Art Biz with Liz – Singing One Last Time

Elizabeth S Leave a comment

Hello, readers! I want to start by apologizing for my brief hiatus from arts, ink. due to some personal issues. I am back and active for my last month at Michigan. Speaking of it being my final month, there are going to be a lot of “lasts” coming up, including my last UM Women’s Glee Club (WGC) concert. This blog post includes the typical advertisement that I normally provide for the upcoming concert, but I am more so going to focus on how the club, traditional UM songs, and music overall have had a positive impact on my time at the university.

May be an image of text that says 'The University of Michigan Women's Glee Club Presents The Sound of All of us Echoes from the past, Voices for the future Conducted by Dr. Julie Skadsem Spring Concert April 2, 2022 Hill Auditorium'

I don’t think it will hit me until after the concert that this will be the last time I get to sing “The University” or “Varsity/Victors” on stage. I used to joke that you weren’t a real Michigan fan if all you knew was part of “The Victors,” which is just a snippet of the extensive library of traditional UM songs. Although nearly everyone on campus is familiar with the main chorus of “The Victors,” I’d argue that many people do not know the words to the beginning of the song (everything before “Hail! to the victors valiant”), which I have held close to my heart since learning them through the UM Women’s Glee Club. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you know these songs or not, but they have helped generate a sense of camaraderie and school spirit I might not have had otherwise.

I credit music and the UM Women’s Glee Club for making me feel more connected to the university. Not only was I able to find another community and make new friends, but I could continue to engage with the arts even if they weren’t my main academic focus. Learning “Blues” pieces, as mentioned in previous posts, also helped me feel connected to school spirit in a unique way. At sports games, I always felt immense school spirit during chants and songs. Singing songs such as “Go Blue” sung in SSAA by Phillip A. Duey (not to be confused with the short “Let’s Go Blue” commonly played at sports games) and “I Want to Go Back to Michigan” elicits even stronger feelings of loyalty and enthusiasm for my school and the memories I’ve made here.

There is always the beautiful and traditional “Yellow and Blue,” but I can already tell that the UM WGC’s arrangement of “College Days” by Donald A. Kahn and Earl V. Moore will be the song that makes me teary-eyed on stage. If you haven’t heard it before, check out the first few lyrics:

I’ll ne’re forget my college days

Those dear, sincere old college days

I’ll ne’re forget my Michigan

‘Twas there long friendships first began

I’m not going to pretend to be the biggest Michigan fan. I don’t know the names of athletes, I can’t promise I’ll be back for future football games (as much as I loved them as a student), and I owe too much in student loans to be comfortable with paying a fortune on more UM gear at the MDen. But the UM songs I’ve learned as a WGC member spur fond, nostalgic feelings, and I haven’t even graduated yet. I’m not surprised that music has that effect.

Our senior song this year, “In My Life” by The Beatles, also provokes strong feelings. To me, the song is about both the past and the present. I mean, take a look at these lyrics:

Though I know I’ll never lose affection

For people and things that went before

I know I’ll often stop and think about them

In my life, I love you more

There are certainly feelings of nostalgia and appreciation for the past, which is bittersweet as the seniors move on from college. But there is also great hope for the present and the future in the way the lyrics compare a current love to the things the singer cared about deeply before. In applying the message to our own lives, there is immense admiration for the past (i.e., college), but there are even greater things to come (i.e., our futures). I like how this theme also relates to the overall subject of the concert, which is “Echoes from the past, Voices for the future.”

UM WGC is one thing I will be sad to say goodbye to, but I am thankful for all the memories and music. I am looking forward to this Saturday and singing in Hill Auditorium one last time. :’)

If you’re interested in attending the concert, click here!

Industrious Illustrating #6 – Supplies

Robin Leave a comment

Geez, how have I gone this long without posting about my supplies? I guess it’s better late than never.
(Despite the posting date, this is not an April Fools’ Day joke. Unfortunate that my Friday posting schedule would lead to this confusion.)

My handy-dandy traditional supplies which I have been using for years are alcohol-based markers (mainly Copics), Winsor & Newton Professional-grade watercolors, and Copic multi-liner ink pens. Layering alcohol-based inks and watercolors on top of each other leads to vibrant mixtures of opaque and transparent colors on the paper. I also sometimes use Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils (not pictured) for additional texture, as the wax-based pigments repel water and create a unique look on the paper.

