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:

(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.