end of first day at school

so sad. i tried to upload photies of Opus One (a wee mini poster study. not actually that exciting) as well as a couple of shots of my newly decorated bedroom (i moved the furniture around. it's now a full-on french garret artistique, bed & wardrobe at one end, and dropcloth & easel at the other end, next to the window) but the escargot carrying the electrons down the french information superhighway wires are all unionized and it's a bank holiday or something, so no go. L also said she tried posting a couple of figure drawings she'd done on her myspace page and got scary warnings that nude images were strictly forbidden (!). you'd think what with all the pornography out there in the world that a 5" x 7" splodgy painting of a fat lady would not get anyone riled up, but i guess it takes all sorts, and i'm not going to spend half an hour uploading photos if blogspot is going to come hunt me down and threaten me with excommunication when i have only been a blogger for 24 hours.
i forgot to say in my last post that i went to angers yesterday with C (40 something, lady from michigan. ex-gallery owner. husband with surgical instrument company - how cool is that??) to stock up on supplies - the airline stole all her paints and brushes, and i wanted to buy a couple of extra things i didn't have, like a nifty light transportable easel (what i now know the word for in french, ooh la la, having had to look it up in my dictionary so i could ask the art store lady for one) - and i found a whole lot of cheapy prints at a used book store that i can (with all my free time haha) make master copies of. lots of pale green medieval madonnas getting annunciated to (my faves), some dutch old mastery things, some fat italian angels, a deliciously fierce looking zurbaran, some ingres... i have scotch-taped them up all over my faux marble fireplace to inspire me.
sausages for dinner tonight! mm. huge thunderstorm last night.
goal for the next 12 hours: spend at least 8 of them sleeping, and then go for a run.
love to all...

first day of school...

ooh this is so exciting, sending my blathering out into the ether. i have never had a blog before. hello everyone!! how are you?? hopefully only nice people i know are reading this, and no scary stalking psychopath pervert-type people.
so today was le premier jour of classe here at studio E and holy f*** the other students are good. way way way out of my league and trying not to squeak about it. although this morning was only a demo by the teacher, people were sort of casually knocking off brilliant little sketches to remind themselves of things as she talked, and it was kind of funny, because you think someone looks like a fairly normal dude and you look over and sneak a peek at their notebook and realize, goodness, hello second-reincarnation-of-leonardo, who knew. but anyway. this afternoon we are going to start our Very First Poster Study, which means blocking out very basic blobs of colour on a minicanvas for first go-round practice in preparation for a real painting, as well as a quickie lesson for the beginner painters in things like how to lay out a palette, clean your brushes, etc.
jetlag is still painful but i stayed awake until TEN O'CLOCK last night!! very exciting. internet connection still dubious - i am poaching time on very nice roommate's computer to do this. G downstairs is playing with mr. meep's etch-a-sketch (thank you to G and Mr. meep) to see if it can be convinced to work. hopefully the internet is out there somewhere...
anyway. love to everyone. if the etch-a-sketch cooperates, more later.