June 22, 2008

I went to a life drawing session this morning. I am glad I finally started again, but once I start, it’s hard to stop. Even today I was sorry to have to pause for the model to stretch some. I planned to go to this session yesterday. It helped getting my mind set on it, so I had no problems getting up this morning and heading over to the studio. There weren’t that many people there today. I went at 10:00 am and I used to go at 2:00 pm when the place was packed with students. Now there were mostly older people. I cannot help but wonder how many of them are accomplished artists and how many are like me and this is just a hobby. One thing I observed today, with one exception, is that the amount of materials one artist brings to these sessions is inversely proportional with the talent of the artist. I guess for some it’s like the beginning of school when they’re all excited about all the new pencils, brushes, watercolors, pastels that they spend half an hour aligning them on a stool next to their easel. By the time they become really good artists they have used most of the stuff, hence my theory kinda makes sense.

I don’t know where I stand. I haven’t been practicing, so like everything else – exercising, playing the piano – the skill gets lost if it’s not kept up. I wasn’t disappointed with my drawing. I am happy to see that I still have some skill left in me and I haven’t fallen that far behind just yet. I’m also still ahead of where I was when I first attended a life drawing session.

I always find it interesting to compare my style with others. I find that unlike other artists I don’t use an eraser and I also never lift my pencil off the page. I start with light lines and I go over and over till I find the shape. When I use colored pencils I start with the lightest ones and then I change to darker ones as I advance. On the other hand the person next to me started with dark blues and then used lighter tones on top. He was using acrylics though, I don’t know how well that would work with pencils. Even with paints, it still seems a bit backwards to me mostly because I’ve always had an easier time making things darker than lighter.

I’m always amazed by people who can start with a finger and finish with a toe and not mess anything up in between. I saw someone like that today. I have to outline the whole drawing first, I could never start with a corner and be done when I reach the opposite one.

June 16, 2008

At the beginning of this year I made a resolution that I wouldn't let a day go by without drawing at least one line. Well, it's been two days since my last sketch. At least it's not a week, so I'm staying positive.

I started aggressively and I went religiously to life drawing classes and borrowed books on drawing from the library. I did very well till I went on my vacation. I hope to pick up the pace again soon, but in the summer, for some reason, it seems to be harder to do.

This year I attended my first ever life drawing class. I was nervous and I confess that when I noticed the model undressing I looked down and I might have even blushed, but soon I got so much into the act of drawing that I had the same reaction to him that I would have had to a plant.

Things I've learned about life drawing as a beginner:

1. It's harder than it looks. I was disappointed with my first sketches. I was embarrassed and tried to hide my drawing from the curious eyes of other artists.
2. It's tiring. Sitting down will make your back hurt, standing up will hurt your feet and especially your drawing arm. If you're not used to it, 3 hours will seem like a very long time.
3. The person next to you might go out every 10 minutes to smoke pot and smell like it so badly, you'll get high too, but at least you won't be embarrassed to show your drawing to her because she's not even drawing what's in front of her, but some strange pink shapes.
4. Other artists and especially the models are curious. They will walk around to check out what and how you're drawing. You'll be curious too.
5. The models are likely to be late or worse, not show up at all.
6. If you've never been to a life drawing session, you might feel awkward or have misgivings about studying someone naked. You'll be surprised at the normalcy of things and how extremely unsexual the whole process is.
7. If you're like me, you'll be in awe at how beautiful the human body is.
8. If you're a beginner the long poses will seem too long, the short ones too short. After about 10 minutes of a 20 or 30 min pose, you'll start looking around at everyone who's shading, adding, improving and you can't think of anything else that you could do to make your own sketch look better. As for the 30 second poses, you won't get beyond drawing a line before the model changes the pose.
9. The model moves. It's a human, it's pointless to erase that hand because you now see it from a slightly different angle. It's not you, it's the model. That's why the 30 second poses are important, you learn to get the big picture down quickly before the model rotates slightly.
10. You'll see improvement from session to session, so keep it up.

Places to go for life drawing sessions in Vancouver: Basic Inquiry Centre and Shadbolt Centre for the Arts

June 8, 2008

Once, after reading a movie review, I complained that the critic had said nothing about the quality of the movie itself, but divulged the plot. Because I was being a smart ass, I was told by a good friend to write a review myself if I think it’s that easy. I don’t think it’s easy and I don’t consider myself to be a movie critic or any kind of critic for that matter, but I also don’t believe there are many critics who can do the thing they’re criticizing. I like a challenge, and since I’m procrastinating on my drawing (I did manage to sketch two disappointing hands today), I’ll attempt to write a short review of Iron Man, which I’ve just seen this afternoon.

I found the movie entertaining and overall I’ll give it 4.5/5 for entertainment. I’ve also thought it was extremely ridiculous, so the ridiculous grade is 5/5. The movie fails in the physics department and caricaturizes the current events (i.e. war in Middle East), where things are black and white and easy to solve just by finding and shooting, burning, squashing the bad guys. I will not hold this against the movie; I wasn’t expecting reality, deep analysis of war conflicts or even things to make sense, it is after all a film about a man in a suit that can fly. The movie scores high on hotness, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) looks very good as a red head in sexy, but conservative attire. She also has some of the funniest and wittiest lines.

