Clay.

I love art.

Things that I can knead with my hands, sketch with a pencil, paint with a brush, snap with a camera, organize into a design, these things,  they are my passion. They help me relax and work more with my intuition than with my mind. Create things that I can’t formulate into words.

I decided to take Ceramics this year, as opposed to Ap Statistics or some other expected “over-achiever” class because it’s my senior year, and at the dawn of second semester, I don’t regret it. It’s fun to have a class that’s relaxed, goal oriented and fun at the same time. We’ve completed 4 projects so far, and in my spare time in between projects, I made some cute little things with the clay. They are all about the size of my thumb, give or take a little bit. I hope you like ‘em!

Here is my little bird nest, and this is one of the instances in which things look better before they are fired. Much of the glaze that I did slid down on the inside, leaving some glaze uneven. But other than that, this nest is fine.

This one is another example of the unpredictable nature of glaze. It was first supposed to be a towel for my Eeyore clay figurine, but then I gave it chocolate curls on it’s side, as in a cake but you can’t see it in this picture. So quite frankly, I don’t know what it is. When I was glazing, I accidentally brushed the side of the eye with some black, and so now, my originally very light and perfect towecake now looks gangster-ish with it’s black eye. – -X

And this one, my tiny rabbit like character from Totoro is one of my favs :]. I think the way I posed it in this picture is kind of interesting because it makes him look scared, nervous and anti-social, when he was supposed to help cheer up Eeyore, but that’s ok. Not everyone’s as happy go lucky as the next little sucker.

Yes, Mooshie is the perpetually happy, smiley and most cheerful mushroom you will ever see in your entire life!! A little careless sometimes though. I love this pic because little totoro’s facial expression is priceless. Like.. “please don’t fall, please don’t fall…”

And here’s the tiny owl mommy that is taking care of her baby eggs.

And I liked this one especially, because it’s like they’re two best friends, staring at the sky, the clouds, leaning against each other and dreaming. It just has a very intimate and warm fuzzy feel.

Aaand… Here’s the Clay Family!!

~

Protected: This is to my best friend. Her name?

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Alternating Roles.

So after nearly a month of looking after my sick grandparents, my mom has boarded a plane and will arrive home tomorrow night. Thinking back, these couple weeks sure flew by quickly. I’m amazed that I am still alive and haven’t one: starved to death or two: fainted from walking home everyday. But I have a lot of people to thank, all of whom I would not be able to do without. My mom’s two best friends, who have been taking turns bringing my father and I food/groceries and my two super awesome friends who take turns giving me rides home. THANK YOU! You know who you are~

Other than that, life without mom at home was pretty.. I don’t know how to describe it. Well, my dad certainly got the worst end of the stick because he had to wake up earlier, cook breakfast, wake me up, clean the temple, start the car, take care of the bills– jobs that he used to split with my mom. Also, take care of the yard, prepare his own lunch (and occasionally mine’s) and make sure i’m in one piece. I guess it’s through this that I got to see how very versatile my dad is. Usually, all he does is walk around in his suit and work on the computer, but now I discovered he can do housework as well as cook! o__o

Before you all think i’m a jerk for making him do everything, I say in my defense that I was working on my 9 scholarship essays the first two/three weeks my mom was gone. now that all this is over I help out , so it’s not that bad.

It’s interesting to see my dad trying to play both parental roles, and I know i’m very lucky to have a dad that’s willing to do that. He tells me to call him everyday when I get home and he makes a visible effort to chat with me when I call/when he comes home because he thinks i’m lonely without my mom, not that she talked to me all that much anyway. He even did half of the laundry today, though I was the one who hung them out to dry. After that, he went to a 7 hour seminar for doctors. He’s a busy guy.

My mom told me that I should treat this as pre-college independence training, but I think it just ended up teaching my dad and I just how important my mom is. But I am glad she got the time to be able to see my grandparents. Because she had to take care of my brother and me, she hadn’t returned to Taiwan in nearly 10 years. Going back was a good idea, and I know she deserved the break.

