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'Joe' went to the same school as me (obviously i was long gone by then), so if you want to check out my old school, watch the X Factor this weekend. Please dont vote for Joe though, for the love of god, they're giving away free Joe masks with the local paper now, having made sure every house in town has a GO JOE!!!!111 poster. I shudder to think the reaction if he wins, they might just rename the place Joe Shields.

Or do vote for him, mabes we'll get more tourists next summer, and they can build us another Greggs. I hope to be long gone by then though.

Sad thing about greggs is that it used to be so much better, the sammiches had less mayo, the pasties were flakier, and stotties in every shop. And taster trays! with little bits of steak bake or donut or mince pie if its xmas! Now theyre so bland, every greggs has the same shit set up in the same way. They dont even do a big range of sandwiches anymore, theyre all homogonised and overpriced and dull.

Standard update time then.

I've just been out getting all my xmas shopping in in one day, i'm knackered, i've only had a small sammich and a starbucks to eat all day too, which doesnt help . i dare not go downstairs as my dad has decided to bitch at me and tell me i should spend all my day cleaning the kitchen and making his food again. Apparently despite being out of the house since 9:45 am i made a mess of the kitchen and left the grill pan with grease in it.

Fuck that.

I've got a test assignment to do for Jagex ( i'm down to the final 4 apparently), which i said i'd get to em in a fortnight..may have to extend that a bit, i predict i'm gonna be bitched at and not left alone to grind in the run up til xmas. This is a baaad time of year for getting anything done to a deadline D:. Any other time of year what i've been told to do wouldnt really take me much longer than a week if I had my head down and concentrated, 2 if i gave it some time for R&D- but who can concentrate on the run up to xmas?!


Art wise I'm coming off the tail end of a transition stage. I 'get' environments now, I still need experience in developing them, but I can confidently lay down some foundations now without spazzing out and worrying about stupid things which dont matter. A lot of it has to do with approach, or in other words, I wouldnt have had the problems i've had if I had a decent teacher. But i guess everyone can say that. I dont know about other parts of the world, but in the UK art education is pretty dire. If you have any skill or talent and you want to learn how to draw and paint you have to teach yourself, because most of the time instructors are not going to have the knowledge, skills or time to push you beyond the absolute basics. They do the same perspective exercises in junior school as they do in college and university.

Dont get me wrong, I'm glad in part for D&C at Teesside for giving me the chance to work from a life model, I just with I'd actually been pushed more. I went to uni thinking everyone on the course was going to be at a standard so high that I'd be in the bottom % and have to work my butt off to compete..in reality a lot of people clearly had not been drawing for very long, and many didnt know how to draw a solid line with a pencil.

As a result the things I handed in were last minute rubbish with no thought put into them and I still got near perfect marks for that module. It was no incentive to improve with any kind of urgency and made me complacent with my skills for a good 2 years.

But its not like I had nothing to learn, I had a hell of a lot I should have learned back then, and i'd probably have a job now if I'd been pushed a bit and given some decent guidance.

But meh. Shit happened the way it happened, I wouldnt really change anything. Unless in alternate past land I actually got that Rare job. Ohh man i'm hungry now.