Paper Riceball

Voila! The first in a series of characters inspired by musical terminology- Harmony.

Harmony is defined as the use of simultaneous pitches. In short, harmonization sounds good because of the constructive and destructive interference between sound waves of each pitch. Basically, music theory+physics. And that’s how I approached designing Harmony, and it’s how I’ll approach all the characters in my Music Series.

When I thought of harmony, I thought of backup vocals, acapella singing, and chords. Harmony, though important, is second to the melody of a song. So I thought the overwhelming characteristic for Harmony would be shyness. She won’t look into the viewer’s eyes because she believes it will be too direct. Fidgeting with her hands started as a nervous tick, then became a habit. Hence, her pose- looking away, one hand behind her back as if she’s about to shrug, one hand covering her mouth for verbal shyness, and one leg slightly bent as if drawing something in the sand. She is accustomed to being overlooked, and believes herself to be a wallflower. When people pay attention, however, they’ll realize Harmony is one of the most intelligent people they’ll ever meet. As for the clothing, I chose to go with something simple and sweet, with toned-down colors.

Many hours of browsing around Deviantart have inspired me to buy a tablet and start creating digital art. So I did a quick Google search for “kawaii” because I wanted to start with something simple, and came across this image on flickr: http://farm8.static.flickr.com/7169/6415819323_3d1299be11_o.jpg

And tada! Below is my reproduction via Photoshop:It’s a simple drawing, but it took longer than it probably should have. That’s because a) I’m a slow worker and b) I’m a perfectionist (gotta get those smooth curves!). The most difficult part of this drawing was definitely just trying to get smooth curves, for the line art AND for the shading/coloring. My friend suggested changing brush settings, and that’s when I realized I was using the pencil tool instead of the brush tool *flails arms helplessly* Using the brush instead of the pencil helped tremendously (it’s so magical! a big thank you to my friend, who knows who she is). Having multiple layers also helped a lot- I can only imagine how many layers I’ll use when I start more complicated pieces *sighs*

The Japanese characters in the top left read “Let’s go to school,” and the characters at the bottom are just the date. Note to self: practice writing on the tablet.

I must say I thoroughly enjoy having the power to undo my steps, hide layers, and erase without residue. Bamboo tablet and Photoshop, where have you been my entire life? One thing I noticed upon closer inspection was that my pen nib sustained more erosion than I expected *teardrop* I probably held the pen at an awkward angle while sketching and trying to make smooth curves (darn you, pencil tool, pretending to be the brush tool). I see I will need to invest in more pen nibs.

I wonder if I should continue reproducing work or dive into creating my own designs. I foresee many more hours of drawing in the near future. Expect something new soon!

Something I wrote in late March/early April:

It’s the cursed (or blessed? depending on how you look at it?) question every student asks him or herself. For most, it starts some time in high school. For a few, it may have started even before then. For some, it drags itself out for years before finally settling down. It is “what college major should I choose?” and I am part of the “some”.

I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown earlier today. It seems that’s been happening more often lately. Looking back, I think the first time I though I would have a nervous breakdown was in eighth grade, and it was partly because I needed to decide which high school to attend- I’ll get back to this in some future post. It’s not important right now.

I almost had a nervous breakdown earlier today because the doubts about my choice of major became overwhelming. Rather, I should say the information on the Internet became overwhelming. Reading blog post after blog post of horror stories about how useless any Bachelor of Science degree is, I seriously believed I was ruining my life (or at least my work life) by choosing to major in Physics.

Well who’d have ever thought I would end up declaring my major as Applied Math? This has got to be one of the strangest choices I’ve made so far. Starting in sophomore year of high school, I disliked math so much that I vowed to NOT choose math as a major. In fact, I wouldn’t even have taken a math class, much less an AP Calculus class, in senior year had my friends not taken it (yay for positive peer pressure). Alas, my pride would not have let me live down not taking a math class…

Looking back at my schooling life, I guess this is a plausible choice. Through elementary and middle school, I thought math was the simplest and easiest subject in school, and it was true. I couldn’t wrap my head around why so many of my classmates found it to be a difficult and less-than-enjoyable course. It’s because I didn’t account for the fact that I, unlike some of my classmates, was always doing math (like ALWAYS- in school, after school, during summer break…) and thus got much more practice with the basics. It’s not that the basics of math are difficult, but there’s always some trick or pattern that you need to recognize, and that comes with repetition. Once I reached high school, I didn’t practice math all the time anymore, so I couldn’t see the patterns as easily. Math became a confusing jumble of words, symbols, and concepts I didn’t understand- it was a jarring experience, to say the least.

I even disliked math so much that I wanted to avoid math classes in college unless they were absolutely necessary. Thinking I would be a physics major, I took the next class in the calculus sequence, and discovered I enjoyed it. I might not love it like I used to love math, but it was definitely a huge improvement compared to my feelings towards math in high school. I suppose part of it has to do with the one semester of no math/science classes. I missed the satisfaction of solving questions- architecture and liberal arts courses didn’t give me the same feeling of achievement.

If I could go back in time to give myself advice, I would say that the major I choose should be gratifying, not solely in a career-wise sense (because then I should probably choose engineering or some other technical field), but also in a learning sense.

It’s about time I wrote the first entry to this blog! You’ll notice that this site was created in August of 2012, right before my freshman year of college. Why didn’t I write anything until now? I wish I could tell you it was because I was so busy with college that I did not have any time left for writing, but then I would be telling a lie, at least partially. If I were really determined to write this blog, then I would have done it regardless of how much work there was- I would have made time for writing. By the way, that’s only one of the strange things I’d like to write about on this blog.

So what’s my reason for not writing until now? Maybe it was writer’s block, but I think it was because of my inability to decide what theme this blog would revolve around. And so the procrastination started. Having a theme is one of those things I so wish I could apply to everything in my life, but which ultimately fails due to my capricious personality type. I thought of creating an art blog, or a creative writing blog, or a culture blog, or a day-in-the-life-of-a-college-student blog, but committing to one would mean disregarding the others. Aren’t I being so wonderfully cliché? But seriously though, fear of committing and limiting myself to one topic scared me into not writing at all. And that was no fun. So now it’s time to disregard organization, theme, and planning for the sake of writing. Do now, think later, right? I’ve spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing in my life. Starting with typing these words, I’m going to change that, and by publishing these words on the Internet, I’m going to hold myself accountable.

On a completely different note, isn’t it funny that this first post is on April 1st? This is a coincidence by the way- it just so happens to be the end of this year’s Spring Break, and feeling that I hadn’t accomplished anything over Spring Break, I decided it’s about time to start writing for fun again. If nothing else comes of this blog, if less than ten people in the world ever read it, if it suddenly disappears off the face of the Internet because WordPress goes bankrupt, if humankind suddenly loses the ability to generate enough electricity to maintain the Internet, then at least I’ll know I created something. Deep, no?

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