pictures from class, adam

Yesterday was a pretty darn good day - I did a LOT of work crammed into the regular number of hours, which always makes me feel good. I also did a presentation at CalOptima, and I do love speaking about PI because I believe in the mission of our company so strongly. It's very rejuvenating to tell a group of interested outsides the good parts about us.

After work I headed to my painting class - it's coming along... it's due Tuesday, which means I have some serious work to put into it over the weekend.



Today I have a bunch of excellent work to do in preparation for the Steering Committee Meeting, making the next newsletter, and preparing for the cruise to the Bahamas we are going on at the end of the month.

Time to get going. Tonight after work I hang out with Roxana, and then hopefully make it back home in time to make some lunch for A for tomorrow. I need to spend some good old fashioned TIME with my boyfriend. Sometimes the schedule we have, where he comes home after I should already be asleep - is very frustrating. I got really cranky last night because he woke me up when he got home, but he was asleep when I left this morning - so if we don't wake each other up, we don't really talk for 4 days at a time. No bueno. Maybe I should get him flowers and candy. ;) It's hard for me to balance the practical necessity of SLEEP with the just-as-legitimate-need for Adam time. Hrmph. I am glad it's nearly the weekend!

painting class again

This is the still life that I've set up for my painting class, with my in progress painting next to it! Obviously there are differences. Let's start with that center brown needing to be darker, and the bottom blue needing to be grayer, and the right purple needing more magenta, and you know, for me to work on all of it. But the first step in these paintings is just to cover the canvas with paint, and then make "a series of corrections," which, as Paul says, is really all painting is.

If I have time, I'm going to do a second one, and back up a lot so that the whole set up is smaller on the canvas. I am torn between just starting over already, actually. We shall see. But anyways, it's fun seeing the two side by side. :)

time for fall to get here for real!

I've been reading things my friends have been writing all over the US about how it feels like fall, autumn is finally here, etc. I am suffering seasonal jealousy! The mornings are foggier and cooler, and it's not hot at night now, but that's about it. It's still pretty darn warm during the day. I am knitting scarves and hats like crazy, hoping to inspire the weather to change for me!!!

When the weather changes, I go into apple-mode, for lack of a better phrase. I want to go out in gloves and sweaters and pick apples, and then I want to bake things with apples, and have everything smell like apples and cinnamon. It gets tied into other things too - I want to quilt, and crochet blankets, and write in a handbound journal, and make my own gifts, and decorate and nest, nest, nest.

But there's something phony about that feeling when I can go outside in flipflops and it's appropriate footwear.

During the fall, I want to be midwestern. Or from Idylwild. Either one. :)

I want to sit inside while it's cold outside, plan my spring garden, knit warm things for people I love, bake bread, and make my home as warm as possible.

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This weekend was fantastic. I can't for the life of me remember what I did on Saturday, but Sunday we had friends over that we hadn't seen for about 3 years. Football started at 10am, so I woke up early and did some housework, and then they came bearing breakfast burritos. We watched the game - well, they watched the game, I crocheted. I've been crocheting baby sweaters like crazy. Found a free pattern on ravelry that takes me about 2 hours from start to finish, and I love it. I figure I can start stockpiling now, so when I am ready to have kids, they'll have a whole wardrobe! So I crocheted while Adam, Chris, David, Joe and Tina watched the game. J and T left, and Steve came over around lunch time. I heated up the pea soup I'd made from scratch, and made grilled cheese sandwiches for everybody. I had Top Chef flashes as I plated more than 1 meal. It made me giggle the whole time. I love feeding people. I played some bejeweled, then got out the box of bisque I have had in the closet for a YEAR. I dug out an underglaze pencil and went to town on my "Possible Life Series" cups which I'd posted on here about a year ago. We went and got food from Katella Deli at some point, played Beatles Rock Band in between the football games, I gave Juno a bath and spent some quality time playing with my puppy, I got out some fabric and started sewing a skirt, and then watched Dexter, Entourage, and Californication with the guys.

Good, good, good, good, good, good day.

I am living off of the glow from that day, hoping it carries me through the whole work week. Yesterday was a full day of work, meetings, presentations, and an A2A event. I got home around 11pm, and worked on my painting assignment for a little while, then fell asleep watching Adventureland with Adam. This morning we woke up early enough for a little quality time, and here I am at work again. I am taking a brief break from closing spreadsheets, refunding client's money, and putting together a press packet for the Walk for Independence. Tonight I have painting class - I am unclear about what we were supposed to have DONE for the assignment, and what we're going to be working on in class, so that makes me a little nervous, but oh well.

The objects I've picked out so far are a bunch of different ceramics, different skeins of yarn, and a cowboy hat. I am having hard time with the first painting, becuase he doesn't want us to create depth, and I HATE forcing myself not to make the image more interesting. But I bought big canvas board yesterday, and I'm really excited to do something larger than 8 x 11!!!

Tomorrow I work, and then my dad and I have a date to do Couch to 5k. Thursday I work and have painting, and Friday I work and then I'm going down to UCI to have dinner/exercise/tv show watching with Roxana.

And then it's the weekend. Wonderful, wonderful weekend.

painting class is getting deeper ;)

I've been taking a Fundamentals of Painting class for about 1 month now. It's twice a week, for 3 hours each week. I've really been enjoying it. We started with drawing - charcoal on paper, using objects (mostly spheres and cylinders) that had been spraypainted white. After doing that once, we moved on to painting them - but again, with just white and black paint and white objects. We did that for a while, adding objects with increased complexity and dimension, and then did the same thing but in raw sienna. We added fabric, which increased the difficulty by a LOT. Last week we started with COLOR! Instructor (Paul) would set up two still life settings - one with oranges and blues, and one with greens and reds. Adding color was like jumping off of a building into a whole new swimming pool. Oh MAN do I love color. The blue/orange combo is especially pleasing to me.

