ran, painted, drew, walked, ate. now sleep.

two more days left - fingers crossed that i will get my painting done before i leave...

so lessee. run this morning was gorgeous - freezing cold and with rays of early morning sun coming through the tree branches, and spiderwebs with dewdrops shining on them etc. etc. very poetic. i stopped at one point to pee in a cow field, across the ravine from argenton chateau, and it was most scenic. moo.

portrait slightly slightly less dreadful. she still has racoon eyes. i can't figure it out. i get up close, and it looks like everything is quite reasonable, and then i back up and she looks like elizabeth taylor-as-cleopatra, with a spectacular hangover. i dunno. the funny thing about painting portraits of people i don't particularly like (i.e. sarah jane) is that i am not too bothered by the dreadfulness, because even if it were brilliant, i wouldn't want her face on my wall (in fact, the fact that my painting _doesn't_ look like her makes me slightly _more_ likely to hang it up somewhere). i should face the facts and admit that pretty much everything i am painting at this point is going to end up under my bed for the next ten years until i get tired of it and chuck it out...

lunchtime tarte alsacienne, salad (food mission going well, although i found a couple of parsnips that are going to be a trick to use up. hmm. a challenge. i'll see what i can do. mashed turnip surprise a la blackadder? (the 'surprise' being that there is nothing apart from the turnip...) and also a jar of olives.) more tali/pejmann/larine drama during lunch. closed doors, tears, the whole bit. it is like junior high school, except without as many zits.

afternoon painting blech. M painted two fingers of the horrible right hand for me, as an example, and then told me to paint the other two, and of course now every time i look at the painting, the two fingers that michelle painted just glow out of the canvas, like beautiful slightly accusatory little finger-shaped lighthouses shining through the murk of the grey soup that i painted. the left hand and i are still not on speaking terms. i keep my eye on it because i think it has a death wish against me and might try to reach out of the painting to throttle me (actually to achieve that, i would have had to paint it realistically, which i definitely have not, so perhaps i am safe). the whole project is also semi foiled by the weather at the moment, which is intermittently cloudy, and the clouds wait until you have looked down at your palette to pass, so that sarah jane changes colour every time you stop looking at her. it's messing with my head, man.

after class, a walk with C who is recovering from her bug. we went a way neither of us had EVER BEEN before (very exciting) and found a new little wooden bridge and a new cow path and a new section of river and even a new group of farmhouses we didn't know about. i don't remember any of the conversation but we laughed ourselves silly for the whole two hours we were walking; it always takes me by surprise how much i laugh with C given that she is a) just kind of a normal person, not fantastically smart or witty, just really chatty and nice and b) definitely not my generation (age 50, two fully grown up kids). on the way back we went into the church, which neither of us had seen (it's usually only open on sundays, when we have class) and had a look round. it is quite pretty old gothic stone etc. etc. but the original stained glass windows i am guessing got bombed out in one of the wars, because all the windows have been redone in 1960's old people's home craft project pattern stained glass, which is just a travesty and a half. if i were in charge of the world, i would put in plain glass until such time as i was able to recreate the original medieval windows. amen, brothers and sisters.

then portrait night tonight - P and his crazy curly hair - which was quite fun. he has a very distinctive face - i think he is half arab, half italian (?). boy's got some nose, in any case. haven't decided what i think about my drawing- i think the mouth might be all wrong. not his fault, though; he was a brilliant model and didn't budge an inch.

et maintenant home and in bed. just finished 'falling boy'; i think the portable mark twain might be next...