An Intense & Intensive First Week

 In the afternoon, after applying our new knowledge onto traced human sketches (using a compass to measure dimensions), we worked with a live model in a classic static pose.  It actually worked – his body measured 7.5 heads …. cool!

I’m showing these sketches here for all to see, simply to show my starting point.

You see, I’ve been wanting to draw my whole life, but built so much resistance and negative feelings around it.  I just never liked it (partly because I appeared to have no natural talent or patience for it).  There may be some significant event in my past that added to that baggage, but I can’t remember it.  I tried a drawing class once and started the “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” book, but to no avail. All I know is that my art and I both need to grow, and I’ve found myself repeatedly frustrated by my inability to draw the simplest images. I so want to incorporate drawing elements in my art, and so I’m determined to get over all these blocks I’ve created for myself.  I feel worse than a true beginner because of all that baggage – I know that I (and the teachers) will require a lot of patience, acceptance, perseverance, and love  – as well as lots of practice, practice, practice.  Even writing about it now brings tears to my eyes.  Luckily, this is not a competitive school – there’s already a sense of collaboration amongst students, and I’ll definitely benefit from their passion for drawing and their already amazing talent for it.  I’m grateful for all the tips they’ve already shared with me.

Today was a great day!

Wednesday: 

The guidance I received from my Spirit Calling Cards this morning was to: “Stretch peace and rejoice in the pure teachings”.  How appropriate! We spent most of the day working on sacred geometry with a compass and a straight edge (a ruler, but we never use the numbers) and a bit of math/algebra – so detailed, precise and complicated – but very interesting.  We’re working on the foundations this week and will eventually learn how to apply it all. That felt like the “pure teachings” my guiding spirits were talking about this morning in my card reading. The “stretching of peace” was more necessary in the afternoon, however.  We once again worked with a live model, this time in a series of gestural poses – several at 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes and a couple at 8 minutes long.  It was fast and free at first, but by the very end, my inner demons started coming out and I wanted to quit, questioning why I thought I could ever learn to draw, or rather why I ever wanted to or would ever need to…. I know – it’s only Day 2 of classes…. but at that point, I couldn’t imagine ever enjoying it – I had to remind myself of my goal and that I was simply tired after a long and full day. My self-limiting beliefs are strong, but I’m working on them. I’m trusting the process and today’s two teachers (David Heskin and Aloria Weaver – a couple from the States) were great.  Each teacher has a very unique teaching style – the three of them together make a very complementary core team for this trimester.

Four of the students (3 who live together and one of the others) were talking about going home to continue drawing and painting all night, but I just couldn’t imagine joining them at this point. Our 7 hours of class time a day are enough for now…  Instead, I so needed a break and so Donnalynne and I raced out of class to get to the Burg Kino in time to see the 6:15pm showing of “The Third Man” – best British movie of the 20th century – a cult film starring Orson Welles, filmed here in Vienna in 1948, when a big part of the city was still in shambles after the bombings of the war.  The ferris wheel was in it, as well as the building right next to our school in Josefplatz.  That’s where Orson Welles lived.  Good movie – not sure if I’ll ever take the guided walk or sewer tour that are offered in town, but the movie was on my wish list.  I grabbed a slice of pizza on my way home – there are no lack of pizzerias around here…. and European pizzas are soooo good – definitely comfort food!

Thursday:

Every once in a while, I’d stop what I was doing in class to say to myself “No wonder it takes some artists years to create a piece” as the planning stage alone seems painstakingly time-consuming… such a different approach from my in-the-flow intuitive abstract painting style that can produce a dozen pieces during a one-week blissfully intensive painting marathon. Could I ever be patient enough to work in this way? I’m certainly not a lazy person, but I do like shorter projects with an end in sight.

I’m getting a lot more comfortable with the ruler and compass – today we looked at how to take our perfect square, created from a circle, to make harmoniously proportionate and balanced rectangles (1:2, 2:3, 3:4). From there, we built rabattements and rectangle armatures to guide the compositions of our paintings.  It’s rather fascinating stuff and much more elaborate a compositional scheme than the golden mean in the law of thirds I’d learned in photography.  Our school’s mini-library has a rare and precious book that shows multiple examples of how it has been used throughout history – I look forward to having more time to glance through it.  At the end of class, we only had 2 minutes to make a quick sketch using our armature – so I reverted to my spiral trees.

Our last class of the day was at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) – once we’d gotten our gear, headed out, bought our yearly memberships, and made our way through a special entrance (because of our easels) and up into the Greek statuary part of the museum, we had about an hour left to draw our chosen sculpture.  I worked on Aphrodite and was quite happy with the results.  I got the proportions almost right and Laurence helped me with the shading – I haven’t learned to see all the variations of tonal values and am still so very uncertain about the drawing process (where to start, what to do next, how to do it, etc.) … this was equally challenging yesterday when working on drawing a white sphere on a white tablecloth.  Practice, practice, practice and lots of welcome coaching.  I felt good though – I enjoyed my museum experience and was glad I’d done a few extra paraliminals to increase my motivation and enjoyment of the process (Peak Performance).

Friday: 

I woke up at about 4am from a series of disturbing dreams.  After I’d been awake for a few minutes thinking about them, I felt my bed shake … it wasn’t until I got home from school that I remembered that and checked the Internet. There had been an earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale near Vienna at 4:06am.  From what I could see on this German website, there are earthquakes in Austria almost every day…. interesting.  I should have written my dreams down, however, as my Spirit Calling Card message for the day was: “Your mysterious dream is the beginning of a message”.  Hmmmm….

Today we worked on perspective.  We learned how to build a one point and a two-point perspective picture plane and then built some cube structures on the one-point page (unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of that).  It sure beat the class I’d had once before that consisted of “Draw this room and look at the lines – that’s perspective”.  We’re learning sooooo much this week – we have to as we only have 3 more weeks of drawing before the 2-week intensive and then we’re into our paintings.  I can’t imagine what I’ll be painting yet as I’m still far from being able to draw anything to paint – but I won’t jump ahead of myself – one day at a time.

In the afternoon, we started with a second attempt at drawing our sphere – I got a lot more coaching from Aloria and one of the students beside me, and I’m glad to say that I can see some definite progress.  Encouraging!  By staring at that ball long enough, the various shades of grey would start to reveal themselves to me….

For our last class, our model was Edgar, our friendly classroom skeleton.  We had a bone anatomy class (Aloria is also a massage therapist and so is very knowledgeable about the human structure).  It makes a lot of sense that the more we know how the body is built, the more we’ll be able to use those structures as our reference points when we’re drawing.  We then spent time drawing Edgar’s hand …. fascinating!

All in all, it was an intensive and intense week – I’m sure I forgot to mention lots of what we’ve covered.  I know I don’t have pictures of all we did this week, but I’m sure this post’s various galleries give you an idea.  I’m glad to say that by Friday, I was looking forward to going back to the museum this weekend to practice some more with my little sketch book.  I gave it an hour and a half this morning (Saturday) and I seem to have regressed, but I’m sure that’s all part of the process.  No judgment today – I just treated myself to a turkey schnitzel for lunch instead.  Tonight, however, with a fridge full of fresh vegetables, I need to get back into home cooking, both for physical and financial health.  I’m glad to report though, that there is a variety of reasonably priced healthy food options when time or energy is lacking to do the home-cooked thing.

I haven’t decided what I’ll be doing tomorrow – no plans or schedules yet.  I needed to take it easy after my first week of school.  Tonight, I might take a look at some “how to” drawing videos or some German TV (I’m understanding more and more and am creating myself some fun opportunities to practice it).