...came this afternoon from the dentist. i had asked him to email me a copy of my x-rays, and the jpeg arrived in my inbox today with the following message:
'dear mlle, here you radio dentaire panoramique. greeting, guillaume g. (dentiste).' for those who care about my teeth (parental types...) good news: i have a permanent filling as of this morning in what turned out to be not such a big cavity after all, and as long as my teeth feel OK, i am good to go apparently. my molar is a little sore, and i actually drooled on a drawing in class later in the morning when my mouth was still asleep - all elegance and sophistication, as usual - but i am enjoying the novel sensation of being able to chew on both sides of my mouth again. so 'ip 'ip 'ooray pour monsieur le dentiste and his torture instruments.
i finished not one but TWO projects today - a master copy drawring and my First Real Painting. three days ahead of schedule, even. i am going to devote the last three days we have painting krystle to a study of her feet. feet are hard, man. they are a weird shape, and then that whole toe business is just for the birds.
ce soir we had a major editing session - M has written an article for international artist magazine on her charcoal/sanguine portraits, and C and i went through it with her to fix up the english prior to submission. then of course we ended up looking again at her portfolio, and then some of the photos that she has drawn/painted from, then photos of C's trip to the coast, then brochures/maps of some of the local chateaux etc. that they have visited, then we had to try some new posh chocolate that M had... oy oy oy. three hours later i finally staggered home to bed.
artichokes with aioli tonight (in celebration of the fact i will not be having to breathe on the dentist again any time soon...) i am thwarted in my brussel sprout preparation by the fact that i am out of butter. do i hold out for friday market and risk the sprouts going even more yucky than brussel sprouts are at baseline, or do i cave to the evils of corporate food purchasing and go to the shopi to buy butter? i will do a fridge revision tomorrow and see if i can make it until friday.
reading materials: stormed through 'in search of j.d. salinger,' a biography of sort about the world's least accessible author, which made me very antsy to reread the entire salinger oeuvre, (even though he really does _not_ sound like a nice man). now onto another biography, about hildegard of bingen, which is proving quite interesting - all i knew about her was medeival nun composer, and there is so much more, as it turns out: obsessive letterwriter (she corresponded with all kinds of popey emperory type people), doctor (of sorts; her cure for jaundice involved a concussed bat strapped to your loins. no instructions on how to concuss the bat in the first place), possible lesbian (this i think is a little farfetched on the part of the biographer, but i guess is to be expected if you are writing about an extremely forceful proto-feminist nun), spiritual guru, author.... like tom lehrer says, by the time mozart was my age, he had been dead for three years. shit, all i have done today is have a tooth drilled, do a bit of drawring, a bit of typing, and pick my nose.
okay time for schnozzling.
Monday 29 September 2008
Sunday 28 September 2008
babies, bunnies, brussel sprouts, and a big hole in my teeth
well, the biggest news of my day actually happened yesterday in berkeley - T's BABY was born, theo scott, 7# something, born at home, everyone healthy from the sounds of things. i just got the announcement email this evening, and i got totally teary reading it. i was expecting to feel a bit bummed to be so far away when it happened and not be able to go visit in the first few days, but even i was surprised at what a sentimental goober i am, and how incredibly sad i felt to not be able to just ring and invite myself over to see them. anyway. he's awfully cute, and from the pics posted looks just like his grandmother. i have actually been feeling a little bit homesick all day - i think it was passing the one month mark.
in the category of less exciting news, i went to the dentist on friday (that required a trip to the megametropolis of neuil les aubiers, pop 2000, twenty minutes away) and was told i had a cavity that might or might not require a root canal :(. the dentist is going to do a temporary filling for me tomorrow, and if the nerve does OK with that for two weeks, i can have a permanent filling, but if not, it's going to be un big deal. no fun. the extra sad part of the whole story is that i may have to give up on my corporate-food boycott, as i have dentist appointments now nearly every friday from here until halloween, which will mean missing farmer's market day. on the whole, better to have teeth with which to eat less healthy food than good food but no teeth. on the upside, i am feeling quite proud of myself for having an entire conversation with the dentist re: what was bothering me, previous medical history, demographic info, x-rays, payment info (fifty euros for the whole thing! i love socialized medicine) in french. i mean, ideally i would be having fluent conversations with tall dark handsome millionaires about how they wanted to fly me to monaco in their private jet after toasting me with premier vintage dom perignon, but barring that, having conversations about cavities with pudgy french dentists with coke bottle glasses is pretty good.
friday night we had a party - bunny-themed, per the instructions of the hosts; i went as MC's zombie rabbit, with a tumour painted onto my face and a ball of cotton wool pinned onto my bum. krystle was a futuristic techno bunny, packed into an electric blue cat suit and cotton wool ears and tail; Head Honcho was a bun-dertaker, with a rabbit skull from their garden pinned to his black suit; H was a rabbot - rabbit robot - in a tinfoil covered cardboard box, with a computerized menu on her chest from which you could select Eat Hop Dance or Destroy.... etc. lots of fun.
for those who are keeping track (and there seem to be an alarming number :) i think the brussel sprout prize is going to go to S. i haven't made them yet, but her recipe involves butter and pecans and she promises it will make the sprouts taste like french fries. although i think making brussel sprouts edible by pairing them with ketchup might be cheating, i am willing to go as far as butter and pecans... la mama was automatically disqualified because she started her instructions with 'boil the sprouts...' thanks to all who participated; if S's recipe is good, i will buy some more sprouts so we can have a silver medalist. the next challenge will be making beetroot palatable...
thanks again to all the lovelies who have written me emails - it is so nice to get messages from home. wish me luck avec le dentiste demain...
in the category of less exciting news, i went to the dentist on friday (that required a trip to the megametropolis of neuil les aubiers, pop 2000, twenty minutes away) and was told i had a cavity that might or might not require a root canal :(. the dentist is going to do a temporary filling for me tomorrow, and if the nerve does OK with that for two weeks, i can have a permanent filling, but if not, it's going to be un big deal. no fun. the extra sad part of the whole story is that i may have to give up on my corporate-food boycott, as i have dentist appointments now nearly every friday from here until halloween, which will mean missing farmer's market day. on the whole, better to have teeth with which to eat less healthy food than good food but no teeth. on the upside, i am feeling quite proud of myself for having an entire conversation with the dentist re: what was bothering me, previous medical history, demographic info, x-rays, payment info (fifty euros for the whole thing! i love socialized medicine) in french. i mean, ideally i would be having fluent conversations with tall dark handsome millionaires about how they wanted to fly me to monaco in their private jet after toasting me with premier vintage dom perignon, but barring that, having conversations about cavities with pudgy french dentists with coke bottle glasses is pretty good.
friday night we had a party - bunny-themed, per the instructions of the hosts; i went as MC's zombie rabbit, with a tumour painted onto my face and a ball of cotton wool pinned onto my bum. krystle was a futuristic techno bunny, packed into an electric blue cat suit and cotton wool ears and tail; Head Honcho was a bun-dertaker, with a rabbit skull from their garden pinned to his black suit; H was a rabbot - rabbit robot - in a tinfoil covered cardboard box, with a computerized menu on her chest from which you could select Eat Hop Dance or Destroy.... etc. lots of fun.
for those who are keeping track (and there seem to be an alarming number :) i think the brussel sprout prize is going to go to S. i haven't made them yet, but her recipe involves butter and pecans and she promises it will make the sprouts taste like french fries. although i think making brussel sprouts edible by pairing them with ketchup might be cheating, i am willing to go as far as butter and pecans... la mama was automatically disqualified because she started her instructions with 'boil the sprouts...' thanks to all who participated; if S's recipe is good, i will buy some more sprouts so we can have a silver medalist. the next challenge will be making beetroot palatable...
thanks again to all the lovelies who have written me emails - it is so nice to get messages from home. wish me luck avec le dentiste demain...
Friday 26 September 2008
more photos...
C and head honcho
le roi charles finis
M's drawing of me
ted seth jacobs trompe-l'oeil violin
at TSJ's house
tsj trompe-l'oueil nymphet
tsj painting
tsj stairway mural
more tsj stairway mural
tsj trompe-l'oueil fridge!
Thursday 25 September 2008
brussel sprout cooking competition!
the weather thing is now confirmed beyond a doubt, by the way. cool and misty this morning, then i went for a run, and the clouds disappeared. i hope i don't come down with something that keeps me in bed for a week - i can just see the headlines now. Unprecedented Tsunami Hits Loire Valley; Village Under Ten Feet of Water. no, no. must stay healthy and active.
today i went to the bakery (baker now back from her vacances) for the very first time. so exciting. the official mission was to buy bread, but i decided (since i was there) that i should also perform a community service (you know me, give, give, give) and make sure the pain aux raisins were of acceptable quality (pleased to report that they were). i am worried, however, about their tarte au citron; i may have to do a repeat visit to inspect those more closely.
i learned a fun new word at the market this morning - betterave (beetroot) - disgusting to eat, but such a good time to say. i was also briefly possessed by aliens, who made me buy a bag of brussel sprouts, which i hate, but because i have had so many people tell me that i only hate them because i have never had them prepared properly, i am holding a competition. if you think you know the best way to cook brussel sprouts, email me your recipe, and if you can convince me that brussel sprouts are actually delicious, you will win a super fantastic prize (a painting of a brussel sprout?) and my eternal amazement and gratitude. you have 48 hours. if i don't get any takers in that time, i am sauteeing them in butter with salt and garlic, and if they are still disgusting, they are going to the donkey. (we have started a collection bag of donkey food, in lieu of compost - any fruits/veggies that are starting to go a bit funny, L takes to give to the donkey. the donkey LOVES L. i think it might try to come back to the states with her.
drawing so-so today - i decided to try doing a portrait with the two days of this pose we had left, and it was terrible horrible no good very bad, so instead i switched to a systematic program of phobia eradication, drawing nothing but eyes, noses, mouths, ears, bits between mouth and nose which i think is the hardest part of the face to draw, hands, and feet). i'll take another whack at the portrait tomorrow. painting much better - i am almost almost done with the figure (except for one leg and the feet. if the model loses her lower limbs in a tragic chainsaw accident over the weekend, i suppose i could be done sooner, but realistically it will be another two days of leg/feet, two days for drapery, and then a day for finishing touches/starting something else/whatever). the painting does not meet my basic artwork standard of "if i saw this for sale at a garage sale for $5, would i buy it?" but i don't think i have ever painted anything which meets that standard, so ??? we'll see what it looks like when done.
we had M&P over for dinner tonight with their two little girls (who spent most of the time jumping on my bed - there are probably a few new cracks in the ceiling plaster as a result, and i will find out soon how the bedsprings fared, but they had a good time doing it). we had a show after dinner (the elder standing on a chair in the kitchen singing, the younger doing spazzy three-year-old interpretive dancing as accompaniment - with her stuffed goose). very cute. i scored some points for being the only person there who knew all the words to 'three little monkeys jumping on the bed' - the elder had learned it at school in canada before she left, but didn't remember all the words. (neither of the girls really speaks english, as they go to french school in quebec, and obviously speak french at home, but luckily L and i speak fluent macaroni-cheese-with-chocolate-eclairs-for-pudding, so we were able to communicate without too much difficulty).
martin scores extra points (personalized shout-out in the blog - you've hit the bigtime now, baby!) for the most eloquent epitaph anyone has ever composed for me, which i would like to share with you all:
'here lies j., beginning to molder,
she was famous in france for her perfect shoulder.'
koan-like in its simplicity, and yet, i think, it speaks volumes. thank you, martin. that's truly beautiful. i will share it with the teacher on sunday when we are back in class. not to blow my own horn, here, or anything, but today she said my left hip was 'quite good.' dizzying heights of praise... :)
okay, time for bed - notre weekend starts tomorrow and i have big plans to NOT get out of bed at half past six...
love to all!
today i went to the bakery (baker now back from her vacances) for the very first time. so exciting. the official mission was to buy bread, but i decided (since i was there) that i should also perform a community service (you know me, give, give, give) and make sure the pain aux raisins were of acceptable quality (pleased to report that they were). i am worried, however, about their tarte au citron; i may have to do a repeat visit to inspect those more closely.
i learned a fun new word at the market this morning - betterave (beetroot) - disgusting to eat, but such a good time to say. i was also briefly possessed by aliens, who made me buy a bag of brussel sprouts, which i hate, but because i have had so many people tell me that i only hate them because i have never had them prepared properly, i am holding a competition. if you think you know the best way to cook brussel sprouts, email me your recipe, and if you can convince me that brussel sprouts are actually delicious, you will win a super fantastic prize (a painting of a brussel sprout?) and my eternal amazement and gratitude. you have 48 hours. if i don't get any takers in that time, i am sauteeing them in butter with salt and garlic, and if they are still disgusting, they are going to the donkey. (we have started a collection bag of donkey food, in lieu of compost - any fruits/veggies that are starting to go a bit funny, L takes to give to the donkey. the donkey LOVES L. i think it might try to come back to the states with her.
drawing so-so today - i decided to try doing a portrait with the two days of this pose we had left, and it was terrible horrible no good very bad, so instead i switched to a systematic program of phobia eradication, drawing nothing but eyes, noses, mouths, ears, bits between mouth and nose which i think is the hardest part of the face to draw, hands, and feet). i'll take another whack at the portrait tomorrow. painting much better - i am almost almost done with the figure (except for one leg and the feet. if the model loses her lower limbs in a tragic chainsaw accident over the weekend, i suppose i could be done sooner, but realistically it will be another two days of leg/feet, two days for drapery, and then a day for finishing touches/starting something else/whatever). the painting does not meet my basic artwork standard of "if i saw this for sale at a garage sale for $5, would i buy it?" but i don't think i have ever painted anything which meets that standard, so ??? we'll see what it looks like when done.
we had M&P over for dinner tonight with their two little girls (who spent most of the time jumping on my bed - there are probably a few new cracks in the ceiling plaster as a result, and i will find out soon how the bedsprings fared, but they had a good time doing it). we had a show after dinner (the elder standing on a chair in the kitchen singing, the younger doing spazzy three-year-old interpretive dancing as accompaniment - with her stuffed goose). very cute. i scored some points for being the only person there who knew all the words to 'three little monkeys jumping on the bed' - the elder had learned it at school in canada before she left, but didn't remember all the words. (neither of the girls really speaks english, as they go to french school in quebec, and obviously speak french at home, but luckily L and i speak fluent macaroni-cheese-with-chocolate-eclairs-for-pudding, so we were able to communicate without too much difficulty).
martin scores extra points (personalized shout-out in the blog - you've hit the bigtime now, baby!) for the most eloquent epitaph anyone has ever composed for me, which i would like to share with you all:
'here lies j., beginning to molder,
she was famous in france for her perfect shoulder.'
koan-like in its simplicity, and yet, i think, it speaks volumes. thank you, martin. that's truly beautiful. i will share it with the teacher on sunday when we are back in class. not to blow my own horn, here, or anything, but today she said my left hip was 'quite good.' dizzying heights of praise... :)
okay, time for bed - notre weekend starts tomorrow and i have big plans to NOT get out of bed at half past six...
love to all!
Wednesday 24 September 2008
fun new addiction! and perfection!
totally better than heroin, and better for you - i am now officially hooked on 'so you think you can dance'. L had an episode on her computer, and she, T, MC, and I spent a very enjoyable hour on the edge of our seats wondering which of the couples would make it to the next round, second-guessing the judges, speculating on whether one of the judges was actually drunk/high (the hot tamale train lady, for any followers of the show), criticizing the outfits/song choices/choreography.... so much fun. for my next three months of self-improvement immersion (i prefer to call it that, rather than vacation) perhaps i will have to go to dance camp. tango? bollywood? you all will just have to wait and see.)
speaking of dancing, the exercise-weather interdependency has been definitively proved as far as i'm concerned, although there does appear to be an 8-12 hour lag time. no run yesterday morning -> overcast by the evening, raining a little bit this morning. 40' run and 20' yoga this morning -> sun out by 3 p.m. i officially control the weather. you better be nice to me.
TOTALLY pathetic awful unsatisfactory stupid rubbishy drawing session (luckily i was starting a new drawing, rather than ruining a previously completed drawing). don't even wanna talk aboudit it was so bad. and i burnt my lunch again (a little fahrenheit-celsius conversion problem. i decided to guess and not actually do the maths. not a good idea. worth doing the maths, as it turns out). in the afternoon, day two of real painting.... i would just like the world to know that the teacher declared my rounding of the right shoulder to be, and i quote, "perfect." perfect! i have achieved perfection! and i am only 34! where is there to go from here, really. (she did, to be honest, follow the 'perfect' comment with, 'so i wouldn't touch it again, you don't want to ruin it, now here are three million other things you might want to consider changing,' but still, that 'perfect' is getting inscribed on my pompe funebre when the time comes.). master copy coming along nicely as well, slow but steady; i have gotten about a fifth of it done. if i don't get sucked into anymore downloaded reality TV over the weekend, i might be in with a shot at getting it at least halfway done. i wonder if not being a regular TV watcher (or heroin addict) makes you extra susceptible - i remember going from utterly dismissive to completely dependent within about twenty minutes of an episode of America's Next Top Model. it's probably a good thing that the internet connection is so, er, sedate here, or i would not be able to get off youtube...
bonne nuit a tout le monde.
speaking of dancing, the exercise-weather interdependency has been definitively proved as far as i'm concerned, although there does appear to be an 8-12 hour lag time. no run yesterday morning -> overcast by the evening, raining a little bit this morning. 40' run and 20' yoga this morning -> sun out by 3 p.m. i officially control the weather. you better be nice to me.
TOTALLY pathetic awful unsatisfactory stupid rubbishy drawing session (luckily i was starting a new drawing, rather than ruining a previously completed drawing). don't even wanna talk aboudit it was so bad. and i burnt my lunch again (a little fahrenheit-celsius conversion problem. i decided to guess and not actually do the maths. not a good idea. worth doing the maths, as it turns out). in the afternoon, day two of real painting.... i would just like the world to know that the teacher declared my rounding of the right shoulder to be, and i quote, "perfect." perfect! i have achieved perfection! and i am only 34! where is there to go from here, really. (she did, to be honest, follow the 'perfect' comment with, 'so i wouldn't touch it again, you don't want to ruin it, now here are three million other things you might want to consider changing,' but still, that 'perfect' is getting inscribed on my pompe funebre when the time comes.). master copy coming along nicely as well, slow but steady; i have gotten about a fifth of it done. if i don't get sucked into anymore downloaded reality TV over the weekend, i might be in with a shot at getting it at least halfway done. i wonder if not being a regular TV watcher (or heroin addict) makes you extra susceptible - i remember going from utterly dismissive to completely dependent within about twenty minutes of an episode of America's Next Top Model. it's probably a good thing that the internet connection is so, er, sedate here, or i would not be able to get off youtube...
bonne nuit a tout le monde.
Tuesday 23 September 2008
weathering the weather whatever the weather
i am developing an irrational superstition that the continued sunshine depends on my exercise routine. i skipped my run today for the first time pretty much since i started running (about a week into my stay) and by the afternoon the clouds had rolled in, after nearly two straight weeks of sunshine. i will have to test the theory by going for an extra long run tomorrow and see if there is a corresponding drop in the barometric pressure and local cloud cover. not sure what i will do if my theory holds true - i don't know whether i am ready for that kind of responsibility. if anyone finds out that i can control the weather by running (or not) i might become victim to all sorts of special interest groups. the tourist board (sunshine). farmers (rain). yacht-owners (wind). snow-plough syndicates (snow). the franco-inuit association for one-storey half-dome sustainable housing (blocks of ice). i can't keep all those people happy! wow, it's like spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.
i was thinking today that i should have one of those super-literate politically informed blogs where i comment in a witty and erudite way on the breaking news of the day, but then i realized that my only sources of news (literally) since i have been here have been:
a) emails from various people with third-hand comments about pigs in lipstick, hockey mums, and photoshopped pics of sarah palin in stars'n'stripes bikini with a rifle;
b) the sign outside the local Presse Forum newsagents, which mainly keeps me up to date on the prince of Monaco's honeymoon in China but does occasionally report more serious news (a fire in the nearby village of Bressuire last week, in which a family of five had to be evacuated from their home for several hours); and
c) head honcho occasionally wandering into class saying, well, bank of america/merrill lynch/washington mutual is going bankrupt, accompanied usually the same evening by an email from my pension plan manager/credit union, saying 'don't panic!! really!! everything's just fine!! leave your money right where it is!! sinking ship?? what sinking ship?!
the network plus etchasketch combination is too slow to go to any website that contains photos, which rules out most news sites, my french isn't good enough to manage an actual newspaper, and i don't have a radio, so for all i know the entire continent of north america is flattened in a nuclear winter and my nearest and dearest (hello nearest and dearest!) are emailing me from the comfort of the bomb cellar in the basement, subsisting on tinned baked beans and making up details about their daily lives so as not to worry me. hm. perhaps i should find a newspaper. hopefully a new yorker will arrive soon, although we have discovered a gap in the space-time-post-office continuum. parcels apparently _routinely_ take 9 weeks to get from AC to the west coast of the US, while postcards (multiple sources have confirmed) take three days. three days! it took _me_ about three days to get from California to AC, and it cost a whole lot more than an 85 cent stamp, that's for sure. there is an economist out there somewhere could explain this phenomenon, i am sure. we don't know yet how long it takes mail to get from the US to here - five minutes? three years? although the same gap in the space-time-post-office continuum resulted in a case of very nice wine being delivered to the studio today - with no name of either intended recipient or sender, apart from the winery. a mystery.
anyway. today in art news (see, i am thinking globally, acting locally)... i finished my drawing today, which means i have two days of the same pose left to do another drawing in something other than pencil (sanguine? charcoal? conte crayon? so many ways to make a smudgy mess on a piece of paper, so little time). it's ok. not great. the face looks like her, but somehow the head is not sitting quite right on the body, or is the wrong size relative to the body or something. i asked Head Honcho what i needed to do to fix it, and he went off for half an hour talking about planes and lines and tangents of light, made a few invisible marks on the drawing, and then said, 'right, well, i think you know where to take it from here' and then it was time for coffee break. in the afternoon, i was FOILED!! in my attempts at subterfuge and Real Painting- the teacher decided she was going to do a demo of Real Painting as several of us were wanting to jump in rather than wade through 3-4 days of preparatory studies. it is magic watching her paint, it really is, she starts mixing blobs of purple and orange and green and splodging them on the canvas, and you sit there for the first half hour thinking, nuh-uh, there's no way she can turn that into something, and then all of a sudden bing! it's krystle, on the page, right in front of you, not a hair out of place, sort of a lovely goldeny brown colour, not a splodge of orange or purple to be seen anywhere. it's also, i have to admit, slightly hypnotic in the literal sense - she's got this very gentle mellow voice, and there's this whole cycle of mix colour -> dip brush in oil -> dip brush in paint -> put one tiny blob of paint on canvas -> clean brush in solvent-> mix next colour (etc) that had me swaying on my stool and my eyelids drooping. perhaps hypnosis is all part of the program to make us paint better. when i count backwards from ten, you will awake and find yourself able to paint a masterpiece...
this evening was portrait night, and it was my turn to play model. at the risk of sounding self-centered, i really do enjoy sitting for drawing - it's the same feeling as when i was little having someone play with your hair, being paid attention to, but in a very non-demanding way; nothing is actually required of you other than sitting still and zoning out (yes! i can do both those things!) but you still get to feel the warmth of having people concentrating on you. and although i don't think i could sit still with my own thoughts for that long if i were on my own (well, maybe i could), it is really quite restful to literally not move for two hours, sort of meditative.
The teacher babysat M's two little girls so M could come to portrait night, and came up at the break to show us a drawing that the little one had done (miniM had been leafing through her little notepad, saying very seriously (in french) the teacher, now, what _did_ i do with that drawing for you? i can't seem to find it anywhere. again, she is three, and officially the cutest child in the universe.) anyway, since M started bringing home all these drawings and paintings of naked krystle, miniM's drawings have developed from the standard 3-year-old stick figure drawing (round head, triangle body, stick arms and legs) to the same figure - with breasts (!) because she wants to draw like maman. very cute.
sleep tight tout le monde, no bed bugs or four-inch spiders, etc., and write me emails! i love emails.
i was thinking today that i should have one of those super-literate politically informed blogs where i comment in a witty and erudite way on the breaking news of the day, but then i realized that my only sources of news (literally) since i have been here have been:
a) emails from various people with third-hand comments about pigs in lipstick, hockey mums, and photoshopped pics of sarah palin in stars'n'stripes bikini with a rifle;
b) the sign outside the local Presse Forum newsagents, which mainly keeps me up to date on the prince of Monaco's honeymoon in China but does occasionally report more serious news (a fire in the nearby village of Bressuire last week, in which a family of five had to be evacuated from their home for several hours); and
c) head honcho occasionally wandering into class saying, well, bank of america/merrill lynch/washington mutual is going bankrupt, accompanied usually the same evening by an email from my pension plan manager/credit union, saying 'don't panic!! really!! everything's just fine!! leave your money right where it is!! sinking ship?? what sinking ship?!
the network plus etchasketch combination is too slow to go to any website that contains photos, which rules out most news sites, my french isn't good enough to manage an actual newspaper, and i don't have a radio, so for all i know the entire continent of north america is flattened in a nuclear winter and my nearest and dearest (hello nearest and dearest!) are emailing me from the comfort of the bomb cellar in the basement, subsisting on tinned baked beans and making up details about their daily lives so as not to worry me. hm. perhaps i should find a newspaper. hopefully a new yorker will arrive soon, although we have discovered a gap in the space-time-post-office continuum. parcels apparently _routinely_ take 9 weeks to get from AC to the west coast of the US, while postcards (multiple sources have confirmed) take three days. three days! it took _me_ about three days to get from California to AC, and it cost a whole lot more than an 85 cent stamp, that's for sure. there is an economist out there somewhere could explain this phenomenon, i am sure. we don't know yet how long it takes mail to get from the US to here - five minutes? three years? although the same gap in the space-time-post-office continuum resulted in a case of very nice wine being delivered to the studio today - with no name of either intended recipient or sender, apart from the winery. a mystery.
anyway. today in art news (see, i am thinking globally, acting locally)... i finished my drawing today, which means i have two days of the same pose left to do another drawing in something other than pencil (sanguine? charcoal? conte crayon? so many ways to make a smudgy mess on a piece of paper, so little time). it's ok. not great. the face looks like her, but somehow the head is not sitting quite right on the body, or is the wrong size relative to the body or something. i asked Head Honcho what i needed to do to fix it, and he went off for half an hour talking about planes and lines and tangents of light, made a few invisible marks on the drawing, and then said, 'right, well, i think you know where to take it from here' and then it was time for coffee break. in the afternoon, i was FOILED!! in my attempts at subterfuge and Real Painting- the teacher decided she was going to do a demo of Real Painting as several of us were wanting to jump in rather than wade through 3-4 days of preparatory studies. it is magic watching her paint, it really is, she starts mixing blobs of purple and orange and green and splodging them on the canvas, and you sit there for the first half hour thinking, nuh-uh, there's no way she can turn that into something, and then all of a sudden bing! it's krystle, on the page, right in front of you, not a hair out of place, sort of a lovely goldeny brown colour, not a splodge of orange or purple to be seen anywhere. it's also, i have to admit, slightly hypnotic in the literal sense - she's got this very gentle mellow voice, and there's this whole cycle of mix colour -> dip brush in oil -> dip brush in paint -> put one tiny blob of paint on canvas -> clean brush in solvent-> mix next colour (etc) that had me swaying on my stool and my eyelids drooping. perhaps hypnosis is all part of the program to make us paint better. when i count backwards from ten, you will awake and find yourself able to paint a masterpiece...
this evening was portrait night, and it was my turn to play model. at the risk of sounding self-centered, i really do enjoy sitting for drawing - it's the same feeling as when i was little having someone play with your hair, being paid attention to, but in a very non-demanding way; nothing is actually required of you other than sitting still and zoning out (yes! i can do both those things!) but you still get to feel the warmth of having people concentrating on you. and although i don't think i could sit still with my own thoughts for that long if i were on my own (well, maybe i could), it is really quite restful to literally not move for two hours, sort of meditative.
The teacher babysat M's two little girls so M could come to portrait night, and came up at the break to show us a drawing that the little one had done (miniM had been leafing through her little notepad, saying very seriously (in french) the teacher, now, what _did_ i do with that drawing for you? i can't seem to find it anywhere. again, she is three, and officially the cutest child in the universe.) anyway, since M started bringing home all these drawings and paintings of naked krystle, miniM's drawings have developed from the standard 3-year-old stick figure drawing (round head, triangle body, stick arms and legs) to the same figure - with breasts (!) because she wants to draw like maman. very cute.
sleep tight tout le monde, no bed bugs or four-inch spiders, etc., and write me emails! i love emails.
Monday 22 September 2008
subterfuge and cantaloupes
dood. i am seriously tired today. my legs feel like they are going to fall off. a good day, today, art-wise; i am clunking away on my drawring (we are doing a week-long pose in drawring) and enjoying it a lot; one thing about painting is that it makes drawing seem like a walk in the park, and i am in supersonic warp speed mode, finished with the figure after two days and all brain cells set on drapery mode now. every hour or so the teacher comes over and says incomprehensible things to me, and then i go back to drawing, and it is nice. M was very cute today; he is normally mr. sardonic and grumpy, but at one point he sat back from his easel and said in a happy little-boy voice, "i love drawing, i do."
painting this afternoon... the completely unspoken, unofficial expectation for this two week pose was that we would start with a poster study, possibly two, then do a rounding study of the pose, and then and only then would it be advisable to actually start the real painting. oyoyoyoy so we know how likely jessica is to do that (not at all) - i dutifully started off with my poster study yesterday (the first day of the pose) and the teacher came round and looked at it right at the very end of class yesterday, and said, "mmm, that is a good start, let's work on it some more tomorrow" (my heart SANK nooooooo i want to be done with it so i can do Real Painting), "and then we'll see where we are." but she didn't give me any specific feedback (i.e. change this line, make this darker, etc.) so at the beginning of class today it's not like i had anything SPECIFIC to do to my poster study, so while i waited for the teacher to come around to tell me what needed to be different about my poster study, i just worked on getting canvas ready for Real Painting. (she still didn't come, and she wasn't watching me) so, i'll just sketch in the outline for the Real Painting (still busy with someone else) so, i'll just do the hair and part of the background for the real painting (still hasn't come around to me), so, i'll just keep painting ... by the time she came over, nearly at the end of class, i had done head, neck, and one arm of Real Painting. she sat down next to me and said, "so.... is this your rounding study, or is this painting?" busted! so i said sheepishly, mm, it's real painting until you tell me i'm not allowed to do real painting yet and then it's a rounding study and she laughed and said, oh, all right, you're allowed then. woohoo.
i was talking to H. the other day about how when i applied to come here, i wrote in my application that i would like to go home with 2-3 finished paintings that i was really pleased with (somehow i had the idea that that would be 2-3 out of 20 or so that i would do...) and that i was beginning to doubt that i would get even 2-3 finished paintings out of the class, let alone ones that i was really pleased with, and H said she had NEVER FINISHED A PAINTING (she has done this class i think four times). the point is apparently to come to class to learn _how_ to paint a masterwork so that you can then go home and do it on your own time. hunh. don't know about that. :)
have i rhapsodized about the cantaloupes here yet?? so good. i have been geting through two a week here. they are ubiquitous in the markets, so they must grow locally; i keep waiting for them to go out of season and disappear,but it has been nearly a month now and they are consistently perfect, every time. nectarines likewise. mmmmmmmm good.
in other news:
painting this afternoon... the completely unspoken, unofficial expectation for this two week pose was that we would start with a poster study, possibly two, then do a rounding study of the pose, and then and only then would it be advisable to actually start the real painting. oyoyoyoy so we know how likely jessica is to do that (not at all) - i dutifully started off with my poster study yesterday (the first day of the pose) and the teacher came round and looked at it right at the very end of class yesterday, and said, "mmm, that is a good start, let's work on it some more tomorrow" (my heart SANK nooooooo i want to be done with it so i can do Real Painting), "and then we'll see where we are." but she didn't give me any specific feedback (i.e. change this line, make this darker, etc.) so at the beginning of class today it's not like i had anything SPECIFIC to do to my poster study, so while i waited for the teacher to come around to tell me what needed to be different about my poster study, i just worked on getting canvas ready for Real Painting. (she still didn't come, and she wasn't watching me) so, i'll just sketch in the outline for the Real Painting (still busy with someone else) so, i'll just do the hair and part of the background for the real painting (still hasn't come around to me), so, i'll just keep painting ... by the time she came over, nearly at the end of class, i had done head, neck, and one arm of Real Painting. she sat down next to me and said, "so.... is this your rounding study, or is this painting?" busted! so i said sheepishly, mm, it's real painting until you tell me i'm not allowed to do real painting yet and then it's a rounding study and she laughed and said, oh, all right, you're allowed then. woohoo.
i was talking to H. the other day about how when i applied to come here, i wrote in my application that i would like to go home with 2-3 finished paintings that i was really pleased with (somehow i had the idea that that would be 2-3 out of 20 or so that i would do...) and that i was beginning to doubt that i would get even 2-3 finished paintings out of the class, let alone ones that i was really pleased with, and H said she had NEVER FINISHED A PAINTING (she has done this class i think four times). the point is apparently to come to class to learn _how_ to paint a masterwork so that you can then go home and do it on your own time. hunh. don't know about that. :)
have i rhapsodized about the cantaloupes here yet?? so good. i have been geting through two a week here. they are ubiquitous in the markets, so they must grow locally; i keep waiting for them to go out of season and disappear,but it has been nearly a month now and they are consistently perfect, every time. nectarines likewise. mmmmmmmm good.
in other news:
(1) i have decided i am really liking _the feast of love_.
(2) 40 minute run tonight.
(3) there are hairdressers everywhere here - two in AC alone, accounting for 20% of the businesses in town - because apparently for some unfathomable reason the french government subsidizes hairdressers. i am really wishing that they did the same for swedish massage therapists. that would be a useful social service.
(4) miniscule amount of progress made on money changer and wife, mostly because i accidentally left my paints at the studio last night in the rush to get out the door to go to ted seth jacob's.
okeydokeysmokey ils sont les 22 heures (the church bell is chiming it as i type) and j'ai besoin de go to sleep. bonne nuit to all.
okeydokeysmokey ils sont les 22 heures (the church bell is chiming it as i type) and j'ai besoin de go to sleep. bonne nuit to all.
Sunday 21 September 2008
narcoleptics of the world uni.....zzzzz......
hola hola -
aujourd'hui we went on a field trip! so much fun. we drew in the morning, painted in the afternoon blah blah blah, and then we left class early to go on an expedition to the nearby village of les cerqueux which i am definitely spelling incorrectly, but never mind. les cerqueux is where ted seth jacobs lives and runs a school of sorts six months of the year (the same handful of students has apparently been coming for the last, oh, fifteen years....) and spends the rest of the year decorating his house and seducing his models, which isn't a bad way to be spending your time, especially if you are in your eighties. his house is aMAZing - it's a rickety old eighteenth century rabbit warren, and literally every surface is painted with trompe-l'oeil and murals. i will post pics when i can, but for instance the front entranceway is a french garden in different seasons of the year, with frolicking nymphets representing each season (definite predilection for naked girls throughout the house. some in more psychologically alarming attitudes than others); up the stairs you get a paris street scene one way and the champs-elysees with the arc de triomphe looking the other way; every nook and cranny has a faux cupboard painted into it with beautiful little objets (china, old dolls, old letters, books) painted in. etc. and the ceilings and doors are painted in faux carved marble and wood, floors are painted in exotic parquet or tile (except for the front entrance which has an ornate painted-in fish pond with carpies in it!). crazy crazy. but so cool. it made me want to go home and paint my house, except it would mean that you could never move. i wasn't as crazy about some of his actual paintings - apart from a few exquisite portraits and drawings, half his stuff is hyper-realist still lifes of buddhism-related objects, and the other half was oil-pastels of mythological/fairy tale type women with weird stretched bodies, alarmingly bushy and/or red pubic hair, and over-the-top makeup jobs (blue eyeshadow, bright pink lipstick), getting either murdered, abducted, raped, or otherwise in harm's way. he has apparently been married six or seven times. i am guessing there is some pathology somewhere in there... :)
then to an open house of a sculptor who lives nearby - an american lady, martine something, who according to her brochure founded the 'passionist' movement in art. this means bronze casts of stretched out fairy-tale type nymphets (what is with randy old male and morbidly obese female artists that they are so captivated by adolescent girls? sorry, that was snarky, but _really_). not my tasse de the at ALL but always fun to have a nose around other people's houses :) then home again home again to dinner: artichokes with home-made mayonnaise, salami, and rice pudding. i think all the major food groups are in there somewhere. T wandered over to eat her dinner with me and we talked about whether doctors and artists see bodies in the same way, and the fact that any discussion/jokes/anything about sex while the model is naked become completely taboo without anyone ever having to say it explicitly.
i did not get a pip of work done on my master copy all day today; no gold star for me. but i did go for an extra long run this morning, as well as morning yoga, so i can have a gold star for that. tomorrow i am sure i will get TRUCKLOADS of painting done. here is a nerdy experiment that if i had a scale i would totally do: figure out by weighing my canvases before and after i paint what percentage of each tube of paint ends up on the canvas, versus down the sink or thrown away. i would be willing to bet it is less than 1/3 ends up on the canvas. possibly a lot less. i am messy (although i had a little OCD moment the other day, when i realized that i was about to run out of all but three colours on my palette - anyone else would have just sloshed more paint onto the palette, but i, i saw an opportunity for a thorough palette cleaning and rearrangement of my colours into perfect rainbow order, where they had been all higgledy piggledy before because i was just putting blobs of colour out as i needed them. SO satisfying).
currently reading 'feast of love', by charles baxter. have not yet decided whether i like it. but he is a good writer, i think.
time for me to join the narcoleptics of the world,
love to all,
aujourd'hui we went on a field trip! so much fun. we drew in the morning, painted in the afternoon blah blah blah, and then we left class early to go on an expedition to the nearby village of les cerqueux which i am definitely spelling incorrectly, but never mind. les cerqueux is where ted seth jacobs lives and runs a school of sorts six months of the year (the same handful of students has apparently been coming for the last, oh, fifteen years....) and spends the rest of the year decorating his house and seducing his models, which isn't a bad way to be spending your time, especially if you are in your eighties. his house is aMAZing - it's a rickety old eighteenth century rabbit warren, and literally every surface is painted with trompe-l'oeil and murals. i will post pics when i can, but for instance the front entranceway is a french garden in different seasons of the year, with frolicking nymphets representing each season (definite predilection for naked girls throughout the house. some in more psychologically alarming attitudes than others); up the stairs you get a paris street scene one way and the champs-elysees with the arc de triomphe looking the other way; every nook and cranny has a faux cupboard painted into it with beautiful little objets (china, old dolls, old letters, books) painted in. etc. and the ceilings and doors are painted in faux carved marble and wood, floors are painted in exotic parquet or tile (except for the front entrance which has an ornate painted-in fish pond with carpies in it!). crazy crazy. but so cool. it made me want to go home and paint my house, except it would mean that you could never move. i wasn't as crazy about some of his actual paintings - apart from a few exquisite portraits and drawings, half his stuff is hyper-realist still lifes of buddhism-related objects, and the other half was oil-pastels of mythological/fairy tale type women with weird stretched bodies, alarmingly bushy and/or red pubic hair, and over-the-top makeup jobs (blue eyeshadow, bright pink lipstick), getting either murdered, abducted, raped, or otherwise in harm's way. he has apparently been married six or seven times. i am guessing there is some pathology somewhere in there... :)
then to an open house of a sculptor who lives nearby - an american lady, martine something, who according to her brochure founded the 'passionist' movement in art. this means bronze casts of stretched out fairy-tale type nymphets (what is with randy old male and morbidly obese female artists that they are so captivated by adolescent girls? sorry, that was snarky, but _really_). not my tasse de the at ALL but always fun to have a nose around other people's houses :) then home again home again to dinner: artichokes with home-made mayonnaise, salami, and rice pudding. i think all the major food groups are in there somewhere. T wandered over to eat her dinner with me and we talked about whether doctors and artists see bodies in the same way, and the fact that any discussion/jokes/anything about sex while the model is naked become completely taboo without anyone ever having to say it explicitly.
i did not get a pip of work done on my master copy all day today; no gold star for me. but i did go for an extra long run this morning, as well as morning yoga, so i can have a gold star for that. tomorrow i am sure i will get TRUCKLOADS of painting done. here is a nerdy experiment that if i had a scale i would totally do: figure out by weighing my canvases before and after i paint what percentage of each tube of paint ends up on the canvas, versus down the sink or thrown away. i would be willing to bet it is less than 1/3 ends up on the canvas. possibly a lot less. i am messy (although i had a little OCD moment the other day, when i realized that i was about to run out of all but three colours on my palette - anyone else would have just sloshed more paint onto the palette, but i, i saw an opportunity for a thorough palette cleaning and rearrangement of my colours into perfect rainbow order, where they had been all higgledy piggledy before because i was just putting blobs of colour out as i needed them. SO satisfying).
currently reading 'feast of love', by charles baxter. have not yet decided whether i like it. but he is a good writer, i think.
time for me to join the narcoleptics of the world,
love to all,
Saturday 20 September 2008
pain in many forms: egg paintings, undead rabbits, and yoga
dauphin baby finished! isn't he sweet?so i was such a good girl today, bouncing out of bed at 8:00 pleine des haricots to get going on my dreaded egg homework (SO tedious. in an effort to keep myself from cracking it against my forehead in boredom, i picked a fun speckly brown egg out of my large collection (i went a little wild and crazy at the egg stand at the market, and was rewarded for my irresponsibly profligate egg-purchasing by being given my eggs to take home in a plastic bag, no carton, no nothing. does this seem like a good plan to you? no, it didn't to me either. but somehow they all made it home with their little eggy selves intact, and one of them now has even had the honour of having its portrait painted, nestled in my red corduroy jacket).
anyway. what a horrible masochistic project. but i spent two hours on it, decided honour was satisfied, even if the teacher would not be, and went on to the next masochistic exercise of the day, which was yoga hour with swami torquemada and the girls. it wasn't quite as excruciating as it was the first time we did the full hour thing, but i suspect that i may still be sore tomorrow. oh, while i am thinking about it -
MC telling the zombie rabbit storyin brief: MC lives in (very) rural quebec on the family farm where there were lots of animals running around; her brother was instructed to dispatch one of the rabbits, who had been growing a large and unsightly tumour on its head. her brother duly took it outside, whacked it on the back of the head to kill it, and threw it on the fire. two minutes later, they heard a log fall, turned, and there was the rabbit, dragging itself out of the fire... repeat x two until the poor thing was finally dead.... :(
eek. anyway. after spending an hour twisting myself into shaky pretzel formations and listening to the yoga sadist saying things like, 'FEEL the sound of your breathing cleansing you from top to bottom; this position helps rinse out your endocrine system, and washes your liver and spleen and being upside down is also good for the heart muscle' (where do they get this stuff??) and (my personal favourite) 'this position will help air out your brain - you want that static out of the attic!') i concentrated on starting my next master copy. the next one is going to be a bit more complicated and difficult than the ones i have done up until now - it is a double portrait of 'the money changer and his wife' by quentin metsys, and it is one of those dutch old master paintings in which there are a million different little things going on, stuff on shelves behind the people, reflective mirrors, a mini street scene visible through a doorway, lots of stuff on the table in front of them. etc etc. so i might give myself a bit longer for this one. we'll see. i got the very top right corner sliver painted today, and the rest of the painting mapped out in charcoal pencil.
