Ellen Kling's Blog: Ridiculously Long Catch-up entry

If the amount of text in this entry bores/intimidates you, don't fret, for there are pictures at the end!

So finals have been over for about a week now. I lived to tell the tale (although it's really not one worth telling). However, I did learn one thing deserving of mention. I learned how to alter the settings in Photoshop to better preserve color when saving pieces for the web. For years I had been plagued by muddy, muted reds and grayed down yellows and greens when I saved my art as web-safe jpegs. Now, thanks to a super helpful blog post by the people at Viget Labs, I was able figure out the solution to my color woes. There was a good deal of hooting and celebratory "woohoo"ing involved. Yes, I'm a nerd.

Sadly, on the day of my last final, I had to completely wipe out my computer and restart from the installer disks. I still don't even know what created the problems it was having. Most disappointing was the entirely unexpected loss of every photo I have ever taken. I say it was unexpected because I had been careful to plunk my iphoto library onto my external hard drive prior to clearing the system...

oh well. I suppose a life is still a life even when it's not document by photos. It just came at a really bad time. I was compiling a digital photo album that I had planned on getting printed out for my mom for christmas this year. Also upsetting is the fact that all my charcoal animation photos were on there.

On a less depressing note:
I met with Ms. Turner (the editor) this past Friday in the Hopkin's Barnes & Noble to talk about illustrating a book. The book's tentative title is A Paintbrush Named Helpin, but it might be shortened to just Helpin. The "interview" went really well. I asked a lot of questions about the format of the book and stuff like that. Strangely, I felt very on top of things for never having done this before. I'm crazy excited about all this. It's a very short kids story/workbook, but it's a great first step.

Saturday was my last day working as cashier at Chipotle (at least for now). It was a pretty brutal night. about a half hour after we closed, while I was silently scarfing down a burrito amidst the spanish gossip, a drunken fratneck completely destroyed the side door. I guess the resistance on the door (due to it being locked) didn't really register with this guy. Instead of realizing we were closed, he yanked hard enough on the door from the outside to completely strip the lock off the door on the inside. He stumbled in and looked at us in confusion as we all stared wide-eyed at the stupidity.

Mum and dad are in Pennsylvania right now helping gram and grandad move. I'm driving back to Kentucky with them on the 21st. I'm really looking forward to going home for a while.

Oh. and I might as well post the most recent drawings I made for my Interactive Media illustration project (see my previous entry for explanation). note the super red reds!