Castles... Castles everywhere!

After I got back home from London -see previous post- I had to get ready for the next admissions in Scotland and in the Netherlands. Luckily Edinburgh College of Art didn't have any home assignments, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht on the other hand, had a quite massive one compared to my situation.
Admissions day of the HKU was in around two weeks but my flight to Scotland was in five days and I wasn't going to come back home before flying to the Netherlands. That meant I had to do the task in four days instead of thirty. Why? Because I didn't have a laptop to carry around all the programs needed. On the contrary I didn't work for the next two weeks, so it really felt like a vacation with a tiny bit of stress.
But let's keep all the details on my experience regarding the HKU for another post. It's time to talk about Scotland!

First impression
My first significant experience in London was not long after arriving to the airport. I quickly found my Easybus with no driver, but a guy sitting on the seat next to the driver's place, reading a newspaper or a magazine. The moment he saw me, he jumped out of the minibus, let me in and sat right back on his seat. I couldn't figure out why the bus driver wasn't there yet. Suddenly, the guy in front starts the vehicle and we set off. It took me half an hour to figure out that it wasn't an exceptional minibus I was sitting in, but that the steering wheel is in fact on the other side in each and every vehicle in this country.
Well, arriving to Edinburgh I forgot all about that. I even attempted to walk onto the roadway, because I thought maybe the bus has it's door on the other side.
After a while I noticed there are no signs on the bus that would announce the next stop, so I had to ask the driver to warn me when we get there. He had such a strong Scottish accent, that I made him repeat every other sentence. I still had no clue of what he was saying.

Where I slept
Just like I know someone from London, I have an acquaintance in Edinburgh as well. But not just any acquaintance, we were classmates in secondary school and most importantly, she is one of my closest friends, Emmy. Funny thing is that one of her roommates attended the same secondary school we did.
Not long after my arrival, exhausted from working on the home assignment for the HKU and from the flight itself, I went to sleep. We indeed did some catchup talk beforehand, but Emmy had essay deadlines and had to pull an all-nighter. The next morning I awaken to her still typing on her laptop, not much later she went to sleep...for a half an hour. I'm starting to doubt whether she is human at all, because apparently, she doesn't sleep much.

Experience
After receiving an invitation per e-mail, I immediately answered I'll attend the admissions day. Later I found out there was not going to be an interview, just a tour around the school. I was quite sick, so I couldn't pay much attention, but I did get a good amount of information on their education, and the students they have are really good at whatever they are doing.
There is no news about the outcome yet, but I'll make sure to write about it either here or on facebook.

What I saw
Ok, so at first I was pretty surprised that the capital of a country could look like a friendly little town with castles. I mean, I get that cars and buses are exactly the same here as in England, but there are some things I just can't leave out of this post. In Edinburgh there are castles literally everywhere! All the hotels are castles, all the restaurants are in castles, shit even the schools are in castles. When I stepped inside one of these schools I felt like there was a crown missing off my head. It's that serious!
Another thing is the kilt. I truly thought that they only wore kilts on formal occasions and weddings, but that's absolutely not true. Every single day, I saw at least three or four men wearing a kilt just because. I also found out that they aren't supposed to wear anything underneath.
As I mentioned before, I can not understand scottish accent, which disappointed me, because I believed understanding each and every word of this years Academy Award winner for best animated feature film 'Brave' would mean I'd be alright in Scotland.
What I truly was excited about though, was seeing red beards. I even saw two of them and have no idea why that made me happy, but it did.

London is kickass

Ok gals, so I have applied to several universities among Europe and have been pretty busy with interviews and such. In the past month, I have travelled between four countries, seeing two of them for very the first time of my life. In this post I'll tell you about my first stop, London, which was also my first experience in the UK.

So, why was I in London?
Well, after applying my stressfully-written but selfglorifying personal statement to  UCAS, which is  the application system in the UK, I was invited to attend an interview and bring my portfolio to London College of Communication -I applied to BA (Hons) Graphic and media design- on the 8th of March.
Eventhough I considered to only apply to the places where I already have at least a friend or a good acquantance, it was still my luck to have someone who took me in for a few nights. This someone, let's call him The Vegetarian, is one of Bear's greatest friends, professional pokerplayer and, if you haven't already guessed, a vegetarian, for which he get's teased a lot. Although I knew that he is very friendly, we've only met once before in the summer of 2011, and to be honest I was very much surprised by his warmly welcoming, friendly and utterly selfless personality. So thanks to that I had a great time in London, where he showed me around the first day already! And do I need to mention the double-decker buses, the drivers sitting on the "wrong side" or just being horrified of dying disappointingly by being hit by a car coming from the "wrong direction"? Thank god for the 'look right' and 'look left' signs on the ground. Life-savers for sure.

About the interview
A part I can't leave out of this post, especially, since many would, or already did ask about it. And eventhough I like talking about myself, after a certain extend I feel nervous and bored, so I never really go into the details enough. Writing a blogpost always seemed like a good solution to decently go into the details while not having to tell the same story over and over again.
So I had to be there by 3.30 pm, and I figured that I should plan a half an hour ahead, just in case I got lost. Since I was first of the group to arrive, I had a chance to look around the building, and though I had higher expectations (I pretty much always have high expectations), some parts of the education did gain my interest. Around ten minutes before start, a spanish girl arrived with her portfolio, which I asked if I could see. By the end of looking through her pages, I couldn't hold my grin for a second; I may sound arrogant, but she was no competition to me.
At 3.30 it was still just the two of us, and it turned out that four applicants haven't even arrived yet. After a few minutes two english villagers arrived, both boys, wearing similar clothing, baggy clothes and a baseball cap. It was time for us to go to the next room and fill out a questionnaire while the interviewer looked through all our portfolios. After that came the group interview where we had to discuss the questions found in the questionnaire. I assumed the purpose of holding the interview in groups was to compare the applicants, so I just started talking the hungarian way: making bullshit seem legit. And to be honest, I couldn't even take those questions seriously, especially after they wrote in the mail, that the purpose of this interview is for me to have fun. I was nervous though, so nervous I even stuttered a bit. The boys both managed to make some sense, though one was obviously smarter. The girl though, didn't even know what she was talking about. So in the end it was just the four of us, and even if I'd like to believe the rest never showed up, I did see two girls hanging around in the portfolio-room after we finished auditioning.
Two days later, I received an email stating the results, and I am happy to say that by next year, I'll be a university student for sure. Just not sure where yet.

Where am I now?
In the Netherlands, chilin' with my nephew, nieces and their parents, and getting ready for my third auditioning so far this year. Forgetting about school for a whole month is a good feeling ya'll!

Photoshoot

My friend, Dalmi came over the other day to photograph my handmade books, just because I'm applying to a Uni (chances=0, but she's a nice friend, who's glad to help anytime and in return I promised to model for some pictures later). She only had a camera, so we used natural light with a metal tray and a special way to form a kind-of white background.

WTF, right? I mean, look at her holding the metal tray with her leg and sometimes I had to play Miss Shadow, because it was just too bright, or hold up a white paper trying to reflect light on the other side! Nevertheless, it all payed off, because we had a lot of fun experimenting after a long time no see.
Eventhough she was pretty critical with herself, she did great, and the way she used her camera was like science to me. Well, actually I love science, I think it's fascinating, but handling a machine is so not my thing. :) Like alien language...

Oh yeah, I can bind books. Forgot to mention, haha.

So here are the results (after photoshopping out all those lines!):

The black book with the furry heart on it was a bitch! The pictures all came out weird and stuff. Real bunny fur though, I think the bunny came back to haunt us. Oh, but I'm innocent, I got the fur from my teacher at the bookbinding camp. I also have some other pictures that were made when the books were still fresh. So take a look.
The black little one was given away as a present (to Bear).

Somewhat

I somewhat like these, and I think that's totally fine.

Wunderbaum

Bring me to the cliff this December

Me and Bear. Christmas cards for this year.

Plastic Sight

A great alternative rock band. Logo.

Plastic Sight Facebook Page 

Check them out:

Memory of Bakonybél

Fall break came and I have been to Bakonybél for a few days. I was planning on painting wonderful forest sights dressed in autumn, but Sunday night the first snow fell. The next day we took a hike in the mountains and although I decided to paint another time, it was the most enjoyable day. Stepping on the fresh virgin snow and making it crunch under our old and dirty hiking boots, listening to the forest sounds; I never thought winter could be this beautiful. There were times I thought my ears would freeze off and I couldn't feel my toes anymore, but it was all worth it, and I would love to do it again.

