Year: 2017

Ligeia Comic Progress

| Saskia

Showing some progress of my Ligeia comic! These are the earliest sketches I made. I really liked the effect of using black and white on this grey paper, so I wanted to use that for the final comic as well. After doing sketches and studies I storyboarded the whole story…

… and after that, draft layouts! The comic spans over seven pages now, these are the first three. For next week I’ll have to finish one page, see how that goes! 

Etching Workshop at AVD

| Saskia

Yes, it’s official! I’m behind! :O

So to make up for the lack of posts, less talking and more pictures.

Two weeks ago, there was a camera lighting workshop arranged for our studio, but there places were limited and therefore there wasn’t any place left for us Exchange students. So Zuzana, one of our teachers, arranged an etching workshop at AVD, the academy of fine arts and the other art academy here in Prague.

Thing was that this workshop lasted the whole week, every morning from 9 till 13. With me having classes at the same time it was also quite hectic, but fun!

The etching itself was awesome, I made an detailed aquatint and a small soft-ground etching, which I hadn’t done before but is a very nice and quick technique too!

Aquatint Etching
Soft-ground Etching

Studio Pictures

| Saskia

I promised pictures of studio a few weeks back, well, here they are! They were shot on a very rare occasion when I was the only one working there.

Main entrance to the left. There is a kettle and like ten brands of tea, as well as a small cooking plate if we are feeling hungry. 🙂

Beige door is to the teacher’s office. Screen in the back is for projecting animations, of course! Sometimes people take a nap on the blue couch. 😀

The teachers’ office

You see, no one actually likes cleaning up here XD Although this is primarly where our teachers will be working, we can freely enter here by using the key right behind the door. We actually have been given a key to the studio, so we can work here whenever we want to!

We also have an ‘upstairs’! Can you spot the little dinosaur from here?

The main reason why it’s such a mess is because all the work from previous semester is still there. Though I don’t think it will be cleared up soon. 😉 Also the Mac is one of the few here, most computers are operating on Windows. Bummer!

Prague’s Jewish Quarter

| Saskia

Last week I visited the old Jewish Cemetery and the Spanish Synagogue.. Also other things but these two stood out the most for me!

I wanted to be there at 9 am because it was Sunday and it sure would be crowded during the day, so I got up early at 7 and guess what? No water and no light! 😀

So I ate breakfast with the little water I still had from yesterday, but at 8 am we still didn’t have water. In the end I went out without having brushed my teeth or taken a shower. 😀 Later I heard from Penny that it took until 10 before we had water again XD

Well, for 185 euros rent a month you can’t be picky, haha!

Elective Courses

| Saskia

Last week was the final week to make a choice when it comes to the elective courses. In the end I settled on Figure Drawing, Czech Language, Genius Loci of Prague, Very Anxious Meetings, Clay Modeling and Czech Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture. This is more than I have to, but there is just too much fun things to choose from! Also if it turns out to be too much I can drop one or two, I still need only 30 ECS and with this I will be having 34.

But let me tell you what these courses are all about! Well, Figure Drawing, Czech Language and Clay Modeling are self-explanatory, but what is this Genius Loci of Prague? It’s basically a weekly tour through Prague with the teacher talking about modern architecture, think first half of 20th century. It’s fun, I get to know architectural styles and periods I didn’t know about and maybe I’ll be able to tell from which period buildings are from their looks in the end! 😀 And the teacher is really enthusiastic about architecture, especially Functionalism and Rondocubism, which is something typically Czech, it seems. Czech Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture is similar, but we will visit museums, galleries and monuments instead. So I go twice a week visiting places in the city!

Last Friday we visited the Vítkov Monument:

This building is kinda strange because it had so many different functions during it’s history… It was build as a memorial for Czechoslovakia in the thirties, then the Nazis used it for storage, during Communism it was the place to display the body of the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia, Klement Gottwald. After 1989 it was left unused for years and now it is a museum. And a memorial. And there is a ceremonial hall which is sometimes still in use.

The view from the roof is amazing, though! We visited the TV tower the day before with Genius Loci of Prague. 🙂

On the very last moment I decided to take the Anxious Meetings course as well. :/ It’s a quite varied course with discussions, guest speakers and sometimes even excursions. Last semester the course concluded with an exhibition. It’s called Anxious Meetings because no topic is too weird or personal to not speak about during the discussions. I kind of missed some theory in the other courses, and the exhibition looked promising, so I decided to follow this one too. So far it’s been fun.