Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Delights and Caprices

I just found this Parisian cooking blog called Délices et Caprices:
which means Delights and Caprices. 
All I could tell was that the blogger seemed to draw fashionable, shy little bunnies with squished faces to accompany each recipe she tried. 
I had no idea what she was saying, but I knew I liked her methods.
 Suivez! Follow!
Then I found a giant google translate button for the entire page and everything made more sense.
 

Monday, March 25, 2013

Christ Appelhan's Bad Unicorn

Chris Appelhans has done a lot of concept artwork for Disney, Laika Studio and now for Dreamworks.
I first found his artwork for Coraline and loved his vivid, emotive, and painterly watercolors.
Then I stumbled across his unicorns!
They are anti-elegant, cuddly bricks of gigantic proportions.  

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Cheers to La Mongerie

For Alpha Gamma Delta's Gamma Retreat, I planned a day in Atlanta that began with brunch at La Mongerie.
I selected this particular bakery and bistro because its website and photos looked extravagant enough for Marie Antoinette and yet had prices fitting the rest of us commoners who just want a cheap slice of cake. 
I am so happy to report that the entire experience was divine.
Their motto is "southern comfort with french influence," and they hit the nail on the head.
We felt like queens, sitting in white baroque chairs and gazing up at the crystal chandeliers as we sipped on our berry water and munched on chicken and waffles.  
The food was too delicious, and the wait staff were friendly, chatty and helpful. 
La Mongerie has two locations (we hit the one on Ponce) and they are working on a third.  
I highly recommend swinging by for brunch.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Matte Stephens

I just discovered the illustrator Matte Stephens.
I love, love, love his work.  
It feels like the (now vintage) modern art style with a childish twist.  
His titles are like puffs of colored thought, and his compositions are flat, quirky, and endearing. 
I love his work so much that I'd like to someday purchase a few prints.
Without a doubt I need Lillian playing with an abstract thought; 
she evokes that childlike curiosity in which the artists like myself and engineers like my love tinker and toy with ideas and abstract concepts.  

Monday, March 18, 2013

Shattered

Here are some shots I took of some shattered glass I found in an open barn. 
Believe me, lying on one's tummy on a cold concrete floor is no small feat.
My unusual angle truly  put into perspective what we mean when we say 
"I was shattered."
So many tiny pieces reduced to powder.  

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Photo Experiments

This is the second time that I have shot pictures through tiny holes that I find in industrial materials.  
It creates this lovely, painterly effect on the background, and a natural vignette around the foreground.
I took these today with my photography class in Murrayville at a patch of farmland next to a Dollar General.     

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

This Made Me Think of You

It might be due to what I hope to do for a living, 
but my favorite gifts are always unexpected and accompanied by the words, 
"This made me think of you."
My sweet sorority sister, Emily, surprised me with these two small journals.
She didn't know about my passion for Japanese prints.
She certainly didn't know that I was nearing the end of my Gratefulness Journal and needed a new one.  
No, she simply bought them for no other reason than:
"I saw them and said, Rachel will love these!"
What wonderful friends I have.  
If you are interested, the covers are by famous Japanese printmaker, Hokusai

World's Best

I wandered around Target clutching this little plastic carnival tent container indecisively. 
 It was the last one.  
I put it back twice, and even considered hiding it behind some stuff,
and coming back for it later when I had extra cash.  
When I run errands, I keep a firm grip on my shopping list, and always recite the same thing to myself before walking in: 
"If it wasn't a need when I walked in,
it won't be a need when I walk out." 
Meaning: don't buy random crap just because it is on sale.  
However, extreme mark-downs and/or items discovered on my long-term shopping list can be decided on a case-by-case basis.  
And then the check-out lady scanned it.
It was twenty-three cents.
Less than a quarter.
I needed an adorable snack container, because, let's face it:
 I don't purchase, carry, or wear anything that I am not crazy about and no way was I spending five bucks on a pack of the Glad brand to hold my sugar packets.  
This container now graces my tea tray and makes me smile while also encapsulating my sweeteners--which is its cute little job.  

