The Struggles Of An Amateur Artist

(Whee double post today...I think I need to be in some kind of stress situations in order to have some good posting ideas...ehem^^")

Okay, uhm...I draw quite a lot. Not as much as I once used to - *stares angrily at pile of uni tasks*- but still.
And those who still need to improve face problems that sometimes makes them want to give up on art. Especially when drawing humans.

Drawing eyes
Ah yes....the problem of drawing both eyes as beautiful as possible.
and what comes out?

This

One eye is Michelangelo and the other one freaking Picasso.
Now, forever and always. Sometimes we just can't manage to draw both eyes as beautiful as we want. Either the shape is completely off, or the eye is squinting or it's bigger or smaller or higher up or lower OR....
And then we spend the next hour on trying to make the eye as pretty as the other one and when we're done we notice that it's too small.
Which brings me to the next point:


Drawing hands
Okay, drawing hands is hard and will always be. Even for the most experienced!
So, us amateur artists try to perfect the pose, the shape and lighting of the hands. So what we do, is zoom in and concentrate on the hand(s).

And the result is mostly like this

You know Sally from "The Nightmare before Christmas"?
Teeny tiny hands like her. Or it's the complete opposite and the person has Wreck it Ralph hands.
If we draw with a computer program it's easy to regulate the size of the hands, but when we draw on paper everything was in vain. And we mourn the perfection that now will be forever lost because the next hand will never be as beautiful as the one before.

I'm not going to make an extra paragraph for the feet, let me just say that the problems are the same. Although the feet mostly look like they belong to Bigfoot.

"What do you do with your art?"
One of the most frequently asked questions. And one of the questions that we poor poor amateurs are actually asking ourselves, too.

We are not afraid of showing off our pictures on the internet on art websites but when it come to making money we back off. So, mostly our routine is
1) Draw picture
2) be proud of it
3) show it to parents an friends and put it on the internet
4) get praised
5) stare at it and improve so that one day we hate that picture ans ask ourselves why we were so proud of it.
6) Throw picture away or hide it somewhere at the bottom of drawing pile and also taking it off from the internet.
That's basically it.

But I don't want to be pessimistic! It takes a lot of time to improve, to try out colours and drawing styles. We go through different stages in our life and begin for example with drawing simple manga only to end up with maybe hyperrealism. We are totally into compurer proograms and fantasy creatures and end up with portraits, still life and oil paintings.
So one day everyone has enough courage to show their art to a publisher! Every big artist was an amateur once ;)

The Curse Of A Double Surname

As you may know, Spanish people have two surnames.
It always consists of the first surname of the father and the second surname of the mother (So in the end, the mother's surname gets lost when their grandchildren are born)

And what happens if a Spaniard comes to Austria (specifically: STYRIA)?
RIGHT, people totally distort the name.
A wonderful surname like (in my case) Catalá Salvá (pronounced: Ca - ta - laa Sal-vaa) becomes Catöla Sölva, Kátala Sálva, Catala Salta and other absolutely horrendous variations. In order to not get confused, people here put a hyphen between the names and/or leave off the accents.

Or, what if a Spaniard marries an austrian woman?
In Austria, the woman takes the  man's whole surname and in Spain she keeps her girl name.
So, if they have children, their surname in Austria is Catalá Salvá and in Spain it is Catalá Kotzbeck. Waaay to ruin it. But noone actually uses Kotzbeck anymore, my mother uses Catalá Salvá everytime. (Seriously who wants to be called Kotzbeck? Sorry Grampa and Grandma)

Can you imagine what it is like, sitting in a new class with new teachers and having to explain your name to every single one of them?
"Sálva Alba Cátla?"
"No professor it's Alba Catalá Salvá "
"Oh but Salva is your second name, right?"
"Noo professor it's my second surname"
"Oh, why's that?"
" 'Cause it's spanish"
"OOhhh okay...but the hyphen's missing"
"Nooo professor there's no hyphen"
"Oh...well, I'll put a hyphen between the names so I don't get confused"

OR, what it's like to get your school photos taken and then recieve them just to find your name "Salva Catalá" on every single one of them? And then also in the years book??
Y'know, I get it, it's complicated. But I don't understand how someone can confuse a name with a surname? And I'm not only talking about me, I'm also talking about my brother. He has a wonderful, simple name that everyone knows: Rafael. You know what they put on the photos this year? "Salva Catalá" NOW HOW THE F*CK COULD SOMEONE FORGET "RAFAEL", HOW? And then there are some classmates with names like "Christina Zoe Lara Maria Krwopealjdfntsa" (<- only an example) AND THEY PUT IN EVERY SINGLE NAME. AND WRITE IT PERFECTLY RIGHT.

*huff huff* Okay I calmed down. Sorry.

