Skating at the Edge of Infinity

I’ve been AWOL a bit.  I started a new job last month and things have been pretty hectic in my life as a result.  It’s like trying to grab a drink of water, from a firehose.  You can quench your thrist but it’s not necessarily a pretty sight.

Hopefully they will settle down a bit so that I can continue blogging and writing about what I am learning in my art classes.

Last month I attended Robert Liberace’s Upper Anatomy workshop.  Most of the folks in attendence were either scultpors or painters.  People flew in from all over to learn from Rob.  Rob covers everything, the tendons, muscles, bones and lignaments.  We all brought anatomy books with us and tried to soak it all in.

Some did better than others;  I was in the others group-and could only remember that the hip bone was connnected to the thigh bone.  But everyone learned a great deal.  Adam was the model.  Adam has abotu 3% body fat and he’s a body builder so you could really see the muscles that Rob discussed.  It was funny because Rob would talk about a specific  muscle group (example the terres major) and Adam would flex his.  They were a pretty amazing team.

Last weekend I drove down to Chincoteague Island, Virgina with some friends.  We had a great time. 

Chinoteague is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Washington DC.  From the capitol, you head east towards Annapolis MD and stay on Highway 50 until you hit Highway 13.  I think it’s about 170 miles away but once you pass the Chesapeake Bay Bridge it gets pretty congested. 

The weather was cool with intermittent sun and showers, perfect beach weather.  We all headed to the Asseteague National Park on Saturday morning.  First stop was trying to find the famous Chincoteague Ponies that they round up every July.  We found them within 3 miles of the park entrance about half a mile from the main road.  They were placidly munching away on grass.  Around us you could see a variety of birds such as the great egrets, snowy egrets, and herons.  We also saw some snapper turtles, a tiny herd of marsh deer that were swimming across a back bay to graze.  Terns, seagulls and these amazing diving birds were also everywhere.

The beaches were almost deserted since the wind was gusting and it was really cold by the water.  But walking along the water, hearing the waves roll and crash settles you somewhere deep down inside.  I wanted to get away from things and just relax and get re-grounded again and spending an afternoon there really helped.

The Smithsonian Craft Show opens this weekend (April 10 - 13) at the Smithsonian Building Museum.  This will be the third show I am attending and I am psyched as usual.  I’d considered going to the preshow on Wednesday evening.  But the admission to the gala is $175 per person (I know but at least there is a free valet!).  I finally realized as much fun as that would be, I could spend it on thursday (and the profit goes to the event which is worthwile) or I could directly support the artist by buying their lovely things.  I decided buying art and fine crafts would be the better option for me.

Admission is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors/military/Smithsonian Associates and employees. 

The hours of the show are:

Thursday 10:00- 8:00PM

Friday - Saturday 10:00 - 6:00PM

Sunday  11:00-5:00PM

There is a small sandwich shop on the first floor that has some great food that is fairly cheap, they sell decent coffee too.

How to get there:

If you are on the Metro, take the RED LINE to Judicary Square.  The national Building Museum is located on 401 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20001 if you are driving there are parking garages nearby but I am a metro gal so check the show link for that information.

For those of you who are out of town and can not attend, you can still participate!  The Smithsonian Craft Show hosts and online auction as well!  The auction opened on 6 April and continues until 15 April.

I am in Robert Liberace’s anatomy workshop from today until Sunday.

My brain is spining from terms like superior, inferior, medial, anterior… well you get the idea. I brought prepped paper but it’s not that kind fo class, so I ended up drawing inmy moleskinne for the class.  Adam is out model for the entire class.  I always find his build interesting but distrubing since he has so little body fat.

Most of today was the chest/ab and back and learning were a muscle started, terminated and what its intended purpose is.  The drawings I made at The Bodies exhibit last fall actually helped a lot to try and make sense of what Rob was saying.

I will down load the photos at the end of the course so you can see what he covered.

Last night I wasn’t really happy with my drawing.  I haven’t photographed it yet, as soon as I do I will link it.

This is a sanguine drawing I made I think, about four weeks ago during class.  Although it’s not deliberate, the model’s pose reminds me of how Tony Ryder poses his models.

 The last session of the class (besides the makeup days) gave us a choice of two great models.  Wayne who Robert Liberace uses quite a bit and another great female model.   

Here is a copy of Robert Liberace’s silverpoint drawing of Wayne.

The model in this drawing is one of Rob’s favorites and the model’s musculature and ability to hold a pose is amazing.  I was pretty frustrated because I was drawing him in silverpoint and couldn’t seem to get it right.

I had difficulty so I finally gave up and drew just his arm in a section of my moleskinne.  Sorry for the poor angle/lighting.  I really need to reload photoshop so I can at least lighten photographs.

Tonight and tomorrow evening we have a makeup session with Robert Liberace.

The model is the beautiful one from the portait painting workshop and her features are wonderful.  She like my painting from the workshop which is kinda nice.