For the most part our paintings have been 20-40 minutes in length. He purposefully stops us from going further with them. He says the hardest part of painting is starting a painting, so he wants to get us over that. Also, he wants to keep us wanting to do more, and it is frustrating when he tells us to stop, switch still lives, and start again. Last night he let us work on one painting for the full time and it was a very different experience. We really got to dive in to it more than we had before.

Tomorrow we are not painting, but going to a gallery opening in hollywood. This is the kind of assignment that makes me grumble and not want to go, but I know that once I get there I'll be glad I went. It'll be really good for most of the kids (yes, I say KIDS, because they're BABIES) to get exposure to any sort of painting at all that isn't as famous as the Mona Lisa.

Tuesday we are to - well, here is the assignment:

Consumer Goods Still Life: Establishing Visual Rhythym and a Limited Sense of Depth

Most of us regularly buy various consumer products. These products might be staples such as milk, soap, socks, and light bulbs. Or they might be products we choose to indulge in more than is strictly necessary, such as gourmet chocolates, t-shirts, cd's, hats. For this exercise, make a list of consumer goods which hold a special fascination with you - items you regularly buy, or want to buy as well as objects you simply enjoy looking at.

After you have finished the list, circle two products which hold an especially strong attraction for you. For each, write a paragraph or two exploring what that product means to you adn why you like to buy examples. Does teh item appeal to you visually, emotionally, intellectually, or sensually, or in some combination of these and other ways? What do you think your interest in the product says about you?

Make two paintings featuring multiple examples of one type of consumer product, like cakes in Wayne Thiebaud's paintings. The product may be one you wrote about in teh first part of the project. Both paintings can be made on gessoed paper or canvas panels, approximately 20 x 15. Use a large or medium flat brush to establish the general shapes first. Work from the general to the specific.

Painting 1 (exploring rhythym): Depict objects in plane parallel to the picture plane. Start by placing objects on a shelf or shelves, or attaching the objects to a wall. As you arrange the objects prior to painting them, experiement with varioius ways of spacing and orienting them in order to enhance a sense of visual rhythym. Try movin gthe objects into highly ordered regular arrangements as well as relatively informal and irregular arrangements. Try arranging the objects based on patterns of darks and lights, or by size and shape. Make a series of thumbnail sketches, then, from these choices, paint the composition that most effectively establishes a sense of visual rhythym.

Painting 2 (a first look at creating depth): Arrange and then depic the objects so that they appear to recede back from the picture plane. Portray depth in two ways. First, where they are aligned, opague objects in front will shield the view of ojects deeper in space. And, secondly, the cotnrast of values will be reduced in teh distance. (The reduction on contrast means that darks appear less dark while lights appear less light)


so....
my objects

yarn, yarn, yarn, yarn
lemons
eggplants
new journals, journals and notebooks and ledgers in general
certain ceramisc
cellos
mandolins
guitars
granny squares
wooden handles on those bags
kitchen appliances - like salad spinners,
lots and lots of vessels
some shoes
sunglasses
fish
birds
anything orange
purple eyeshadow
little bottles of wine/champagne
potted herbs
certain flowers at the grocery store
thin asparagus
pens, crayons, markers, sharpies, etc.
big chunky wooden earrings


we shall see, we shall see. I will have to go on a foraging trip through my house to find these. I know I like series and groups of things - I like a whole wall full of yarn, a whole shelf full of the same style of books, a whole cupboard full of spice jars, etc. I would love to combine the consumer aspect of this assignment with the visual.... looking forward to a painting assignment that goes beyond what you see in front of you!

projects projects projects!

I started more of the coin purses - I do things in stages, so first I crocheted about 8 supersized rectangles, and then felted them all, and then last night spent some time needle felting. I am going to need more wool yarn soon. I am running out. Used up all of the brilliant green and purple, have no more black... it's pretty much down to baby blue now. Time for some yarn shopping.

Went to Stuart's for a director's meeting of a new venture, which I will post about more later, I believe. We will be starting 2 LLC's - Adventures to Grow, and Adventures to Go - the Grow one aimed at youth, the Go one aimed at adults. I am very excited about this. Stuart did a good job getting his "dream team" assembled, and this could be really good. If nothing else, we had David, Salvador, Adam, Stuart and I in the same place at the same time since we graduated 2 years ago. I was grinning the biggest grin the whole time.

Have some sort of virus taking over my face. Skin hurts.

Thinking that I should help my little sister move to UCI at some point. She's going to be experiencing what was one of the coolest things in MY life, and she gets to do it even more hardcore (yay campus housing) and I have been sort of ignoring it.

Have had nothing but golden days since Adam and I had our official Golden Day. I am so pleased with us. It's incredibly easy to be so unabashadly in love.

In painting class we started using color last night. It was wonderful. Tonight we do more. I enjoy those 6 hours a week a whole lot.

Need to cook and clean today/tomorrow. The kitchen is disgusting. I tried stewing a bunch of my garden tomatoes and so there is tomatoe blood and guts all over. I need to grocery shop to cook lunches and in order to cook I need to do dishes... I just need a full day of chores to make my brain feel relaxed in my house again. I'm starting to accrue all those little piles of "I'll put them away later" and I hate that.

So this is me, right now. Lots of projects, not as much time. Feeling physically not to hot, but mentally good. Stuart's project was necessary for me. I really needed to feel excited about something new.