THEN (yes! the good girlness continues! i know, i amaze even myself sometimes) i went for a run in what was left of the early evening sunshine and then came back and cooked myself an Extremely Nutritious Dinner (followed by apple tart...) I think my shopi boycott might be tested soon - i bought some gorgeous cocoa at the market on friday, but realized today it is supposed to have sugar added to it, and we don't have sugar.... hmmm. i have gone two weeks with no shopi - i would hate to crack for something which is admittedly non-essential from a nutritional standpoint. does it count if i borrow sugar from someone else? i don't think it should.
demain (sunday) le plan is class all day (first day of a two week pose in painting...wowee zowee) and then in the evening we are going to ted seth jacobs' open house - he is a realist painting guru dude who is/was head honchos' teacher, and the reason they ended up here (he got fed up with new york, moved here, and all his students followed him). his house is apparently amazing, every surface painted, and he opens it up once a month as sort of museum. he is also apparently writing his masterwork - a self-published 900+ page treatise on the structure of the human body as it relates to drawing. should be a real page turner. top of the amazon bestseller list as soon as it comes out.
a moment of silence for the passing of a computer (given that it died just as my ipod came back to life, reincarnation as something else technological may be possible - a cuisinart? an AA battery? an MRI scanner? - but we won't hold our breath). the sad story is that M apparently tripped while carrying his open laptop from one room to the other in his flat yesterday, and ended up with his elbow through the laptop screen. i haven't heard anything about the elbow, but the laptop is very definitely no more, a late laptop, and he went into angers today to get a new one. quelle tristesse.
okay c'est time for bed. mucho love to all.
Friday 19 September 2008
weekly photo update, in no particular order
slimy castle moat
gigantic spider
T & T
demented chimp and drawing of T
original of next master copy
le vieux chateau
L and donkey
peeps in the studio
start of master copy
drawring from yesterdayThursday 18 September 2008
blogging under the influence again
apologies for the delay in posting this - network was dead again last night...
i had a bit of a depressing day thursday; i dutifully got up for my morning run but did not do a good job timing the running versus going to the loo parts of the morning, and spent most of the run needing desperately to poo but obviously couldn't because i was, well, running, and then no pilates because the mistress of the pilates video decreed that thursdays are her day off from having to exercise. i felt like a junkie whose dealer suddenly stops returning phone calls. drawing class was good; we had one long pose (three hours) and i did the drawing i posted this morning (kind of a treat to have so much time for one). then i burnt my lunch and it was all downhill from there - painting in the afternoon was horrible horrible. i don't know what was going on, but i just hit a wall; i would stare blankly at a bit of the model up on the model stand, nothing, nothing, nothing, and finally my brain would go, "um, ochrey with maybe a bit of pink and white?" and i would put a blob of paint on the canvas and it would look all wrong, but my brain would have frozen up again. all wrong. i ended up spending the last forty-five minutes of class just painting and repainting the blue background in order to look busy. blech. 'orrible.
i had a bit of a depressing day thursday; i dutifully got up for my morning run but did not do a good job timing the running versus going to the loo parts of the morning, and spent most of the run needing desperately to poo but obviously couldn't because i was, well, running, and then no pilates because the mistress of the pilates video decreed that thursdays are her day off from having to exercise. i felt like a junkie whose dealer suddenly stops returning phone calls. drawing class was good; we had one long pose (three hours) and i did the drawing i posted this morning (kind of a treat to have so much time for one). then i burnt my lunch and it was all downhill from there - painting in the afternoon was horrible horrible. i don't know what was going on, but i just hit a wall; i would stare blankly at a bit of the model up on the model stand, nothing, nothing, nothing, and finally my brain would go, "um, ochrey with maybe a bit of pink and white?" and i would put a blob of paint on the canvas and it would look all wrong, but my brain would have frozen up again. all wrong. i ended up spending the last forty-five minutes of class just painting and repainting the blue background in order to look busy. blech. 'orrible.
thursday night was make-your-own pizza buffet night, and (in addition to overwhelming amounts of pizza, some edible and some not) there were quantities of red wine and some sour apple liqueur (one of my secret weaknesses. well, not so secret after i have had a couple of glasses, i guess) and i cheered up a bit with food and company, (nice long chat with M about his emigration to new zealand; he is excited b/c his wife and daughter will be arriving for a visit soon).
today was a bit better - i had a good run this morning (i am just about to the point where i can run, albeit very slowly, for half an hour without really having to think about it, which is an improvement), and then bus to thouars for market day. i was still in a bit of a funk, so i decided to let myself have whatever i wanted. olives? sure. artichokes? only fifty cents each! no problem. a pair of shoes from the ten-euro shoe stall? go for it. a pain au raisin at ten thirty in the morning, to be eaten as i walk around in the sunshine, even though i already had breakfast and it is megatacky to eat on the street in france? i ate with my head held high and crumbs everywhere. it was great. grapefruit? absolutely. strawberries, even though they are ludicrously expensive? you can have a punnet. my favourite was the guy from whom i bought a mini log of chevre, who spent about ten minutes wrapping it in wax paper for me with the same amount of care as you would expect with the purchase of a diamond necklace, singing bapbapbapbap to himself the whole time.
in the afternoon, i finished my master copy of the dauphin baby (hooray!) and went for a long walk to take advantage of the sunshine while it lasts. L cooked a chinese dinner tonight for a little group of us (with a very unchinese argentais cream puffy thing from the bakery for dessert), and it was very reassuring to hear that everyone had a rotten day painting on thursday. MC also told us the story of the zombie rabbit,which is mainly entertaining for the imitation that goes along with it (i will post pics next week, indescribable in words).
the challenge for tomorrow is bounded by an ethical quandary; do i do my semi-official painting homework ('if you have never painted an egg, do that this weekend') or do i get a start on my next master copy. i am extremeley not excited about painting an egg, and could easily lie ('eggs? i've painted hundreds in my day! all kinds of eggs. teach your grandmother to paint eggs!'), semi-lie (i have after all decorated plenty of easter eggs over the years), or just buckle down and do the homework. (although i asked MC what a suitable amount of time to devote to painting an egg might be, and was horrified to hear, "oh, i dunno. three weeks?") these artist people, they are not like me. there is a rumour floating around that tony ryder once spent two weeks drawing a toe.
okay, i am going to post this before the network crashes on me again...
love to all!
today was a bit better - i had a good run this morning (i am just about to the point where i can run, albeit very slowly, for half an hour without really having to think about it, which is an improvement), and then bus to thouars for market day. i was still in a bit of a funk, so i decided to let myself have whatever i wanted. olives? sure. artichokes? only fifty cents each! no problem. a pair of shoes from the ten-euro shoe stall? go for it. a pain au raisin at ten thirty in the morning, to be eaten as i walk around in the sunshine, even though i already had breakfast and it is megatacky to eat on the street in france? i ate with my head held high and crumbs everywhere. it was great. grapefruit? absolutely. strawberries, even though they are ludicrously expensive? you can have a punnet. my favourite was the guy from whom i bought a mini log of chevre, who spent about ten minutes wrapping it in wax paper for me with the same amount of care as you would expect with the purchase of a diamond necklace, singing bapbapbapbap to himself the whole time.
in the afternoon, i finished my master copy of the dauphin baby (hooray!) and went for a long walk to take advantage of the sunshine while it lasts. L cooked a chinese dinner tonight for a little group of us (with a very unchinese argentais cream puffy thing from the bakery for dessert), and it was very reassuring to hear that everyone had a rotten day painting on thursday. MC also told us the story of the zombie rabbit,which is mainly entertaining for the imitation that goes along with it (i will post pics next week, indescribable in words).
the challenge for tomorrow is bounded by an ethical quandary; do i do my semi-official painting homework ('if you have never painted an egg, do that this weekend') or do i get a start on my next master copy. i am extremeley not excited about painting an egg, and could easily lie ('eggs? i've painted hundreds in my day! all kinds of eggs. teach your grandmother to paint eggs!'), semi-lie (i have after all decorated plenty of easter eggs over the years), or just buckle down and do the homework. (although i asked MC what a suitable amount of time to devote to painting an egg might be, and was horrified to hear, "oh, i dunno. three weeks?") these artist people, they are not like me. there is a rumour floating around that tony ryder once spent two weeks drawing a toe.
okay, i am going to post this before the network crashes on me again...
love to all!
Wednesday 17 September 2008
this week in science news: cadmium exposure may cause delusions of artistic competence
well, the most exciting item of news is that l'ipod, lazarus-like, is risen from the dead. the battery finally died after having been frozen in indigo-girl stasis for several days; i recharged it all the way, played with all the toggles more or less at random, offered up a prayer to steve jobs (hail steve, who art at apple, slightly odd is thy name, but thou art wicked smart and thy products tend to be reliable, and besides i have only had it for a year and a half, so give me back this day my regular access to recorded music other than what's on the jukebox at the local pub, which is shut anyway while the pubowner goes on holiday for the next week and forgive me for having taken it running which i probably shouldn't have done, for thine are the IQ points and the millions of dollars and the stock options forever and ever amen), and hallelujah! a miracle! it is risen, so i don't need to slit my wrists after all, and can instead concentrate on putting my blathering out into the ether. (i am trying to type this while listening to johnny cash, a boy named sue, and it is a feat of serious verbal coordination).
anyway. lessee. morning pilates, run, breakfast, etc., (did not hit the hat-stand today. still can't do a sit up. cantaloupe and pont-l'eveque for breakfast. so much better than the cardboard packing material they mix with raisins to put in muesli boxes here. i feel i have broken through my emotional breakfast barriers to a higher plane of enlightened breakfast being). drawing class was good; we worked on rounding studies in drawing, which suddenly seems ridiculously easy once you don't have to worry about colour at all.
painting also good, except for i need to buy a pair of racehorse blinders so i am not distracted by everyone else's work, because everyone else is SO GOOD it is a bit disheartening sometimes. i did discover a new fun colour today - cadmium red purple was on our supply list, and (true confessions) i hadn't even bothered (until today) putting a blob on my palette b/c the colour on the wrapper was so blah - sort of a dull bruise colour - but today i grabbed the tube accidentally on my way to find something else, and put a squash of it on, and WOWEE it is a deep sexy rich scarlet, nothing at all like the wrapper. so moral of today's painting lesson is twofold: don't judge a paint by its wrapper colour and also do whatever painting teacher tells you. i love red.
i started on a new master copy; i think i am going to stick to drawing on this one (laziness more than anything: it will mean a few days' break from trekking all my paints and brushes back and forth between home and the studio every day), although the original is painted. it's sort of a sweet little portrait of some dauphin or other, aged about two, done by the maitre of moulins. ooh, tomorrow is our last day of rounding studies before... drumroll.... we get to start our first Real Painting on sunday. we will have the same pose for two weeks, and i am hopeful i will be able to finish something in that time (that is the one advantage (?) i seem to have over the other students: everyone else paints soooo slooowwwwlly. for example, G took 4 hours to do a contour drawing yesterday, and 3 hours today to fill in the hair (black hair, in shadow -> all black. what was he DOING all that time?? dunno). my paintings might not be ready for the sotheby's auction block, but shit, girlfriend can cover some CANvas, 's'all i's sayin'.
bellydancing class tonight - i had a solo private lesson with H, as the other regulars (MC, krystle) were invited to M's for dinner. H is kind of amazing - she is one of nature's aristocrats, automatically good at pretty much everything she tries. she speaks brilliant french, picked up bellydancing this summer from videos on the internet (and is clearly a natural at it), sings, paints beautifully, pretty, funny, gobs of personality, and very much the social hub of the group. i am struggling to master the trick of doing two moves at once (hip slide plus snake arms, e.g., or shoulder shimmy with camel. can't do it to save my life (yet) but i have been practicing in the shower, and i am getting a bit better. the only problem is that we learn more moves my showers have been getting longer and longer...)
i think i may have created a monster teaching L about pre-made pastry for tart-making. she has been unstoppable - she used our leftover pastry from the blackberry one to make 'cookies' today (strips of pastry with dobs of chocolate paste on them), and this evening she was putting together another blackberry tart - with cocoa- and polenta-flavoured creme patissiere (yes, cocoa, polenta, and blackberries) and rhubarb jam to make the glaze. eek. just call me 'dr. frankenstein'. she asked me today for the recipe (!) for the green beans i was steaming for supper, and i am scared to tell her how to top and tail beans and put them in a pan with half an inch of water, for fear i will come home the next day to find her trying to steam a half a goat or something (dutifully topped and tailed), sprinkled with caster sugar and mayonnaise as a variation.
omg and speaking of monsters, MC and i found a spider on the stairs today that was four inches across. we got a picture of it next to my ruler.
okay, time for bed; i have an urgent appointment with my current junky thriller...
love to all.
anyway. lessee. morning pilates, run, breakfast, etc., (did not hit the hat-stand today. still can't do a sit up. cantaloupe and pont-l'eveque for breakfast. so much better than the cardboard packing material they mix with raisins to put in muesli boxes here. i feel i have broken through my emotional breakfast barriers to a higher plane of enlightened breakfast being). drawing class was good; we worked on rounding studies in drawing, which suddenly seems ridiculously easy once you don't have to worry about colour at all.
painting also good, except for i need to buy a pair of racehorse blinders so i am not distracted by everyone else's work, because everyone else is SO GOOD it is a bit disheartening sometimes. i did discover a new fun colour today - cadmium red purple was on our supply list, and (true confessions) i hadn't even bothered (until today) putting a blob on my palette b/c the colour on the wrapper was so blah - sort of a dull bruise colour - but today i grabbed the tube accidentally on my way to find something else, and put a squash of it on, and WOWEE it is a deep sexy rich scarlet, nothing at all like the wrapper. so moral of today's painting lesson is twofold: don't judge a paint by its wrapper colour and also do whatever painting teacher tells you. i love red.
