cal ear and friends no. 1

CAL EAR & friends

Take a Good Look - February-June 2022

Table of Contents Instant Film 04 Illustration 10 Sewing 14 End of School 18

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THE COOLEST PEOPLE EVER Some time in February, I decided

Before starting this project, I

that it was time for me to

hadn’t touched my camera in

re-organize my corkboard. It was

about two years (mostly

looking a little bit cluttered and

because I ran out of film at that

boring, and I just wanted to

time), so when I put the first

change it in some way. Being the

cartridge in and tried getting

indecisive person I am, I decided

the cover part out, the batteries

to ask some of my friends, to which

died! I was afraid that the

Tashvi (top row, middle, also the

camera broke and I wasted

person with the best ideas ever)

thirty dollars on film for a

suggested adding instant film

camera I couldn’t even use, but

photos, which started this

I was VERY glad that that

three-month long project.

wasn’t the case.

After finding my old Fujifilm

I decided to use the rainbow

When I took the last picture

Instax Mini 9, I bought a value

pack of instant film first because

using this pack of film, I’ll

pack of film from Walmart and

it looked really cool when I put

admit that I was a little sad

practically chased my friends

all of the pictures together.

because I’d never used, even

around school with my camera.

Obviously, a couple of the

seen, rainbow film before

Did I take a few horrible looking

photos weren’t scanned so the

seeing the box online while I

pictures because of this?

rainbow isn’t as cohesive as it

was searching for the largest

Absolutely. But you could say that

could be, but that’s because 1) I

amount of film I could buy

it was in the name of “CREATIVE

accidentally took a picture of my

without going broke, but alas,

EXPLORATION!” or something

sleeve the first time I brought

all good things must come to an

just as corny. It was really fun

my camera to school so the

end. I think I’ll get around to

taking these pictures because of

picture is completely black, and

buying more rainbow film

how different it is compared to

2) I gave one of the pictures to

eventually, and hopefully I

taking pictures on my phone.

Anika (the one on the right in

won’t waste any of it this time.

the last picture on the bottom row).

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THE THE GOOD, GOOD, THE THE BAD, BAD, & & THE THE OVEREXPOSED OVEREXPOSED Oh boy. I’m not sure why, but this pack of film

Nothing we did in that English class was particularly

was the start of me failing to take a properly

fun or interesting either, but I think that was more

exposed picture of Kaylyn (top row, left). That’s

so the teacher’s fault if anything. I might be biased

not all though; When it was Jegg’s birthday (top

but I did not enjoy that class at all. I made some

row, middle, also left picture on this page), it took

pretty good friends from there though, so that makes

me two attempts to get a proper picture of them.

up for it in a way.

The first picture I took was so overexposed to the point where you couldn’t really make out anything in the picture, which sucked, but what more can you do? He ended up keeping both pictures, which is why there are only eight shown at left.

The two pictures to the right were both taken at my birthday party. I meant to take more of my other friends, but I forgot. When we got home from the bowling alley (where we hung out for the first couple of hours that day), we all went to my bedroom. I ended up finding my Akatsuki cloak and wig from I was a HUGE Naruto fan and dressed up as Konan for Halloween in around sixth grade (not my proudest moment). I don’t remember what led up to it, but we ended up putting Jegg and Keyan (both shown at right) in the costume and we all struggled to zip up the cloak--it’s not like it was difficult either, we are just a little dumb sometimes I guess. That day was really fun but that’s not what this is about so that’s where I’ll stop this.

Anyway, I took a picture of Elizabeth (iPad gremlin in the second row, middle) in our English class when she found out when she would do fitness testing. She was not very thrilled about it.

I took a handful of questionable pictures with this pack of film, but looking at those pictures bring back really good memories, from being the loud, annoying teenagers at my birthday party, to wasting time in English when we were probably supposed to be doing something important, to sitting in the grass area in the back of the school during lunch, usually showing each other funny videos and talking about how annoying our classes were that day.

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“OK, WHO’S NEXT?” Although I loved using the other two packs of film, The last picture (bottom row, second) was taken in a the pictures I took using the pink film are probably rush on the last day of school. I wanted to take a my favorite (even if I did take a couple of

group picture of my friends, but we had to hurry

overexposed shots, oops). It might be because it

because my mom was already there to pick three of us

was the last pack I used before the end of the

up, so I put it to a random setting and hoped for the

school year, so all of these photos (and the

best, but it turned out a little too underexposed

memories attached to them!!!!11!!!!) are fresh in

(surprising, I know). I decided not to edit the

my mind in a way? I do have some stories to tell

exposure on here though because it reminds me of

regarding these though.

how everything panned out during it. Is it cheesy? A little bit, but I know that it’s not necessarily a bad

The first two (top row, left and center) were either thing. taken on the same day or the same week, and I was trying to get some candid images but I, once again, There are two missing photos, not because I messed forgot to change the setting on the camera, so they up, but because I gave one to one of my bio classmates were once again OVEREXPOSED! I laugh at those (I believe it was the one that forgot the alphabet) and pictures a little bit when I see them on my cork

the second is still in my camera. I wanted to get

board though, so you win some, you lose some I

through all of the pink film by the last day of school,

suppose!

but I was mostly just trying to get out of school as quickly as possible.

