Up out of habit

It's been a long day. It started early with a nice breakfast of eggs, toast, and tea with my husband, even though he's not feeling amazing.

Session four of talking to kids about drawing went pretty well. The mass of the class has been weeded down to six or so girls. While I'm sad that I failed to engage the ones who aren't showing up any more, short sessions mean that I have to give a targeted lesson, which has a narrow scope of interest. If you're not interested in learning anatomy, there's not much I can do.

Hm. Focus on the good things. To go along with the torso references I had printed in the handouts that I whipped up last night, I projected a few on the whiteboard and had a few of them step up and practice locating the skull, ribcage, and shoulder line of the references by tracing them on the whiteboard. There was also a cool moment of teaching how the collarbone indicates what someone's shoulders are doing.

The biggest struggle is getting them to find the sweet spot of sketching fast to achieve line control and drawing slow to achieve line accuracy.

I always feel like I'm drawing poorly around them. My demo drawings are usually done while I'm talking and also working fast because time is so limited. But I feel like they're awful and don't properly illustrate what I'm trying to convey. BLEH.

Got home, tried to restart my day by doing some reading that I hoped would turn into a nap. It didn't, but I found the passage of past continuous that I've been waiting for.

Waiting is the wrong word. It implies that I needed or expected it to happen, neither of which are true. Even if the whole book had passed without something like this particular scene occurring, I wouldn't count it as a waste of time. Shabtai's style is, without a doubt, an acquired taste. I'm glad I've acquired it, but even without me adapting to his rambling style, I would have seen the scene of Israel and his roommate's lady friend throwing a knife at the wooden board as beautiful. It is at risk of falling into my own personal trope of "every emotion leads to sex", and also does nothing to buck the trend of nobody in the book being both happy and faithful, but I still enjoyed it. After reading the passage once, I immediately thought "this needs to be a poem" and wrote down the concept and the page number on a sticky note.

Maybe I should have taken a stab at it then. I'm sure not in the mood now. But I give this rhyme some effort and time...

what moves?


Outside my window
small ones dwell
between the leaves
and in the well.

Sometimes they dance
while I do sleep;
more oft in dreams
I hear them weep.

They curse the caging
garden wall
each time winds bring
the wild's call.

I mourn with them:
I have roots, too,
but I can hide
from freedom's view.

There, I found the energy to double the size! And I avoided referring to the sky as blue! Twice the victory.

Between reading my book and reaching this point of stretching my brain, I discovered another season of CSI:NY on Netflix, sorted a couple thousand files, and eked out some pages of drawing in my sketchbook, including prelim doodles for one of those opportunities I've been considering.

This is not those doodles (but the bird in the upper right is one of my favorite things right now):



Oh, that reminds me to share this mind-blowing-ly bizarre music video.