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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Not getting up to speed

I really thought I would be steaming ahead full speed by now, following the new year, but it isn't happening. Well, that isn't exactly true, since I'm going at a pretty good pace, but some things are still on the back burner--like blogging. I felt very smug that I got my 2008 records sorted and in a box, so I can attend to tax matters when the time comes. Then, I learned that a package I shipped to Washington state on Dec. 31 still hadn't arrived by Jan. 13, and I couldn't find the receipt to track the package. I spent hours looking at every piece of paper in the box and it didn't turn up. Since I had shipped a number of packages in December, I didn't recall which shipper I had used, so I called around and finally found the one that had the record. The package was on the truck to be delivered that day. But I didn't get anything else done for hours.

Then, our kitchen sink stopped up and we had to wait a couple of days for repair. Then.... Oh, rats, it just goes on...the water softener overflowed and there was a delay in service on that. And it has been bitterly cold, which is no surprise in Ohio in January, but just adds to the tension. What would I do without hot mocha?

My Hithergreen class is in full swing. The lessons on portraits have gone well. Two weeks ago I discussed the proportions of the head and features. This has been their main hangup, along with foreshortening. On Monday this week, I brought in a portrait-in-progress of my granddaughter to show them how I used a grid to enlarge the photograph. Then I started a portrait demo of a fashion model, to show them one way to do portraits--washing in the shadow planes with Davy's Gray, then glazing with flesh tones, a combination of yellow ochre and cadmium red. The final touch was a splash of permanent rose on the cheeks, forehead, tips of the nose and chin. I try not to take too much time in demonstrating, because they don't have much time to paint in a 2-hour class.

Their assignment is to do a self-portrait or caricature for next week, which should be fun. I don't plan to finish the demo, but I'm looking forward to working on my granddaughter's portrait. Time, where art thou?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Victoria on Okinawa said...

I know exactly what you mean about time getting away from you, I constantly have to remind myself of what I did get done even if only a little bit of art being done is better than nothing. Sounds like you have been doing much even in all these trials that pulled you away from your art plans. Portrait class sounds great, too bad it can't be done through the internet.

2:44 AM  
Blogger Nita said...

Classes can be done on the Internet, I just don't know how to do it!

9:26 AM  

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