state of the art

omgosh. art is hard. why don't people tell you that??? i suspect every person has some sort of creative bone in his or her boday - ha. i wrote boday instead of body. anyway, i'm sure everyone could be artistic, but many people choose not to be. and now i know why. its hard.

i signed up for an acrylic painting class at the bcae. i've had two classes. and its hard. BUT i really like it. so i may have found a pasttime. !!

for the first class, i walked in not even a minute late and everyone (4 people and the instructor) were busily drawing. drawing?? no one told me there would be drawing! i can't draw. drawing is hard. doodle. i can doodle reeeal good. but not draw. and besides, aren't i taking a PAINTING class?? i didnt know you had to do one to do the other. sigh.

so i start drawing. and she teaches us some things that we can do to test proportions and dimensions and stuff. that was helpful. the "sculpture" we were supposed to draw was SUPER boring. it was a white vase with a white shell and a white saucer and a white mug and a white bowl. the point was we were going to be painting using only white and black. to learn about shadows. so i draw part of the sculpture and the instructor, anna, i think, came over and helped me. but i didnt like it. so she said i could start over. i so i erased it and decided to draw the spotlight that was lighting up the "sculpture." so this is what i drew.

i actually don't think it looks that bad. and then she tells me i can start painting. and everyone else has moved on to painting. and so i just sit there. i have NO IDEA what to do. like... i can figure out that i should pick up the paint brush. is that one word? paintbrush? i guess so. i picked up the paintbrush and just kind of LOOKED at the white and black paint she has squirted out for me. where do i start? do i mix? and everyone has water at their station. am i supposed to use water?? i had NO IDEA what to do. i waited a few minutes for her to make her rounds again and then i was like "umm... i have never painted before. i have no idea what to do." she was like "oh, do you do anything artistic for work?" and i said "nope. i sit at a desk and work on spreadsheets." i think she finally understood. she was dealing with a novice. painting virgin, in fact. she picked up the brush and put it in the water and then mixed a few colors and just kind of went with it. she gave me some tips and i started. it was super hard. i mean, difficult. it was sooo difficult. and she kept coming by and encouraging me, complimenting me, in fact. she then said "it looks like a graphic novel." and i didnt really get what she meant until we put our paintings up at the end of class. i, of course, was the asshole who didn't follow directions and painted something TOTALLY different from everyone else. but once i stood back, i could tell it DID kind of look like a graphic drawing. here it is.

i told my friend alissa about my class and she was like "only you would assume you could come into something and do it really well the first time." i was like "yeah, i had NO IDEA how hard it was!" then we had homework. the homework was to take a painting thats already been done (something famous, most likely) and then print it in black and white and paint it. anna actually had 4 printouts for everyone, but there were now six people in class, so i offered to find my own painting. i looked up my famous painter, charles dwyer and found a painting that i liked. here is a link to the actual thing at gallery m. here is a picture of the black and white photo i printed out.