Paper Jewels

Marta Scythes talks about paper and ink, charcoal and conte like some people talk about fine wines and cheeses.  You just want to feel as knowledgeable about her working materials as she does.  She taught us Drawing and Rendering this week.  Other students in the class had taken courses from her before and told the rest of us, who may not feel as confident about drawing as we could, that she would have us feeling proud of our accomplishments within the week, and she did.  The course was geared towards portraying gems, pearls, and metals using charcoal, conte, pencil crayons, and watercolours.  The colour theory we learned was immediately relevant to what we were drawing and painting, which helped make it stick in one's mind.  The most important concept she shared was the primary importance of Value in a picture, even more important than Colour.  And, for me, the placement of reflected light, as well as the finished look a a shadow can give an object.  I'd like sometime in the future to find time to take a watercolour course and build on what I've learned this week.  Marta has a beautiful website that shows the broad scope of her work at http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca/~marta/ , it's well worth a gander.

This was a short week because of family day falling on Monday, and unfortunately it did feel a bit rushed because of that.  It will take some discipline to practice all that was learned this week so that it doesn't fade from my mind.

I was in the mood for some poetry this week and found myself wandering around a great site: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/index_poet.htm  All Canadian poets, I found a very perceptive poem about cats, as well as one about the importance of the moments in-between all the Things we think we're living for.  I suppose I should be remembering the poets names as well, but they're not on the tip of my tongue just now. 

I'll end this post here so I can get in to the studio and work some more on my chasing project.  Why oh why I was so ambitious with that design I'm just not sure.  But I keep tapping away at it in the continued hope (delusion?) that it will be done in time for our second week of Forming.  (Note to self: bite off more than you can chew only when no one else is around to see you choke...)  No choking this week though, it's Reading Week, yay, I'm off to visit dear old friends and family, perhaps I'll fit in a post about the Sculpture Forest next weekend, since I won't have jewellery tales to tell.