One or two days later I simply couldn't resist sketching down a piece of memory from the hike I'd never want to forget. I didn't like the end result, so Bear told me he should have it. I had to mention him, because I'm utterly thankful for these few days. This sure was the best vacation I ever had and he was perfect at planning it all.

I named the sketch My Memory of Bakonybél.

Riot

First message. I didn't know watercolor that well when I made this, so there was a lot of struggling.

Still Death

I don't smoke, but I chose the ashtray in the shop. Had the urge to paint it ever since we bought it. It's a Still Life.

Shoe box

Self Portrait

That explains it all

Very recently, especially on and after the exhibition, many people have been asking me the question: Why Cyclop Bunny? I can only imagine how little sense it makes to the ones who haven't known me for years, and almost every time, I brushed it off, saying the story is too long and difficult to tell. But the questions just kept coming, and I needed to give the name some justice and a true meaning.
The problem is, when I tell people, that the explanation is related to inside jokes and some personal stuff, it makes them either uninterested or even more confused. Now that you know some basic information on the name, you can decide whether or not you want to continue reading! :)

Still with me?
Let's start off with the personal stuff. The reason it's Bunny, is simply because my boyfriend calls me bunny. And we'll just keep it at that, cuz let me say it out loud: You don't care about my love life.
And now the longer part, the Cyclop part, which is written incorrectly. (And there I was wondering why none of the CyclopBunny usernames were taken yet.) If you ever played the game, where you need to take a piece of paper, draw on a body part, fold the drawn part down so it's not visible to the others, switch papers, draw the next body part and so on, you must know, that's the moment when the most fucked up creatures are being created.
Well, how did it begin you say? Me, my boyfriend and another guy (who is irrelevant at this point) were sitting in a train on our way to Balaton, the lake of Hungary. Bored. And since I love to draw when I'm bored, it's just natural that I carried some pen and paper with me. Though my boyfriend also brought some stuff along, he couldn't beat his boredom, so we started playing that awkward game with awkward creatures, and these were some of the results:

You can already see a bunnyesque thing taking it's form, but in the end it's only the drunken bald lady that matters.

If you are blessed to have the ability of understanding the Hungarian language, you'll be able to read the text written below the weird lady, unless you have bad eyesight (turns out we all do), then hover over the picture to see the text appear. Otherwise use Google-translate to dampen your curiosity. (It won't make sense, I just wanted to troll.)

And this is the part where my boyfriend started to call me Tutu-wearing Cyclops Bunny, because he thought it was funny. So he kept calling me that, combined with an "evil but sweet" facial expression until my brain started to accept this name against my will. In the end he stopped the tutu-thing and started calling me Bunny again, but this name stuck with me, and here I am, trying to make excuses in order to save my ass from being looked at as a crazy person.
Even though it sounds more reasonable in Hungarian (TütüsKüklopszNyúl), I dropped the Tutu, because it didn't just make the name too long, but don't be kidding me, Tutu-wearing Cyclops Bunny (in English) sounds horrible as shit.
And why did it end up as Cyclop instead of Cyclops? Well, you might have already noticed, that my English sucks as hell, and I was thinking it should be Cyclop, because they only have one eye, so why should I use plural? (Cyclops is singular, as I discovered today)

To be Continued...

My very first Art Exhibition

Hello World!
Since I'm far behind from being good enough, and the lack of time I have these days, I never got a proper reason to start an art blog. But now that I'm sick, and after realizing, that without advertising myself right now, I will be nowhere after graduating, I thought why not?
My last push (and only motivation) to starting this was my very first Art Exhibition that I had a few days ago. And let's be honest, starting off a blog with my first exhibition is pretty neat.

Time and place
The exhibition took place in the Trafo Club, in Gödöllő, which is almost an hour away from Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Unfortunately, because of this, only a few of my friends could come and see me, but that doesn't mean I wasn't happy or satisfied. In fact, the 21st of September 2012 was one of the happiest days of my life. The sea of love I received that day was just unbelievable!
It started at 8 p.m., and I was super nervous since I was the greenest and youngest of all the artists, but my friends kept encouraging me and in the end I wasn't that bad, I guess.

this was my stand

I still feel I didn't deserve this, though I'm proud that I managed to come to this day this early. All the people were proud of me, and that's the main reason I felt happy that day.