Doggie Trio.

You definitely must watch this video. Or you can play the video and just listen to the music (I realize the image of that dog looks freaky and diseased). But really. It’s definitely worth listening to.

Fine, maybe I am getting lazy, putting on back to back videos, but this video/song made was a must share because it is really awesomee! When I heard this as I was breaking from studying, I felt really nostalgic because I actually have a CD of their music from many many years ago. Who’s music? Three adorable bark-singing doggies. :] The three dogs names are Wang wang (bark bark in chinese), Candy and Mitsu. You can’t help but fall in love with their upbeat fluffiness.

The dogs on the video are not real, obviously, but here is a picture of them. Aren’t they adorable??

Take A Break.

So since everyone is in the thick of finals, I decided to put up something to give you all a break. It’s pretty short, and I hope you like it.

Raindrops.

After I came home today, the rain stopped. As I wandered around the house, not quite knowing what to do, I suddenly felt an urge to go outside and take photos. It was really cold, but I grabbed my camera and ran outside. Although I did not have the opportunity and luck to capture the large rainbow that was visiting right before school let out, I caught a lot of pictures of the sun. :] Though cough* I know a certain friend that “hates the sun”, I think it was beautiful today. With my yard recovering from three days of flooding and the plants dripping sparkles, I had a heck of a time taking pictures.

So.. technically, this is from yesterday. But I felt the need to share it regardless. Putting out buckets/trashcans is a really good way to conserve water because once you fill the buckets, you can water your plants for a while. These guys here can last around… a week. :] Save earth, Save us!

And here is a picture of a drop of water falling down from the roof into a bucket. Now I hope you appreciate how difficult it is to photograph moving things. I discovered, first when I was taking pictures of Girls Basketball, and now, when I was trying to take pictures of the falling droplets just how much effort and practice it takes. I think I took somewhere between 30 or 40 pictures of this trashcan full of water. @__@ Although I didn’t get to capture the light shining through the water, I kind of liked the effect of the droplet’s impact on the water.

For this one, I like how the other branches are reflected in the little round droplet. It feels really intricate, and reminds me of the mirrors in the painting: Giovanni Arnolfini and his Bride, by Jan Van Eyck.

So at 4:30 in the afternoon, the sun finally decided to show up. I was experimenting with various different angles, but I found that I liked this one most. The sun peeks out from in between the leaves, and makes everything bright and shiny. It was pretty interesting because as the sun came out, the dark gloomy clouds floated away.

Here is a closeup of one of the leaves that was hiding the sun in the previous picture. I really love this particular shade of green because it feels really organic and earthy, and I love the texture of the leaf.

Call me strange if you’d like, but here is a picture of another water droplet, but this time, with the sun glittering through it. This picture nearly cost me my camera because I had to stand on the mini brick wall to be able to take the picture. Trying to get the exact angle made me hit some branches with my umbrella, and down came the water droplets! Good thing my camera’s still okay, knock on wood. Overall, taking these was really fun. I splashed around a lot in the water, and caught some pretty interesting photos. :]

Final Exams

So I saw this on one of my friend’s blogs, and it made me crack up sooooo much. I thought i’d like to pass on the laughs.

3 days before final exam:

2 days before final exam:

1 day before final exam:

A night before final exam:

1 hour before final exam:

During the final exam:

Once you walk out from the exam hall:

After the final exam, during the holiday:

It’s a pity we don’t have that holiday, but oh well. Hope this made you smile. :]

Conservation.

Well, I know a lot of my friends have been asking to see the Fairchild Contest Editorial Cartoon that I drew for the Huntington Library, so here it is. You may be wondering what the Fairchild Challenge is, and it’s basically a contest intended to raise environmental awareness among the youth. It was open to a couple local high schools, and the winning high school will receive 1000 dollars (I think) for an environmental cause. (Yay!)

It took me a really long time to think of an idea, but I am kind of glad Ms. VT pressured me to draw this because if she hadn’t, I would have given up a long time ago. (you might have heard me complaining before).

