[pcc_life] Got It Together At Last

The different things I was trying to accomplish at PCC have been accomplished. The biggest thing was getting that evening section of Life Drawing that I was trying to get. When I walked into CT231 and asked for the instructor, who should I find but the instructor from my Watercolor class much earlier that day.

I presented him a blue slip, and he signed it forthwith.

I like Mark Richardson Smith. He's a good fella.

Anyhow, we got right to work doing gestural studies. I came severley unequipped; I did have a bigass pad of newsprint but all I had to draw with was mechanical pencils (HB, true, but .5 and .7 mm leads) which is somewhat inappropriate for the media. Never mind. I just got to work.

Gestural drawing is a marvelous thing. It's loose and fluid, and since you're not trying to augur in the details, surprisingly apt at communciating the emotional impact of something. If you work a gestural sketch long enough it will more and more resemble what you're trying to portray. But it's a fluid, of the moment thing that forces you to look and really see what you're trying to depict.

Strangely, "drawing what you see" means so much more that you think. People don't genrally look to see things as they are. This is not a criticism really, this is a talent that the average Joe or Jane doesn't really need to walk down the street, buy a latte, step onto a TriMet, what have you.

Or is it? How much more expressive and exciting in the simple ways would life be if we looked at things like the artist does?

This is another thing that learning design has given me.

That and, apparently, the power to digress into territory unknown.