So I'm being pressured to put my art up on lj again...I'm going to need some better picture hosting soon...

This one's currently clipped to the message board outside my dorm room. When I get my scanner, drawing tablet and quite possibly talent back I'll color it in and it'll be beautiful. But right now it's just a crappy photo. ^^' (Yes, these are the same characters - Chiyo and Joben - from Teh Boxx.)



Quote of the Day eternity since I last did a Quote of the Day:

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
- George Bernard Shaw