As I say to most experiences, both good and bad, drawing this taught me a lot. I did not in any way imagine that I would place first because we have one of the most talented artists I have ever known who was competing against me, but I suppose I have the advantage since it’s environmentally related and I am more familiar in that subject. I guess what I am trying to say is to just go out and try something new. Even if it takes a lot of work and effort and you become very frustrated, you may just end up surprising yourself!

Domo.

My brother came back from Taiwan today with two stuffed, heavy suitcases of goodies from Taiwan. He brought back some really cute things, including a bag of assorted candy for me , some random girly hairties from my cousins, really awesome post-its and inking pens that I requested and… a domo! If you don’t happen to know what a domo is, it’s a brown stuffed animal with a giant mouth. It has shiny white teeth and is really popular nowadays. Well, my domo emerged out of his suitcase, and is really cute and hugg-able. At first, I wanted to name him brownies or chocolate or something because I love both of those things, but I didn’t want to sound retarded or whatever.

It’s really cute and I like it because of it’s simplicity. So without further ado, here is domo the shy chocolate pillow!

He is actually quite big for a stuffed animal, and I think his height is about one foot. Pretty good, eh? :]

We also got something very special, and my brother bought these little babies in a 夜市, an evening swapmeet. They have plenty of those in Taiwan, and it is really just wonderful. These are made with the leaves that you use to make  粽子, a sticky rice triangle that we eat a lot. My brother was smart– he bought 4. So we drew something to identify each of us by, either glasses, bags under eyes, accessories, etc. It was fun, and from now on, it’ll be the family owls!

Mine is on the very left, with my small glasses, my dad’s has extremely bushy eyebrows (haha…), my mom’s has an apron, and my brother’s has glasses and bags under it’s eyes.

Edible.

Well, I guess I found one big reason why staying home for any long length of time is not the best idea. It’s simply too comfortable. At home, I have my computer, a soft comfy bed and couch, books, but worst of all, I have food. Yesterday night, a lot of my parents’ friends came over to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Originally, only one person was going to bring food, but in the end, everyone ended up bring something. Mmm.. it was one of the best dinners of my life. :] Though it made me feel incredibly fat afterwards.

There was soup, courtesy of my dad, fried rice (mmmm), pasta salad, cold noodles (i just translated it literally from chinese– not sure what to call it in english), different asian dishes (two that I cooked!), a really wonderful Tiramisu cake from the bakery 85 degrees Celsius ( refer to past post), Red bean soup, Green bean soup, and another taro dessert. Whooh. Just remembering makes me full. Well, words can only say so much, so here are some photos of the wonderful food we had. I hope you ate already.

Here is the pasta salad that was really tasty. The birthday lady made it! There was pasta, vegetarian ham, zucchini, tomato, mayonnaise, relish, mushrooms and some other condiments.

Here is the dish of broccoli that I made! Although it was not one of the “star” dishes, I really love the color contrasts with green, white and blue.

Here is one of the most beautiful dishes yesterday. This took a lot of effort, with carefully sliced tofu, corn, mushroom, vegetarian meat, and a lot of other things. The highlight, however, is the red bell pepper that is on the left. It was placed in the middle of the dish, and was like a red heart.

Here is a dish that one of my mom’s best friends made. She is the lady that makes the organic sushi lunch that I sometimes have and she her store is on the corner of Santa Anita and Lower Azusa. She is suuper nice and a wonderful cook. Here, there are some vegetarian meat chunks with celery.

I believe this is a grapefruit but I am not quite sure. It was not the best tasting thing ever, but I really love the beautiful color it has. The blend between the dark orange and the soft lime yellow is really pretty.

And here is the really delicate and intricate tiramisu cake. It was… dreamy. Soft, fluffy and perfect. They actually placed the two strawberries on a little tower made of pure dark chocolate rolls. I am amazed how the people even thought of making cake like this. The result of creativity at it’s best.

Everything is an art– especially food.