Trip delayed, life drawing, and fire

Well. Trip has been postponed 'till the 12th or 13th. So I got one more life drawing session in tonight. Posted in reverse order tonight, just for kicks: top one was 1 hour, the one below was 20 minutes, and then the warm-up sketches. (Posted in reverse, but drawn in the normal order.) 18" x 24" paper.

It's been a harsh couple of days, as there's a big fire (7000+ acres) raging just a ten minute drive from here. They're calling it the Fourmile Fire, because it started in Fourmile Canyon. I assumed it was a wildfire--it hasn't rained for a few weeks--but supposedly a vehicle hit a propane tank.

I'm grateful we haven't had to evacuate or lose anything. When I was 16, our house burned down and it was the kind of traumatic event that never leaves you. I've had a real fire phobia since then. (Not such a terrible phobia to have, I suppose. I do have other phobias that are less useful.) The air here is terrible, full of smoke and it's "snowing" ash. Just breathing feels really uncomfortable. Not sure why my lungs are taking this harder than, say, The Husband's. I'm coughing a lot. Maybe it's because my breathing apparatus has already been partly taken down by allergies. The combination is pretty nasty.

One thing that feels odd is that a few years ago, The Husband and I almost bought a house right where the fire is now. Apparently, so far, over 90 known structures (houses and other buildings) have been destroyed. I can't help but wonder if that particular house is suddenly gone. Amazingly, no one has been injured during all this, so far as I've heard.

And now for some comic relief...

The Husband decided to try to fix the leaky pipes under the kitchen sink. It wasn't funny to me (though it's okay with me if you laugh) that we couldn't use the sink for two days and there were parts strewn everywhere and it was extremely obnoxious of The Husband not to listen to me and call an actual plumber, even when it became apparent that we really needed one and he instead made four separate trips to the hardware store...

But the gem in all this chaos was that The Husband found an Assistant Plumber, albeit a little guy, wearing his spotless white coveralls.

And a video of the plumbing action, below (remember that Rumi is deaf, so his hearing is not being hurt even though it looks bad):

$115.00 - Beth 8SEP10 (Ready to Frame)

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Life drawing

The last life drawing session for a while...

Leaving Tuesday for India.

Above, the quick warm-ups.

Below, two sessions of about 20 or 25 minutes each.

And below, probably my favorite drawing since art school. 40 or 45 minutes.

These are all pretty big (18" x 24")--I finally got myself a large drawing board and a big pad of charcoal paper. So this one really has some presence.

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Sleepy.

$155.00 - Large life sketch (Ready to Frame)

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Life drawing...and a studio incident

Life drawing class the other night went well. It will be continuing for a few more weeks, which is great, though I'm not sure I'll be here for all of them (may be going to India again at some point soon, for the business).

The timing of the next drawings was, respectively: 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 20 minutes. The last one is my favorite.

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So there was a little studio incident the other night... When I woke up I heard some frantic meowing. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and then it stopped, so I shrugged and went about my morning. Then it started up again. Was it coming from outside? I looked behind the house, looked in front of the house. Then, quiet for a while. Then, more meowing. Finally, I happened to walk past the (glass) studio door (which connects the house and studio) and saw a stripey little Lynx face peering at me anxiously and meowing insistently. Apparently, Lynx got trapped in the studio sometime during the night. I'm guessing I hadn't latched the door well and he went in and then when he tried to come back out, he probably stood on his hind legs and pressed against the door and it latched shut. (They're always standing like that looking in when I'm in the studio.) Lynx was very grateful to be rescued (he's a cat who's very nervous about new situations) and got quiet for a while, but then started meowing again, which was odd, because he rarely uses his voice.

So an hour or two goes by and I realize I haven't seen The Midget (sorry, but that's one of Rumi's nicknames...I'm embarrassed...okay, some of his other nicknames, as long as I'm embarrassing myself, are: MonkeyPie, Pink Cadillac, GhostPuppy, The Prince, WhiteChild, Mr.Pink, Tiny-ness, and Midgetino) all morning. So I go look in all his favorite sleeping places around the house: papasan chairs, kitchen cupboards, on top of my computer bag...nada. Strange. And he couldn't be in the studio, because I'd already been in there, and he would've heard me and wanted out, like Lynx.

It actually took a few minutes for the fact to register: Oh. Rumi's deaf. He wouldn't have heard me. Back I go into the studio, searching everywhere for a non-frantic kitty (no meows, no sad face at the window)...and finally find him, curled up happily sound asleep inside a box of framed pastels covered with brown paper in a corner.

Needless to say, there were some painting casualties in the studio. And I didn't notice this until later in the evening:

Nearly impossible to get these shots, as Rumi loves both people and the camera, so it was very hard to get behind him; he kept turning around instantly while I ran around the table like a maniac.

Well, I've always thought he looks like a blank canvas with a lot of potential...


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Life drawing...and what's that in the sink?

It's weird with drawing--sometimes I feel like it'll be a great drawing night and it isn't; other times (like tonight) I go in in a bad mood and the feeling I won't be able to do anything, and things turn out well. There seems to be no predicting the outcome based on mood or on sense of ability going in.

After the quick warm-up sketches (above), the instructor had us divide our paper into quadrants (below) and in each quadrant, we had 10 - 15 minutes and a different pose, and were supposed to do something quite different each time. The lower left one is my favorite of the night.

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I almost had a heart attack this morning when I went to brush my teeth and saw this in the sink:

...It's the fake "squirrel tail" toy that Lynx likes to play with.

(He likes to "drown" things, actually, and we've had to learn to keep the toilet seat lids closed all the time, or we'll find lots of surprises in there.)

And lastly, there's something about the new dog bed...

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Life drawing...and an unwelcome visitor

The really fast, warm-up sketches always seem to be my favorites.

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Can you guess what kind of incident we had here the other night? Yep. My reconstruction of the event is as follows: Miss Lemon was enjoying the night air out on our front deck; along came a little black-and-white creature, aka Pepe LePew; the two creatures were startled to see one another; Pepe did his thing; Mojito heard something and demanded to be let out to go save Miss Lemon; Pepe did his thing again. The worst thing is that it happened about two feet from our front door, with all our house windows open, and the deck is wood, and the house is wood, and all the skunk spray sank into the wood, to permeate it, though I hope not permanently. It is, as you might imagine, and as Larry David would put it: pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty bad.

Who knew the windowsill was such a good place to work on one's stretches?

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More life drawing

This was 17 minutes.

And the following two were actually the super-quick ones from the beginning of class, 1 or 2 minutes each. These often turn out to be my favorites.

Box o' Lynx.

In Jaipur.

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Life drawing

So thrilled to be back in a life drawing class again, even though it's just four sessions. Hoping the instructor will decide to continue; this is just a sort of mini-course for July. My only complaint is that it's going to be the same model every time. I like variety.

The technique on these was to spend just a few minutes per drawing, continuously moving the charcoal in geometric shapes as we saw them, not using line. It was interesting.

Mona Lisa's got nothin' on my boy Rumi's smile.

Miss Lemon. It's too hot to have any bones.

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