i started on a new master copy; i think i am going to stick to drawing on this one (laziness more than anything: it will mean a few days' break from trekking all my paints and brushes back and forth between home and the studio every day), although the original is painted. it's sort of a sweet little portrait of some dauphin or other, aged about two, done by the maitre of moulins. ooh, tomorrow is our last day of rounding studies before... drumroll.... we get to start our first Real Painting on sunday. we will have the same pose for two weeks, and i am hopeful i will be able to finish something in that time (that is the one advantage (?) i seem to have over the other students: everyone else paints soooo slooowwwwlly. for example, G took 4 hours to do a contour drawing yesterday, and 3 hours today to fill in the hair (black hair, in shadow -> all black. what was he DOING all that time?? dunno). my paintings might not be ready for the sotheby's auction block, but shit, girlfriend can cover some CANvas, 's'all i's sayin'.
bellydancing class tonight - i had a solo private lesson with H, as the other regulars (MC, krystle) were invited to M's for dinner. H is kind of amazing - she is one of nature's aristocrats, automatically good at pretty much everything she tries. she speaks brilliant french, picked up bellydancing this summer from videos on the internet (and is clearly a natural at it), sings, paints beautifully, pretty, funny, gobs of personality, and very much the social hub of the group. i am struggling to master the trick of doing two moves at once (hip slide plus snake arms, e.g., or shoulder shimmy with camel. can't do it to save my life (yet) but i have been practicing in the shower, and i am getting a bit better. the only problem is that we learn more moves my showers have been getting longer and longer...)
i think i may have created a monster teaching L about pre-made pastry for tart-making. she has been unstoppable - she used our leftover pastry from the blackberry one to make 'cookies' today (strips of pastry with dobs of chocolate paste on them), and this evening she was putting together another blackberry tart - with cocoa- and polenta-flavoured creme patissiere (yes, cocoa, polenta, and blackberries) and rhubarb jam to make the glaze. eek. just call me 'dr. frankenstein'. she asked me today for the recipe (!) for the green beans i was steaming for supper, and i am scared to tell her how to top and tail beans and put them in a pan with half an inch of water, for fear i will come home the next day to find her trying to steam a half a goat or something (dutifully topped and tailed), sprinkled with caster sugar and mayonnaise as a variation.
omg and speaking of monsters, MC and i found a spider on the stairs today that was four inches across. we got a picture of it next to my ruler.
okay, time for bed; i have an urgent appointment with my current junky thriller...
love to all.
Tuesday 16 September 2008
pilates disasters and and some psychology
hola tout le monde, or at least the tiny fraction of le monde that is reading this :) -
so. a red letter day on multiple counts:
it was sunny ALL DAY; not a single freak rainshower. C had been thinking of hiring herself out to drought stricken agricultural areas, as she was able to consistently bring on thunderstorms by hanging her laundry out to dry, but it looks as if she may be losing her touch. long may it last. there's a rumour that they had sun all the way through october last year, but we are not choosing to believe that that could be possible.
in the saga of my ongoing physical fitness attempts, a low point: i actually fell off my pilates mat this morning - one of the thinly-disguised-sit-up exercises is a somersaulty type of arrangement, where you roll yourself into a ball and go backwards, and i went so seriously off course in my uncoordinated enthusiasm that i went off the mat, and crashed into the hat-stand in krystle's bedroom, bringing it down on top of me. hat-stand is fine. i have some bruises. that episode was followed by an unsatisfactory run, as well; i picked what looked like a lovely little rural lane, which quickly turned into the competition course for the local truckers' association's annual diesel-fume production semi-finals. this svelte midriff business is not for the faint at heart, that's all i can say. tomorrow morning i might just have to stay in bed and eat bonbons.
rounding study today not QUITE as dreadful as yesterday's. (i think. we'll have to see what it looks like by the cruel cold light of morning tomorrow). possibly maybe might be getting the hang of things. drawing was good as well - i am enjoying the exercises, although the lecture today had everyone either confused (M, P and G, who i think tend to assume that it's their limited english that is the problem), asleep (L confirmed her asleep state, and several others were doing the dip and twitch as well), or stroppy (me and liverpudlian, who said afterwards, 'i get to the end of class sometimes, and i realize i haven't a clue what the last two hours was about.'). (extraterrestrial statement du jour: 'what we are speaking to here is the creation of illusion of integrity inherent to the body, and by that i mean both spatial integrity and physical integrity.') the problem is that occasionally there is an actual idea hidden in the waffle, so you can't just stop paying attention and pick your nose. i should have bought that 3' x 6' cross-stitch in the market the other day, so i would have something to keep me occupied during lecture. hey, cross-stitch can be Art, too.
portrait night tonight - i cracked out the sanguine, which was indeed a messy sensual pleasure, but which resulted in a picture of T that made him look like a serial killer chimpanzee. (he and G (the one who made the etch-a-sketch work, yay gary) have been here working all summer, and facial hair maintenance has not been at the top of the priority list, so he's got a little bit of the rockabilly jesus about him, but nothing of the thyrotoxic homicidal tendencies-look of my sanguine drawing. so (sigh) i went back to boring ol' pencil after half an hour and ended up with a drawing that kind of sort of looks like him. the problem with sanguine is that you can't erase anything, so any mistake are there to stay forever and ever amen at least until you chuck the drawing into the recycling. (T for the record is hilarious and weird and astonishingly bright and very slightly antisocial and his work is beautiful. my favourite T fact is that an anagram of his name is 'tiny bonkers.')
long conversation with M today about her kids; apparently the younger one (age 3) is causing much drama with her separation anxiety, throwing fits every time she needs to leave, bedwetting for several _months_ after M went away once for three days, etc., and the elder one (seven) is obsessed with parental death and her subsquent adoption. she overheard them playing the other day: 'when i grow up i am going to have four babies and i will never leave them ever but no daddy because daddies aren't important' (M's husband P is a great big teddy bear guy who makes furniture and is incredibly sweet and patient w/ both the girls) to which the elder one replied, 'if you were adopted, you wouldn't have a daddy, but probably it would be better if mummy was dead before you were adopted.' eek. nothing freudian about it, it's too direct. then again, apparently when T's dad was leaving for a few days on a business trip, four-year-old T called after him, 'don't fuck any horses, daddy!' so who knows where any of it really comes from. i myself had a todd K. dream last night (once again i was wandering the halls of harborview), so there are clearly dark forces at work.
food extra good today; i made a galette with mushrooms and jambon campagne and stinky cheese. mmmm. green salad preceding and nectarines and chocolate afterwards... this two hour lunch thing will be hard to give up.
so. a red letter day on multiple counts:
it was sunny ALL DAY; not a single freak rainshower. C had been thinking of hiring herself out to drought stricken agricultural areas, as she was able to consistently bring on thunderstorms by hanging her laundry out to dry, but it looks as if she may be losing her touch. long may it last. there's a rumour that they had sun all the way through october last year, but we are not choosing to believe that that could be possible.
in the saga of my ongoing physical fitness attempts, a low point: i actually fell off my pilates mat this morning - one of the thinly-disguised-sit-up exercises is a somersaulty type of arrangement, where you roll yourself into a ball and go backwards, and i went so seriously off course in my uncoordinated enthusiasm that i went off the mat, and crashed into the hat-stand in krystle's bedroom, bringing it down on top of me. hat-stand is fine. i have some bruises. that episode was followed by an unsatisfactory run, as well; i picked what looked like a lovely little rural lane, which quickly turned into the competition course for the local truckers' association's annual diesel-fume production semi-finals. this svelte midriff business is not for the faint at heart, that's all i can say. tomorrow morning i might just have to stay in bed and eat bonbons.
rounding study today not QUITE as dreadful as yesterday's. (i think. we'll have to see what it looks like by the cruel cold light of morning tomorrow). possibly maybe might be getting the hang of things. drawing was good as well - i am enjoying the exercises, although the lecture today had everyone either confused (M, P and G, who i think tend to assume that it's their limited english that is the problem), asleep (L confirmed her asleep state, and several others were doing the dip and twitch as well), or stroppy (me and liverpudlian, who said afterwards, 'i get to the end of class sometimes, and i realize i haven't a clue what the last two hours was about.'). (extraterrestrial statement du jour: 'what we are speaking to here is the creation of illusion of integrity inherent to the body, and by that i mean both spatial integrity and physical integrity.') the problem is that occasionally there is an actual idea hidden in the waffle, so you can't just stop paying attention and pick your nose. i should have bought that 3' x 6' cross-stitch in the market the other day, so i would have something to keep me occupied during lecture. hey, cross-stitch can be Art, too.
portrait night tonight - i cracked out the sanguine, which was indeed a messy sensual pleasure, but which resulted in a picture of T that made him look like a serial killer chimpanzee. (he and G (the one who made the etch-a-sketch work, yay gary) have been here working all summer, and facial hair maintenance has not been at the top of the priority list, so he's got a little bit of the rockabilly jesus about him, but nothing of the thyrotoxic homicidal tendencies-look of my sanguine drawing. so (sigh) i went back to boring ol' pencil after half an hour and ended up with a drawing that kind of sort of looks like him. the problem with sanguine is that you can't erase anything, so any mistake are there to stay forever and ever amen at least until you chuck the drawing into the recycling. (T for the record is hilarious and weird and astonishingly bright and very slightly antisocial and his work is beautiful. my favourite T fact is that an anagram of his name is 'tiny bonkers.')
long conversation with M today about her kids; apparently the younger one (age 3) is causing much drama with her separation anxiety, throwing fits every time she needs to leave, bedwetting for several _months_ after M went away once for three days, etc., and the elder one (seven) is obsessed with parental death and her subsquent adoption. she overheard them playing the other day: 'when i grow up i am going to have four babies and i will never leave them ever but no daddy because daddies aren't important' (M's husband P is a great big teddy bear guy who makes furniture and is incredibly sweet and patient w/ both the girls) to which the elder one replied, 'if you were adopted, you wouldn't have a daddy, but probably it would be better if mummy was dead before you were adopted.' eek. nothing freudian about it, it's too direct. then again, apparently when T's dad was leaving for a few days on a business trip, four-year-old T called after him, 'don't fuck any horses, daddy!' so who knows where any of it really comes from. i myself had a todd K. dream last night (once again i was wandering the halls of harborview), so there are clearly dark forces at work.
food extra good today; i made a galette with mushrooms and jambon campagne and stinky cheese. mmmm. green salad preceding and nectarines and chocolate afterwards... this two hour lunch thing will be hard to give up.
Monday 15 September 2008
le roi charles est finis!
hullo world! how are you? doing bueno, i hope.
so today as it turns out is the chinese harvest moon festival (corresponding, whether on purpose or just a felicitous accident, with a full moon last night); studio E celebrated with a blackberry tart made by the two chinese-speakers in the class (L and me; i have now expanded my chinese vocabulary to include 'yes' and 'no'). it was not your average blackberry tart - the creme patissiere in particular had an original je ne sais quoi to it (actually i do sais quoi - as we didn't have corn starch to thicken it, i used the flour we had plus a pinch of polenta) - but luckily L put a little card next to it introducing it as 'mystery pie' which guaranteed that people went into the eating experience with an, er, open mind. i am pleased to report rave reviews all round, except from M (the frenchwoman) who very sensibly doesn't eat anything that anyone brings to class, probably out of total horror at the things americans are willing to put in their mouths and actually knows what proper creme patissiere is supposed to look/taste like. (she looked particularly scandalized at krystle's popcorn with cinnamon and cocoa powder. everyone else chowed down).
drawing in the morning was good; we are doing more blocking-in, with contour drawings, and although i am consistently wanting to cheat by holding up my pencil to check angles etc it is a very good exercise to do. (checking angles by holding up calipers/straight edges is absolutely forbidden, off limits, verboten, interdit, i think mainly because ingres once said something snotty about people who do that, and cleanliness is next to godliness is next to ingres-liness at studio E). it is really amazing how you can think you have everything right, you check all your angles, all your relative lengths, yup yup yup everything checks out, and then you find one thing which is completely wonky (in my case invariably something leg-related - why is that?) that you can't change without going back and readjusting the entire drawing that you had thought was right but obviously wasn't.
painting in the afternoon - day 2 of rounding studies which are SO HARD. i just don't get how the people who are really good at them get their colours to smoosh together and look like a completely smooth surface. coincidentally (or perhaps not), those are the people who have done the course before (except for M) - i will be interested to see how much i improve over the next ten weeks, and whether the skill-to-prior-terms-here relationship is causal or casual. hm. on verra.
anyway. on to the things i am wildly successful at: eating cheese (fromage of the day a viciously pungent pont l'eveque. mmmm), timely completion of copies of pictures of long-dead french kings (hooray! have to decide what i am going to do next), and punctual and reliable attendance at pilates this morning and hula class tonight. my powerhouse is feeling the attention, i will just say that. i have done more sit-up type exercises in the last two days than in the rest of my life combined. the thing about pilates is that the sit-ups are all _disguised_ very cleverly as something else. 'let's do scissorlegs!' says the perky lady, or "you're gonna LOVE this one - i call it the seal!" and then she has you do sit-ups again. hey, by the time i come home i might actually be able to _do_ a sit-up.
time for book and bed - fingers crossed no insomnia tonight...
love to all!
so today as it turns out is the chinese harvest moon festival (corresponding, whether on purpose or just a felicitous accident, with a full moon last night); studio E celebrated with a blackberry tart made by the two chinese-speakers in the class (L and me; i have now expanded my chinese vocabulary to include 'yes' and 'no'). it was not your average blackberry tart - the creme patissiere in particular had an original je ne sais quoi to it (actually i do sais quoi - as we didn't have corn starch to thicken it, i used the flour we had plus a pinch of polenta) - but luckily L put a little card next to it introducing it as 'mystery pie' which guaranteed that people went into the eating experience with an, er, open mind. i am pleased to report rave reviews all round, except from M (the frenchwoman) who very sensibly doesn't eat anything that anyone brings to class, probably out of total horror at the things americans are willing to put in their mouths and actually knows what proper creme patissiere is supposed to look/taste like. (she looked particularly scandalized at krystle's popcorn with cinnamon and cocoa powder. everyone else chowed down).
drawing in the morning was good; we are doing more blocking-in, with contour drawings, and although i am consistently wanting to cheat by holding up my pencil to check angles etc it is a very good exercise to do. (checking angles by holding up calipers/straight edges is absolutely forbidden, off limits, verboten, interdit, i think mainly because ingres once said something snotty about people who do that, and cleanliness is next to godliness is next to ingres-liness at studio E). it is really amazing how you can think you have everything right, you check all your angles, all your relative lengths, yup yup yup everything checks out, and then you find one thing which is completely wonky (in my case invariably something leg-related - why is that?) that you can't change without going back and readjusting the entire drawing that you had thought was right but obviously wasn't.
painting in the afternoon - day 2 of rounding studies which are SO HARD. i just don't get how the people who are really good at them get their colours to smoosh together and look like a completely smooth surface. coincidentally (or perhaps not), those are the people who have done the course before (except for M) - i will be interested to see how much i improve over the next ten weeks, and whether the skill-to-prior-terms-here relationship is causal or casual. hm. on verra.
anyway. on to the things i am wildly successful at: eating cheese (fromage of the day a viciously pungent pont l'eveque. mmmm), timely completion of copies of pictures of long-dead french kings (hooray! have to decide what i am going to do next), and punctual and reliable attendance at pilates this morning and hula class tonight. my powerhouse is feeling the attention, i will just say that. i have done more sit-up type exercises in the last two days than in the rest of my life combined. the thing about pilates is that the sit-ups are all _disguised_ very cleverly as something else. 'let's do scissorlegs!' says the perky lady, or "you're gonna LOVE this one - i call it the seal!" and then she has you do sit-ups again. hey, by the time i come home i might actually be able to _do_ a sit-up.
time for book and bed - fingers crossed no insomnia tonight...
love to all!
