The Best of 2012!

MUSIC:

1.     We are Young ft. Janelle Monae – Fun

2.     Telephone Banking – Clean Bandit

3.     Rivers and Roads – The Head and the Heart

4.     One Spring Morning – Akron/Family

5.     The Third of the Storms (ft. Sam Sparro) –Mike Simonetti

6.     All Fired Up – The Saturdays

7.     Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu – Benny Dayal, Anushka Manchanda, Shefali Alvaris

8.     Be My Guest – Gaitana

9.     Take a Walk – Passion Pit

10. Roll with the Wind – Alexander Rybak

11.  Up Up Up – Givers

12. Billionaires – Your Twenties

13. Little Talks – Of Monsters and Men

14. Glad You Came – The Wanted

15. Babel – Mumford and Sons

16. Starships – Nicki Minaj

17. A&E – Clean Bandit

18. Earthquake ft. Tinie Tempahs – Labrinth

19.  Want U Back – Cher Llyod

20. Thrift Shop ft. Wanz- Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

21. Spinnin for London 2012 – Dionne Bromfield & Tinchy Stryder

22.  Die Young – Ke$ha

23. Diamonds – Rihanna

24. Bangarang ft. Sirah

25. Paradise – Coldplay

Extended:

26. Mozarts House – Clean Bandit

27. High Hawk Season – The Mountain Goats

28. Rail Guddi – Jassi Sidhu

29. Shera Di Khom –Ludacris

30. Veer da Viha – Jassi Sidhu

31. Is it the Sea? – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

32. Beat of my Drum – Nicola Roberts

33. Crystal Ball- Grimes

34. Uk Shanty – Clean Bandit

35. Take Care – Tom Rosenthal

36. Legacy (ft. Derrick Carter) – Youseft

37. Forgets Slowly – Tom Rosenthal

38. Wild One – I Am Harlequin

39. Default – Djago Django

40. Disperate Youth – Santigold

41. True Romance – Motion City Soundtrack

42. Lights – Ellie Goulding

43. 30 Days – The Saturdays

44.  My Heart Takes Over – The Saturdays

45. Should’ve Known Better – Soluna Samay

46. Euphoria – Loreen

47. Stay – Tooji

48. Aphrodisiac – Eleftheria Elefheriou

49. OPA – Giorgos Alkaios & Family

50. Garden of Your Mind – Symphony of Science

51. Fela Igjen – Alexander Rybak

52. Fairytale – Alexander Rybak

53. Shuffle – Bombaby Bicycle Club

54. Into the Open Air- Julie Fowlis

55. Keep Your Head Up – Andy Grammer

56. Bad Girls – M.I.A.

57. Gimme Sympathy – Metric

58. Home – Philip Philips

59. Give Your Heart a Break- Demi Lovato

60. Good Time ft. Carly Rae Jepsen – Owl City

61. Call Me Maybe- Carly Rae Jepsen

62. I will wait – Mumford and Sons

63. Lover of the Light- Mumford and Sons

64. Dirty Paws- Of Monsters and Men

65. Price Tag/Don’t You Forget About Me – Pitch Prefect OST

66. San Franciso – The Mowgli’s

67. Titanium ft. Sia – David Guetta

68. Levels – Avicii

69. Super Bass – Nicki Minaj

70. In Your Imagination – Symphony of Science

71. Electric Shock – F(x)

TV:

*missing: New Girl, OUAT, Friday Night Dinners, Me and Mrs. Jones, Leverage. Baby Daddy

FILMS

*missing: Albatross, Dark Shadows, The Avengers, Cockneys vs. Zombies

BOOKS:

Seasonal Photos

The Only way to avoid repetition.

Life can be boring.

But art is not.

Lately its been my own source of escape. 

And it keeps me from going insane. 

Excuses

I make a lot of excuses.

I'm tired.
I have to work.
It's hard to stay motivated now that I'm not in school.
I forgot my tripod.

Why bother?

I wish I could say this is going to change, but it's not.

But I can't make the excuse that doing nothing leads to something.
Even the smallest thing is something.

"Nothing is a mistake there's no win and no fail. There's only make."

Portraits of People that may have existed.

New Sketchbooky things:

Backing Up

Lately I've been struggling with just picking up my camera and taking a picture of, well, anything. After spending the last few years working on long term projects I'm having a hard time taking a photo without  it being part of a larger whole, that is, just going on walk and shooting whatever I find interesting. I keep thinking 'why am I doing this' 'where would this fit in with my other project', or 'I should be working on some larger project'. And the stress of it has prevented me for doing anything. I used to take my camera to an event and shoot a hundred pictures in one shot. I didn't care if they were prefect or anything. I miss those days, and I feel like some of my favorite memories were of these random moments. The other day I took a walk in my backyard, and realized how much I miss just documenting my life, and the small moments I've forgotten about. My goal right now is to stop stressing and just enjoy.

Sketchbook Portraits

I've been looking at vintage photographs lately in my sketchbook and adding my own spin.

Doily Prints

I may have mentioned this but I love the idea of trying to reinvent objects with previous memories to them. i.e. my Monopoly ring series. Recently my mom handed me these old rubber doilies that my great-grandmother had under a glass tabletop knowing that I would find some use for them, which I of course did.

I call these 'prints' only because I have no other idea how to identify them. I created some of them much like one would when they make a relief print (painting on top of the doily and pressing down but some others I created in a much different way by filling in the in-between spaces with paint.  

It's still very much experimental. Although it is still the same doily how I apply the paint make each look completely different. Yet none of them are prefect, not all of the paint sticks to the paper, and sometimes it still dries too fast, so there are still kinks, but it's interesting how quickly it came to me.

Summer Photos

Some photos of the adventures from this summer.

Summer picnics:

Quiet moments:

Fourth of July bokeh:

Trips to the country:

My Great (2x) Uncle's Shed:

Sketchbooky things.

I swore to myself that I would dedicate myself fully to my sketchbook during this post-graduation, pre-job stage. Well, somehow watching the entire series of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer has become my time holder instead. I've been using the age old excuse of "I don't have any project ideas," which is dumb, I need to keep exploring, nothing comes out of.... well, nothing.

All that rant aside, here are some of the sketchbooky things that have appeared since I last updated this blog. Maybe my goal for the summer should be to find a project. I have a feeling I'm going to miss having deadlines like I did with school. Alas,

Girl Scouts Rock the Mall

Last weekend was the celebration of a 100 years of Girls Scouts with the Rock the Mall Event in D.C. It was crazy. We got all of about 10 feet into the event and never really got a chance to do anything. Seriously, there were thousands of Girl Scouts everywhere. (We took the Metro in from Maryland, and I feel so sorry for all the locals who had to deal with us clogging up the line).

a map of troops attending the event,  there were actually outliners towards the west that I didn't get

I didn't get a lot of pictures, but I made a little sketchbook with I filled with sketches from the bus ride down/back and all the waiting around at the Metro station for the bus: