career as portraitist to the undead? hmm...

SJ as angry zombie - morning pose
SJ as poorly made-up corpse - fuzzy pic of afternoon pose
two paintings in progress - i suspect they will continue to in progress for quite some time. i nearly painted an enormous black X through both today, i was so frustrated by the end of the day. blech. and yet, in a masochistic sort of way, it's fun. like going to the dentist and having teeth drilled, but the dentist is nice.
pub lunch for the second day in a row, this time with the whole group; the conversation was about alternative energy sources. we had everything from methane-fuelling everything (harness the power of raw sewage!) to squirrel-power (fully biodegradable work force!). i wonder if my six weeks of not driving anywhere has come anywhere close to offsetting the carbon footprint of the flight from SF to Paris. hm. doubt it. there was a cool segment on the pub TV about the new electric cars that are being pioneered in India, two passenger deals with one person in front and the other behind. they are very nifty-looking, but WHY oh WHY are plain old bicycles not getting promoted more??
okay i am going to go out and find a telephone to try and track down pau, who i think may be driving around in circles in the cow fields, because he has now taken three hours to do what should have been an hour and a half drive, and i am chewing my hand off with hunger...
love to all.

cheese fondue! mmm....

voici new model
jiminy crickets, i am fatiguee. a long day of paint huffing. today i was a Lady Who Lunches; C & M and i went to the pub for lunch (the only restaurant of the town is closed except for summer weekends, but the pub is actually pretty good: savoyard sausage with potatoes, cheese fondue, green salad... mmm.... profound food coma during Head Honcho's afternoon painting demo, however, so it will not be a regular occurrence). M won yet another painting prize for international artist magazine, and needed help with writing a blurb. she came over again tonight, and is feeling extremely pleased because it's now finished and sent off and she will have the weekend free of worrying about it (it's amazing how much trying to write in english stresses her out; she was imagining spending every evening for the next week on it). i have already told her that my motives for helping her are entirely selfish, and that if/when i have a baby, i am fully planning on ringing her for a commission and will expect her to drop everything to come to california and do a 16 x 10 foot mural in the living room. (she said no problem).

P. comes tomorrow, so i will have to do a lot of cleani... i mean, i will wave a duster quickly around the always impeccable flat, laundry so he has clean sheets, a market run, borrowing an extra duvet from Head Honcho, etc. hope he arrives OK - i haven't actually checked to make sure that google maps knows of the existence of AC, but he hasn't emailed to say otherwise, so fingers crossed. i have made rezzies at what is supposed to be a scrumptious hole in the wall in vihiers, a whopping 20 km away (hey, man, you get access to a rental car, you spread your wings and fly while you got the chance) - i think the potatoes and cheese fondue i ate at lunch today will hold me until tomorrow evening quite nicely. i had (literally) a piece of bread and a small pile of raspberries for dinner, and i'm still full.

painting update: so i don't know if it's a fluke or what, but i think i might be getting better. i like the 2 day drawing of s.j. (above) much better than the 2 day drawing i did of krystle, and so far i like the painting i'm working on of s.j. slightly better than i liked my painting of krystle at the same stage (although it's annoying to already be able to identify major problems with it this early on that i don't know how to correct). i am doing my best to incorporate some of the stuff that michelle says into my painting, even though it's hard not to revert back to the paint-whatever-bit-of-the-model-appeals-to-you-most-at-that-moment technique, and to really try and define blocks of colour before i put them down, rather than just smooshing the paint around until it turns into grey soup. hunh. dunno. it's also hard to nail down how much improvement is due to the teaching, and how much is due to just having nothing else to do all day every day for this long a stretch.

okey dokey smokey time to go and attain unconsciousness....

quote of the day

...from M's eight year old daughter, sarah, watching him painstakingly shade in a detailed figure drawing: "Daddy," (pause. "yes?"), "you take an awfully long time to colour in."

ultra quick b/c we have class in fifteen minutes, and i'm not even dressed yet: yesterday good, finished figure drawing, will now be painting both morning and afternoon sessions, as well as starting new master copy (contrary to doodle's request for "more luscious bottoms" i have picked an even weirder, greener, elongated madonna for my next one. sorry ducks. promise to paint a big fat lady naked bottom for the one after that if i can find one.)
run this morning: parental types should not be worried about my getting molested and/or run over running in the dark: the only car traffic down the road i run down are tractors going 10 miles an hour once every two hours, and the only non-studio-E foot traffic i have (literally) ever seen are cows, so i really don't think it's an issue. i am starting to get sore knees though, which i am going to choose to just ignore for the time being, because i am enjoying the running so much.
okay time to get changed and go to class...

