This is the end.

The time has come to leave this blog to rot. I have a brand new, my very own domain for posting my pictures:

http://www.sleepingartist.info

I'm so happy with my own domain and my new way of managing my blog. I never completely understood the logic of Blogger. And Amoena tells me Wordpress is for über-professional people.

I guess I will have to develop some standards now for my posts. Not too high, because I sincerely don't believe my readership will ever go beyond Kai and Amoena. And maybe my dad too, at least occasionally. But it can't hurt, either.

It's so much more inspiring to post when you have a new, beautiful theme and layout. I have lots of new ideas for my future posts. I'm thinking I'll expand my content to literary art, and talk more about art in general. Maybe I could slip in some of my musings about language issues, as well.

There's a very practical reason for new themes. I'm running out of good pictures, and unless I paint a whole bunch of new ones this summer, I won't have any new pictures to post by next winter. Time will tell I suppose.

Alienation, Part 2.

I faintly remember watching some science fiction film, then painting these. Or perhaps it was a book that I read, or a picture I saw online. I do know I was inspired by something.

These naked men don't just pop into my mind out of nowhere, you and your dirty mind.

The odd thing is, I usually forget the films that I've watched, like really fast. A week goes by, and I'll have enormous trouble trying to remember what the film was that I saw. Does that tell you something about how good my taste is when it comes to films? I should hope not.

I mean, some films are permanently burnt into my retina, e.g. the Alien films. Not to mention Star Wars. (I wish I could name a film with more intellectual weight to mention here.) But it bothers me sometimes how soon I forget about some pretty decent movies that I've seen.

The guy on the front should perhaps do some butt clenches or something. But it's me who's to blame, really. I should start using models when I try to paint human bodies. Sadly, there are no naked males available to me right at the moment.

On a side note, notice how different the first two paintings look. The first one was taken with flash, the second, without flash. In consequence, the colours are quite different. I wish I knew instinctively how to take perfect photos, since I have absolutely no interest at all in learning how to use all the functions in cameras.

But that applies to pretty much everything - I'm a lazy bastard. A luddite of the worst kind. As conservative as they come. Add to that an insatiable taste for peace and quiet in a staring-at-the-ceiling fashion. It makes me wonder how I can ever function as anything else but a parasite in this society.

I'm not beating myself up about it too hard, though. I didn't even freak out physically when I realized my brother had installed Windows Vista on our family computer. Usually when something other than the routinely thing happens, I'll go completely off my rocker.

Despite my initial reaction of shock and horror, I pulled myself together and calmly tried to figure out where the hell all my files have gone. Only to find that all my Half life 2 saves had vanished in thin air. Which made a perfect excuse to play them again! Escapism, here I come!

Actually, I may have been inspired by Half life 2 when I painted those. Now there's a surprise. There was a point where I had trouble deciding whether I liked the sense of alienation or the human companionship in the games better. I was positively an Alyx hater (a very much human character they're trying to marry to Gordon, who is the protagonist of the game, i.e. the player her/himself). Now, I'm growing to tolerate her.

What I liked about Half life in the first place, what made me fall in love with the game years back, was the sense of being completely cut off from all human interaction, being utterly alone in the midst of mutants (how cool) and monsters and black ops and commandos who kill themselves with their own grenades. The less than perfect AI helped substantiate the lack of a human connection.

But in the new, improved version, the human characters are quite lifelike. The enemies don't commit suicides anymore with their grenades, but for the love of God - now my allies do! During my occasional (read frequent) fits of frustration when trying to cooperate with my inane artificial comrades, I'll just send them off to suicide missions.

I don't do that anymore, though. Maybe I'm finally growing into a sense of moral behaviour towards my fellow human-like non-playable-characters? (Whether I am personally human-like and non-playable is a moot point.)

Always stick to what you do best.

I was bored and I felt like trying something new. Behold the result.

I wasted tremendous amounts of paint on this. I wanted to see if I could keep going with the horizontal brush strokes only. I didn't quite follow it through. It looks kind of fun, though.

