우리 결혼했어요!
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I’m getting married in one week, and I’m turning 25. The only truly ambitious goal I’ve ever been determined to achieve is to spend time in Korea. As anyone who knows me knows, I was already blessed with 5 wonderful months there which left me only craving more and, luckily, my husband-to-be is nothing but supportive and excited by having more adventures with me. Since graduating, my priorities have definitely shifted away from creating art. I feel satisfied with the design work I get to do at my job because I’m learning so much about Indesign at the same time. But in general I haven’t done anything creative with myself. I haven’t even been diligent about studying Korean lately, with the wedding approaching. The main thing that bothers me is that I’m so content with this getting by every day. I’m perfectly happy working, loving, eating, reading, just being. But I’ve never been ambitious with a project. I do get temporarily excited about ideas, but I’ve never followed through. For now, I’m just writing about this. I want to feel satisfied with myself, with some kind of studying regiment, and also expanding myself creatively. I also want to update this website more often with something! I have some ideas, but I’ll have to get back to you in one week! See you again! I’ve been doing some new ballpoint pen drawings, and thought I’d upload a couple that I’m pretty happy with. I always start out wanting to do something really loose and stylized, but I get way into the details and things end up much more realistic than I originally intended.
The image on the left is a character concept I’m working on, and the one on the right is just a silly character I made up– was mostly focusing on the anatomy in a bodysuit. I tend to draw stylized, skinny women most of the time (though I probably don’t have many of those drawings up on here), so I wanted to draw a new bodytype.
Tristan has been somewhat interested in cosplaying– though I think he’s mostly into the creation of the costume. He decided to go as Kratos from the game God of War, and has devoted a lot of time over the last few months into making the costume. It paid off, because he won 2nd place as an amateur in the craftsmanship contest! The judges particularly liked the swords, which he hand-carved and painted himself. It being Tristan’s first time at a an anime convention as well, it was definitely a great first experience. There have only been a few good Kratos cosplays done so far, and his version was very well received. As for me, being there made me feel guilty that I hadn’t gone earlier– if I’d known what it would be like, I would definitely have submitted some artwork to the art auction and easily made a nice sum. There were a lot of talented artists there, and a lot of artists who clearly just drew stuff they knew would sell (heck, can you blame them?). If anything, I came away from the experience with some motivation to pick up drawing again and begin a project of my own. Since graduation I haven’t created much, and I can’t keep using wedding preparation as an excuse– though it’s no secret that I keep procrastinating with wedding stuff as well.. hah! We also bought a few prints in Artist Alley. There was a lot of nicely drawn stuff there, but anime posters of pinup women and pretty-boys with flowery backgrounds aren’t very suitable for a person to put on their wall if they don’t want their apartment to look like a college dorm room. So when we came across this guy’s table, we were really enthusiastic. He has his own drawing style, even though he draws other characters, and his prints had a really nice sense of composition. So we’ll have three of his prints on the wall! I was disturbed enough to hear a statement on NPR about how Monsanto is one of their sponsors, with a little blurb about how great genetically modified seeds are and how they’re saving the planet. But it was even more disturbing that, minutes later, there was a report about how efficient genetically modified seeds are. The report didn’t mention Monsanto, but I was still disturbed. After seeing the accusations against the company in Food Inc. I’m skeptical. The convenience of their seeds doesn’t change the fact that they have control over 90% of the crops in this country, which only increases as they prosecute farmers for theft if their crops happen to be pollenated by plants grown from their seeds. As if anyone has control over the way the wind blows. I just wanted to share a hilarious post featuring Lolcats-like versions of photos of Kim Jung Il, such as this one:
A random update– Sunday morning Tristan was greeted with an email from Blizzard informing him that he was selected to be a beta tester for Starcraft 2. I’ve never played the original myself, but I’m familiar with its popularity seeing as it’s huge in Korea, even after ten years. [I was witness to an outdoor Starcraft tournament between Yonsei and Korea University] For the beta there is no option to play against AI (although I know there is a hack for that out there for people who weren’t invited to beta); it’s all online against other players. I’m not actually playing myself, just watching him play, but I haven’t noticed major issues– just a few imbalances between the races. There are definitely a lot of clever people out there who were clearly good at the original Starcraft, so it’s some tough competition