Monday, March 11, 2013

Two Worlds

This past Spring Sweetheart Formal we were given super-nifty favors:
A glass tumbler with the Theta Xi Crest.  
I was thrilled to have something so nice...
that was also transparent...
that I could also use for mixing water for my watercolor brushes!  
I saw it sitting there happily in the sunlight--
the perfect blend of my two worlds:  
Brenau and Georgia Tech.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Dark and Lovely Beasts

The more I doodle and the more I delve into the work of other illustrators I find that I am drawn to creatures.  
I enjoy the stillness of a single strangely nostalgic scene filled with dark and lovely beasts.
Someday, I'd love to have a line of illustrations that are titled "The Menagerie."
Illustrator Julianna Swaney of Oh My Cavalier specializes in crafting these tiny worlds, and also gorgeous image and logo design for companies.  
I really admire her.
Look at that wolf with a baby in a papoose!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Buckle Up

I had a photography assignment over my frosty Spring Break (Brenau always places Spring Break during the last week of February and first few days of March).
Fortunately, my assignment to take photos of people out of doors was pretty well suited to the three locations in which I spent my break: Myrtle Beach, Camden County, and Nashville, Tennessee.  
My Nashville shots are my absolute favorite.  
It was a chilly, grey day, and the air was filled with a constant flurry of snowflakes.  
My dear friends acted as models, parking the car illegally for fifteen minute stints on rooftops and by churches, and forcing smiles against the cold.
The above photo is of my friend, Ian, who looks best when laughing, I have decided.  
He found this "Buckle Up" sign and it made a great prop!
 
My Photography instructor is wonderful; he is very hands-on and old-school:obsessed with lighting and getting the shot correct on ground, rather than editing sloppy mistakes later with photoshop. 
I still have a lot of learning and practice ahead of me, but these are the shots of which I am most proud.
Aperture priority mode is my favorite mode right now.
I'm learning to "blow out the background" as he phrases it, in order to put my subject in greater focus.  
Above is a photo of my friend Erik, who I am obsessed with looking at. 
I want to use him for some drawing assignments later on.    
He has fantastic bone structure that makes his face transform from stoic and brooding to joyful in a flash.  
Also, his red hair makes me so happy.
Sorry Erik!
This is a picture of my bestie, Amber, in front of a church.  
Her face is always sweet, quiet, and lovely, just like her personality.
Cam is always my trickiest subject--we know each other so well, and yet he is fidgety and camera shy.  
I still love how I was able to pull the colors from his scarf from the background. 
 
I had us sneak into a studio space under construction.  
Worth it!  
I wish I had had my tripod so that I could get steadier shots, but I'm still really pleased with them.

Gratefulness Warm-Up

Gratefulness.
It stretches out the kinks in my warped, convoluted, and inward-bending thinking.
Like the warm up before the miles ahead, God has been reiterating my need to say thank you and count my blessings before coming to Him with my weariness and requests.  
The miles are not so long when I have said "Thank you," before beginning them.  

This verse has been my constant reminder and has been changing the color and transparency of my heart towards Him:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.  
Phillipians 4:6

I have been especially devoted to my prayer and thankfulness journal, and it has been my catalog of all the small events that have made my life into something lovely and glorifying to Him. 
When I remember that my life has a storyline, and more importantly, that I am not the heroine of this story, I begin to see the patterns in His plan for me woven into this story. 
I have more faith in the intentionality of his hand in my life and have more confidence in Him to ward off the fear of the chaotic, the seemingly random. 
I begin to feel myself stepping within His story, my footfalls matching the rhythm of his heartbeat, rather than the disjointed, uneven stumbling that I make on my own, fighting against the flow of His life for me.  

Monday, March 4, 2013

Long Time No See

You found me! 
Have we got some catching up to do.  
But we'll save that for later.  
In the meantime, here are some shots taken with my new Canon Rebel T3i on the Gainesville Square.
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