The colours are so delicious, too. I love salmon red these days A LOT. I even have these shoes that I use in the spring time that are salmon leather and so good for my feet. Easy to take off in these computer rooms when it's too freaking hot, as it always is. Haven't they noticed it's May? That it's like +10 outside, and hence no need for heating indoors?

I turned off the heating in my apartment in MARCH for pete's sake, yet the heating was on in the staircase this morning! Is that fucked up or what, if not then I don't know what is!!!! I mean, c'mON with the global warming and all, we should be SAVING energy, not WASTING it just to make people feel as uncomfortable as possible!!!!!!!!! I'm so aggravated by this every single time I enter any of the university buildings.

Well, in all fairness, the old main building does have a nice air conditioning system (which you could argue is a waste of energy as well, but let's not go there now), and often I'm actually cold during lectures there! Not that I mind it though - better so than being sweaty and smelly and changing your shirt every day and WASHING THE LAUNDRY so often that it WASTES ENERGY even more! What a vicious cycle, don't you agree?! This is not supposed to be an officially green university, but since we're trying to save paper here, why not energy? Why does saving and thinking about the environment have to be limited to one thing only? Why not save on the one biggest single factor which uses energy in general?

And while I'm on the subject that I could go on about forevermore, what's up with people not wanting to put on more clothes? They complain about cold weather when it's -5 celsius outside! What happened to Finnish people? Where did sisu go??? You know, they still sell sweaters and pullovers in shops in case you don't own one. Put on some clothes, and what d'you know, you're not cold anymore! No need for excessive heating and wasting energy!

Besides, I read in the paper yesterday that being too warm and comfortable all the time can lead to allergies in children. There's been an explosion of allergies in recent years, I take it. Wow, I'm going to be such a great parent some day. No candy (because it ruins their teeth), no heating (see above), no fancy, trendy clothes but only hand-me-downs (for obvious reasons), internet only an hour a day (so they get exercise and go play in the dirt so they'll acquire a normal immune system), oh and I'll also be watching that they really do their homework, since I could have done so much better in that area in my time.

Oh, and as a model for the painting I had the singer from Poets of the Fall. It's a Finnish band that I fell in love with last summer, or the summer before that. My memory fails me constantly. Old age doesn't come alone apparently. The singer is so cute, anyway. The clown I posted earlier was also modelled on him, though the likeness is arguable in both cases.

Avril Lavigne-ish.

I think you can see part of my carpet right there. And there appears to be a speck of something on the lady's boob. Meh.

Anyways. I modelled this one on this picture of Avril Lavigne, my favourite singer who should seriously consider growing up one of these days. The playing-a-teenager was fun for a while, but I've been over it since time immemorial. Thank heavens she's planning her next album already.

It's not a complete success as a painting, but close enough. I'm surprised I had the patience to try and make the clothing resemble real clothing, remotely at least. I'm amazed I was able to use green and blue and - horror of horrors - violet! Those have got to be the most depressing colours I know. Especially green and blue together, makes you want to go kill yourself.

I'm getting kind of excited about my poster presentation at QITL-3 in Helsinki on June 2nd, 2008. Beginning at 17:20. Not that I'm advertising or anything, since Amoena is the only reader I have. Oh, and they put my name and the non-final title of my presentation on the site, looky here. I was a little shocked over seeing this - I thought there would be dozens more presenters, but I'm actually one of only a handful! Panic panic!

It made me think, am I one of the lucky few who got chosen, or were there in fact only about five more to consider in addition to those chosen?? I'm inclined to think they didn't get that many abstracts overall, as mine was such a mess. They were just interested in seeing what I had to say, messiness aside.

Gah. My abstract went through a complete revision, as I realised there's no way in hell I can discuss well enough everything that I had planned. My title had to be modified as well, albeit slightly. I'm hoping no one will notice and be mad. I feel like such a rookie now. Oh, the shame.

This is the first time I've worked with Powerpoint. It's even easier than I thought. I had to create these two slides with which I should introduce myself and my topic. Haven't quite figured out yet how to express my main points without giving it all away.

I mean, it could be something like 'what factors can be found to affect the said variation?', which isn't saying anything at all and would not excite anybody's intrest. But I like the idea of formulating it as a question.

