Welcome

OMG. Spring break is over. School is back in session. My peers and I are now in constant panic mode for the next month. Mental alarm bells go off too often to ever settle down in calm. On the other hand, here are some things I have observed whilst driving along congested LA freeways (the 110 North for those who know). I noted odd things, tells you a lot about what you can catch—or miss—when you don’t live with your eyes open wide at the world.

• I saw a man eating pizza, ravenously at that…how he kept his eyes on the road and hands on the wheel escapes me
• I saw a man picking his nose, deeply at that…how he thought no one was watching him obviously turned out false
• I saw a man who looked like he just got beat up, badly at that…how he can drive with black eyes (plural) and looking like he was in pain escapes me, too
• I saw a man driving a yellow cab, smoking with his hand hanging out the window, with a pinkie nail that was Wolverine status in length (yechh)…creepy to the max, it didn’t help that he looked like a thoroughly unpleasant character

The shoe salespeople at Macy’s work like snails with Alzheimer’s and the woman who worked at See’s Candy wouldn’t have looked out of place in Willy Wonka’s factory. I love my box of soft centers…they are delicious.
My parents and I went to see the Renoir exhibit at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) last Monday and it was beautiful, as was to be expected. It was of his later works, centered around portraiture and his bathing nudes. I’m not much of a nudes savant, I love scenery (although landscape after landscape does get boring after a while), for example, I love the works of Monet. Renoir was a very talented old man, lucky, too. My mom brought up the fact of how Renoir lived a fairly pleasant and comfortable life as one of those rare successful artists in his own lifetime, whereas Van Gogh starved half of the time and painted pathos-ridden still lifes of sunflowers and his few meager potatoes. He became famous after his premature death (37 years old). I have to say, Renoir was good at drawing women the way they are, unlike the surreal artistic style of Picasso (I swear, sometimes his women look like hybrids of cows, pigs, and birds). Oh, for those pizza lovers out there, the King of New York pizzeria on Western has an absolutely delicious vegetarian pizza, oh my heavens, it is heavenly.
My choir concert went very well, I had so much fun. It was a lot of work and rehearsals, but there’s nothing like being on that stage, singing your heart out with people you love, and finishing off to ravishing applause for three bows. This concert was for fundraising, so it wasn’t the usual “choir” heavyweight repertoire—our show was very theatrical in order to attract a wider audience and so we could pull it off and have fun. Bel Canto (the top/oldest group I’m in) had three costume changes…at least there’s only thirteen of us, otherwise chaos in the dressing room.
Now I know I really need to get going on a new version, I’m getting tired of this now although I can never forget my roots, but I also need time to plan and design and right now I don’t have that! For Naeolia, as my main site, I always make a huge version change because my baby deserves it. I’m not one of those people who churn out layouts (though Lucy you are amazing and can do it fabulously) like new iPods—it’s always a fairly long process for me. I guess it’s just the way I work so bear with me. Wow, I think I’ve rambled long enough to put you all to a long and fitful sleep, so I’ll wrap it up with some new photography and retouches: Lady Gaga and Vera Farmiga. And by the way, for those interested, there is a new round at Erised, plug below.

Do you like going to museums? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen while on the road?

Wow, the crazy March has drawn to an epic close. Whew. I’m happy to say our color guard team did really well for our first year of competing in WGASC, and we have the option of going to championships in April! My SAT scores are supposed to come out tomorrow…oh wow, I just realized that. Holy shit, okay now I’m nervous. It’s my first one and I don’t want to have a bomb ass score. My spring break starts at 12:05pm on Friday. I know I won’t have much of a break—consumed by choir tech rehearsal week & concert—but just the fact I won’t have to get up early and go to school for 9 sweet days sounds beautiful. The rest of the school year dawns closer and closer, a huge blinding abyss I know I’m going to have to brave eventually, what with AP exams, finals, and the end-of-the-school-year shitpile. Hope.
Resources: I have ten (10) new icon textures. I reformatted the page so I no longer have to manually update each new icon’s code. It is automatic now. Teasers of them are below. I have also added some new stocks to the stock & scans page. There have been 25 downloads of the mannequin scans so far; they’re so cute and versatile to use—if you play around with color balance, you can match the outfit to any color you want.
Art: I have two new colorizations, the older one was a challenge entry at FLR Blends and lovely Angelina Jolie was done on my own for my own sake. Funking around on Photoshop produced a weird looking kind of conceptual design that I ended up labeling Naeolia on. It’s supposed to be an abstract old-fashioned cap (if you have no fucking clue what I’m getting at, I won’t blame you) haha. I put it under vectors because it was mostly done with the Pen tool, and the texturing was made from scratch. I love the camouflage colors I ended up with. Believe it or not, the scratchy looking texture stuff is actually a macro stock I have of the plush cushion things the little jewelry boxes come with. I know, weird & cool, right? I’ve decided to post the macro jewelry photos I took of some of my favorite daily bling. I also have two new retouches of Emily Deschanel and Drew Barrymore.

Confidence. When a person is young, it is especially hard to struggle with and balance the level of confidence and self-esteem. Some adults struggle to find their confidence all throughout their lives. The earlier you find out for yourself and become comfortable, the more you are able to grow as an individual, and most importantly, become an objective human being. As young as I am, I am glad to be able to happily say that given my circumstances, I have no issues with self-esteem. Confidence is a different matter. Confidence can almost span a lifetime to master. But, just because you are nervous, does not mean you lack confidence. I could have practiced as much as I could for a piano recital, and I would still be nervous, not because I lacked confidence to pull my repertoire off, but that’s just the way my nerves are at this point. Boldness is not a quality I wish I could always have in myself either. I don’t think being a bold person is necessarily the best thing. Bold, after all, does not always mean polite, kind, wise, intelligent, beautiful—it just means you’re bold. Which can be good sometimes and bad in other times. People like to fool themselves into thinking they have confidence, self-esteem, boldness. The latter is much more temporary than the others. Boldness is usually a fleeting attitude. Faking the first two aren’t bad; the only problem is that, as human beings, it’s usually the unpleasant that surfaces, and not breezy self-confidence. What do you think about yourself in terms of self-confidence? Do you put on a facade most of the time, or no?