Undergraduate / It is a bizarre thought; Where's Waldo Really? [3]

Please help with my essay! I don't know if this is the right sort of thing. I don't really say much about myself and don't know how to include it. (i'm well aware that this is very very last minute!)

Who is this character, this entity that is 'Waldo', or 'Wally' as we call him in the UK? And why are we trying to find him?

What do we gain out of scouring a piece of paper in a book, looking for him? Prizes do not miraculously spring out of the pages. There is no X Factor style elimination round with the best Waldo finder being crowned as having the 'W Factor' and a million pound contract to keep finding Waldos. The most we can gain is a sense of achievement, or in my case, coincidentally being given a 'Where's Wally?' advent calendar for Christmas, a daily piece of chocolate. But maybe that doesn't count, since finding someone I had already found before, on a daily basis, has hardly been taxing.

The short-lived sense of achievement we feel after finding Waldo is soon replaced by, well, nothing. The only thing left to do is to turn the page and search again, a fruitless cycle of finding and losing, much like the relationship I have with my Blackberry.

The thing that really perplexes me, and in turn fascinates me most about Waldo, is that when you really consider it, Waldo is nothing more than an arrangement of ink on a piece of paper.

It is a bizarre thought, obviously not only with Waldo, special as he is, but also with the plethora of drawn characters that exist on the pages of our books and on the television screen. In fact, it brings into light the whole concept of representation and therefore the entirety of art in the traditional sense.

Man has been creating imagery since prehistoric times and we are the only beings to do so. We are familiar with the 'primative' imagery that embodies our idea of the cave man, largely bringing to mind images of simply drawn wildlife, herds of bison consisting of the repetition of rectangles embellished with legs and horns and stick men wielding flint spears. Surely it is a deception of the visual senses if a simple assemblage of lines and shapes is perceived as a representation of the human form or an animal?

Waldo is nothing like the Vitruvian example of a Homo Sapiens. First of all, the bodily proportions are all wrong, his head much too big. There is no muscular definition or curvature in his limbs. He is, basically, a glorified stick man. And the face. Who ever saw a face shaped so very identically to a very tall cup? It is a shape much more suited to being filled with freshly squeezed orange juice. We can surely conclude, Waldo is not very human in form in the slightest. This phenomenon of perceiving faces in inanimate objects, such as in the moon and those hilarious images of toasters having a conversation, is known as 'pareidolia'. You might be thinking, this is completely different, he was meant to be seen as a figure! Yes, but the techniques in drawing him only work because of this occurrence.

What is stranger is the sense of nostalgia and attachment associated with Waldo, and also his personality, which somehow is so aptly exuded, his appeal something that cannot be pinpointed but is summed up through the 'Waldo' aesthetic. He is somebody we can relate to, expressed through his simple outfit, lanky body and nerdy glasses. He is certainly the antithesis of other drawn characters such as Clark Kent or the Hulk. The 'Where's Waldo' books are textually sparse, we create and deduce this personality ourselves from the drawn images we are presented with.

The power of the drawn image is something that I find completely and utterly fascinating. The artist of the Waldo cartoons Martin Handford obviously designed Waldo in this way completely and utterly intentionally, playing on the way we see and the way our brain interprets visuals. The artist has the power of creating something that has never existed before, something that is not just an image but a stream of associations, memories and in this case, hours of enjoyment.

Waldo doesn't really exist, neither in the pages of our books or on our computer screens. But where he does exist is in the mind of Martin Handford. The little man capering through the African Sahara or lounging in the sand in the Caribbean that we are presented with is nothing but a mere projection and communication of the character that Handford built up in his mind and wished to share with the world.

Undergraduate / My own little interesting world; Georgetown Self Description Essay [3]

Ok so I wrote this for Georgetown and I'm not sure whether it's good enough and whether it gives the right impression. Please give me some feedback???

Thanks. (i know it is horrendously last minute)

Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you.

I hear the sound of my favorite band, I think it would be best to refrain from saying who for fear of embarrassing myself, blaring through my mobile phone. After clicking the snooze button a few times, my body awakes, and I arise. I have no idea what I am doing at college today and I like the feeling.

Wrapped up warm in art-school appropriate clothing, stylish yet resistant to the possibility of being doused in oil paint, I set out the door of my student accommodation where I am to be spending the next year, and onto the streets of East London, in my opinion the most intriguing part of the city.

I walk past swathes of diverse people, noting the expression in people's faces, wondering who they are and what life is like living behind those eyes. Pavement sprawls before me, chewing gum smattered, and I pass a shop advertising 'Jack the Ripper' tours and I wonder, what stood where I am standing 200 years ago? I might go home and research the mass-murderer later in a futile attempt to understand the motive behind such actions.

The shops on Whitechapel Road are culturally diverse. I pass a Starbucks, a branch that I have vowed not to enter in loyalty to the plethora of beautifully quaint cafes that occupy the expanse of Brick Lane, before passing an Islamic gift shop and a mosque. I marvel at the towering minarets and if I'm lucky, the bellowing call to prayer given by the resident muezzin. The smell of freshly cooked samosa from a Brick Lane curry house brings me back to my Indian roots.

Before I get on the tube, I peer into the neighboring Whitechapel Gallery. With its frequently changing exhibitions I am fearful of missing anything. I glance upwards, never tiring of the building's new addition, a beautiful golden tangle of climbing ivy made in metal and gold leaf, fixed onto the exterior of the building by Turner Prize winning artist Rachel Whiteread, a commission in celebration of the 2012 Olympics. Sometimes looking up and out in life can have unexpected benefits.

I spy a book on Installation Art that I have been lusting after for weeks in the window of the Gallery Shop and struggle to stop myself from going in and purchasing it, reminding myself that I have to get to college on time and that I must save and not spend the money I receive from my part-time job. Plus, I am already struggling under the weight of all my sketchbooks and reference books.

I make it onto the tube on time, as always, and settle down into my seat. I always ponder the thought that I am currently sharing such a small space and ritual of life, the commute, with a group of people I will probably never see again. I put on my headphones and close my eyes, anticipating the song that will come up on shuffle, pleased at hearing the opening broken chords of Holst's 'Jupiter', one of my favorite pieces of Classical music due to its strong ability to conjure up images in my mind's eye, before the song changes to a Bollywood hit, reminding me of the time I danced to it with my school's Asian dance troupe.

I see one of my classmates on the other side of the carriage, fervently waving. I smile before receding back into my world. The same occurrence on the way home would be a different story altogether and I will relish the chance to excitedly chat about the day's events, reflecting on what I learned and the progress of my current project. Perhaps I will moan a little about how I have too many ideas and not enough time to fulfill them all or that the school does not provide Rodin-esque marble carving classes, because how cool would that be? Mornings are my time to be in my own company and to ready myself for the rest of the day.

As soon as I step into the crumbling yet charming building that is Central St. Martin's my day properly begins and I set into action, the internal whirring of my brain transfers into outward communication and action. I set to work. And this is where my description must end because I do not know where my day will take me. Perhaps I will re-discover automatic drawing and spend the rest of the day reading Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams', or spend the day, and therefore the next few subsequent weeks for hours on end striving for nothing less than perfection, trying to capture the essence of a classmate using nothing but oil paint and a 2D surface to work upon. I will think, 'Why am I doing this when it is so easy to just take a photo?', prompting my tutor suggesting me to read Baudelaire's 'The Painter of Modern Life'. I prefer it this way, I prefer not to know. I like being in the kitchen with a bunch of ingredients and concocting something up, I like getting on my bike and seeing where my peddles will take me. Some may say that I'm in 'my own little world', but I think it is a very interesting place to be.