In terms of paper, I currently mostly use Smooth Bristol Board and both cold-press and hot-press watercolor paper. Bristol Board is a semi-thick type of smooth paper that somewhat resembles cardstock, and it holds inks + pigments quite well. For heavier-duty paintings with multiple layers of watercolors, though, I use one of the watercolor paper textures. Cold press is rougher and has more of a visible texture to it, while hot press is smoother, almost like a thicker version of Bristol Board. I use Arches-brand watercolor paper, but honestly it doesn’t feel that much better than the Strathmore 400 Series. I also prefer using value-priced XL or 300 Series Bristol Board from either Canson or Strathmore because it’s more cost efficient than buying higher quality but far more expensive paper pads.

I actually used to create my digital artwork on a cruddy little Wacom Intuos S until this Monday, when its USB port decided to crap out on me and leave me without a digital tablet. I borrowed a much, much better Wacom Intuos Pro Medium from the Stamps ECHO equipment borrowing office so that I could finish some school assignments, and I’ll receive my own personal Wacom Intuos Pro Medium this weekend. While a tablet with a screen would feel more tactile and closer to the experience of drawing on paper, currently I would prefer to have a portable tablet which won’t break if I’m a little rough with it.
I would recommend this tablet to people who are serious about drawing (whether as a hobby or as a job) and are looking for something portable and sturdy. While the initial price tag might seem pricey (between 300 to 400 dollars on Amazon), trust me when I say that purchasing and refilling traditional supplies instead of just using a tablet will become much, much more expensive over time. Also, it’s very useful to at least know how to use digital media in today’s commercial art world. That’s why I started to actually use Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop after I started attending university.

That’s all for this week! If you have any more questions about the supplies I use or what I think of them, feel free to ask them in the comments section!

TOLAROIDS: B&W Photography (part 1)

akilian Leave a comment

Okay, here is my take on Black & White photography: it’s very difficult, it can be very beautiful, and 85% of the time it doesn’t work.

Many beginner photographers resort to B&W filters for the “artistic” look they give, but it would be a lie to state that professionals refrain from it – it might be a controversial opinion, but every time I see B&W photo entries among the winners in competitions like the World Press Photo, I just can’t help but think that some of them probably just didn’t look too interesting in color and were never meant for a B&W edit. They are supposed to create an illusion of dramatism or darkness, but if other aspects of the photo don’t speak for themselves this will just not work. I believe that what makes a remarkable B&W photo is that it was meant to be one from the beginning.

Maybe my aversion to B&W photography comes from the fact that many times people use B&W filters to cover up white balance and color mistakes, which I am definitely guilty of as well. I certainly hope you never find my early photography anywhere online, but if you do, you’ll understand why I usually avoid the B&W editing altogether.

To give you an idea, here are some good examples of when I tried to ‘cover up’ bad photography with B&W editing.

The first photo you might have seen already when I posted it for Women’s Day. It is a shameless cover-up, it’s not as bad as some other ones, but you can see where it came from: I had an unfortunate white balance issue that messed up my colors (they are very greenish and I still think this one was actually slightly edited which means the original was worse), and since my old Sigma didn’t do so well in the dark, it was almost impossible to fix it in Lightroom due to so much noise*. It is still a somehow intriguing photo, not because it’s B&W but rather due to the subject. The photo on the right is some kind of an attempt at “artsy” photography from a few years ago, and as you can see it would match an Instagram story better than a photographic portfolio. B&W didn’t fix the composition or lighting issue, nor did it make it artsy.

That’s why I genuinely think that the best B&W photos are the ones that are planned as such from the start. It’s a play between light and shadows, it’s knowledge about what colors give what shade on the greyscale. B&W photos can be truly captivating and are a form of art that is very difficult and very subtle, but because B&W filters became a rescue for our photographic failures, we are bored and unamused when we see a good B&W photo “in the wild.” Don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely discover that your photo can look good in B&W after taking it too – just don’t treat the edit as a plan B in an attempt to save what is simply not that great of a photograph.

