My Awesome Room

This will be my last blog before I leave for the summer. This is gonna be about my bedroom! Last year I impulsively started a painting project, using my bedroom walls as my canvas, and almost a year later, I finally finished...more or less...and these pictures are the finished product.

So...

I will give you a guided tour of the production from around the half-way point of my work to the finish, and I will give detailed explanations of anything of interest.

...enjoy.

Alors...je commence.
Let me start by giving a brief introduction to my room.
When we moved to this house 3 years ago, I got the huge basement room, which I was sharing with Mickey at the time. The walls were totally white and completely bland. My room would have been the most boring place in the world...except that I had (and still have) the coolest loft bed, lots of space, a couch, and a keyboard (which is honestly my best friend).

The room became solely mine a year and a half ago...and I was left with four boring white walls with nothing on them. It was like living in a box made out of white paper. There was nothing that I could stick onto the walls to make them more interesting. ...so one day while I had a pencil in my hand, I drew impulsively on the largest empty space on one of my walls. I didn't know what I was doing or what I wanted to do, but once the pencil had touched the plaster, there was no turning back.
...

I unknowingly started a long-term project in the Spring Break of 2005. The first image I drew was the leaping bull from the 5,000 year-old "Toreador" fresco from Minoa. I finished outlining it in pencil in about an hour. Then I added the bull-jumpers, and they took about two hours each.
I was exhausted. The people in the drawings are pretty much life-size. Most of them are taller than me. I was on a ladder for half the time. And due to my limited attention span, I just left the pencil outline of the fresco on my wall...for a very long time.

...until one day...
I found another Minoan fresco that I liked and I drew it on another wall. They were of dolphins, and the whole thing just took about an hour and a half to pencil in. I was really stoked and I started to want to see it in colour. At this point I was just starting to love what I can do...I had a few more empty walls and the possibilities were endless. So my mom bought me little tubes of paint one day and I started painting...and for a few days, I just couldn't stop...

And for a while, I didn't stop. I found more Minoan paintings while doing research and I just really liked them so I kept putting them up on my wall. On this wall I drew a procession of people (each of whom were from different Minoan frescoes). The one furthest left is from a fresco called "Prince of the Lilies," the second one is a water-bearer, and the furthest one is a picture of priestess-musicians. I couldn't stop.


And the last one was the single-most complicated, but definitely the most detailed and most hypnotic. It's about 6 feet tall and the hair alone took several days to draw. I drew this Mycenean woman about 6 months after I drew the bull-riders. After I finished drawing this, I didn't wanna paint it because of the sheer size and detail...most of which was located where it was too high for me to reach. When I finally did start painting it, I painted it a yucky green colour (it didn't look yucky in the bottle), and I was so unhappy with it so I painted over it in red. The hair was a pain to paint.
So I pretty much got so lazy after this one that I didn't touch a paintbrush for a while...and so the project was on hold.
My room was left incomplete.

...but slowly and gradually there was progress...

I was just going and going and going and going.

My mom took this picture one morning, while I was in my boxers, listening to my iPod shuffle.

...and then one day...
I don't know how it happened. But I pretty much finished.
...the crumpled and paint-stained clumps of toilet paper were cleared, the furniture was moved back and the tubes of paint were sealed. My room was...clean!

I guess the only thing left to do is to give you a complete and detailed tour of the highlights of my room...

Every painting in my room represents some part of me. It's up to you to analyze it; theories are very welcome.

Directly beside my door is a painting of the priest-king of Minoa. There was something very tranquil about the original fresco that I wanted to reproduce onto my wall. Whether I did or not is subjective. I also loved the air of pride that he has on his face.

This was my favourite one to draw and definitely one of the easiest.

...And right beside the painting of the prince is my altar to several of my highschool awards...This one is my Eagle Award, which is the biggest service award that I got in highschool. I wish somebody could have taken a picture of the look on my face when they called me to the stage. Underneath the Eagle Award are other plaques and a shelf where I stash my textbooks and random language dictionaries.

And above my left wall is my picture ceiling. They're mostly of my friends during Pirates of Penzance (musical I was in), of Grad and of the random silly things that we did. Can anyone see themselves in the pics?

So this again is the painting of the bull-jumpers. Underneath the paint on the belly of the bull is an inscribed dedication to Franchino, which stands for Frankie, Charlie and Gino. Frankie and Charlie were my two best friends in the last half of highschool. Since I finished the bull shortly after the three of us went our separate ways, I thought it appropriate to dedicate it to them.

This is my dolphin wall. Dolphins are one of my two favourite animals (the other being lions) and I especially liked the Minoan portrayal of dolphins because they express strong, determined faces.

Since the colour I used on the dolphins reminded me so much of our policemen costumes in Pirates of Penzance, I decided to name each dolphin after a policeman in my musical. This one was my first and best one, and it's also my favourite one, so I named it after my favourite policeman (and my favourite person in the entire world). You know who you are...subtle tribute. haha.

Beside the dolphin wall is my keyboard (and also my guitar, in this picture). I can literally spend 6 hours on that keyboard. The seat I use is my treasure chest on top of which I placed a sheepskin. The sheet music on the keyboard is the Rent musical score. Behind the keyboard is my messy messy messy desk. And on top of my desk and my keyboard is...

My bed. I got a 6-foot tall loft bed in IKEA and I assembled it all on my own...though it took me like a billion hours. The first time I slept on it, I woke up and hit my head on the stucco of the ceiling and I missed a step on the ladder. After that I realized that I have the coolest bed in the world. In the far corner, you can see my air purifier which I use as an electric fan. Like the rest of my room, this cozy corner is usually messy.

Beside my bed is my shrine to Pirates of Penzance. I have the posters, the program and the newspaper clippings. The black cloth is a napkin I nicked from Moxie's when they over-charged me for iced tea, and then i painted a seahorse on it... and over that is my wicker bag from the Philippines which I wear once in a while.

And the final feature of my room is of course the Mycenaean woman carrying my wall clock, which is always five minutes ahead (but I'm still always late for my first lecture). It's always hidden behind my door when it's open and I can't see it at all from my bed because of the angle...mysterious girl, this one.

And the best place to chill after a very very long day of being inexhaustibly brilliant is this couch. I am by no means ever totally done. I will add more, as inspiration dictates...but for now I'm done. After working on my room for a year (on and off) and writing this blog for about three days, I think I deserve a couch-break. But before I do, I'd like to say goodbye to everyone.
Within the next week I'm gonna be seeing 14 different states and then I'm gonna be living on my own and working in Ontario until August.
I'd like to take this opportunity to tell my friends to be good while I'm gone and not to kill each other till I get back.
I'll see you all around August/September-ish.
Honestly, I mean it. Be GOOD. Or else.