Right now my free time is taken up with mostly wedding planning… actually, I must admit a lot of my free time is being spent playing Fable II, but there’s a lot of wedding planning to do! I probably won’t write too much about that stuff here, but I wanted to make an announcement on here I haven’t been doing a lot of art-related stuff these days, just working. But I am still actively studying Korean, and I feel like writing a post about what’s going on with that. Looking around online, that’s not a ton of resources or anything for American people studying Korean, so I might as well put this out there. There’s a decent amount of website out there for studying Korean, and they all help you get past learning the alphabet, getting by day to day, and speaking several tenses. But it’s next to impossible to find a good source (even textbook) that goes into more advanced grammatical forms. After getting the basics down, I’ve found that these have been my most important tools: Electronic dictionary - I use an Udea, and it was the cheapest one I could find. It costed about 120,000 Won, but it also includes Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. For a native English speaker trying to learn Korean, it’s a sad truth that you can’t buy these in the US. Language study isn’t really popular here. My dictionary’s functions are all in Korean, but once you learn how to navigate around, it’s totally worth it. The English portions are all in understandable english from Korean-English, and you can even search the meaning of each Hanja. It’s so priceless in helping me study. I have the cheapest kind but it gives me examples of how to use the word, lets me save words in a flash card set, etc. Electronic dictionaries are much more than simple translators. Get one! Textbooks for learning English – You have to either get your hands on these while you’re in Korea or borrow them from your Korean friends living in the US (or wherever you live). There are an endless number of resources for Koreans to learn English, and they get into much more detail that I’ve ever seen in an English textbook. Note: The dictionary is important though, especially with vocabulary. An English word has several meanings, and so the Korean will list multiple words. If you don’t know their meaning, look them up. For example “current” means both the present, and also a flow of water, in English. So you have to take care to remember that these books aren’t actually written for you. A conversation partner - I put a link to Craigslist, because it’s a great place to start. There’s not a lot of competition for English speakers looking to practice their English, but if you live near a university or a large city there’s likely an exchange student or two who are here to improve their language skills. There’s no way I could continue to improve without the help of my conversation partner. Unless you live in LA you probably don’t come across a lot of practice opportunities. Also, your reading and writing will continue to grow as you study, and then one day when you meet someone you can finally show off your skills to, it’s really embarrassing to realize you have no ability to speak! It’s a totally different challenge when you have to conjure up the vocabulary and grammar to express your genuine feelings about something, as opposed to answering questions with obvious answers, or reading someone else’s ideas. Sogang’s Website – My friend introduced me to this site. I think it goes along with the university’s series of textbooks, but you can use it without the book or having to log in. It has some listening opportunities and exercises, and great explanations of grammar. Grammar is something you won’t be able to learn from your dictionary. It’s a really helpful website. Naver – I posed about Junior Naver before, but Naver itself is a great tool when you’re at the point where you can navigate comfortable around a website. The webtoon section i especially awesome– you can read comics and learn at the same time! I learned a lot about spelling abbreviations and dialogue versus writing. It’s a rare glimpse at casually spoken Korean versus written. Even watching Dramas you can’t read the script (and usually the script doesn’t precisely follow). If you’re overwhelmed by all the text on the website at first, just try tackling unfamiliar words a little at a time, and eventually it’ll feel like your home page! ^^
That’s all I am thinking of right now, but I might write later on the subject. I’m sorry I’ve not got any art updates!
One of the things I enjoy while studying Korean is the different words used to express things. Example: 전쟁이 일어났다 – it literally translates to “war has awakened”
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Life is good, work is good, things are really good. So here’s to 2010 which has started off great so far!