I am definitely yet to train myself in B&W photography, but for now, I am mostly a shameless judge. However, I do have some attempts I consider rather successful (at least compared to my previous ones, attached above). While the composition still requires some work, I like these (pro tip: architecture is a good subject for your early B&W photography). Moreover, these were taken by an Olympus OM-1, an analog camera, which gives them a special feel.

 

This is it for now, but I will continue the topic next week when I get into editing and how to turn your colored photos into B&W ones while avoiding some cliches and common mistakes. Maybe I will try to find some external sources of B&W photography I really like so you can see the true art behind it. It is definitely not easy, but it’s easy to mess up – but more on that next week.

 

-Tola

 

 

*when you can see “grain”, especially in the dark parts of your photograph

My Name is Minette, Chapter Sixteen: The Other Side of Town

theopoling Leave a comment

The mines were on the opposite side of town, set into the hills and crags just beneath the walls like orange and brown canyons. Dark caverns stretched underground for miles, yawning, black mouths opening out from the hillside.

They headed toward Main Street, which was a straight shot through Droz and out the other side to the hills full of copper.

When they got close, though, Paw’s nose grew just as wrinkled as hers.

Main Street was the center of life in Droz, and apparently all that life was all out in the streets today.

The heat pushed crowds into its shady streets and pubs, food and drink in high demand. Bodies and donkeys and horses crowded one another, elbows bumping elbows and shoulders hitting shoulders, creating a density like that of cranberries shoved into a bucket to be smushed into juice.

“I know another way,” Paw grunted, jerking on Lumpy’s reins, directing the horse away from the loud, overlapping shouts and cries of peddlers and hagglers on Main Street. He took them on a zig-zagging route, moving farther and farther east until they were on the edge of Droz.

Minette had never been to this part of the city before in her life. She sat up straighter, holding her hand up as like a visor and squinting into the sun, peering at the buildings strewn about.

This neighborhood felt abandoned. Instead of cobblestones and pavers and bricks, this part of town was dotted with listing huts with gaps in the thatch; warped-wood, grey wooden buildings; and scraggly, unkempt vegetation creeping along dirt roads.

They were close to a run-down section of the wall, black with soot and shiny with moss, close enough that the entire area was cast in a permanent shadow.

They passed a few people walking in the road, wandering in the fields, lurking on porches. Each and every one of them stared up at Minette as she passed, stopping in what they were doing. She was a spectacle, something new, and the tired mistrust was apparent on their lined faces.

It made her feel itchy, sweaty, like eyes were sticking to the small of her back along with the humidity.

They were outsiders. They weren’t welcome here.

The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 22: Uprising?

Alias Leave a comment

Deviating from last week’s exploration of Michigan Traditionals, today’s post focuses more on songs made popular in more recent years.  A rock song played over the stadium loudspeakers or a pop song heralded by the band can carry just as much emotional weight while being relatable to the students, who would much rather listen to Seven Nation Army than Varsity.

 

Seven Nation Army.  This adrenaline-inducing 21st century anthem emerged in 2003, making it about as old as the younger end of this year’s freshman class.  Its solid angst-ridden lyrics are largely ignored in favor of “Oooh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ooooooh-ooooooooh,” which, to be fair, is the tune that makes the song so popular–but you’ll never hear them at a sports game because of the aforementioned “Oh”-ing.  This song was played after we beat TTDS at The Game while the field was being stormed, so it is also a victory anthem.

 

Pump it Up.  This song by Endor has very, very straightforward lyrics:  “You got to pump it up / Don’t you know? Pump it up,” but its significance at Michigan home games cannot be understated.  After The Trio, the stadium (whether it be Yost or The Big House) blasts this song, and everyone repeats the mantra while high-fiving each other and basking in the glory of our team having scored a point.  Unsurprisingly, it was played multiple times on November 27th.

 

Uprising.  The question mark in the title is on purpose.  After this song was played during the third halftime show of the season, the Fearless Leader started asking the band if they were ready to play Uprising in the stands with a simple question:  “Uprising?”  It became a running joke for the remainder of regular season (I can’t testify to anything after November 27th).  It’s enough of a power anthem that it warrants a spot as a stand tune next year in my 100% unbiased opinion.