why doesn't insomnia make you more productive?

money changer and his wife - master copy
saint krystle
half past five in the morning and here i am up blogging - the things i do to keep the masses entertained (OK, myself entertained - insomnia strikes again...) i just finished reading margaret forster's family memoir 'hidden lives' and it was totally disappointing: she starts off with a bang, the fact that her grandmother had a twentyone year period of her life which she flat out refused to discuss (age two to 23, a fairly significant chunk, most would argue) and that after her grandmother's death it was discovered that she had had an illegitimate daughter BUT then you never find out what her grandmother _did_ during those 21 years, and there is no more information about the daughter except for she got married and then died in the 50's in a mental institution, and the entire rest of the book is a not very interesting recollection of the author's own childhood. she went to school, she argued with her parents, she went to university, she got married to a faceless bland nice guy, she had kids, she became an (apparently successful) writer, she continued to argue with her parents, her mother died, dad still alive at cantankerous age 94, end of story. i feel CHEATED. a whole three hours of my life, gone, just like that, when i could have been sleeping. oh well, next time i will know better. on the upside, however, most of the book takes place in carlisle, in the english lake district, and they go on holiday to some familiar places (keswick, pooley bridge(!), etc.) which is kind of fun. (they complain about pooley bridge the whole time: none of the coffee shops have proper toilets, it's raining, the pubs are full of noisy people smoking, there's nothing to do... love it. pooley bridge clearly hasn't changed in 80 years).

notable events: finished master copy yesterday WOOHOOOO far from perfect, but it meets the minimum standard of my painting, which is that there is paint over the entire canvas = good enough. will post photo, god and L's computer willing, as well as a pic of the drawring i did as a going away present for krystle, in her saintly pose.

went for a run yesterday evening in the dark, and was a bit nervous coming back along a dark deserted stretch of road, as there was a dark figure running along on the other side of the road from me and for about three minutes was convinced i was about to be raped/mugged/murdered, until the dark figure turned out to be T (equally convinced that she was about to be raped/mugged/murdered by my dark figure) and we had a nice companionable jog together.

okay, now let's see if this photo thing works...

surprise! more drawing and painting!

action-packed thrilling day here today in A-C; first day of drawing/painting the new model, who is a completely different shape and colour from krystle (who was yellow ochre, raw sienna, naples yellow). this girl is lots more pink and white and blue, and she's about half the size as well (she also has bruises on her bum from her pelvic bones b/c she is so skinny, which weirds me out a little bit, but never mind, i'll get over it.) she's got quite an interesting face, and this time in the easel lottery (a very formal procedure involving drawing scrabble letters out of a miniature cauldron) i ended up front bang center, full body plus face, so i might not be quite as speedy gonzalez as the last pose, when all i had to draw was the back of krystle's head.

today i am HEARTBROKEN to report that i did not quite quite finish my master copy. so close. i put in an hour at lunch time, and another hour after dinner and then it was too dark. i literally have about two percent of the painting left. ees keelling me. never mind, tomorrow is my day.

entertainment for the evening was watching another episode of 'so you think you can dance' - a very peculiar poppy ballroomy version of tango, a rocking bollywood routine, and some fun hiphop. we find out on the next episode who gets eliminated. i don't want to know, it's too painful. i love all the couples. really, i want to be on the show. L. and i decided we are going to write to the fox network to suggest a new program, so you think you can paint, and it will consist of watching people hunched over easels swearing under their breath for three hours at a time. guaranteed to make bajillions for the networks. she also let drop that she used to dance hiphop in college, so guess who is going to be made to give a little performance one of these days. she asked for a few days to figure out a routine and practice it. stalling for time, you see. but i'll get her.

happy birthday today to my MUMMY!! (i think. have kind of lost track of the days, to be honest).

