I've been having a blast since the school semester got out in may!
I took a trip to New York and Washington, DC with my girlfriend and her family. New York was my favourite, we could have spent two more weeks there and still not have seen everything I wanted to see.
After that it was visiting family on vancouver island, and immediately after returning we bought a kitten off of craigslist! His name is Pickwick, he was a very tiny 7 weeks old when we got him. He's now more of a cat and less of a fluff ball at 12 weeks old. He's black with a white belly and paws and a little white streak on his forehead. He looks like an Orca.

I visited my family in Calgary, and attended the general meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students in Ottowa as a representative of the Emily Carr students union. Too bad I didn't get to see more of the city while I was there, it was my first time there. Next was a skills development weekend at UVic for the provincial body of the CFS. There were baby bunnies everywhere! :3 I took so many pictures.

As far as work goes I am working as a film extra. I did a day shoot for the TV show Psych! Coming up is a longer shoot for the film adaption of Percy Jackson, the Lightning Thief. I get to be a punk kid from the 90's. I have terribly tight black faux-snakeskin pants and one of those shirts with the shoulders cut out!

I haven't been updating, first because it was the crazy semester of insane amounts of homework, then because on november 1st I became extremely ill and was out of school for two weeks. I was in the hospital for three days during that time, after which it turned out I had e-coli. NOT FUN! Even after I got better I was horribly behind in my schoolwork, so I struggled to catch up right until the last day.

Since then I have been traveling for the holidays, but had the great luck to have my laptop die after left home. It seems to be beyond repair, so now I am just waiting until I can get home to buy a new one and rescue the files off the fried one.

Hopefully the new comp will mean I can start posting my schoolwork from this semester! I have been doing so little drawing outside of class because of all this crazyness, I am excited to get back into it this semester, but at least I have some half decent school stuff to post.

this new version 6 has now crashed my Firefox browser on my Mac 4 times, especially the page with the promo vid and all the info about what they changed.
I am NOT HAPPY.

So I've had a couple potential Emily Carr students inquiring about the program and asking for advice, so I thought I would post this little summary of my courses at Emily Carr so far. I agree that it's way too hard to get information about these kinds of things if you don't have a friend on the inside, so I'll be that girl!

They change the classes around pretty much every year, so things may be different next year when you start, but here's how mine has been going:

Well for one thing, you probably won't be doing the specific kind of art you want to until at least second year! They have a pre-set stream that forces you to try new things, which is great for giving you a wide breadth of experience of different art styles and medias.

First semester you choose either Design or Sculpture, no other choices. With that comes some bog standard drawing, english, and art history. Plus a course called creative process where the teacher pretty much teaches whatever they want to, in theory about the process of making good art.

Design funnels into communication design and industrial design, and involves a lot of conceptual thinking and building of little bristol board sculptures, as well as focusing in on the real basics of communication design, like line and form. Presentation is really heavily emphasized, and the ability to communicate a concept abstractly.

Sculpture is also pretty conceptual (concept is big at emily carr), but also gives some intro into ceramics and other types of sculpture building.

I took design, and really liked it, I'm even trying out industrial design next year. Many of my friends who were planning to go into animation or even more like traditional painting type stuff really hated design though, so it's kind of based on the person.

Second semester you choose three options, one being either drawing, design, or digital media (Digital media is like photoshop and computers for dummies). Why isn't sculpture one of the three? This totally screws over the people who took design first semester from taking sculpture second semester if they want to try out other options. I'm taking drawing.
So you choose one of those three, plus two other options, and english and art history.

I am branching out and trying new things, Print Media (like old printing presses, stamps, woodcuts, etching) which I adore, and Animation which I find really difficult, but I just wanted to try it. I don't ever plan to do animation for a career, but it's a good thing to understand. We start with really basic flip books, move up to drawn animation, then puppets, and then we get more freedom in media to try and communicate feelings and a story.

haha wow that was long, but hey I hope it helps! I'll try to answer any other questions anyone has.

Vancouver is fun! But rather lacking in friends and family whom I miss. I'm coming back to Edmonton tomorrow night for the weekend, I'm so excited! I won't be able to see everyone, but ah well. My Dad came out to visit today with his girlfriend! It was fun.

The first month of uni has kind of overwhelmed me! I can't believe the semester is half over already, I have a midterm coming up in two weeks!

But my new living space (Roomy one room apt shared with my beautiful girlfriend) is looking nicer and nicer, we're putting up posters now! It took us a long time to get all moved in, but now we've got decorations and curtains I sewed myself and we've even made some repairs! I replaced a tap handle by myself, very big for me.

I'm trying to ferret all my various piles of stuff into corners so I don't look like I own way too much stuff (which I do). Art supplies take up room, it's necessary I swear!

Cooking for ourselves and washing dishes by hand is a bit arduous, but I'm getting better and better at cooking as a result!

My classes are really exciting, we're learning all sorts of history and things about design and the environment. I have two days off in the week because of my small number of classes (I have a credit for drawing 100 and English 100 because I took IB courses in high school), so it lets me get things done around the apartment. I have wednesday and thursday off, it's perfect.