Perhaps something like 'do these factors affect the said variation? Stay tuned for my data', from which you can already guess that they do in fact affect it... And I'm not entirely convinced people will come to see the poster just to see loads of tables that are quite hard to take in, even for myself. However, it is quantitative investigations in theoretical linguistics, so I suppose everyone will be just psyched about numbers and figures and fancy-looking tables.

But for my actual presentation, I'll have to create a poster. I'm thinking I'll just print out a bunch of A4 sheets, boringly in black and white. Maybe I could draw some flowers or something for decorative purposes. Or a horsie. Wouldn't that be swell.

Jessica.

I'm in full swing now. I should be reading for my exam, but this'll only take like five minutes.

This is supposed to be Jessica Alba. As per usual, the resemblance is not exactly striking.

I love the combination of creamy yellow and ocean blue/green. This one was fun to do because it was so quickly done. I like quick sketches the best really, even though I get the best results if I focus and spend hours on it. It's only on the rare occasion that I can calm myself down enough to do so.

I'm thinking it's time to paint something new for a change, as these dusty (they truly are covered with dust, as it sticks onto oil colour very easily) old pictures that I don't like so much anymore. Besides, I actually have some extra time to do something else other than study for a change. Too bad any new paintings won't translate into new postings here any time soon, as I don't own a digital camera.

Thanks for Amoena for the flattering comments by the way. ^^ Are you sure you don't know how to move around the title and subtitle of my blog? It's annoying that they're so hard to see now with that background. I love that picture and I want to keep it. Please Amoena, pimp my blog!

Whatever.

This was originally supposed to be another Samantha Morton. As far as I can recall. It turned into a young girl. And the colours went all dirty.

I don't like using dirty colours much. I want them bright and breezy. But when I'm desperately trying to get the features right, it sometimes happens that what were originally nice and bright colours, become something else. This one was soon beyond salvation. However, I'm quite happy with everything else about it. Except for the fact that she seems to be wearing a wig of some kind.

Alienation.

I'm not sure where I stand with these even square canvas cardboards. It's surprisingly difficult to design the arrangement of the characters and the cropping in particular. Most importantly, I tend to run out of space.

Generally, I like to crop my characters partly out of the picture. That is, if I give any thought to the layout. I don't always do so, which tends to result in somewhat stagnant pictures. Too tiny painting surfaces help prevent that.

Pink and dark blue = yummy. I used a sponge on the background. It saves a lot of paint and makes it easy to create a misty look.

Words elude me.

The colours are just delicious here. Nevermind the egghead.

I like using scarlet and mixing it partly with white, it's such a dramatic combination. It's usually best to take your colour straight from the tube and only add black or white. Once you go too far with the mixing, it will be difficult to modify your painting later. Not that I would ever do that anyway. Either I nail it in one sitting, or I don't. At all.

Samantha Morton.

She was great in the Libertine, which had Johnny Depp as the libertine, i.e. John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. I barely recognized Johnny from the cover of the film casing, and I actually thought there was some mistake with that picture, as the screenshots on the back cover obviously had Johnny in them. But the film was amazing, you definitely should see it.

I was so impressed by Samantha that I rented Code 47 shortly afterwards (or 46, I can never remember which it was). It's a scifi film where code 47 means that you shouldn't have sex with your family member. The idea, as far as I can remember, was that people were created often from dna samples, so it was possible to meet a stranger your age who was, dna-wise, your mother/father/sister/brother. Creepy. And hence the possiblity of becoming attracted to your genetic mother/whomever and engaging in incestuous intercourse. Whatever floats your boat I suppose, but at least they tried to avoid it.

The core of the film is a sad love story between an older man and a younger woman, she being the genetic mother of the man, if I recall correctly. (God forbid that I should check all of these points in imdb.) The music was so sad as well.

This painting isn't the spitting image of Samantha, but I like it anyway. Don't the black dashes almost look like they were done with a marker pen? I like the cartoony effect you get from clear black lines. But there seems to be something weird going on with the image file, as it looks to have some strange stripes all over it. Harumph.

More FPS beauty.

Here is one more character inspired by Half Life 2. The original model can be found here. There isn't that much resemblance, but I don't really care. I gave it to my dad as a xmas present, and he liked it. Nothing else matters.