So two more drawing sessions and then painting class starts in 2 weeks.  Next Friday-Sunday I am taking Rob’s anatomy workshop at the Arts League.  Should be very interesting since the only muscles I know are those you work on when working out.  Rob tends to really explain the mechanics of what the muscles and tendons and bones are doing under the model’s skin.  Reminds me of the Bodies exhibit we all attended last October.

I’ve been lurking on a lot of graphic art, design and decorating blogs lately.  Several of them feature amazing art created with a Japanese screen printing machine called a Gocco.  Mind you, the only printing I’ve ever done involved a potato in 2nd grade (results weren’t memorable); but Gocco is easy!

This little sucker is a very compact table-top system.  It’s about the size of the yellow pages (well it’s narrower than that but it gives you a good idea).

Here is a picture of my original drawings.  I placed two on the screen so that I could use either end to make my stationary/print. 

 So last Friday I tried my hand at designing/printing using a Gocco that I recently purchased.  Here are the results.

The paper is a pale blue Cranes.  I will post a close up of the original drawing tonight.   

Using the Gocco was fun and very easy.  I created two different sized versions of this image, for use with larger stationary or for smaller cards like this.

People do an amazing amount of design (four color with registration etc) and the work is so very beautiful.  I won’t be making anything to sell, but I think this is a great way to make and design my own stationary.

There are simply times when you feel like you are drowning in the business of simple every day life.

I’ve wanted to write two blog postings for the last few weeks.  One of them I just started, it’s about a 1-800-SUICIDE and 1-800-SUICIDA hotlines for suicide prevention and crisis counseling.  Reese Brooks hosted his 4th annual Hopeline conference on Captial Hill on March 13th.  I attended it and am working on a write up but it’s taking more time than I initially thought.

I also wanted to write a posting about the Collectors Collect at the Arlington Arts Center.  I specifically wanted to write about this amazing artist, Barbara Liotta. 

Hopefully I will finish the posting about Reese Brooks soon so I can write up Barbara Liotta.

Played a little more World of Warcraft last night instead of working on my taxes like I thought I would.

I’ve forgotten alot about the game, I stopped playing around November timeframe.  So it’s weird.  My sister told me there was a new server up (Cairne) so I figured I’d give WoW another shot.

Still trying to decide which class of character to play. I initially rolled a blood elf (BE) hunter but then decided to try a BE Warlock.  I leveled her to 12 Sunday evening and then dithered some more and ran a priest up to 7 last night. I like playing the healing class and also a priest levels pretty fast if they are shadow. 

I’ve heard there’s a marked lack of healers on the server.  I thought about leveling a shammy but I think a hunter or lock (since I’ve never gotten a  hunter past 32 or a lock past 14) should be fun or at least different.

I am considering buying Johanna’s leveling guide which shows you how to level really fast.  A friend of mine is using it and said he went from 1 - 17 in about 4 hours.  Pretty amazing. He said that the guides are written for a hunter but any class can use them. 

Also have no idea which professions to try.  Looks like jewel crafting and mining for now.  Initially was doing JC and skinning (I hate wasting all those pixal skins!) but it’s smarter to doing my own mining and smelting.

A friend of mine in drawing class shared this story with me.

My friend showed up early for her painting class last week at a studio in Northern Virginia.  She showed up early so that she could sit and chat with the instructor who is a friend of hers.  The instructor is an elegant older lady who has been painting for decades.

While they were talking, a man walked in off the street and exposed himself.  Nonplussed, they both looked at him and then the instructor told him they didn’t need a model since it was a still life class.  She sent him down the hall to the life drawing rooms and they both continued talking. 

Yes you read that correctly.

Can you imagine being a flasher and wanting to shock people and being told to go to the life drawing room?  Too funny.

Also, this Friday the nice fedex man delivered this beauty. I invited some friends from my class to come over for the unveiling. It’s very stark and a cityscape which is unusual for me.  I’ve lusted after Sonya Sklaroff’s work for years.  This was the first time that she had smaller works for sale in a few years.  The photograph doesn’t really do the painting justice, there are thick impasto passages and for all the stark contrast there is a wonderful translucence on the lower portion of the painting. 

3 Watertowers and Pipe, Sonya Sklaroff

12″x12″ Image courtesy of GoArt online

Sonya’s show, State of Mind, at the Corning Gallery at Steuben Glass just closed.  To learn more about Sonya, click here to see her website or her agent’s site (Odile Gorse) or these interesting  sites/articles:

Greg Peterson

Myartspaceblog 

This weekend I attended the Collectors show at the Alexandria Arts Center.  It was an amazing event with great art.  I will post more on it later this week.

Also, in something totally unrelated to the topics; I rolled a new character (toon) on a World of Warcraft server.  It’s a warlock (I started a hunter and was told the server needed ‘locks sooo).  So far it’s been fun.  But I want to have something to play for sheer enjoyment. No messing around with guilds, raiding nothing except for having a good time. So far I have her 1/2 way to level 10.  If I remember correctly, the voidwalker quest truly sucks (ok it’s not as bad as the fire totem quest for a shaman but it’s close) but my sister said she’d help.  

Tot zeins