Printmaking and a lot of careful erasing of earlier pencil lines before I matted the triptych. My teacher agreed that I’d made the right choice about not colouring the background. I called the submission “Vegetables Matter”. There is fruit involved as well however; it’s the vegetables that really matter to this composition in my mind. I glued the lino square piece and rectangular border piece bringing them home to work on – I’ve started some sketching looking for an idea.
The painting teacher was away and we had a supply teacher who read the paper and bantered but had nothing valuable to do or say about the work. We set up our easels and an arrangement – I suggested a change to a few other objects in the room (boot and basket for example) and we gamely tried thumbnails. When the break came, most took off perhaps planning to return in the afternoon for the sculpting studio. I enjoyed a round of gossip with a few of my classmates – dishing the teachers – many of us have the same impressions of the various styles.
Printmaking studio is also on Tuesday afternoons and I’ve not gone for either – the time seemed better for laundry so that Wednesday I could sleep late. The midnight MRI kept me up late Tuesday night.
Thursday was a bit of a bore in Art History. The teacher had thrown together heavily text laden (copied and pasted) slides with events from Canadian Art History. He hadn’t read them over and made lots of mistakes in reading stuff he clearly didn’t know and could care less about until he got to the politically bent events of the past few years. I did get a chance to run my attributions project by him (5 pages) and I was off the mark in a few parts. He wants a much larger display on poster board that includes an analysis and all needs to be able to be easily read like a poster.
Having an extra hour for lunch inspired me to go to Midoco to get items from my classes required materials lists. I asked M to accompany me. It was her first time there and she got a pencil sharpener while I loaded up on supplies from poster board, cartridge paper and more newsprint to charcoal pencil, 2B pencil, a 2008 Day-Timer, India ink and tools that will work for sculpting and ceramics. $60 +
M came home with me for lunch – she had her bagel and I my sandwich and we talked a lot – mostly about family. M nervous about presenting on Cubism in sculpting class so it was good to distract her from her stack of cue card notes for a while. She did very well. She came to out teacher a number of times and to others (me too) as she worked on it and we got a lot of information as a result.
I thought I’d completed my clay maquette and could start on my plaster carving however teacher says I need to have the shapes coming from a deeper place within the figure. His assistant tells me it's a positive sign if he says he wants more - it means he thinks I've got more in me to give. That he wouldn't bother if he thought it was the best I could do... Good strategy. I also need to show him my proposed medal design for both sides of the piece. He gave a demonstration for preparing the Klean Klay models. Later, he soaked L’s plaster cast and demonstrated how to start carving the wet plaster with a knife and other implements. A few of us got quite a giggle from the very obvious sex organs implied by the piece. Such naughty children.
Today, figure drawing with the same older male model as last week. He had his staffs with him for his heroic poses. The longest pose today was an hour. But first we warmed up with 20sec-20sec gestural drawings – 10 total. Then we had a 20 minute contour drawing. For all of my impatience with contour drawing, when we did the one where we could look at what we were doing, I found I had improved. For my final (hour) drawing, I used pencil instead of conte and found it much easier to get line variety. Teacher commented favourably on the line quality as well as on my capturing the musculature effectively.
I see a bit of progress happening. In between drawings some banter among the guys and me – I seem to be allowing my sense of humour to flit about from time to time. I’m sure that’s much better than any tendency to bitch and grumble. I did however report to our acting principal that the conditions of the washrooms are unacceptable and unhygienic – disease waiting to happen. Disinfectant must be used!
And on that bright and shining note, I wind up another week’s notes. I have plans to do a bit more art supply shopping in Chinatown area. I also have in mind to work on sketches for both lino project and medal project over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
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