My mind is kind of empty right now. I just wanted to post before I forget about this blog, again.

Seriously, he WASN'T.

Another Hayden can't hurt. I just saw a trailer of his new film, Jumper. There is a chance it could be at least remotely interesting, even though the concept is kind of silly. I read his interview in the latest Glamour magazine (which btw had an interview of LINDSAY LOHAN as well, and a photoshoot of her in a terrible dress), and he said how he loves travelling, but hates the act of it. I couldn't agree more. I like it when I'm in places other than Finland, I just detest the flights and packing and everything else that comes with it. If only you could just jump everywhere in a matter of seconds!

I also noticed how convenient the English language is. I'm often frustrated during lectures when I try to make notes in Finnish - I have to abbreviate every freaking word so I don't lose track of where the lecture is going! But if the lecture is in English, I even have some spare time between taking notes! The same goes for writing essays and papers: The sentences in Finnish just become ridiculously long, even when you're saying something really simple. Not to mention how easily you can mess the case endings if you're not paying enough attention. In English, you will notice if you've missed a preposition, or an article. In Finnish, it's so easy not to notice if there is one or two letters wrong at the end of one word!

Having said all this, I don't hate Finnish, I have learned to cherish my opportunity to write a paper in Finnish for the first time during my studies. In fact, I hate it how so many people use English words and phrases in the middle of speaking Finnish. I'm like, why are you polluting your beautiful language like that? Have you no respect for your mother tongue? English isn't nearly as beautiful as a language as Finnish, it's simply a lingua franca you can't get rid of. Don't mix the two. I suppose I'm being a little tight-assed about this, but I can't help it. I do love English, though, I just don't appreciate how some people seem to sprinkle in a few English words here and there, just to show that they can. And as one of my English teachers once said, "that is just something really annoying".

Alien 3 was on tv last night. I had to watch it, having seen it only a gazillion times. It was still just as enjoyable. I love the ambience all the alien movies have, even if they're not scary anymore. Sigourney Weaver is a seriously wonderful actress. It's a pity she's so old now, I can't see her doing yet another Alien movie as a granny.

The aliens versus predator films have been nowhere near as good as the alien ones... what is so difficult in creating a real story for a film? Is it too much to ask to have characters that have a tiny bit of credibility and, you know, character?? I can't understand for the life of me why anyone would shoot a ridiculously expensive movie, only to ruin it with a non-existent story line and zero suspense.

For what it's worth, the predator and his space ship looked nice. The aliens you could hardly get a glimpse at, which should have made them more scary, but it didn't. Sigh.

I used to draw aliens all the time a few years back. I should dig out those pictures and put them up here, since otherwise this is going to be oil colour pictures only. I don't use pencils for serious artwork, I only ever use them when trying to come up with an idea for a painting. I think it's boring to make a picture using only a pencil and no colour. I need colours.

The Revenge of the Sith was a good film. And Hayden wasn't that terrible.

This is obviously an old painting, since it was painted some time after the Revenge of the Sith had come out in Finland. I think in April, or May 2005... gosh, that was 3 years ago! I can't believe time goes so fast. I'll be a bitter old spinster before soon.

Well, I had sort of a crush on Hayden Christensen, although I can't see now what it was I saw in him. He's so feminine, it's overbearing. There are still times, though, when I temporarily get hots for him. Weird. But whether or not I think he's hot or not, he does have a good facial bone structure. He makes for an interesting model for a painting.

I might add that I didn't use any white on the face, only on the background, which I think is somewhat of an achievement, considering how hard it is to create form without using black and white. I truly think this one turned out quite alright, and I like the angle, which is from the side, and slightly from above. The picture I used wasn't from this angle, which makes me wonder why I painted it like this. Heck, it's been 3 years - how could I possibly remember?

Another self-portrait.

This is one of my earliest paintings. I'd forgotten this one, and how much I actually like it. The profile has only a faint resemblance to me, so mind you, I'm not this ugly. And I don't have red hair. Or light blue skin. Or an insanely muscular neck.

What I like about this picture is the colours (now there's a surprise), but for a different reason than usual: here, they're not exactly in harmony. As much as the Brits may like their flag with its horribly disharmonious imperial blue and red, I don't think anyone can sincerely say that they go well together.

Here, the blue, let's say person, really jumps out from the background, because it is cold in tone, and the background is warm. Moreover, I mixed in some white to create an impression of form to the person, whereas I didn't mix the red at all. Somehow, the person looks like an ancient sculpture, you know, the nowadays colourless marble sculptures from Ancient Greece and Rome.

I also think the violet-yellow character on the background really agrees with the red. Violet and red is such a lovely combination. I feel so inspired by the colours in this picture, I definitely have to dig it out from my closet as soon as I have some time to paint something new. Which means, pretty much as soon as it's summer again...

Me as bald.

Here is one attempt in my sad series of self-portraits. It's crazy difficult to paint yourself. Especially when you don't have a mirror that you can have conveniently by the painting table, having to hold it upright yourself while you're painting. There is also the concern of coming off as too self-absorbed when showing the result to someone. But at least it's been done by myriads of painters before, so there's my excuse. In addition to the fact that it's only healthy to have some level of self-interest.

This was back in time when I was worried I might go completely bald. My hair is naturally quite thick, but I lost most of it about two years ago, for some reason. It was horrible. No woman should have to go through that. I need hair. It's kind of weird how important hair can be to you, and you won't even realize it until you start losing it. And it's so much worse when you're young, as it can be expected that you'll lose some of your hair when you're older anyway. It's cruel to have to lose hair in your twenties.



I know this person here looks somewhat inane, but in my defense I'll point out that it's a full frontal picture, which is very hard to do. Besides, there is some added depth thanks to the strange yin-yangy colour theme. (Yeah, right.) And sometimes I really do look this retarded. I think I've captured my essence.

Clowns are creepy. But also sad.

Here's another one my mum likes. Even though his hat doesn't quite fit.

I've always found clowns scary. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Yet, some people think children love them. Are children somehow supposed to be less easily scared than adults?

All I need to get the creeps is reminisce the scariest scene ever in Bond movies: agent 009, clad in a clown suit, gets killed by some messed-up twins while stealing a Fabergé egg. Doesn't that sound really freaky even without the clowny twist? Just take a look at the sad face of a clown, and a knife sticking from the poor guy's back...

*Shiver*. Well, I'm quite busy this week so I'm leaving this short. Get the creeps folks, try not to have nightmares.

Happy.

I thought I'd do another post now before I get too busy again with everything. I remembered yesterday that I was going to post about something Amoena posted about me in her blog, way back in time. I just never got round to post about it, being busy and all. It's such a nice excuse.

I was in a pretty bad mood when I read it. I'd just had a discussion with my professor, and once again, he'd had a 5-minute giggling fit after I'd reminded him that I'm not going to graduate just yet, even though I'm finished with my first subject studies, plus my master's thesis. I mean, I can see how that might be amusing the first time you hear it, but when he started giggling about it for God knows how manyth time (since a writer for New York Times has used that expression, it must be legit), I just couldn't be ok about it. I just sat there silent, rolling my eyes.

Sooo, it has been established that I was a little bit pissed. But I felt better after reading what Amoena considers my most valuable characteristics. She had tried to pick one or two properties of each of her friends, in trying to describe her perfect best friend. Now isn't that adorable. But let me quote her here:

"Elina was a bit of an harder piece of cake, but I did figure it out: I would take her wisdom so he could make me smarter and her good spirit to keep me optimistic."

Apart from the slight confusion with my sex (I'm female if you didn't know already ;)), I thought it was a really nice thing to say. But I totally did not expect either of those points. My "wisdom"? I certainly don't consider myself completely stupid, but I'm not the most intelligent person to walk this earth, let alone the wisest. It's easy to have an inferiority complex about your intelligence when you're studying at university level, surrounded by hundreds of clever people. However, I suppose it must be that I have as much as three years more of life experience behind me than her. ;) You can grow a lot in that time, but I'm not so sure whether that necessarily makes you any wiser...