Sunday 14 September 2008
insomnia vs. the internet...
not a good thing, on the whole, to be blogging at 4 in the morning, but when insomnia coincides with the network coming back to life, you have to carpe the diem and log on to make blogging hay while the sun, um, doesn't shine.
main items of interest yesterday:
1. bone-marrow freezing cold (i wore a camisole, a t shirt, a cardigan, a large rollneck fuzzy jersey, my paint-stained hoodie, leggings, sweat pants, and my thick bedsocks to class, and i HAD GOOSEBUMPS; i have no idea how the model managed with nothing on and a tiny space heater, but she is clearly made of tougher stuff than i am). the only time i was warm all day was after i got home and poached myself in the bathtub for half an hour.
2. i started re-reading kate atkinson's behind the scenes at the museum; am enjoying it _very_ much
3. attempt at blackberry tart with L - we made the pastry shell and the pastry cream last night and we will put it all together this morning. not sure what it will taste like (there are no measuring cups in the apartment, and we were missing a couple of key ingredients (cornstarch, proper tart tin) that might turn out to have been crucial, but at least the blackberries will be good. hard to screw up fresh blackberries.
4. painting all day: a demo in the morning, and then we had our first crack at a rounding study in the afternoon; the idea is to paint a simplified version of the figure, leaving off features (eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, toes, etc.), just concentrating on creating the 3D effect of the larger shapes (head, torso, limbs) in space. it was good
5.M (english guy) has gone vegan!! totally a surprise (this was the guy who brought chicken and nothing but to our potluck dinner the other day). he said it was because his cholesterol is high, and he wanted to try the experiment of veganism while his wife wasn't there to suffer through it with him. he is in fact swearing off all fats of any kind (olive oil, etc. as well). it was difficult not to go doctor on him, i have to admit, but i limited myself to wow, that's interesting, you'll have to let us know how it goes. after all, i watch plenty of other people eat crap socially and don't feel i need to say anything, and my own diet at the moment isn't exactly designed to lower cholesterol. oh, speaking of, i have seen God, and he/it is a slab of pecorino romano cheese i got at the market on friday. sharp, salty salty with cracked peppercorns running through it.... oh oh oh so good. it was the only thing that got me out of bed when it was so cold yesterday morning (that and the pilates lady. not as sadistic as the yoga guy. she is perkier, and talks to me about my "powerhouse" (which i think means abdominal muscles) and tells me i am beautiful. although the demo class that she has on her video is comprised of leggy blondes who are able to completely disarticulate their hips at will, so maybe it's them she's talking about.)
6. king charles - i decided to abandon the curtains temporarily, and do the tapestry thing over his lap and his hand; he is now done except for the bloody curtains and a little bit of background. the background is also going to be tricky - it's sludge green but with bits of red sort of bleeding through. i may have to bring him to school for a professional consultation.
7. i had a dream last night that i turned up for my first day of work at harborview, and there was a big machine in the front lobby of the hospital that dispensed whatever your needed things were for that day, like charts of patients you were supposed to see, coffee for those that needed it, etc. since it was my first day there, the machine was supposed to give me my employment paperwork to fill out, a nametag, etc., but it was malfunctioning and just spat out a stack of charts that some ICU guy (now on vacation) was supposed to dictate before he left. i went to see human resources, and they said the only way that i could get my nametag, new employment paperwork etc, was to complete the charts and put them back in the machine, so i had to go sit in the work area and try and dictate ICU discharge summaries on a whole pile of patients i didn't know. eek. not a good dream. i clearly need to stay on holiday for a LOT longer. oh,wait, how convenient.... :)
okay, i am going to try to go back to sleep for a couple more hours before the siren song of the chirpy pilates lady lures me out of bed again...
love to all.
main items of interest yesterday:
1. bone-marrow freezing cold (i wore a camisole, a t shirt, a cardigan, a large rollneck fuzzy jersey, my paint-stained hoodie, leggings, sweat pants, and my thick bedsocks to class, and i HAD GOOSEBUMPS; i have no idea how the model managed with nothing on and a tiny space heater, but she is clearly made of tougher stuff than i am). the only time i was warm all day was after i got home and poached myself in the bathtub for half an hour.
2. i started re-reading kate atkinson's behind the scenes at the museum; am enjoying it _very_ much
3. attempt at blackberry tart with L - we made the pastry shell and the pastry cream last night and we will put it all together this morning. not sure what it will taste like (there are no measuring cups in the apartment, and we were missing a couple of key ingredients (cornstarch, proper tart tin) that might turn out to have been crucial, but at least the blackberries will be good. hard to screw up fresh blackberries.
4. painting all day: a demo in the morning, and then we had our first crack at a rounding study in the afternoon; the idea is to paint a simplified version of the figure, leaving off features (eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, toes, etc.), just concentrating on creating the 3D effect of the larger shapes (head, torso, limbs) in space. it was good
5.M (english guy) has gone vegan!! totally a surprise (this was the guy who brought chicken and nothing but to our potluck dinner the other day). he said it was because his cholesterol is high, and he wanted to try the experiment of veganism while his wife wasn't there to suffer through it with him. he is in fact swearing off all fats of any kind (olive oil, etc. as well). it was difficult not to go doctor on him, i have to admit, but i limited myself to wow, that's interesting, you'll have to let us know how it goes. after all, i watch plenty of other people eat crap socially and don't feel i need to say anything, and my own diet at the moment isn't exactly designed to lower cholesterol. oh, speaking of, i have seen God, and he/it is a slab of pecorino romano cheese i got at the market on friday. sharp, salty salty with cracked peppercorns running through it.... oh oh oh so good. it was the only thing that got me out of bed when it was so cold yesterday morning (that and the pilates lady. not as sadistic as the yoga guy. she is perkier, and talks to me about my "powerhouse" (which i think means abdominal muscles) and tells me i am beautiful. although the demo class that she has on her video is comprised of leggy blondes who are able to completely disarticulate their hips at will, so maybe it's them she's talking about.)
6. king charles - i decided to abandon the curtains temporarily, and do the tapestry thing over his lap and his hand; he is now done except for the bloody curtains and a little bit of background. the background is also going to be tricky - it's sludge green but with bits of red sort of bleeding through. i may have to bring him to school for a professional consultation.
7. i had a dream last night that i turned up for my first day of work at harborview, and there was a big machine in the front lobby of the hospital that dispensed whatever your needed things were for that day, like charts of patients you were supposed to see, coffee for those that needed it, etc. since it was my first day there, the machine was supposed to give me my employment paperwork to fill out, a nametag, etc., but it was malfunctioning and just spat out a stack of charts that some ICU guy (now on vacation) was supposed to dictate before he left. i went to see human resources, and they said the only way that i could get my nametag, new employment paperwork etc, was to complete the charts and put them back in the machine, so i had to go sit in the work area and try and dictate ICU discharge summaries on a whole pile of patients i didn't know. eek. not a good dream. i clearly need to stay on holiday for a LOT longer. oh,wait, how convenient.... :)
okay, i am going to try to go back to sleep for a couple more hours before the siren song of the chirpy pilates lady lures me out of bed again...
love to all.
Saturday 13 September 2008
two words: fig gratin
another action-packed day here at rue PV: L and i went for what was supposed to be a 1-2 hour excursion to sanzay, to go look at an old castle ruin; we got slowed down saying hello to the donkey who lives by the river (ten minutes), by some urgent blackberry picking (half an hour; plans are afoot to try to make a blackberry tart, if i can use the internets to remind myself how to make creme patissiere), and then we dawdled at the castle for quite a while (another half an hour), and then we got spectacularly lost coming home (an hour...) so all told it was a four hour excursion. but the castle was cool: thirteenth century, with a moat full of slime and everything. we did some language instruction on the way home: i taught her my six words of french (which curiously all seem to be food related), and she taught me how to say "Hello, how are you? My name is ____ and I speak perfect Chinese" in Chinese. We did numbers up to 100 in french; she has been learning french from M's little girl, but has been hampered with the numbers thing because so far miniM only knows how to count up to six herself. it's very cute.
on the subject of L and language (she is a native chinese speaker, and her english is excellent but a little funny sometimes), she came out with a classic today at lunch time; she was sounding out the labels on some of the food stuff we had in the apartment, and she got to my box of 'polenta instantanea.' she read it out in a thoughtful voice and said, 'huh, instantanea, is that place in middle east or somewhere?" we also had a bizarre conversation when she was setting off to buy ingredients for this blackberry tart; i told her we would need (among other things) some cream, and she looked at me like i had three heads, and said, i don't know what cream is. (me: um, well, you know, cream... it's like white, comes in a carton...). do you mean like half and half? (well, it's the half of half and half that's not milk). i don't know what it looks like (you know, like the white stuff you can whip and put on desserts) like whipped cream? (yes, but not whipped, just cream, you know, cream). i'm so sorry, i never see cream before. funny that someone would know about half and half and whipped cream, and not just cream. i think i am thinking about this way too much.
in the afternoon i had a petit nap (delicieux), did some more painting (charles' curtains are proving deceptively tricky!), and then most of the crew went out for dinner at the restaurant overlooking the lake, which was great fun. (i had mussels mmmmm..... and a warm chevre salad mmmmm...... and ham in port wine sauce mmmmmm..... with a fig gratin for dessert mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....) lots of wine, lots of giggling (the canadians in particular were on a roll tonight), and i am now at home in bed with a bulging belly and eight and a half whole hours in which to sleep before i promised krystle i would be up to do pilates with her in the morning (true confessions: i have never done pilates, except for this one wicked exercise which F. taught me which is a hip adductor thing that just about made my legs fall off it was so hard). so i am actually quite looking forward to it.
bonne nuit to everyone out there in internetland!
on the subject of L and language (she is a native chinese speaker, and her english is excellent but a little funny sometimes), she came out with a classic today at lunch time; she was sounding out the labels on some of the food stuff we had in the apartment, and she got to my box of 'polenta instantanea.' she read it out in a thoughtful voice and said, 'huh, instantanea, is that place in middle east or somewhere?" we also had a bizarre conversation when she was setting off to buy ingredients for this blackberry tart; i told her we would need (among other things) some cream, and she looked at me like i had three heads, and said, i don't know what cream is. (me: um, well, you know, cream... it's like white, comes in a carton...). do you mean like half and half? (well, it's the half of half and half that's not milk). i don't know what it looks like (you know, like the white stuff you can whip and put on desserts) like whipped cream? (yes, but not whipped, just cream, you know, cream). i'm so sorry, i never see cream before. funny that someone would know about half and half and whipped cream, and not just cream. i think i am thinking about this way too much.
in the afternoon i had a petit nap (delicieux), did some more painting (charles' curtains are proving deceptively tricky!), and then most of the crew went out for dinner at the restaurant overlooking the lake, which was great fun. (i had mussels mmmmm..... and a warm chevre salad mmmmm...... and ham in port wine sauce mmmmmm..... with a fig gratin for dessert mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....) lots of wine, lots of giggling (the canadians in particular were on a roll tonight), and i am now at home in bed with a bulging belly and eight and a half whole hours in which to sleep before i promised krystle i would be up to do pilates with her in the morning (true confessions: i have never done pilates, except for this one wicked exercise which F. taught me which is a hip adductor thing that just about made my legs fall off it was so hard). so i am actually quite looking forward to it.
bonne nuit to everyone out there in internetland!
Friday 12 September 2008
gooseberries...
sorry for the delay in posting my nightly blathering - the network was down last night - but hopefully the internet is still out there somewhere...
bong sewer! (as hagrid says) -
so a VERY busy and productif jour today, especially considering it's our day off, my goodness. started off w/ a run at 7:30 (i did not pick a good road today - i tried the road out to bressuire, the next p'tit village over, and you wouldn't think that between one sleepy little rural hamlet and an even sleepier little hamlet there would be so many enormous 18 wheelers with huge scary rattly bits on them, to say nothing of the much more terrifying middle aged french women in SUVs who have no qualms about trying to run you off the road (or in this case the 2 inch shoulder) because after all, c'est un road, hein, qu'est-ce que tu fais in the road quand je suis driving mon SUV a mon urgent hairdressers appointement, hein, puf, les americains, ils sont toujours in the way - all this magically communicated, of course, without actual words or even eye contact. it's the mysterious thing that happens to french women between the ages of 35 and 55 that they emit some sort of imperiousness pheromone without even trying, and then they mellow out again when they get old. i was in the coffee shop later in the morning, and all the booths were full of sexagenarians, crammed 6-8 to a booth like teenagers, drinking their coffees and aperitifs and having a grand old time and looking like they wouldn't stare down a fly.
speaking of old people, i have identified another mystery which requires resolution: there seem to be an abnormal number of shops around here devoted to pompes funebres, which btw i think is a terrific word. much better than tombstones. i definitely want a pompe funebre when i pop my clogs rather than a tombstone - it sounds like it automatically comes with a team of six black horses decked out in purple plumes and a brass band, doesn't it? anyway. what i can't figure out is whether the population curve is simply extremely skewed towards the elderly in this particular region of the loire (doesn't seem to be, but perhaps each family has an extensive collection of moribund senior citizens hidden away in the attic, 'not quite dead yet' a la monty python, and they only bring them out when it's time to bury them); whether it is indicative of some gruesome public health problem that is about to come to light (syphilis in the water, west nile virus in the beer on tap at the pub, etc, that is killing off even young healthy people), or whether AC is simply _the_ Place to Shop for your pompe funebre needs, like going to paris for high end clothes, milan for leather goods, belleville and environs for methamphetamine, etc. if anyone knows the answer, callers are standing by.
apres le run, a petit group of us went to thouars for the farmers' market - i don't know what was going on, but it was an extra fancy extended farmers'-and-then-some market today. as well as the usual meat, dairy, produce, fish, bread, you could also purchase today:
- a cross-stich kit (tapestry needle and embroidery thread included) to make your very own 3 foot x 6 foot cross-stitch sampler of a naked woman reclining on pink satin sheets (in a very boudoiry sort of way, just in case that's not clear). i sort of wanted to lurk to see what sort of person buys something like that. but not really. i do however want to reiterate that this thing was 3 FEET by six FEET. take a moment to imagine it .
