FACE THE DRAWMA:

I never want to draw a single line ever in my life again.

Drawing makes me feel like shit.

You know what doesn't make me feel like shit?

Films. I will now dedicate my life to only watching films for the rest of it and figuring out a way to make a living doing just that. I suspect it will involve a pen with a light on it.

Here is a gif of me interpretively dancing about my feelings:

late night drawing

Last night I FINALLY managed to squeeze out a couple of illustration to my Butcher story. I might get paid for these so, you know, I should have done this a month ago. Anyway, I know you probably haven't read the story; I haven't published it here because it was never really meant for the public. I always thought "what are the odds that I'll win this contest. No one will ever see this." But I was wrong and The Butcher will inevitably be published this fall, although only within my school in a small paper from the Vera List Center. And maybe they'll want to put my drawings in it. I'll show you one; this is the little girl with the big dog. They have a short debate in the story about whether she got killed or not. click to view larger.

















I heard there was a huricane coming over to visit us here on the southwestern coast of iceland. Judging from the weather outside it is already here. The hurricane's name is Bertha and supposedly it is not dangerous any more. I have a lot of experience living with harmless hurricanes named Bertha. My mother is one. She is a hurricane in the kitchen, for example. The results are delicious.

I am this forever

I suck at photographing my work at the moment. sorry.

p.s. approx. 12x16 inches, graphite + watercolor + pen and ink + brush and ink. I'm not sure why people always seem to want to know these things.

winner time.

I got an e-mail the other day:

Dear Julia,

Congratulations! On behalf of the jury members of the Vera List University Art Collection Writing Award, I am pleased to announce that your submission "The Butcher" to the 2007/2008 writing competition was awarded the first place in the category of creative response, with a prize of $400.

This means I wrote a story and sent it into a competition and won. The competition is for all the schools within the new school university. This means that a lot of people take part. this means that a lot of them are americans and native english-speakers. this means that some of them are writing majors at eugene-lang.

I still won. The Icelandic girl who never took a creative writing class in her life won. The Icelandic girl who just recently started writing secret stories when she was angry at people and/or had interesting dreams and/or real or imaginary conversations.

AMERICANS = PWND

This makes me happy.

Now you can all say "hey I started reading what Júlía wrote before she won an award and became famous."

joke.

I have one problem that I want to talk about. I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with real people other than myself. I guess I am interested in myself too but I am more interested in people who I know or know of. I am not interested in imaginary people. I never ask these real people permission to draw them or write about them because that would be weird. They would think I was in love with them or something. That is not the case. I am never in love with people. So I just go ahead and draw them and write about them, telling myself I'll just never show anyone. Like when I wrote The Butcher. Of course I change names and details when I write because that's easier than changing people's faces when I draw. But I still thought "I will never tell anyone I wrote this. I will not win anything in this competition because I am foreign and this story will never be published and no one will read it."

Well I was wrong.

The story is about being foreign too, in part. It's about me and being foreign and angry and tired. It's funny. The jury used the word "Irreverence" about something in my story. I had to look the word up in the dictionary because I am foreign.

Okay. this might make me seem productive. I am not. I never make anything serious. except this story and another story that I illustrated for my lithography class. I am happy with these 2 things. Even if I get bad grades, which will probably happen, I will be happy that I accomplished two things that I like this semester. Here is a picture of the book I made:



I don't want to post the inside because I wrote and drew a real person in it and I didn't ask them permission and I'm scared they will not like it. But if you want to buy one of these they might be for sale. You should ask me.

I want to now apologize to everyone I might ever draw or write about without their permission. I'm sorry.

I should do my homework. Instead I always spend all of my time making very unserious things. Like this unserious thing I made today for Alex Fitzgerald. I like Alex Fitzgerald because he makes me smile and he likes the internet more than I do which is rare. Before I knew him I thought he was a lame internet person. Then I got to know him as an awesome real person. Now we talk to each other regularly both with our real faces and with our internets. So today's conversation resulted in this:



I am going to leave it up to you to read into this piece. Here is a clue: "Irreverence."

I am going to drink my tea now, it has probably gone cold. then I will draw tesla coils. good night.

monkeys

I feel shitty. Winter makes me feel shitty. Too much schoolwork makes me feel shitty.

