Yeah! It's over! Oh my gewdness, Friday night, the night before Portfolio Day, was the most hilarious night I've ever had. I'm sure any person with a sound mind who'd walked in and listened to the shit we talked that night as we were finishing matting our work would have thought we were smoking something. But no, it was just good ol' Governor's school brand stress and tiredness.

Luckily, I managed to finish matting my last two pieces by ten o' clock, but I still had to run back to the studios twice before I could finally go to sleep (kept leaving my crap all over the place).

National Portfolio Day itself went pretty well. It was held at Cobb Galleria Center, which was the same exact place where AWA was held in September, which was cool. The only two colleges that I went to were Kansas City Art Institute and Ringling. To be honest, I didn't really NEED to go see Ringling in the first place, because I'd already had my portfolio reviewed at their campus in October, and I was basically told the same thing, that I was doing the right kind of work and to keep doing it, but this time I did get a little more good critique. She pointed out that I need to work more on value, which, I will admit, I have hardly been doing at all this year. Because I'm lazy. But she pointed it out in paintings from my junior and senior year, which I'd never noticed before, so it wasn't really a waste to have my portfolio reviewed by them again.

However, now I really think that Kansas City Art Institute is going to be my top choice for college. They gave a presentation here at the school on Thursday (and I could've had my portfolio reviewed then as well, but damn, I needed SOMETHING to do today). Memphis had come on Tuesday, and they were good too, but I wasn't really impressed by the quality of animation that their students were doing (but theirs was a new program so it was understandable). But with Kansas, I just fell in love with all of their areas. Their animation department seemed to have some pretty impressive work, AND they are the only school so far that I know offers both an animation program ANDDDD Japanese classes. Also, I don't have to focus solely on computer animation after learning a year of traditional, as I would if I went to Ringling. I could probably focus more on 2D animation at Kansas City if I wanted to (while still getting the basic computer/3D animation skills).

Oh, but anyway, the guy that was reviewing portfolios for Kansas City was really cool. He was impressed by my observational work, which was mostly all I had. He still told me however, that he would've liked to see more personal work from me (stuff that says something about me), not just studies and stuff. Which, according to Shirley, who says according to Mr. Thompson, Governor's School kids get that a lot from colleges (and I am not the only one who got that comment today, as a matter of fact), just because of the way our curriculum is. It's mainly foundational, and not to mention strenuous. It's kind of wanted to mention during my review that it's kind of hard to be making personal work (and I don't mean the kind of late-night, low effort stuff I usually submit here) along with classwork, because our schedules are loaded as it is. But still, there are ways around that, ways which I haven't even bothered with (and mentioning that might've sound more like excuse-making). Well anyway, I still had my portfolio approved, but I'm going to try to come up with more work to include in my portfolio to Kansas City (which will be much different from the portfolios I'm going to submit to both Ringling and CIA) because I really, REEEEALLY want to get in there. Luckily, they have a forgiving Priority Deadline of February 1st.

And after we were all done at Portfolio Day, we met up with the juniors at the High Museum, which is always great, but a little more disappointing this year because we only got to spend a little over an hour and a half of looking at all the exhibits as seniors. This year, the main feature was Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, where the Louvre exhibit was last year. And I think I left with a little bit of insight about Leonardo's art, but not much because I didn't stay in that exhibit very long. I also walked around the museum with gingko leaves in my hair, and we were all very tired by 5:00, but I still think, if we'd had the opportunity (the juniors did while we were at Portfolio Day), I still would've had enough energy to play on a play set made by Isamu Neguchi. I'd forcibly SUMMON the energy for an opportunity like that. @_@