- biodegradable socks (what will those crazy EU people come up with next)
- several persian rugs that very definitely had the look of having fallen off the back of a van
- several stalls of clothes (mainly fun because the 'changing room' was the guy's truck - you just climbed in the back of the truck, he strung a couple of pieces of muslin up, and you hoped noone was looking)
i resisted everything but food items, you'll all be pleased to hear - no persian rugs or soft-porn cross-stitch samplers for me - and i am still holding strong to my goal of shopi-avoidance. i got some lait cru from the dairy lady (does that mean unpasteurized? or just without whatever they put in milk here so it can survive a nuclear winter at room temperature? i am hoping the latter. if i miss more than a couple of days of blogging, perhaps someone would be kind enough to call around to the GI units of the local hospitals...) as well as a petit pot of creme fraiche oh my god my arteries were hardening just looking at it, but it is REALLY REALLY good, and some free range biologique eggies. i love the way organic stuff is called 'biologique' here - both languages need to come up with a more accurate term, i think.
i also bought more mystery meat at the butchers' stall - there was a lady ahead of me in the queue (of the crucial magic imperiousness-pheromone-emitting age range) ordering all kinds of peculiar things that i hadn't a clue what they were, much less how you would possibly prepare them in such a way as to make them edible, but when it was my turn, i thought, what the fuck, i'm 34, if i were french i would almost be old enough to be bossing around enormous men with meat cleavers, i'm going to go for it, so i asked for some things i recognized (poulet and saucisses aux herbes, since they were so yummy last week, some jambon sec for my lunchtime sammy) and then a couple of things that i don't even know what sort of animal they come from just to feel the frisson of bossy-french-lady power, as if i knew exactly what one does with un filet dinde agneau bistek du porc. it feels very odd to be buying meat, i have to say; i realized i can count on one hand the number of times i have bought meat to cook at home in the last 2-3 years, but the meat is all so much yummier and healthy-looking here, it is much more appealing. and besides, i am not going to let some bossy french lady show me up. no madame.
in the afternoon i worked on king charles, who is looking a bit less drag-queen like than he did in the photo i posted this morning, (but not much; he's got a little bit of the eyeliner look in the original, actually, and his hat is full-on silly. i don't know what he was thinking that day). then L (who was foiled in her plan to go landscape painting by the fact that it bucketed down rain all afternoon) suggested that we do poster studies of each other, which was kind of fun - we just did little mini-heads.
impromptu dinner party tonight; borscht, with garlic toast and blob of creme fraiche, and for pudding, a veritable TREASURE that i found at the bakery stall: a gooseberry tart. i have such a nostalgia thing for gooseberries, as they are peculiarly associated for me with the summer i spent in northumberland when i was seven (i had never had them before, and i think have had them maybe twice since) and wow it was good. i didn't even stop to look to see what they are called in french - i saw the tart from 20 feet away (it was the only one left in the case), and was so excited all i could do was point, say 'ca, s'il vous plait,' and hand over the cash.
ok, c'est time for bed; love to all and particular thanks to those who emailed!
bong sewer! (as hagrid says) -
so a VERY busy and productif jour today, especially considering it's our day off, my goodness. started off w/ a run at 7:30 (i did not pick a good road today - i tried the road out to bressuire, the next p'tit village over, and you wouldn't think that between one sleepy little rural hamlet and an even sleepier little hamlet there would be so many enormous 18 wheelers with huge scary rattly bits on them, to say nothing of the much more terrifying middle aged french women in SUVs who have no qualms about trying to run you off the road (or in this case the 2 inch shoulder) because after all, c'est un road, hein, qu'est-ce que tu fais in the road quand je suis driving mon SUV a mon urgent hairdressers appointement, hein, puf, les americains, ils sont toujours in the way - all this magically communicated, of course, without actual words or even eye contact. it's the mysterious thing that happens to french women between the ages of 35 and 55 that they emit some sort of imperiousness pheromone without even trying, and then they mellow out again when they get old. i was in the coffee shop later in the morning, and all the booths were full of sexagenarians, crammed 6-8 to a booth like teenagers, drinking their coffees and aperitifs and having a grand old time and looking like they wouldn't stare down a fly.
speaking of old people, i have identified another mystery which requires resolution: there seem to be an abnormal number of shops around here devoted to pompes funebres, which btw i think is a terrific word. much better than tombstones. i definitely want a pompe funebre when i pop my clogs rather than a tombstone - it sounds like it automatically comes with a team of six black horses decked out in purple plumes and a brass band, doesn't it? anyway. what i can't figure out is whether the population curve is simply extremely skewed towards the elderly in this particular region of the loire (doesn't seem to be, but perhaps each family has an extensive collection of moribund senior citizens hidden away in the attic, 'not quite dead yet' a la monty python, and they only bring them out when it's time to bury them); whether it is indicative of some gruesome public health problem that is about to come to light (syphilis in the water, west nile virus in the beer on tap at the pub, etc, that is killing off even young healthy people), or whether AC is simply _the_ Place to Shop for your pompe funebre needs, like going to paris for high end clothes, milan for leather goods, belleville and environs for methamphetamine, etc. if anyone knows the answer, callers are standing by.
apres le run, a petit group of us went to thouars for the farmers' market - i don't know what was going on, but it was an extra fancy extended farmers'-and-then-some market today. as well as the usual meat, dairy, produce, fish, bread, you could also purchase today:
- a cross-stich kit (tapestry needle and embroidery thread included) to make your very own 3 foot x 6 foot cross-stitch sampler of a naked woman reclining on pink satin sheets (in a very boudoiry sort of way, just in case that's not clear). i sort of wanted to lurk to see what sort of person buys something like that. but not really. i do however want to reiterate that this thing was 3 FEET by six FEET. take a moment to imagine it .
- biodegradable socks (what will those crazy EU people come up with next)
- several persian rugs that very definitely had the look of having fallen off the back of a van
- several stalls of clothes (mainly fun because the 'changing room' was the guy's truck - you just climbed in the back of the truck, he strung a couple of pieces of muslin up, and you hoped noone was looking)
i resisted everything but food items, you'll all be pleased to hear - no persian rugs or soft-porn cross-stitch samplers for me - and i am still holding strong to my goal of shopi-avoidance. i got some lait cru from the dairy lady (does that mean unpasteurized? or just without whatever they put in milk here so it can survive a nuclear winter at room temperature? i am hoping the latter. if i miss more than a couple of days of blogging, perhaps someone would be kind enough to call around to the GI units of the local hospitals...) as well as a petit pot of creme fraiche oh my god my arteries were hardening just looking at it, but it is REALLY REALLY good, and some free range biologique eggies. i love the way organic stuff is called 'biologique' here - both languages need to come up with a more accurate term, i think.
i also bought more mystery meat at the butchers' stall - there was a lady ahead of me in the queue (of the crucial magic imperiousness-pheromone-emitting age range) ordering all kinds of peculiar things that i hadn't a clue what they were, much less how you would possibly prepare them in such a way as to make them edible, but when it was my turn, i thought, what the fuck, i'm 34, if i were french i would almost be old enough to be bossing around enormous men with meat cleavers, i'm going to go for it, so i asked for some things i recognized (poulet and saucisses aux herbes, since they were so yummy last week, some jambon sec for my lunchtime sammy) and then a couple of things that i don't even know what sort of animal they come from just to feel the frisson of bossy-french-lady power, as if i knew exactly what one does with un filet dinde agneau bistek du porc. it feels very odd to be buying meat, i have to say; i realized i can count on one hand the number of times i have bought meat to cook at home in the last 2-3 years, but the meat is all so much yummier and healthy-looking here, it is much more appealing. and besides, i am not going to let some bossy french lady show me up. no madame.
in the afternoon i worked on king charles, who is looking a bit less drag-queen like than he did in the photo i posted this morning, (but not much; he's got a little bit of the eyeliner look in the original, actually, and his hat is full-on silly. i don't know what he was thinking that day). then L (who was foiled in her plan to go landscape painting by the fact that it bucketed down rain all afternoon) suggested that we do poster studies of each other, which was kind of fun - we just did little mini-heads.
impromptu dinner party tonight; borscht, with garlic toast and blob of creme fraiche, and for pudding, a veritable TREASURE that i found at the bakery stall: a gooseberry tart. i have such a nostalgia thing for gooseberries, as they are peculiarly associated for me with the summer i spent in northumberland when i was seven (i had never had them before, and i think have had them maybe twice since) and wow it was good. i didn't even stop to look to see what they are called in french - i saw the tart from 20 feet away (it was the only one left in the case), and was so excited all i could do was point, say 'ca, s'il vous plait,' and hand over the cash.
ok, c'est time for bed; love to all and particular thanks to those who emailed!
more photos...
morning run down by the river
everyone's poster studies stuck up in the estudio
puppies at the fair
le roi charles et son doppelganger , both wearing ludicrous cinco de mayo hats.
ann boleyn
my contribution to cuteoverload.com at the fair
gesture drawings what we spent nearly an entire week doing...
H at portrait night
my favourite poster study so farThursday 11 September 2008
and now for something completely different...
...okay, not really: today i spent the day, um, drawing and painting. BUT a much better day than yesterday - suddenly everyone was in a giddy pre-weekend good mood, the painting went a bit better, and i think we are all looking forward to moving on to some new stuff next week. i got my requisite exercise - an hour walking around the lake at lunch time - and got the first half of my grocery shopping done at the mini farmer's market (the heavy stuff and the staples; the fun things i will get tomorrow when we go to thouars mmmm cheese. there is also an olive vendor there that i might need to inspect more closely. and i will have to test and make sure that the apricot tartes at the bakery stall have not dropped in quality). i was also full of painting beans when i got back from class, so i got a bit more done on king charles; i will try and post pics tomorrow in thouars.
red (and pink) wine in the downstairs flat w/ the crew after dinner - it is crush season, so wine has gone from extremely cheap to ludicrously cheap; at the shopi they are practically paying customers to take it away. i will have to relax my no-shopi policy for wine, i think. the border between nutrition and recreation is blurry here in any case.
i am fretting about the elections: i hope my absentee ballot arrives in time, although i can't imagine obama will not win california. if i am out of the country anyway, can i register myself to a swing state like ohio? i will be really fucking depressed if mccain wins, to the point that i might not come home. i wonder if i could get a job here. teaching english? hula dancing? there must be something. perhaps i could work as an art class model... oh, but it's getting colder. don't want to do anything that involves fewer layers of thermals. :)
time for bed- friends don't let friends drink and blog, and i try to be a good friend to myself, so time for beddybyes pour moi, especially since i have got to be up in le matin to catch le bus.
g'night to tout le monde...
red (and pink) wine in the downstairs flat w/ the crew after dinner - it is crush season, so wine has gone from extremely cheap to ludicrously cheap; at the shopi they are practically paying customers to take it away. i will have to relax my no-shopi policy for wine, i think. the border between nutrition and recreation is blurry here in any case.
i am fretting about the elections: i hope my absentee ballot arrives in time, although i can't imagine obama will not win california. if i am out of the country anyway, can i register myself to a swing state like ohio? i will be really fucking depressed if mccain wins, to the point that i might not come home. i wonder if i could get a job here. teaching english? hula dancing? there must be something. perhaps i could work as an art class model... oh, but it's getting colder. don't want to do anything that involves fewer layers of thermals. :)
time for bed- friends don't let friends drink and blog, and i try to be a good friend to myself, so time for beddybyes pour moi, especially since i have got to be up in le matin to catch le bus.
g'night to tout le monde...