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SO HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED: Instead of focusing on full, finished pieces, I spent a lot of time doodling everywhere; in my sketchbook, on my iPad, the whiteboard in my math classroom, English notes, my friends’ homework, EVERYWHERE. I also decided to focus on traditional art a little bit more after the start of 2022 since I became a bit burned out with digital art. This allowed me to practice more semi-realistic sketches using nothing but random pencils (my preferred medium as of late), so it felt quite comfortable while doing something a bit different from normal.

The next few pages will show some of my favorite drawings I’ve done within the last few months, both digital and traditional.

Enjoy!

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Traditional Art

SOME DRAWINGS ELBOW - Although this sketch was done rather quickly, I was -- and still am -- pleasantly surprised by the outcome. This self portrait was done after getting home from karate, where the day before, we had to do snake crawls, aka my worst nightmare (but not really), and I burned my elbows on the mat. I was scared that we would have to do them the day after, so I wore bandages on my elbows. When I got home, I realized that I’d never drawn an arm in this position and I thought that it would be kind of funny to draw, which led to this sketch.

EMILY - While trying to fill up the “traditional art” section of my website, I decided to draw a bunch of my friends. One of these friends is Emily, shown at right. I was really happy with how I shaded the mask and the facial proportions look pretty accurate to my reference.

This drawing was based on a picture I took one day at school, where I kept shoving my phone in people’s faces with the flash on and the zoom at 0.5x (sorry for blinding everyone). Despite being a complete nuisance to the people around me, some of the pictures looked alright, so I used a few as drawing references, like for this one.

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(ANOTHER) SELF PORTRAIT - It felt a little self-centered to add another self portrait to this list, but I’m really happy with the way I shaded the mask and the rest of the face. I think the drawing looks like me too, which was kind of the whole point, which is good. I remember being told when I was younger that the way I drew myself didn’t look like me, so since then, I’ve been trying to draw myself more accurately.

There was also a time where I hated doing any kind of realistic art style (mainly because I didn’t know how), but over the last year or two, I’ve really grown to enjoy this kind of art style!

Digital Art

I DID RECENTLY

A few of my favorite sketches, doodles, and illustrations from the last few months.

GIRL - Before I started this piece, I was going through little bit of a digital art block. I knew the only way for me to get out of it was to do something a little different with my art, so I used a set color palette and drew a more close-up shot of face. I ended up being really happy with the end result, especially since I was pretty loose with my drawing process. In fact, I didn’t even do proper lineart for this drawing, I just cleaned up my sketch a little bit.

Coloring was a pretty relaxed process too. I just scribbled using random Procreate brushes until I was happy with the end result.

BAD WEEK - This drawing was done a week before the end of the school year. I kept getting called short the entire week, which was weird and annoying because I’d never been called the same thing so many times by so many different people, so it made me wonder if that’s all people saw me as, which wasn’t the best for my confidence but I’m over it now. This was also the day after a rather interesting Disneyland field trip where the bus ride home was delayed because the bus driver got lost and and around 50 people had to cram into one bus. We ended up getting home at 11 p.m. and we had school the next day. It was an eventful week to say the least.

CLOONY - I took the picture while on the Santa Monica boardwalk with my family, and when I got home, I realized that this could be used as an album cover for my super cool and awesome Bandcamp project (REAL! NOT CLICKBAIT!)! The picture looked too plain by itself, so I added doodles, and I ended up liking the end result. This project is still very much a work in progress, but I am really, really excited to finish the album and share it with everyone!

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SEWING MACHINE, Back in March, my parents gave me a sewing machine for my birthday. Was I excited? Yes. Did I have any kind of previous experience using a sewing machine? Absolutely not. My only experience with sewing at all was when I would make tiny bean bags with my grandma, where she taught me how to hand sew basic stitches, as well as the handful of times I would fix holes in random pillowcases and shirts.

Despite this, I was very eager to learn how to use my new sewing machine. I was a little intimidated by it at first, but after watching an ungodly amount of sewing videos on YouTube, things seemed pretty easy. It was not. Well, kind of. I went to Michaels to buy some felt so I could begin my first sewing projects. Through a little bit of experimentation (cutting out random shapes of felt and hoping for the best), I figured out what worked, and what didn’t.