 

Blues Brothers.  Ah, yes, the Blues Brothers theme!  With an amazing, peppy melody and a fun dance, you can’t go wrong (unless you get the moves to the dance wrong).  It’s quite a shame that this happens during commercial breaks, because this is about the only time I am doing something that passes as dancing.  (The Cha-Cha Slide does not count because it isn’t really played in the stadium.)  Also, the final bit where we cheer and shout, “I QUIT!” is an incredible way to unleash pent-up tension.

 

Mr. Brightside.  From the moment you read the first sentence, you knew this was coming.  It had to.  No list about modern band/sports game anthems would be complete without the punk rock gem by The Killers released in September 2003.  After all, nothing quite makes your day like a stadium of 100,000 people belting out the verse, bridge, and chorus to a song that, for its upbeat tempo and catchy melody, is really depressing when you read the lyrics.  But there’s something magical about shouting the (hopefully correct) words and feeling your voice getting swept away by the sheer number of people who are screaming around you.  The anticipation builds as you reach the line, “But it’s just the price I pay,” where the audio cuts out and everybody finishes the chorus in a thunderous mass of shout-singing.  Even when it was 30 degrees and snowing, the rendition of Mr. Brightside on November 27th was impeccable–especially since, once the field was stormed, the DJ played Mr. Brightside and solidified it as a modern Michigan victory jam.

Sagas Among the Arcana: If you just tried harder . . .

suparnah Leave a comment

This week’s 3 card reading  (using the White Numen: Sacred Animal Tarot by AlbaBG):

8 of pentacles – high standards

8 of swords – self-confinement

7 of wands – control

 

 

 

 

 

“You know if you would just work harder . . .”

The boy has heard it many times in his short seventeen years of life. Teachers, parents, parents’ friends, friends, girlfriends, and now law enforcement.

The policewoman at the desk is giving him a lecture about something — he doesn’t care. All he did was steal a pack of Cheetos. He was hungry and he wasn’t fond of his mom’s Sunday stew. He tells the policewoman such as she’s about to hand him a pamphlet for some troubled youth program, and she throws him a scathing frown. Her eyebrows quirk up.

“Yes, now, it’s a pack of Cheetos, but two weeks ago it was . . .” and she continues to list off all his transgressions from the past month. If he doesn’t stop her soon she’ll get into the previous years as well. He isn’t able to, though, because she’s obstinate. By the end of it all, she gives him a warning.

“Soon it won’t be juvie anymore.”

~

He stole a chicken. And now his hands are being tied behind his back. His girlfriend raises her eyebrows at him eerily akin to the policewoman from a year ago.

They were out on a date, and the police found him to arrest him for the chicken he kidnapped yesterday.

Before she can say something, like seriously babe? he takes action himself. 

“We’re through.” He wants to spit in her face to gross out the police and throw her off her game, but he still kind of likes her and doesn’t want to ruin her day anymore. She’s about to fight back, perhaps to disagree with his statement because unlike him she’s loyal to a fault, but he’s already in the car and being driven to jail if the policewoman from last year is to be trusted. He is an adult now, after all.

He’s not too upset about the breakup (and definitely not about the stolen chicken). This girlfriend had said it too. 

“You know, babe, if you just tried harder . . .”

~

Really, all of their standards are just much too high for him. 

That’s the problem he tells himself as he socks this douche in the face. The guy’s teeth are crooked now; he probably tastes blood. Man shouldn’t have taken his beer like that.

His current girlfriend looks at him horrified, “Dude, what the hell? ”

She’s thoroughly pissed now. He can sense it. He knows that she just wanted a night to rewind after all the exams she just had. She’s kind of the studious type so he doesn’t know what she’s doing wasting her time on him. Maybe she thinks dumbasses are sexy. He should just save her the trouble and dump her like his girlfriend from four years ago.

He doesn’t have the chance to, though. The other guy comes back to punch him. It’s a nasty hit, and he doesn’t feel like he’ll be able to chew again. 

He plans on paying the favor back because for once in his life he needs to be on top of some situation. Also, he needs to defend his honor in front of the girl he’s planning to dump in just a few minutes. 

But he doesn’t have the chance to do either as he slips on glass, and suddenly his head feels warm and sticky. He hears his girlfriend’s panicked voice, unused to being in such situations, and sees the smirk on that bastard’s face.

In the end, he decides he’s tired and lets his eyes flutter, anticipating an awakening in his favorite holding cell.