But after having gone through an MFA program and years at an atelier, I can confidently tell you that 'talent,' while real, gets you nowhere on its own. You have to be willing to suck; to put your work out there in the real world for feedback; to sit down and learn your craft; and chutzpah sure doesn't hurt. When I first went back to art school, I despaired utterly of ever catching up to the other students, who had not taken any time off to go get writing degrees or careers.
Read Moreso true
So last night I said, 'Hey, my deadline has just moved up a week and I have the comps done, so how about that posing?... 'I think my wife needs me to take out the trash,' they said.... 'My girlfriend won't let me get naked at your place anymore,' they said.
Read Moreson of packing
Last Sunday, my oldest friend came down to retrieve 10 boxes she'd been storing in my attic, and all of them looked as if they'd been set down the day before rather than 10 years ago. No thick layer of dust, no grime, no water damage.... Although the house is now at the point where I despair of it ever being completely packed and cleaned, I am beginning to get excited about the new place.** The one room I can't quite decide how to lay things out in is the studio, and that's mainly because I need so much more stuff for the studio, it's not funny. a desk for the laptop and monitor to live on a flat filing cabinet (one can hope) some kind of stacked storage for art supplies, so they are all in one place, instead of in many little boxes shelving units for things that don't fit in little boxes some ingenious way I have not yet thought of to store old paintings a low table to set my oil palette on a nice, big, sturdy easel, as the tabletop easel currently takes up my drafting table, and this is not good.
Read Morelassitude
It's been a busy few weeks at the Art Cave.
Moving preparations, which I'd been putting off, now need to be tackled At Once, as I now have a little over a month to winnow, cull, and pack up all my worldly possessions. This makes me want to take to my bed with the vapors. Tackling it even a little bit at a time is overwhelming. Where are my cabaña boys to handle this all?
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Work is busy, I suppose, in the sense that there is a lot to do, with no immediate deadline for most of the projects -- just a distant thought about how it really should all get done soonish. So Saltmine U. continues much as it has been.
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I have a new painting to do, which I'm quite excited about, but want to keep the subject secret until it's finished.
More class work from the man with two silver earrings than I want to think about is in the queue.
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Comic-con looms.
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And all this, combined with summer heat, is giving me a severe case of lassitude, and lack of appetite -- sure signs of stress. Some people, when stressed, devour everything that isn't nailed down. I, however, end up picking at food when I get preoccupied, and have to be reminded to eat. Stress exacerbates this. The only thing that sounds appealing at the moment is faffing about, drinking gin & tonic.
Well.
That's not the only thing.
Technorati Tags: art, comic-con, deadlines, painting, studio
black & white grisaille; birthday weekend
Looking at it after some sleep, I'm not sure about the tooth cylinder dimensions -- it seems like maybe I should make the distance between the nose and the bottom of the jaw taller -- but then, there is that shadow on the jaw, which is making it look smaller than it really is.... But in spite of his hotness, I still nodded off a couple of times during the film; that whole 2.5 hours of sleep the night before and six hours of driving was not a good combination. The Art Cave's appliance insurrection continues: now it's the washing machine that won't pump water, and an outlet in the living room that refuses to power anything.
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