Why is it so hard to get a haircut around here?

Haircut
My hair was getting really really bad. With two weeks left to go until I returned to Saint Louis, I had quite the dilemma. Do I wait until I get back to STL and my favorite hair stylist, Callie? Do I fork over the big bucks for a fancy, but still probably crappy haircut? Or do I just go somewhere cheap and get a probably crappy, but potentially decent haircut? Since my 9 months of unemployment has left me with empty pockets, I opted for the latter. Last Wednesday, I ended up at the Urban Academy beauty school on Central for a cheap haircut. My stylist-in-training did a good job, although it took about an hour and a half to get the job done.



I normally have my hair cut much shorter, but this seems to be a tall order around here. When I say "short" I mean less than a half inch rather than an inch. (Compare this "haircut" to the lovely short cut in my profile picture on the right.) Overall though, she did better than the last person here in ABQ. I'm still looking forward to my return to STL and my regular stylist. It's nice to be able to walk into a place and just say, "the usual" with no questions asked and have it done in less than a half hour (including three trips to the shampoo sink).

Final Critique
Last week was pretty busy in the shop. Everyone was trying to get done for our last critique, which was today. I was working with Neal Ambrose Smith. The print was three runs, one on stone and two on plates. He started with this image on the stone.



Then on the subsequent plates he added some more drawing and then xerox transfers with text and clip art. Originally he wanted to do some sort of RGB color layering, but the drawing wasn't really working for that effect. We ended up with a watermelon, a golden yellow, and an eggplant color. Here you can see the red and yellow together, and then the purple layer on top to the left.



After I finished the three run edition, Neal decided to add in another layer to finish it off. I don't have a picture handy, but the final version has a red ochre flat that pushes the landscape back and pulls the figures forward. It turned out nice.

Here I am pulling my final official print at Tamarind (I still have a few personal projects to finish up):



Sunday evening I helped Patrick finish his print which was a small simple CMYK on some crazy paper. He was also happy to be finished:



Isotopes
Yesterday we hit a mid-day matinee baseball game at Isotopes Park. The weather was almost perfect, except that we weren't able to escape that oppressive Albuquerque sun. Patrick got a giant hot dog which was double in size by all the toppings he added.





Patrick was determined to get a foul ball... even if it meant digging behind the rolled up tarp pushed against the wall. So happy!

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