Surviving first days of school

Well I survived my first week of school. Only had one class in each of my three subjects, and for the most part have to say they were somewhat a waste of time. Well unless you like getting lectures about how you have to attend classes to get a good grade - like DUH, but since most of the students in the class are just out of high school where I guess attending classes has become optional this needs to be stressed. Still it got very old about the 3rd time I heard it. Also since they don't pre-hand out what class supply requirements are there wasn't much we could do. I did haul my books and some other supplies with me, but in the classes we needed to do some drawing in paper and pecils were provided.

Drawing class, that was my first class on Tuesday, we had a slide show of various artists drawings, and our instructor told us that he likes to teach beginning drawing (YEAH, that is always good news) but he likes charcoal - which I hate - so messy, oh well. After the slide show he had us do a couple of exercises, we had to finish a drawing which at first glance looks like a globlet, but is really two profiles facing each other, then we had to reproduce one of 3 drawings, while looking at them upside down. First image is what we were drawing, but right side up so you can see what it is Next image will be what I managed to do. Hmm no comments















On Wednesday I had two classes, computer graphics - where we will be learning Adobe Photo Shop, Illustrator, and Quark Express (actually it will be Adobe's new program for book design called InDesign) We are supposed to be at least conversant if not experts by the end of the term. We will see. Oh yes the instructor informed us that the room we meet in has dubious heating, there is one heater that works in the room but in order to be heard above the noise it makes he tends to shut it off during class (burr) not sure how well I am going to cope with that, I hate being cold, and it makes it difficult for me to concentrate on anything other than being cold. ICK. My afternoon class is Color and Design, we have a book for that one which I have started reading. Art Fundamentals, Theory and Practice. The first chapter is a dozy, with the introduction of the vocabulary they want to use throughout the book. I have to admit I am having a hard time with some of the concepts they introduce. Form (the how), Subject (the what) and Content (the why) which are supposed to form a Organic Unity, describing these they have a lot of multi-syllable words like Naturalism, Realism, Semi abstract, and abstraction. I suppose the point of this is so that the instructors can critique our work using words that we will understand, but I really and truly doubt that most artists spend a lot of time thinking about some of these things when they create art (sigh) Especially when they talk about how art comes from the artist subconscious which I do feel is true. Ah well, I think the instructor thinks some of this is a load of bunk also - she appears to be very down to earth and practical. For this class we had to draw some fruits and vegetables that we are going to be using in Monday's class. Should be interesting.

On the home front I have been working on a small wall hanging where I am abstracting (grin) christmas cactus flowers from a photo I took last December. I have the background pieced and am working on the top. I should be doing that now instead of this, but wanted to get the blog updated before heading into classes which are bound to be much more demanding then last weeks.