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.