The Best Way to Go Out

Well, the end of the school year has come and gone and now its time to catch all of you diligent JonJonBlog readers up.

For my painting class, our final project was very open and allowed us to do a series of whatever we wanted. I chose to do portraits of my friends.
Here they are. Casey, Richmond and Kristen. It was really great painting them and I now feel even more connected to them (or at least their faces). I was trying to get more painterly with brushstrokes and stylize their portraits a bit through color and lighting. Im super happy with they way they all turned out and Kristens mom, Maureen, bought hers! (hopefully if you click on it you'll get a larger image)

My final project for my 2-D Design and Color Theroy course was themed "The Tree of Life." This was also a pretty open assignment and we could do whatever that meant to us.

I took Casey's longstanding idea of the interconnectedness of us and nature and created this. I wish I had a better image to post, but you should be able to open a large image by clicking on it. This was my first time using oil pastels and boy are they tough. In the end though I'm really glad I used that medium. It came out exactly how I imagined it.

Sometime between the last day of classes and my last day of finals Casey and I showed our art in the Stockton Art Walk downtown. It was a pretty cool event with music and art and a bunch of people. This is me in front of my pieces. It was humble showing, but it was really cool to have the actual public and not just my friends and peers see my work. I am glad to say that people actaully stopped and looked at it.

After this show we went to Valley Brew, a local eater, for celebratory drinks for everyone finishing classes. The group was the usual 15 or so and soon grew into 30. We ended up taking over this banquet room. Plus, a DJ that was scheduled for a party that was late came and started playing us some jams. So this cool hang out turned into a sweet dance party with $5 pitchers. Here is a shot of some of the funness. It was seriously so crazy and spontaneous. After this we headed over to a friend of a friends place for some French electronica dance music. It was one of the best nights every created.

So after all the studying, final projects and evaluations it finally happened. I graduated. May 17, 2008 I walled across the stage, shook a bunch of hands, received an empty diploma holder and switched my tassel to the other side. It was the hottest day of the year and miserable, but it was still amazing to be done with my degree.

This is me and my friend Basha. He a nerdy mechanical engineer and a great guy. This is before we walked.

Ah, and my fellow MEs. There were 11 that graduated and 10 that walked. I've spent a lot of time with these kids. Lots of coffee, batteries for our calculators, giant cookies, engineering pads along with lots of laughs and good times.

After the graduation ceremonies, we cooled off and got ready for our grad party. We had a huge get together at Richmond and my place. It was a chill night of drinking, conversing and saying our "until next times. " A lot of people actually came and it was a great way to wrap things up. Towards the end of the night when I wanted to get richmond, Kristen and Casey to take pictures with their portraits.

After taking their photos I hopped in there (with a bit of encouragement) with my self portrait. This photo shoot was pretty fun.

A few days after graduation, I went over to Casey's place and as I was entering the apartment gates we heard a little "meow." We looked and saw a tiny kitten peering over the curb. Of course we had to play with it, so we approached it slowly and just as we were about to pet it, it leaped up into Casey's car engine.

Here's the little booger on her alternator. We spent the next hour trying to get it out of there. We tempted it with our cat calls and fresh canned tune. We tries scaring it out with hissing and banging. Finally I just reached in and yanked it out. Originally we were just going to feed it and clean it up, but she's do damn cute we had to keep her. We named her Piston for obvious reasons and she now serves as my 6:30 AM alarm clock.

About a week ago I was in the city to celebrate my friend Chirstina's 21st.

Heres a picture of me, Christina and Casey. It was a great night and I got to see a number of my college friends. Weird to call them that! Anyway we had dinner, drinks and dancing and I got to see Christina before she left for study abroad in Madrid.