Sylvia, Weeks 2-3

So I don't quite recall how it all went down after that first week, it was quite a blur...but after class the second week where we were met with, "I don't know HOW ya'll can LIVE with yourselves," and "What did all those undergraduate schools TEACH you?" and "I feel so bad for ya'll spending all that money on colleges that didn't teach you how to do research."... we stumbled out of the classroom, licking our wounds and started revising all that we'd worked on. I think the idea was to take our best illustrations and finalize them at 6" x 9" and then take them to Kinkos to get them enlarged to 24" x 36" and printed. Once you blow up a piece that much, there are glaring holes of blank space that need filling in so we addressed those problems using more black marker on the kinkos printouts...always getting closer to the final.

The final. The final was to be a recreation of the 24" x 36 printout only the re-creation needed to be made entirely out of cut paper. NO pens, no markers. At least 11 different shades of gray, 5 shades of black, 5 shades of white. No area on the piece could have more than 3 layers of paper. There needed to be areas where there were cuts to reveal something else. And the piece would be an advertisement for some sort of attraction/resort/event so we had to decide what that would be. And create the whole thing. In a week.

Since we had a true-to-size printout to start with, Sylvia suggested to all of us that we try tracing paper...trace the print-out with a soft pencil, then flip it over and trace it onto the BACK of all the gray/black/white paper that we intended to cut out with a harder pencil. Then once we cut and flip, the image would be right reading.

It took FOR-EVER. But the result was quite stunning and apart from the fact that I couldn't move my hand for a few days after using an exacto knife for 48 hours straight, I was pretty happy with my creation.



But now it was week 3. We all had revisions to make to our cut-paper posters but for the most part they were done. Wasn't this the hard part? But we had 6 more weeks to go? What next?

We'd only just gotten started. Sylvia's class, I would learn from a wise upper quarter student, is just like drinking from a firehose.

We waited for the blast...and week 4 offered it up...

Oh, and for some added entertainment, you can check out "Sylvia's Song" written by a student 5 or 6 quarters ago... It's the 5th video down on the left side.