Archive for Text

I have tasted the wisdom of divinity, and the horrors of its sting

September 6, 2007 at 6:49 am · Filed under Text, Works in progress

Yes, I’m still here.

Yesterday was rather emotional as it marked the second time I have been told in so many words “funny that you tried, but get out of here, scum” by the art department at this school. There’s a lot more to be said about it, but I just don’t have the energy. Yesterday I spent a lot of the afternoon in a blind rage.

I still plan on doing the five projects I proposed to for the class, instead I will do them on my own. The guy who was going to do the class with me said he’d be okay with meeting a few times over the semester for feedback and critiquing, and I became dramatic yesterday and was telling people why bother but I’m kidding myself — the whole point of my wanting the class in the first place was to GET HELPFUL FEEDBACK on stuff, rather than just showing the silent web.

This is what I was working on, in fact what was sitting still wet in the easel upstairs
when I got the initial email about not being able to take illustration.

Dancing people in progress

If we set aside the talent question, which is subjective and something I don’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole, let’s just look at some duration. Let’s look at the endless doodles all over my spelling worksheets and math assignments in elementary school. Lets look at the art classes I took and eventually helped teach from 6th grade through about sophomore year of high school. Let’s look at the art teacher who essentially made up a new Honors Painting 5 for me so I could get some solid portfolio work done. Let’s, University of Northern Colorado, look at the fact that every day I come hope from work and dig from my pockets the numerous scraps of paper — receipts, envelopes and little torn pieces of paper — and spend several hours working them out in my sketch book, or transferring them onto canvas, or slowly, slowly chipping away at that image I thought of when I heard that piece of music or saw that color, because there is nothing else on this earth I’d rather be doing. If you are unwilling to sanction that time spent even with one measly “directed study” than you, Sir, do not grasp basic time management.

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Out of office notification

August 20, 2007 at 6:27 am · Filed under Text

This week I am going to be scarce as it is project switch everything from old system to new system week at work. Overtime approved. I am facing up to seven 11 hour days at work, plus I still need to have meetings about classes for school. when I’m not doing these other things, I will probably be sitting very still at home.

In addition to this I start school the following week, which means I will go back to living three lives (artist, student, desk-job-holding-adult). I sat down and tried to configure a schedule, and figured I can promise myself about 20 hours from each responsibility each week:

- 20 hours at work because it is required of me,

- 20 hours of school work, which is including classes but is also including a huge block of time to sit and get all my work done, which I hope is effective, and,

- 20 hours of art time, which can be pushed to two 10 hour days on the weekend if I simply have no time during the week.

This may seem extreme, but really this is only 4 hours per weekday of each activity. 4+4+4= 12. There are 16 hours of awake time in a day, which still leaves 8 hours for sleeping. And I do want to set aside a LOT of time for school, and I have some ambitious projects looming in the distance and I need to be spending actual time with them. So there you are.

Here is a great project I will be doing whenever I have a chance.

Catch you later.

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Man sketch

August 1, 2007 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Pictures, Text

This is kind of incredible. \

man sketch
from my sketchbook, sometime in high school

Just last night I was talking to Sam about how boys tend to draw boys and girls tend to draw girls. It’s not a matter of preference at all — people just draw what they’re used to, and what’s easier to “get” than the sort of body you deal with on a daily basis?

Of course, one does need to draw the opposite sex every once in a while, and sometimes one needs to draw obscenely muscled people. I told Sam about this series of studies I did that was basically the torso of men and then everywhere else of…well, all sorts of things. And here it is! Well, here the file is anyway. I think this may have been one of the many things stolen from me in ‘02. Luckily for you I had an e-copy.

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Number the first

July 31, 2007 at 10:12 pm · Filed under Pictures, Text

On July 29th, 2007 (so, like two days ago as I type this,) I began scouring craigslist to see what sort of job prospects there were in Portland. At the time, I wasn’t looking for anything immediate, just something that I could do later on when I move. However, because of the ephemeral aspects of so many of the art gigs there, I began trying to snatch a few up locally.

It’s hard work. The internet is kind of a scary place, particularly if you are trying to negotiate freelance business plans and you have to think about ethics, ownership, rights and a bunch of other stuff. It’s also hard to do this if you don’t have much of a web presence — obviously there is no replacement for actually meeting people and showing a hard-copy of a portfolio, but if you are just trying to convince someone you are on the level in the interim it’s unfortunate when your name in a Google image search brings up only an aging folk singer and that one elephant you did when you were like 12.

Not to knock the elephant. She got me far.

My name is Maggie Nichols. And I do art.


from Media Matters, color pencil, 2003

Here I plan on posting sketches, ideas, stuff I’m working on, things that inspire me visually, stuff I’ve recently finished, stuff I may have for sale, and anything else that has to do with art.

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