[pcc_life] It's A Wrap: Fall Term 2004

With the close of the last Watercolor class today, my Fall Term 2004 experience has come to a regretful close.

I've really had fun with this one. The three classes challenged me and I grew artistically, despite the battle with infection. That alone blew a huge crater in the middle of my term, and if it weren't for understanding instructors I don't think I would have made it.

Certainly the web-based Dreamweaver course helped.

Looking back, I can't say which of them I enjoyed more. Watercolor class actually got me to get out my dam' paints, which I have collected for quite some time (I am an inveterate collector of art matierials (yes, bizarre, I know)) and get them used! there is significant damage to my Alizarin Crimson and Cad Yellow Light, and many of the blues are looking quite used. There is a joy in looking at a watercolor box that has seen service. I now have a clue as to what to do when I get them out, and have lost the intimidation factor. I even use charcoal now (I still hate it).

Life drawing benefitted me greatly. Long ago I made the nai'ive statement to my The Wife[tm] that I'd "like to add light and shadow" to my line drawing. Well, my friends, the big epiphany is, there is no such thing as "line"...at least not the way most beginning artists think. Light defines shadow, and shadow gradates and defines itself, the light, and volume. Learning to see, truly see contrasts, areas of light and shadow, is the one true artistic skill. After that, color. But if you don't have a grasp of light and shadow, I don't really think you can really grow as an artist.

To have artistic talent or training, I am now convinced, carries with it the obligation to develop and grow it, or at least to exercise it in some way. It is an important thing that moves us from being worker drones to actual people and citizens.
This is an internal conclusion; I can't back it up with an explanation, but I am as sure of it as I am that the earth revolves about the Sun.

The Dreamweaver class was a good bit of fun. Being web based (and, due to my anxiousness to learn it already and some prior experience hand-coding) I was able to get ahead early on and the infection and hospital visit didn't put me behind much. My final project was a tour of Portland's Bridges, which I have always been fond of, and now adore even more. It used some things because they had to be used (gratuituous rollover images). I found that frames can actually organize and give a site rationale if they are used in just the right way. I used gratuituous multi-event rollovers but it works somehow.

It was good enough that my instructor of record asked to put a copy of it up on his instructor's website. Got full points for it. I did kind of stress the design. And I am kind of proud of it. May post it independently myself sometime, but I borrowed a lot of images and there may be copyright issues to work out. I plan on gathering my own images, over time.

Next term: only two classes, Geography of Oregon (am salivating at the thought of this one) and something called Computer Concepts I, which oddly is seen by PCC as a Physical Science class. Should be more than a coast but less than, say, solo pyramid building. And then there'll be the last term, Spring Term, the term where I do my ultimate GD courses.

Gotta start thinking about a portfolio....