Monkeys make me feel less shitty. I drew some monkeys yesterday:

space traveler monkey:



octopus monkey:



popsicle monkey:



I need to pick one and make a finished drawing. you should tell me which one to pick.

---

I watched the oscars this weekend. It was pretty fun. the ceremony wasn't that fun. I liked the fact that a lady screenwriter got an award because that is not common. I liked the fact that all the acting performance awards went to europeans because I am european. No one from Iceland got an oscar. BUT! Jar City (Mýrin) is opening at IFC this weekend. It was our oscar contribution I think although it didn't get shortlisted. But everyone in New York should go see it. Go see iceland. Go see an icelandic murder mystery. there is no trailer online so you just have to take my word for it.

---

so there is a website called doingfine.org which is all about people who are doing just fine. I like that. I like it when people take a break from complaining and being miserable. I don't think I like very happy people but people who are doing fine are good. I am often doing fine. It is a good subject to dedicate a website too. Anyway, they contacted me and asked me to put up a button for them and maybe I would get something instead. They made an ugly button but I don't really care, I like their concept. so I have temporarily stuck it on the bottom of the sidebar. I thought their request was kind of funny anyway. I don't know. maybe I am the postergirl for "doing fine." A lot of shit happens to me but somehow I always manage to stay pretty "fine". Yes. I have decided this is the truth.

He has killed a lot of animals in his lifetime but mostly lizards

I need to tell you about one of my classes. It is one of my favorite classes; a writing and drawing class called picture-story workshop. One of the great things about this class is Ben Katchor. He is the teacher. Another great thing is this AMAZING little korean girl who has not failed to bring all the best stories so far. What makes them so good is that they're sort of unintentionally amazing. She just sort of hangs out in the corners all shy and polite and quiet and cute and then she opens her mouth and amazing things come out with her polite and quiet voice.

example 1:

we had to interview a subject of our choice and she interviewed her male friend. When she was a few seconds into her account of the interview I manically started writing down some excerpts from it (this girl does not actually look like the freak of nature child-humans that i like to draw during class)



I will elaborate for you:

"He was bragging about his digestive system and how it is so good. He has great control over his digestive system and can relieve himself whenever he likes or hold it in for days. He has killed a lot of animals in his lifetime but mostly lizards and other cold blooded animals. He fears lizards and other cold blooded animals. He was in the Korean army and there he killed many lizards and snakes. A dream he remembers is him dreaming of himself dreaming."

And then the dude drew a picture of A CRUCIFIED MACBOOK AIR WITH A MACBOOK PRO LOOKING AT IT SAYING "MACBOOK AIR SUCKS!"

I want nothing more now than for this young man to be my friend. he can brag about his digestive system all he wants and kill me some lizards.

example 2:

we had to write a story about our "life of crime." I wrote a really boring story about dairy products because I am too much of a wuss to write about anything interesting/ too innocent to have committed any serious crimes. failure.

but SHE starts talking and it goes something like "well I had a boyfriend here but then I went to Korea and had... an encounter with a very nice boy there..."

snap.

so that wasn't too outrageous. but next we had to draw pictures of the crime scene. and this girls picture was possibly the greatest crime scene picture I have ever seen. She didn't give it to me but I tried my best to reproduce her drawing for your viewing pleasure.



and it gets better with the explanations:

Ben Katchor: wait... your hair is completely straight. Why is there an afro in this picture?
awesome girl: oh, this is just to show all the confusion in my mind.
Ben Katchor: so there was striped wallpaper in his room?
awesome girl: no, this is to show how it was like a prison.

I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE... OH NO WHO DO I LOVE! OH NO I HAVE AN AFRO AND I'M GIVING A BLOWJOB IN PRISON.

I will try to be her friend as soon as possible.

kisa/dying

This is me seeing how it will look if I post pictures on this blog.



This is my favorite picture that I drew last semester. It portrays a cat who is happy because it is his birthday, while simultaneously remembering that he is constantly getting older and one day he will die. I drew this in a class called intro to design and visuality or cultural studies or something serious like that, the class was mostly really boring but sometimes awesome (like when I said "porn" in front of a few hundred people, this ended up being the only word I ever said in front of my whole class). I had this class with Eric. Now I have no classes with Eric. Eric is a really gay jewish person with a filthy mouth and I used to live on his bright orange couch. I drew this picture for Eric. I miss him.