The Wayfaring Wordhack

*argh!* How aggravating! I had a long entry typed up, just needed to attach a photo and say a few more words before hitting "post," and I fumble-finger navigated myself away from the page.  Unlike LJ, it didn't ask to restore the draft, even though it had auto-saved it. :(

Long post short, I mentioned watching the first season of Landscape Artist of the Year with Sprout and how we enjoyed discussing our views compared to the judges'.  I also get a kick out of British humor, and what is not to love about the English countryside?  It is always interesting to see others interacting with art and trying to push ourselves to be more open to styles and interpretations that don't really appeal to us.  These convos are both interesting and challenging with Sprout. I believe I have mentioned before that she is a Very Literal-Minded Girl, and her literal-loving tendencies encompass art as well as language.  (Do not get her started on the common conceit that the heart is the seat of emotion.)


Another YouTube find was Ian Roberts' channel, which was suggested to me when I was looking up composition and layout for children's book illustration.  Go figure.  But I am happy for the find because he was able to make some things click for me about thumbnail and reducing detail to value that Marcel* was not able to make stick long-term for me. Time will tell if I really have it now, but I think I do.  Just need to practice more.

Here is a sample of what I was doing based off two of Ian's videos. Three thumbnails are me trying to get the best dynamic lines from a photo of his and the other is a copy of what he did in the second video with a different landscape.



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* An artist in Mayotte, whom I took some lessons from.  I have a few entries tagged with his name.  I need to reread them for a jaunt down memory lane.

This Saturday was art class as usual. I took the car instead of biking so that I could get our painting. As soon as we hang it (and if the camera isn't still on the blink), I'll take a pic. My lesson consisted of transforming this
into a larger, color painting. Marcel wanted me to finish it in one day, but I'm too slow. I'm not happy with the colors yet (just a basic palette of black, white, burnt sienna, ochre, indigo, and a touch of cobalt. I think he'll have to let me use a touch of violet to get the alley floor right.)

Sunday,  mana_triniand I took the boat to Ilôt Bambo for a picnic. We stopped along the way and snorkeled between two islets. We saw an enormous crown-of-thorns starfish for the first time. Since it's the only one I've ever seen, and we haven't heard of there being a problem with them in Mayotte, we didn't try to take it (they can wipe out all the coral; and you can't cut them up and leave them in the water because they will just regenerate.) No point in further trying to "fix nature" only to mess up the natural order of things.

When we arrived on Bambo, two kayakers were already there, but they left by the time we got our fire going. After we put the fish on the grill, we drank champagne and did other French things. We had a lovely lunch of grilled fish (two kinds), tomato salad with preserved lemons, baguette, and blue cheese. Because I forgot the plates, we ate our fish on some nice flat stones that we found on the beach.  It was a great touch because the sun-warmed rocks kept the meat hot. We had fresh pineapple for desert as we strolled along the beach, looking for treasures. After taking advantage of the tide to reload the boat, we snorkeled for a little bit before heading outside of the lagoon so J could spearfish.

Monday night, we had Marcel over to stretch the painting onto the frame for us. Now J knows the technique and can do it when we move. Marcel stayed for dinner. Unfortunately, while taking my apple pie out of the oven, I burned three fingers and a thumb and had to spend the evening with my hand (the left one to boot! argh!) in a glass of ice water. It is more numb than painful today, but it still makes typing awkward.

I had my first art lesson today, and I'd classify it as a success for two reasons: one, I didn't feel like a total hack; two, I learned something new. I worked with charcoal, first doing a landscape in my amateurish way. Then Marcel showed me how I *should* do it. So I did that again, and it wan't half bad. Then we went through his reference photos, and he chose one of a little alley with marked values. I sketched it large to work on perspective and the values. Then, I did it on smaller scale, and he declared it fit to be traced to transfer to a canvas. My next lesson will involve painting the scene.  But...all in black. As if I were still working with charcoal.

I came home exhausted. I'm not used to standing on concrete for 2.5 3.5hrs anymore(see, I'm so tired, I can't even count. :P). Since I already wrote for the day, I think I'll have supper and curl up with a book. That's a nice way to spend an evening alone.