on love

that's a heavy topic, huh?
especially coming from moi, i'm below a noob. but it's important and that's what a good therapy session does to you.

in the wintertime, i always get melancholic and lonely. when spring comes and everybody suddenly freaks out and truly acts like seeking a mate is everything, then i'm usually over it all and it's all good but it's winter now so let me get it out. i'm planning something fun for next week, i promise.

~~~

my sister got married recently, in august, to a man she has known for years and years. he's in our family for so long, i can't even imagine, or remember well for that matter, time without him. great, right? they are always so kind with me, helping go through lots of stuff, i'm so grateful even if i don't say it that often.

to be very honest, i'm kinda jealous. not envious, oh no, but i can't help but feel weird knowing that they have been together when they were my age now. and here i am, reading fanfiction and than closing it with anger when, once again, i can't relate.

~~~

how do you imagine kissing with somebody? hugging them and not wanting to ever let go? reading their messages and smiling from ear to ear when they appear online?

how do you know you're wanted if you're the one coming up to somebody? as stupid as this sounds, how would you know you're attractive to them, if they haven't really noticed you first? how do you even get the courage to make a move?

how do you even meet people? the only friendships i have we formed during an outside situation, school etc. (exclusively, now that i'm thinking about it). the only outgoing i do is for an one on one ''coffee'' with an amount of friends i can count on one of my hands. and now it got even smaller, since a couple have moved too far away. i didn't even have any possibilities, let alone a choice, to not go alone to my prom last friday. sixteen year old me is sad.

~~~

to not get so sad (yes, i am aware that i'm pitying myself but you have to do it sometimes) let me say one more thing. why the fuck a romantic person is almost always hopeless? i know it may be a bit old school but can't i want the guy to make the first move? come on...

~~~

strangers, move your chair if somebody visibly can't fit behind it. repeatedly.

this has been your monday dose of thinking.

love,

qofr

into the woods

at first i didn't intend to make scenography and set design for this project. i'm not really into that domain of theatre so i just wanted to go with raw industrial. un/fortunately, my tutor thought of a whole stage set when she heard about the costumes, told me about it, so, since i'm the type that if something is stuck in my head it's for good (gonna stay there till i realise it), i got to work.

since the most important things on stage were the lit costumes, i focused on the lighting.

this is the finished product. to be fair it actually came out almost just like i imagined (the temperature of lights could be more alike but you can't have it all)

the whole set is basically just 3 paper screens and lights, but what an effect!

this is the raw set, no light. looks bare and not really interesting but the scale is quite big. each screen is about 3 meters in hight and 2.5 in width. it was an exhausting task, thank you jagoda for helping me, i still have a bit of scarring on my hands (i had to lift like a 60kg roll of paper). each piece is hung from the celling in two places, held together with a wooden bar. the one thing i need to remember in the future is to make them a bit longer, so they don't slide that much.

behind the screens there was a spot light and on the sides two slide projectors. and i mean those old ones, with single frames and film.

the shapes are inspired by the same things as the costumes, i just simplified them a bit, to make things more clear.

you would think i'll use digital projectors with scans of my inspirations, right? well, first thing, there weren't that many just available since ''light day'' is a school thing and there were many other performances. second thing that it actually didn't work that well in practice. i did a lot of monotype designs with different motifs but the scan wasn't good enough and i would have to clean all of them by hand, no way...

luckily, my teacher suggested just drawing the needed shapes on see-through foil and putting it in film frames, worked great and it was easy to copy for two screens. an even better thing was that since the actual image wasn't visible, the audience couldn't see the imperfections.

~~~

ok, that's it. listen to this and enjoy the photos (taken by jagoda as well):

this has been your monday dose of pure coolness

love,

qofr

in times of need, acrylic is here

i started by making the templates, wanted to make them with paper, turned out that they slide all over the place so i, the genius that i am, thought of adhesive foil so this was a big connivence.

the biggest thing was to figure out how to get the pattern onto the fabric. i did some tests, hoped that print paint would work but that was too see-through, there was no contrast to see the outline. then i tried with spray paint but that was even worse.

if you don't know what to do, do it in acrylic. simple and the effect was perfect.

here are some photos from the making:

let's just strop here. at this point i was so proud of myself, right? like wow, this looks nice, really suits the theme, seems well designed as a pattern. then i realised.

the suckers.

how the flipping fuck am i going to do that. it was just a pain it the but really, cause i had to cut it all individually. i had to number all of them, different colours for each tentacle to not mix things up. of course i had to save those little circles because it wasn't unified in any way (why should i do that? to make my work easier? that's for chumps). after gluing down the rest of the foil i had to go over each spot, make it smaller and glue down. i'm sure there is an easier way but i'm not going to think about it now.

#deadhand

i don't really have any more photos from the making of the actual costumes.

i don't really have that much more to say about the costumes. next up the stage design and summary.

this has been your monday dose of mind-boggling work.

love,

qofr

p.s. this is draining my energy. i'll finish those posts this week and quit talking about this project for now. from february sockabrate is coming back.

so, śródświetlne

the name means, in loose translation, amongst light. the whole thing was prepared for my schools 'day of light', but not for them, for myself. the event is centered around light related projects made by students at my school.

i had this idea for a while, the play of light and shadow is fascinating when observed in movement, and i love the idea of semi-transparency and all that.

the whole concept is based on cloth with printed, contrasting template. i got really interested in artistic graphics last year, i'm a craftsman so doing stuff by hand is definitely my thing, and making molds was really cool. since this year i don't have that subject anymore i wanted to do something my myself, for myself this once. plus i really wanted to have something big, new for my portfolio.

i like doing stuff on my own so this was a real pleasure even though it was so time and work consuming.

i started of with some loose sketches of the cloths and the patterns i wanted. i love the idea of octopus tentacles in graphics (i have no idea why, it has been a running theme in my art) so i started with that (curse this, the suction things were a bitch to make). i was struggling to think of other nature inspired patterns but it worked out.

i have an octopus, trees, coral and fern. each made twice, mirrored for both sides of the model.

and for good measure i did some model sketches

i wasn't sure about the last one 

and i want to use my pad more so:

this is the beginning, my inspirations. the making is coming.

this has been your monday dose of artistic motivation, you can do it!

love,

qofr

happy new year!