Yesterday's poppy did double duty before it deceased.
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Unrelatedly: it's been rather amusing here over the last couple of days searching for an item that can be used tomorrow in the beginning drawing class I teach, on how to shade a sphere. Knowing that ideally I need a perfectly smooth white ball, the search began. An orange? Nope, too nobbly nubbly and too dark a value. Billiard ball? Don't know anyone who has one. A baseball that Mojito, one of our dogs, brought home from the park? Nope, the stitching is too distracting. Ditto the grooves in the volleyball that the neighbor brought over in hopes of relieving my dilemma. Then the neighbor's wife dug up a ping-pong ball from some basement stash, but alas, it has a very distracting seal-line all the way around it. (Plus, as she pointed out, "It's awfully small!") "An egg?" she offered. Not round enough for Lesson 1.
Things were beginning to get desperate as I contemplated showing up to class empty-handed on sphere-shading day. I started to gaze at the filthy dog-tennis-balls in the yard and wondered just how gross it would be to try to cover one of them in acrylic gesso. I almost tried it out of desperation, until I started visualizing how I would go about that--specifically, how would I cover it completely while it had to rest somewhere to dry? So then I thought, well, I guess I could sort of spear it onto a sharp stick like someone getting ready to toast a marshmallow, and gesso everything but that part...and fortunately, that's when I gave up on that whole idea.
I went grocery shopping tonight and found a couple of quite round, light-value smooth-skinned grapefruits. Voila! Good enough. Now please don't remind me how I have to lug a big ol' spotlight from my home studio to the class tomorrow along with a grapefruit and all the other stuff too...in the rain.
Moral of this story: It's a lot harder than you'd think to find a smooth white ball in your house.
"The Search for a White Sphere" sounds like a good title for something...perhaps a Damien Hirst piece?
More art on my website: jalapfaff.com
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