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MY BELOVED! After making a few (attempts at) plushies, I thought it would be a good learning experience to make clothes for the first time. My mom gave me an old Bedsheet for me to practice different stitches, so I got to work. This project was very much a learning experience. I spent two weekends on this shirt; one weekend for cutting out the parts of the shirt, and another weekend for piecing everything together. I made a handful of mistakes but I was kind of surprised that it actually ended up being a fully-functional shirt. Sure, it has a hole in one of the armpits and the inside looks like a mess, but I was able to wear it to school without it completely falling apart, which is good since it was the first piece of clothing I’ve ever made.

The next pages show some of the things I’ve made using my sewing machine, as well as my thoughts and stories behind them.

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HEART - This was the first thing I made using my sewing machine. I had been drawing a bunch of these heart characters around the time I made this, so it was only natural that that was what I was going to try to make. It was originally supposed to have limbs, but they were too difficult to stuff with polyfill. It usually sits in the back of my bookshelf these days.

CUT, STITCH JEGG’S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE - About a week before Jegg’s birthday, I decided that I wanted to get my friends together to do some kind of surprise. To do this, Rebecca and I went to a few stores, grabbed random Canadian products, as well as supplies to make this plushie, and got to work.

This project was challenging, but I think the end result looks funny (in a good way).

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DOG - Over the last few months, I started doodling these dogs everywhere, especially on my arms and in my notes at school, so I wanted to make a plushie out of it. Some people think it’s a bear, but they are incorrect!! Anyway, it looks a bit funky, but I think it just adds character.

Some projects I’ve done using my sewing machine (March-May 2022)

SHIRT - After my mom gave me the old bedsheet my brother and I used as a costume for Greek Day in sixth grade, I was unsure what I wanted to make with it. After asking friends and searching online, I decided to make a button-up shirt with a weird pocket. I (loosely) followed a YouTube tutorial and ended up with this. It was really fun learning about the different stitches and I want to make more clothes now.

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FINALLY, NO MORE SCHOOL! The last two weeks of the school year were…definitely something. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be eventful. So many things seemed to be happening at once and my brain felt so deep fried during that entire time. It’s not like I even had the sense of relief that school year was ending like I had in previous years either. I had to keep reminding myself that school was ending in less than a month.

In the second-to-last week of school, the only thing that kept me going was the Disneyland field trip that was planned on the Thursday of that week. We were supposed to be at school By 7:30 in the morning, and we were to return at 10 at night. When I woke up on that Thursday, it was much earlier than planned.

This was because I was awoken by the feeling of blood pouring out of my left nostril. How fun. After

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cleaning up my nose at 3 a.m., I went to sleep for another two hours. When I woke up a second time, I got ready and headed to school, where we taunted our classmates who didn’t go on the trip with us. This was funny.

When the bus finally arrived, we were all very excited.

We headed into the school buses, and rode for an hour and a half to the “happiest place on Earth.” We then arrived, split up into groups, went on a number of rides, and wandered around the park for a while.

While I was enjoying my stay at the park, my feet were killing me and I became as insufferable as a whiny iPad kid. Rebecca was not very amused, although she did agree with everything I said. We went on a few more rides after this, and then we headed to the gift shops near the front of the park.

At 7:48, I get a call from a friend, who is asking me for my location rather frantically. I automatically realize that I’ve lost track of time and that it’s time to leave the park. Rebecca and I rush out to the front, and we get scolded at by our teacher. That’s not where it ends, though.

We had to wait over an hour after the scheduled time for the school buses to arrive to carry around the 50 students. One bus got lost and broke down, so we couldn’t use that one, and the second bus also got lost, but thankfully it arrived. We all crammed into the single bus, eager to return to our school. On the bus, one of the teacher chaperones coughed non-stop for a good ten minutes, so that was kind of gross, but I ended up sleeping through most of the ride home so that was alright. We ended up getting back at 11, and I went to sleep as soon as I got home. Interesting times.

The three days after that was finals week, and that

week was so stressful, yet so calm. I wasn’t worried about most of my finals, but my math final was on this whole other level of…very much not good. The teacher (the best math teacher I’ve ever had, ever) was sick with Covid, but the worst part for me was that I did not study--like at all (This was entirely my fault because I knew very well that this was a bad idea). I didn’t even complete the test, I only finished around 52 of the 60 questions. I was SO sure that I was going to fail. I didn’t however, I barely passed with a 73%. I was honestly surprised I even passed.

I’m just happy I’ll never have to worry about that test again.

Now that summer has begun, I just want to think as little as possible about academics (before summer school, at least). I might just be a little dramatic. Who am I kidding, I’m being over-dramatic.

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THANK YOU FOR READING THE STORIES AND LOOKING AT THE PICTURES

☺☺☺ I spent a handful of late nights working on this project and my parents were very confused about why I stayed up so late editing photos. I’ve been wanting to make a zine for so long but I was always unsure of what I wanted it to focus on, so I’m glad I finally got around to working on one!