The quarter is almost over, I have three finals this week, one tomorrow and two on Thursday. Here is a portrait I did for my final visual thinking portfolio, the guy looks pretty stern. I copied this one from a self-portrait of Edward Hopper from the National Portrait Gallery.
I started off my morning right with my new weekly pilgrimage to the coffee house near my apartment. It is a true Seattle experience in my eyes. Free Wi-fi, cute college chicks studying over obnoxiously gigantic mugs of coffee, and local art all over the walls. It used to be a house and still feels like somebody's home only with a large espresso bar added to the living room.
I walked in at about 8 AM this morning and sauntered up to the bar and asked the barista(my new coffee vocabulary), for a large vanilla latte....mmmm. (By the way, I'm still very impressed by the way these northwesterners can rattle off their extremely complex coffee orders with the skill of a practiced auctioneer, "I'd like a harmless double tall non-fat vanilla cap, and make it wet please.") She pulled out a mug that would hold a well-developed cantaloupe and said "are you sure?" I said to her, "hmmm....do you have anything more....say, bucket sized?" I always claim that I don't drink much coffee and then people say, "but what about this morning, you had two cups??" I guess it always seems like I don't drink it often because I have not built up the caffeine tolerance of these coffee-fiends up here. I dragged my mondo mug of coffee over to my regular corner next to the window and got right to work. About an hour later I had downed three-quarters of the cup and started to notice that my writing looked like I had been using one of those squiggle pens. I was shaking so bad you could actually hear a high-frequency hum coming from where my butt met the chair! I managed to get through writing the notes for my finals but then had to begin one of two portraits I have to do this weekend. Not a chance! After going through four hand-spasm riddled pieces of sketch paper I decided to abandon the task and walk back home for some food. I never even finished my trough of coffee.
I found this quiz while surfing the net today.....a nice homework alternative for those of you in school. It's kind of interesting if you have the time to do it. Take the quiz and leave a comment, let me know YOUR world view:
This is mine:
 | You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com |
Papo and I spent almost nine hours at the Drawing Jam, an annual event held by the Seattle Academy of Fine Art. The Jam featured 12 hours of live music, belly dancers, free food and art supplies, and about ten studios open for anything from still-life drawing to clay-modeling to nude figure models. I was picking on Papo because even he called it "artsy-fartsy," he spent several years as an art student in San Francisco. If he calls something artsy-fartsy then it REALLY must be. At Seven o'clock they ushered out the kiddos and we broke out the beer that the Red Hook Brewery had so kindly donated for the event......didn't I just have a post about drinking and drawing recently? I spent most of my night in the long-pose room where the models hold their pose for an hour. I met so many great people and it was cool to have so many REAL artists in one room. They really gave me some great pointers, I think I'm going to start sudying how to draw hair. It is a really elusive technique for me, I always end up with "rambo" hair like the woman in the drawing on the right has. I wish they had an event like this every week, I really need the practice. That was my first time ever drawing the human figure. I was really surprised to discover that there are a lot of parts that I generally overlook when I see a naked person. I must have spent twenty minutes studying one woman's shoulder! It was very eye-opening for me. I realized that people, including myself, generally have a very poor idea of what is beautiful in other human beings. Studying the body as I did that night teaches one to see beauty in everybody.
Holy Crap!! Is this thing real? My friend Rachel was on the hunt for gadgets as gift items for Christmas and turned up this super technoriffic set of pens that transform into a computer. There is no way these things actually exist, is there?
My friend's dad had a heart attack yesterday and went in for a quadruple bypass operation. I'm happy to say that the surgery went off without a flaw and tough old Greg is doing quite well. Sue flew out to Idaho as soon as she heard what had happened and asked me to take care of the dog for her. Sophie is a dimwitted but sweet 115 pound St. Bernard. Mind you, I lived with her for almost three years up in Marysville. Things were different then though, that was a HOUSE with a YARD. She is Waayyyy too much dog for my little one man pad I'm living in now. We got back to the house at around eleven last night and within two minutes, she had torn down three of the blinds from the sliding glass door, she's too big for her own good. Then she kept me up all night, at two in the morning I woke up to the unmistakable sound of a dog vomiting. I was too tired and figure I'd just clean it up in the morning. Funny though, when she woke me up at four A.M. to go for a walk, there was no sign of the Sophie surprise anywhere......I'll probably find it in one of my shoes or something. I took her to go pee 
and then hopped back into bed. She continued to do obnoxious things like breathing on my face, jumping on the bed and belching, yes, this dog belches, LOUDLY. She'll only be here for a couple days though, and she IS a total sweetie, she thinks she's a lap dog.
OH! Also, it's SNOWING out here today!!!! I'm so excited, I haven't seen snow in a loooong time. I usually migrate south in the winters.