pickety pics

confirmation please that above child is the cutest in the universe. she has a snaggle tooth which is probably going to have to get fixed one of these days, but in the meantime, it just adds to her charm.
nada mucho to report today: L. staggered in at an astonishing 2:30 a.m. last night, which just goes to show that there is a social life to be had in AC, i am clearly just not part of it. i am a slave to my circadian rhythms. bed when it's dark. it feels good.
another hour long run this morning (these aliens are very persistent. they seem to be relenting a bit and giving me back some control over the weather, however; glorious sunshine), followed by seventyfive minutes avec le sadiste de yoga oh my god i hate that guy. he makes you do the most impossible things and you are just about falling over with the pain and wobbliness of whatever ridiculous position you have contorted yourself into and he goes on about ujai breathing and finding your spiritual center and all you can think is oh god please let us get soon to the bit where we get to lie face down on the floor. that's my favourite part of yoga, i have decided.
in other breaking news, i made myself go back and work some more on the money changer and his wife painting; my procrastination on that particular project was getting worse and worse, until i was avoiding even looking at that half of my bedroom. but i screwed my courage to the sticking place, plugged in l'ipod, inhaled some turpentine fumes to get myself in the mood, and nailed my bum to the chair. all but the bottom 6" x 6" square is done now, and i can inshallah finish that tomorrow during lunch, thereby staying On Track for my goal of one master copy per week. huzzah!

walk with L this afternoon to go and say bonjour to le donkey in the sunshine (she actually calls out, bonjour donkey! when she sees it, and has learned when she throws an apple to him and he fails to notice it (because he is not a super bright donkey, as donkeys go), to call out, donkey, pomme la bas! which is just the cutest thing EVER in her chinese accent.).

we are entering week five of the shopi boycott; i made stock for soup today, boiling up leeks and carrots and chicken bones like a good housewife. the thing i am most whimpering about at the moment is refined sugar (i want it to make cocoa with) but even i recognize that sugar would be a pathetic thing to cross my own picket line for. if i am going to cave in, it should at least be for something that theoretically i could die of some horrible vitamin deficiency without. scurvy. beriberi. something. i will not die without refined sugar to put in my cocoa, i will not.

i did however have dinner from the pizza truck, more because of the entertainment value than the quality of the food: the pizza truck which arrives in town every saturday night is the only thing apart from the town fair three weeks ago that i have seen here that draws more than three people. normally this town is dead as a doornail; you can walk around for an hour and not see a single solitary soul on the street. come saturday night, however, at the roundabout, they come out of the woodwork; there are maybe forty or fifty people hanging out eating pizza next to this grotty pizza truck, where they are making the pizzas (by hand, from locally grown pizza trees, so i am allowed), teenagers, old people, everyone, and it really makes you wonder where all these people GO during the rest of the week. maybe they're all vampires with no kitchens. who knows.
i also noticed today that one of the biggest pompes funebres shops actually shares a storefront with the ambulance dispatch service.

after pizza, G&H, C and i watched the VP debate. if you didn't pay attention to what she was actually saying, i was depressed to feel that sarah palin actually came off as the more appealing candidate. i stopped watching after 45 minutes because i just couldn't stand it any more. vaguely related (biden mentioned pakistani schools vs. madrassas briefly), i am reading "three cups of tea," which EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW. i am going to send him money as soon as i get home and have a reliable internet connection and so should you. he is working to build schools for girls in the sketchiest parts of pakistan and afghanistan, and he is amazing. i started tearing up over my sandwich while i was reading it during lunch today.

pic of feet

this is going to be extra speedy b/c i am once again on L's computer (the etchasketch has been VERY uncooperative of late. not sure why) and she needs to go to bed soon.
news du jour: bloody freezing cold. farmer's market in a.m. i have a crush on the guy who sells nectarines, even though i can't understand a word he says. i had a nap in the afternoon because it was the only way i could stay warm. finished book (the cryptographer. weird. kind of good). went for walk, thwarted by hailstorm. (hail! wtf!). new model arrived today; wiry intense new yorker lesbian smoker performance artist. laundry. glass of wine in pub with C, turned into multiperson social event, fun. no run today because all running clothes in laundry, dryer occupied nonstop all day. couldn't face painting; i need to power through this master copy of the money changer and his wife but it is killing me. tarte au citron from patisserie very good. roast chicken from market for lunch from which i am going to make stock from chicken bones so can have soup this week. now one month into shopi boycott, going strong except for CRAP just realized i forgot to buy butter from market today. eek. will have to make do w/ olive oil for the next week. but did get some lovely homemade jasmine soap. time for bed! hope all are well, love jess