As for the "good spirit", then? Like, what?? I've always thought of myself as more pessimistic rather than optimistic. Most of the time I'm moody, and often feel depressed. I can be very cynical, hopeless and sarcastic at times. But I do have a solution to this one, as well: I tend not to mope when I'm with friends. I just see no point - why not have fun, since nobody really can laugh and have fun when they're alone? You can enjoy your lone time, but I rarely laugh when I'm alone (only the Friends and Conan O'Brien with his sophisticated beard can make me do that). It's a social thing. So, I try to make light of everything around friends, within reason of course. Especially when I notice that a friend of mine is feeling a bit down, I try to make them at least smile. So I guess that attitude can come off as a good spirit.

Ok, now onto the painting of the day. For once, I really, really like this one. I gave it to my mum for Christmas two years ago, and she really liked it, too.

The original model is actually Asian, or Asian-American, for all I know (an NPC from the game Half Life 2, rightmost at the bottom; God I love that game), but I don't know how much of her is left here. I'm quite happy with the linearistic style and the smooth shading, even if the features of that woman aren't quite natural. I still can't make it look right when I paint faces a little from the side, especially the mouth area. Yet, it is the most common pose used in portraits! Maybe it makes anyone's face look thinner? It's also supposed to be easier than, say, painting a face staring straight at the viewer. Silhouettes, for their part, can be easy, but are also dull.

I'd love to do more Half Life -inspired paintings, and as a matter of fact I have made another female NPC painting, but I think I could expand to male characters, as well. As much as I want to, I don't think I'm ready to mimic any of the wonderful environmental and architectural scenery that is so compelling and beautiful in the game. Hey, here's an idea: if you haven't played HL2, you should play it, if only for the sake of its amazing art.

Which reminds me of a book that I got for Christmas in '06: Video Game Art. Can't find a link or remember the name of the author, but it was a good book. The pictures were really inspiring, and the author had some pretty good points about how to give credibility to video game art. This is only my hunch, but I don't feel like video games are appreciated as pieces of art. For sure, they are appreciated occasionally when it comes to a good narrative, but the visual experience is praised only in game reviews. Which don't exactly reach the whole population. I hope this author will contribute more to his cause in the future.

Through the Looking-Glass.

Ok, it was about time I remembered I have a blog! I've had this feeling for days that there's something I should do whenever I read my email at university computers, yet I couldn't put my finger on it.. It's so difficult to remember which sites you should/want to visit, and whatever else that you can only do online, when you can't keep a list of bookmarks. All you have to rely on is your memory. And that, my dear, is fallible, especially in my case. I'm such a scatterbrain.

What is more, I got a new, expensive usb storage device (is it called a 'memory stick' in English, as well??), and these Goddarn uni computers can't even recognize it!!! For ***** sake, what the **** is wrong with these ****ing things??!! The only reason I need big portable storage devices (sounds a bit show-offy doesn't it) is so I can transport big files from uni computers to my home laptop, since I have no internet connection at home. And there goes the sole purpose of my new device, right down the drain.

But let's put that sucky situation aside now. Last night, I actually slept more than 6 hours! Yay! I feel so refreshed. I guess my neighbour thought I should get some sleep at least every couple of days, since she fired her cannon only once, then stopped. Yes, that's what it sounds like, more or less - whatever it is that she does every morning at 5 am, it sounds like a cannon blast. And then I sound like a bloodthirsty tiger when I deliver my usual profanities and death threats at her.

Ok, so I'd forgotten I'd done this lovely little painting. It was so long ago - I feel like I've come a long way since, in all respects. I think this is when I realised how much more fun it is to paint alla prima, not letting the paint dry, but instead finishing it at once. But I'm not exactly sure why the face on the right looks kind of overexposed.

Oh, and the background was done with a palette knife. You can make a nice, smooth surface with it, if you use a lot of paint. It's a good thing when you've blended too much of some colour, and have no other use for it. But the downside is, that coat of paint will probably start to crack or peel over time.

These are the kind of creatures I used to love to draw when I was younger. Sort of caricature-like, grotesque, often had wings and fangs and what else. Now I just go for naturalism, trying to make the faces look as much their owner as possible. It's actually quite dull: all I ever paint these days are faces, continued with a little bit of neck.