Wednesday 10 September 2008
breakfast quandary
bit of a blah day today - not hugely happy with either my morning drawing work or the afternoon painting. motivation is definitely flagging today: why exactly am i putting so much effort into learning how do something that isn't actually all that useful? it's not that i thought i would suddenly be much better after two weeks, it's the worthiness of the goal that i am doubting a bit. perhaps if i could have a sneak preview of a totally amazing painting that i will produce by the end of class, i would feel a bit more juiced. i think everyone's hit a bit of a cranky patch the last two days, to be honest; L said she was feeling very cross at her lack of brilliance yesterday, and M was grumbling away all day today on my left. oh, well - hopefully it is just a passing phase.
second bellydancing class tonight - krystle is going to paris for the weekend in two weeks for some mega techno music event and she has promised to buy belly dancing jingly scarves for everyone. i think that's a sound investment of ten euros, myself, so i have a request in for midnight blue.
tomorrow my Big Job is to get myself out of bed in time for morning pilates (we alternate yoga and pilates every morning at 7:30; this morning was the first morning i was organized enough to join in, and half an hour with the dvd yoga sadist proved to be much more doable than the hour long version we did the other day)... and then get myself to the weekly AC mini-farmer's market to buy groceries before class. i am making a conscious effort to stay away from the supermarket as a dietary challenge, and only eat food i get at the farmers' market. bless me, michael pollan, for i have sinned; it has been four days since my last visit to the shopi, but the only thing i bought was balsamic vinegar, which i really don't think should count against me; the last visit before that was over a week ago. i am going to have to find a solution to the breakfast conundrum; i am such a creature of habit with my shredded wheat and granola, that any deviation from the norm is painful. the closest approximation the shopi could provide are cardboard rice flakes, with some truly horrible muesli (for some reason 95% of available cereals are chocolate flavoured - including the muesli options), and it is truly a mystere why the french who are SO GOOD at food should be so bad at breakfast cereal. (i could go the decadent route and go to the bakery for a croissant or pain au raisin every morning, but the bakery is closed until sept. 23 while the baker goes on holiday, and also i would come home weighing three hundred pounds. the bakery is very cute - it is all dark and locked up, and there is a big sign on the door explaining that there will be an Depot de Pain at the butchers' shop for the next two weeks while m'sieu le baker is en vacances with the addresses of the three nearest villages' bakeries in case of emergency. i can't think what such an emergency would consist of (some diabetic accidentally overdosed on their insulin and needs two chocolate eclairs STAT!) but i am looking forward to his return and checking out the goods.
i made a spanish omelette tonight with skinny green beans with ham; L is always very impressed when i do something that is what she calls European Cooking (pouring gazpacho out of a jar and sauteeing some stale bread for croutons also counted as European Cooking, so her standards are not high). i have been keeping half an eye out for an easy french cookbook, but perhaps l'internet will be my best shot, despite the slllooooooowwwww connection. hmm. thoughts to ponder.
thank you to those who have written to me - it is much nicer to feel that i am responding to people rather than just rambling!
love to all...
second bellydancing class tonight - krystle is going to paris for the weekend in two weeks for some mega techno music event and she has promised to buy belly dancing jingly scarves for everyone. i think that's a sound investment of ten euros, myself, so i have a request in for midnight blue.
tomorrow my Big Job is to get myself out of bed in time for morning pilates (we alternate yoga and pilates every morning at 7:30; this morning was the first morning i was organized enough to join in, and half an hour with the dvd yoga sadist proved to be much more doable than the hour long version we did the other day)... and then get myself to the weekly AC mini-farmer's market to buy groceries before class. i am making a conscious effort to stay away from the supermarket as a dietary challenge, and only eat food i get at the farmers' market. bless me, michael pollan, for i have sinned; it has been four days since my last visit to the shopi, but the only thing i bought was balsamic vinegar, which i really don't think should count against me; the last visit before that was over a week ago. i am going to have to find a solution to the breakfast conundrum; i am such a creature of habit with my shredded wheat and granola, that any deviation from the norm is painful. the closest approximation the shopi could provide are cardboard rice flakes, with some truly horrible muesli (for some reason 95% of available cereals are chocolate flavoured - including the muesli options), and it is truly a mystere why the french who are SO GOOD at food should be so bad at breakfast cereal. (i could go the decadent route and go to the bakery for a croissant or pain au raisin every morning, but the bakery is closed until sept. 23 while the baker goes on holiday, and also i would come home weighing three hundred pounds. the bakery is very cute - it is all dark and locked up, and there is a big sign on the door explaining that there will be an Depot de Pain at the butchers' shop for the next two weeks while m'sieu le baker is en vacances with the addresses of the three nearest villages' bakeries in case of emergency. i can't think what such an emergency would consist of (some diabetic accidentally overdosed on their insulin and needs two chocolate eclairs STAT!) but i am looking forward to his return and checking out the goods.
i made a spanish omelette tonight with skinny green beans with ham; L is always very impressed when i do something that is what she calls European Cooking (pouring gazpacho out of a jar and sauteeing some stale bread for croutons also counted as European Cooking, so her standards are not high). i have been keeping half an eye out for an easy french cookbook, but perhaps l'internet will be my best shot, despite the slllooooooowwwww connection. hmm. thoughts to ponder.
thank you to those who have written to me - it is much nicer to feel that i am responding to people rather than just rambling!
love to all...
Tuesday 9 September 2008
bad technology day
grrrr.... ipod is inexplicably frozen, and i managed to inadvertently delete all the photos on my camera.... if anyone has any suggestions re: unfreezing the ipod, i suspect i will be desperate in a few days, so any and all remote technological assistance welcome. perhaps it just doesn't like the indigo girls. hopefully the bad technojuju will not affect the etch-a-sketch.
we did gesture drawing with blocked outlines this morning; less tedious than just gesture drawings because there is only one right answer with the blocked outlines, and you have to sit there until every single angle agrees when you check it against every other angle. it definitely feels like there is a point to doing it over and over again until you can get it right the first time. it's like when the karate kid first figures out that there's a reason for the wax on wax off. any day now i will be the surprise victor at the national high school karate finals competition; just watch this space. Teacher's lecture today was an exercise in self-improvement in a different way: he managed to stay a bit more concrete, but every few minutes there would be a mispronunciation ('...the artist paul klee...', pronounced klee instead of clay), a misdefinition ('relative pitch in music, for example, is when i play you a note, and you sing that same note back to me') or a wrong word ('the sense of where your body is in space is called 'propiocentrism' eek no it's not, it's proprioception). i have to remind myself, the contest is not about who knows more, it's about who can restrain themselves from being an obnoxious smart-arse. clearly not me, because i am blogging about it now. but i promise, not a peep out of me during class.
during lunch i worked on king charles (isn't that a kind of spaniel? i'm thinking small and yappy with long floppy ears) and then back in the afternoon for poster study. M has promised that after this week (different poster study every afternoon), we will do one more week of something called rounding exercises, and then we will get to start our first Real Painting (a two week pose). She said this during coffee break when we were all standing around yackering and there was a sudden dead silence, and everyone felt really nervous, like, wow, A Real Painting. that's heavy stuff, man.
ce soir i went for a runnyrun out a different way than i have ever gone before, uncharted territory, off the map. i didn't see any sea monsters, but there were some tres joli sunflower fields in full bloom. it pissed with rain this morning, cold and windy, all the shutters rattling (the stools in the studio all creak and squeak, so when the wind gets going, it feels like you are in an old wooden ship in a storm at sea) but then was inexplicably hot this afternoon when i was running. i have given up trying to dress for the weather; polartek and thermal underwear with eensy weensy tank tops and skirts is the only sensible solution.
portrait night this evening - i have done both portrait sessions in pencil, because it's what was on the supplies list, so i figured i should start getting used to it, but have come to the conclusion that i DO NOT LIKE drawring in pencil because the grey is BORING. i like my lovely sanguine, all juicy warm red sexy smudgy that you can fingerpaint with, practically, and next tuesday supplies list be damned! i am going to go for it. wow, that just goes to show the isolation tankitude of my existence here, when using something out of my secret illicit stash of unofficial art supplies counts as a thrill to be anticipated a week in advance. i'd head out to le calimero (the little pub) and have a glass of wine, but the overstimulation might be damaging, so instead i'll head to bed, read about alice munro's depressing childhood in ontario, and contemplate the appointment i have with the french dentist for a cleaning in two weeks' time instead (flying to france to take advantage of socialized medicine might sadly be more cost effective and timely than trying to get dental care in the US; apparently they charge a flat rate of 30 euros for cleaning plus x-rays if you don't have a french health card, and teacher said they apologize profusely for even charging that much... sounds like a deal to me, man.)
love to all and to all a good night...
we did gesture drawing with blocked outlines this morning; less tedious than just gesture drawings because there is only one right answer with the blocked outlines, and you have to sit there until every single angle agrees when you check it against every other angle. it definitely feels like there is a point to doing it over and over again until you can get it right the first time. it's like when the karate kid first figures out that there's a reason for the wax on wax off. any day now i will be the surprise victor at the national high school karate finals competition; just watch this space. Teacher's lecture today was an exercise in self-improvement in a different way: he managed to stay a bit more concrete, but every few minutes there would be a mispronunciation ('...the artist paul klee...', pronounced klee instead of clay), a misdefinition ('relative pitch in music, for example, is when i play you a note, and you sing that same note back to me') or a wrong word ('the sense of where your body is in space is called 'propiocentrism' eek no it's not, it's proprioception). i have to remind myself, the contest is not about who knows more, it's about who can restrain themselves from being an obnoxious smart-arse. clearly not me, because i am blogging about it now. but i promise, not a peep out of me during class.
during lunch i worked on king charles (isn't that a kind of spaniel? i'm thinking small and yappy with long floppy ears) and then back in the afternoon for poster study. M has promised that after this week (different poster study every afternoon), we will do one more week of something called rounding exercises, and then we will get to start our first Real Painting (a two week pose). She said this during coffee break when we were all standing around yackering and there was a sudden dead silence, and everyone felt really nervous, like, wow, A Real Painting. that's heavy stuff, man.
ce soir i went for a runnyrun out a different way than i have ever gone before, uncharted territory, off the map. i didn't see any sea monsters, but there were some tres joli sunflower fields in full bloom. it pissed with rain this morning, cold and windy, all the shutters rattling (the stools in the studio all creak and squeak, so when the wind gets going, it feels like you are in an old wooden ship in a storm at sea) but then was inexplicably hot this afternoon when i was running. i have given up trying to dress for the weather; polartek and thermal underwear with eensy weensy tank tops and skirts is the only sensible solution.
portrait night this evening - i have done both portrait sessions in pencil, because it's what was on the supplies list, so i figured i should start getting used to it, but have come to the conclusion that i DO NOT LIKE drawring in pencil because the grey is BORING. i like my lovely sanguine, all juicy warm red sexy smudgy that you can fingerpaint with, practically, and next tuesday supplies list be damned! i am going to go for it. wow, that just goes to show the isolation tankitude of my existence here, when using something out of my secret illicit stash of unofficial art supplies counts as a thrill to be anticipated a week in advance. i'd head out to le calimero (the little pub) and have a glass of wine, but the overstimulation might be damaging, so instead i'll head to bed, read about alice munro's depressing childhood in ontario, and contemplate the appointment i have with the french dentist for a cleaning in two weeks' time instead (flying to france to take advantage of socialized medicine might sadly be more cost effective and timely than trying to get dental care in the US; apparently they charge a flat rate of 30 euros for cleaning plus x-rays if you don't have a french health card, and teacher said they apologize profusely for even charging that much... sounds like a deal to me, man.)
love to all and to all a good night...
Monday 8 September 2008
hula princesses hit the loire!
so this morning i celebrated the fact that i am no longer sore from yoga by _not_ joining the girlies for morning yoga, but instead took myself for a jog around the lake (mist, early morning sun, more swans, peaceful old guy fishing, peugeot-driving insane people taking curves of tight medieval stone streets at fifty miles an hour, etc.) and now i'm sore from that. you just can't win. :)
then to class, where yes, we did indeed spend the entire morning doing more gesture drawings until i was cross-eyed with the tedium of it. i am hoping it's going to be like the karate kid, wax on, wax off, and if i just keep doing gesture drawings (one every five minutes for THREE HOURS today oh mon dieu) then when it comes time to do a real drawing i will suddenly discover that i have a black belt in karate. or something.
after lunch (polenta, roasted garlic, mystery sausage, tomato salad, peach with meringue and blob of fromage frais) i hooray finished ann - all except for the inscription thingy above her head, which i can't decide whether i want to add or not. to be decided. but she's stretched out to dry taped to my floor (it's the only flat surface in my room that will not disintegrate if something gets taped to it) where my job for the next few days while she dries is not to step on her. although ann boleyn patterned footprints would be kind of a cool artistic addition to the day-core of the house, i don't think landlords would appreciate it.
painting with M this afternoon; i wish _she_ would spend more time talking in generalities, because she's a very, very good painter. her teaching style is very gentle, and she just sort of wanders around going, "um, i think if you look, that bit there could be a little darker" and "remember since that plane is tilted slightly towards the light source, the value is going to be a little lighter," and of course she is always right, but it would be nice to be able to see what was wrong with it before she came and pointed it out. not thrilled with the poster study i did today, but meh, it's all a learning experience.
the evening's entertainment was a hula lesson, taught by krystle, whose parents are filipino and somehow (i didn't get the full story) that translates into her having danced hula for years, taught/performed it, the works. we had a good crowd, and it was very fun. plans are already in the works for a performance before krystle leaves in a month. plastic flowers, bikini tops, grass skirts made of shredded garbage bags - it's gonna be classy. four blondes and a hong-kong native yearning in swaying formation for their tropical island home to the sound of ipod ukeleles - don't pretend you don't want to be there to see it.
i also made a start on the next master copy - a fouquet painting of king charles the somethingth of france. i'm burning through my sap green at a fast and furious pace - i will have to order another tube if i keep indulging my taste for pale green anatomically weird early renaissance people.
anyway. bed!
love to all.
then to class, where yes, we did indeed spend the entire morning doing more gesture drawings until i was cross-eyed with the tedium of it. i am hoping it's going to be like the karate kid, wax on, wax off, and if i just keep doing gesture drawings (one every five minutes for THREE HOURS today oh mon dieu) then when it comes time to do a real drawing i will suddenly discover that i have a black belt in karate. or something.
after lunch (polenta, roasted garlic, mystery sausage, tomato salad, peach with meringue and blob of fromage frais) i hooray finished ann - all except for the inscription thingy above her head, which i can't decide whether i want to add or not. to be decided. but she's stretched out to dry taped to my floor (it's the only flat surface in my room that will not disintegrate if something gets taped to it) where my job for the next few days while she dries is not to step on her. although ann boleyn patterned footprints would be kind of a cool artistic addition to the day-core of the house, i don't think landlords would appreciate it.
painting with M this afternoon; i wish _she_ would spend more time talking in generalities, because she's a very, very good painter. her teaching style is very gentle, and she just sort of wanders around going, "um, i think if you look, that bit there could be a little darker" and "remember since that plane is tilted slightly towards the light source, the value is going to be a little lighter," and of course she is always right, but it would be nice to be able to see what was wrong with it before she came and pointed it out. not thrilled with the poster study i did today, but meh, it's all a learning experience.
the evening's entertainment was a hula lesson, taught by krystle, whose parents are filipino and somehow (i didn't get the full story) that translates into her having danced hula for years, taught/performed it, the works. we had a good crowd, and it was very fun. plans are already in the works for a performance before krystle leaves in a month. plastic flowers, bikini tops, grass skirts made of shredded garbage bags - it's gonna be classy. four blondes and a hong-kong native yearning in swaying formation for their tropical island home to the sound of ipod ukeleles - don't pretend you don't want to be there to see it.
i also made a start on the next master copy - a fouquet painting of king charles the somethingth of france. i'm burning through my sap green at a fast and furious pace - i will have to order another tube if i keep indulging my taste for pale green anatomically weird early renaissance people.
anyway. bed!
love to all.
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