The part I liked best about the movie was the Iron Man’s suit. It was packed with detailed, neat gadgets and composed of a lot of parts that made it seem somewhat comfortable. It allowed for all body joints to be bent. I don’t know if the movie producers built the suit in real life, my guess is that it was all computer generated, but it looked fantastic, so whoever designed it, did an amazing job. Though unreal, I also liked Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr) 3D designing board, his easy to use computers and his overly understanding robots, that provided few occasions for chuckling. I really liked the special effects and general object and set design of the movie. The house that Iron Man lived in, I’m guessing it’s a real home, was located in a beautiful area and it had the most interesting architecture with rounded corners, almost as if Tony Stark had designed it himself. I thought it was the perfect house they could have chosen for a rich inventor.

The plot is simple without any surprises, and Iron Man doesn’t get as much action as I was expecting, but I wasn’t bored or annoyed. I didn’t regret spending money on the ticket. The villains were as usual not developed as characters having only one side to them: the bad one. But who cares about a complex villain when the movie it’s supposed to be about a cool suit that protects the person inside it against tanks and can fly at "sonic speed"?

I would not recommend this movie to my parents, but I am sure my teenager siblings and male population under 35 would enjoy it a lot.

June 7, 2008

I was away for a month and coming back and getting into the every day rhythm of things is not easy. I have yet to draw a line (literally) since I’ve returned. This will be my first weekend at home since before may, so I have some hope for tomorrow.

My trip took me to Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary and Romania. I will not go into detail here, but in point form here are some of the things I liked and some things I wish were different.

• Of all the cities I saw, I loved Gdansk best. I would say it's beautiful, but cute too. It felt really good to be in that city, it had wonderful energy. It might have been the sun. It's hard to explain what I felt. Everything I saw made me smile and I loved how the homes, the cobbled streets and the churches looked. It was love at first time, the city made me giddy, giggly and happy.
  
• I was pleased to see that Budapest was just as I remembered it. Budapest has a special place in my heart because it was the first city I saw outside Romania. At 14, after eating at McDonald’s with chandeliers above us, the restaurant being in the lobby of a hotel, I thought life could not get better than that. Life did get better, but the fondness for Budapest remained. I was worried that seeing it again after so much time, I would be disappointed, since I’ve seen so much more of the world, but no, the city is as beautiful as ever. Unlike Vienna with it’s funny beaches on the concrete along the Danube, Budapest makes the most of the river and has spectacular bridges and architecture alongside it.
  
• The best view we got was from Tampa mountain and from the White Tower in Brasov. Tampa mountain was the only place where we could get really high to see a panorama and yet feel very close.
  
• Excepting the occasional garbage pile along the train tracks, especially near Bucharest, the whole way from Bucharest to Constanta was paved with red poppies all in bloom and beautiful among the tracks' rocks.
  
• We stayed with relatives or friends in Gdynia, Vienna, Brasov and Constanta and everyone was unbelievably friendly, helpful and too eager to feed us. I feel indebted.
• I had the occasion to meet three of my half siblings for the first time in my life. My impression was that they are three wonderful, beautiful adolescents. I loved the never ending hill at the back of their house, their cow, the cats and especially Rocky, the very independent dog. I realized my life would have been quite different had I lived with my father instead. There’s so much to wonder, so many questions, so many ifs that I find it hard to get bored with my thoughts.
• I love sour cream, I practically add it to almost everything I eat. I thought that this was just something that I did till I went back to Transylvania and saw the tubs sour cream in super markets. We went to a restaurant in Brasov and we had everything from the soup to the desert served with sour cream. I realized is part of my culture not something strange about me.
• After Gdansk, I had high expectations about Krakow, but the place was so packed with tourists it felt fake. Like Disney’s fairy tales are fake, their charm lost when no characters are cruel enough anymore or any challenge too hard, so are the touristy historic spots. The whole place becomes a charade. Bran’s Castle (Dracula’s castle to tourists) is the same. The furniture in the place is not even from the period that the castle was built and Vlad Tepes (Dracula) might have only slept a night there. Krakow is beautiful, Bran’s Castle, built on a rock and partly in a rock, is imposing and to use Jane Austen’s expression "happily situated", but both places made me weary.
• I was sad to see how the gypsies were treated in Romania. I don’t live there anymore and many would say it’s not my place to talk. As an outsider I noticed a lot of cruelty and prejudice against them. There wasn’t one person we talked to who didn’t complain or said something negative about them. We were on a bus once in Constanta and two little gypsy girls of about 8 got on and started singing beautifully. People on the bus were outraged and started calling them names and yelling at them to get off the bus. It was obvious the girls had encountered such opposition before when they fought back saying that singing and begging is better than stealing. That’s it! That’s how they see themselves. From childhood they know that they have only two career choices: stealing or begging. If from very young everyone calls you a thief and a beggar and doesn’t see you as anything else, what can you become?
• Watching TV in Poland was a very interesting experience. I don't know what the Polish people have against subtitles, they did not exist. Most of the TV shows were dubbed by a guy reading the script. He did all the voices for both male and female characters and used the most apathetic tone ever. The funny part is that you could still hear the English in the background.