I really am sad because I think our name is no that hard to understand...I get that maybe some people misronounce it or misspell it but what I don't understand is that they can't distinguish the name and the surname...
Actually, if you have the name on a paper right before your eyes, why is it so hard to totally confuse it?
My mother reflexively corrects every person if they mispronounce her name, every time until one day they hopefully get it...(Sounds a little bit rude sometimes but YOU GO MOM. I also picked up that habit xD)

My Cambridge Experience

Sooo...after carefully thinking about my first topic *coughyeahsomuchthinkingcough* I thought about about writing someting about places I travelled to. first I couldn't decide between my school trip to Cambridge and my best vacation I ever had in Spain...but since this is for an english class, let's stick to Cambridge, shall we? ;) Also, I seem to remember more about that trip...probably because I was totally disappointed and emotionally scarred. *totally not exaggerating*

Okay, I'm not only talking about the food. I knew from the beginning that I would come home with either 4 kg more (Junk Food) or 4 kg less (Not eating anything). In the end, I never checked because I was afraid of the result. (Tho I felt like 4 kg more, so I guess that's why I never checked) OKAY MOVING ON.
I'll start from the beginning:

Travelling.
Before I start describing, let me just mention that I had a mother of a cold. It will heavily influence the flight.

So, first we had to drive in a bus to Ljubljana. Not Graz but Ljubljana. We drove two hours to arrive at some mini airport and fly from there to Cambridge in some old propeller plane. The plane wasn't a big problem, I've had a lot of experience with those kinds of planes. The problem was the cold I mentioned before. I felt like I had my whole head wrapped in cotton because my ears and nose were really stuffed. Somewhere in the middle of the flight my ears were hurting so much because of the pressure and I thought my eardrums would just explode so I spend 30 or more minutes frantically chewing gum and crying. When I got out of the plane I was half deaf. From the airport we took another bus to Cambridge. Somewhere in the city we had to get off and wait for cabs picking up every group and bring them to their host family. My friend and I were one of the last ones and it was freezing (Not the best conditions for my cold).

The "family"

The family was a single mother and her 6-7 year old daughter (plus the mothers "friend" - pretty sure it was boyfriend - that stopped by a few times) and I think they volunteered to keep us because of the money.
I kinda feel uncomfortable talking about them since I still feel like I'm hurting their feelings but...it's just a really big part of why I was so disappointed in the whole trip.

So...their house was small. Not a problem, small houses are cozy. BUT it was dirty. We were told that English people have another sense of cleanliness, but we didn't expect...THAT.
The living room was a mess. Clothes (dirty and clean), toys of the kid, electronics, all kinds of things lying around the whole room. I really had to watch my step!
The kitchen was no better. Dirty dishes and pots everywhere, the gas stove looked like it hdn't been cleand for MONTHS.
Our room was small and quite stuffy...but okay. Though the first time my friend sat on one bed it broke down. She didn't even launch herself onto it, she sat down normally and BAM it broke. It wasn't exactly breaking, it just folded down and we had to put it together again. But then she wanted me to sleep in it in fear it will happen to her again. I was totally okay with that...only my blanked seemed to be an old, fuzzy one and it was a little bit uncomfortable feeling the little fuzzy bits against my skin.
Well, the room wasn't all to bad, but what really was shocking was the bathroom. It was dusty - there was a thin layer of dust everywhere!  We didn't dare to put anything down that we needed to clean ourselves, like towels, toothbrushes n stuff. The shower had mold on the ceiling. Just...EW. NO. MAYBE I'M JUST ACTING LIKE A SPOILED RICH BRAT BUT IT WAS SO DISGUSTING. Can you imagine how happy we were when she said she had to clean the bathroom?? And how disappointed we were when all she did was swipe off a little bit of dust from the washbasin and put away all the showering supplies lying around???
I'm not commenting much on the food she made - it was mostly some pre-made stuff thrown together and once Toad In The Hole. I'll be honest: most times it was not good. Again, maybe I'm just really spoiled but I just couldn't help it! I'm sorry >_<


Cities
The cities (Cambridge and London) were awesome. I'm not gonna lie, the cities are beautiful! Awesome buildings, stores and streets!! Also, wonderful landscapes! I really loved siteseeing and taking photos and listening to people narrate facts and history about their home. We did most of the siteseeing on London because we went to school in Cambridge. The school was quite okay, the teachers were good and fun, but I can't really say that I learned something..."Lunch" was a sandwich with either ham, cheese, ham and cheese, turkey or salad. yes, there was a sandwich with only salad. I hope I don't have to explain how hungry we were. But anything else, we had to buy with our own money and only at certain times because "the food was for the students and they wouldn't have anything to eat" suuuureee. cafeteria ladies were b*tches. (I'm so sorry for swearing like this)
When we went at London, we didn't sleep there. We went there by train in the morning and came home at night (12 pm or even 1 am. SO TIRING) The lunch pack our dear host mommy made us both days was: one little sandwich split in half, a packet of chips and one sweet. No drink. Thats it. That should be our food for THE WHOLE DAY.
Facit: most frequented places were subway, pizza hut and McDonald's and loads of  money got wasted for additional food.
We went to Westminster Abbey, The Shard, Tower Bridge, Greenwich, The Royal Palace, some of the Universities in Cambridge, Ely etc.
                                                 

Red Telephone Box. Need I say more?

One of maaany churches. (Whe had our religion teacher with us)

 THIS CLOCK WAS SO AWESOME! That insect thing moved! and the time was shown with lights!

 Beautiful University! I loved the gardens

 Greenwich!

 I was so excited! It was really late so no tourists were there to take photos...

Shakespeare Museum

View from the Shard :3

 Honestly, Ely is beautiful! The weather was wonderful that day!!

Ely Cathedral

There was a man....playing guitar....in a litterbox.
.....
.......yea.








Well...so much for my visit in Cambrigde! I hope you see why it was so disappointing for me. I swear I'm not exaggerating!