The Center of the Anomaly

I Got Frogged Again January 27, 2010

I can explain…

Ok, I went and got another frog yesterday after work. This one is called “Lucky Strike”. Lucky, meet the internwebberytubes! Interwebberytubes – Lucky. I had a REAL hard time deciding between this one and the other one I bought Monday. Even after I got home last night I still agonized over it and wound up dreaming about frogs during my sleep. By lunchtime I decided to stop fighting and get this one too. As I’ve already explained – these were on sale. 25% off! By Grabthar’s Hammer – what a savings!! So I called the gallery during lunch and had them reserve it for me so no one could swipe it before I got there.

This guy is a bit different from all the other frogs I have since he hangs on the wall. Cool huh? I put him in my bedroom and he’s the last thing I look at before I go to sleep. I can now say that I’ve fully satisfied my frog cravings and there definitely WON’T be another frog post tomorrow ;-D.

…

They have another artist who does these really cool cat sculptures though…

The Parental Units’ New Table January 25, 2010

It’s actually a bronze sculpture called “Let’s Do Lunch” and they just bought it yesterday. Is this beyond cool or what? (Clicky on pic to embiggenate).

The picture above I swiped from the artist’s website: Frogman Collection. Hit the link for more froggy goodness.

Dunno where they’re going to put it since their house is already kind of full.  Well, I suppose they could replace the end table they have in the living room and give me the end table (which is itself a really cool table made out of a large manzanita root).  I wouldn’t mind that :-D.

Friday Meh January 23, 2010

As Fridays go this one kinda sucked. In class today all we did was go over the syllabus and course material sheet, ask & answer few questions about this & that and we were out of there in about a half an hour. We didn’t actually do anything because “we didn’t have our materials yet”. I don’t know why I was surprised. Instructors at this school blow off the first day every time. Still, I thought that this time it would be different.

I mean – come on!  It’s Beginning. Drawing.  How much in the way of materials do we really need to get started?  A piece of newsprint and a crayon for each of us, a table with a bowl and some fruit for a still life and BAM!  first lesson.  Remember, since this is only one day per week it’s a six hour class.  We could have gone to a store, got supplies and come back and still have plenty of time to do something.  Blowing off a day in this class is actually blowing off two day’s worth of instruction.  Hell, she could have at least done a presentation of  basic art concepts of form, line, textures, values and whatnot with some nice pictures of…oh I don’t know, drawings, perhaps that demonstrate these characteristics?  That doesn’t even require any materials for the students at all!  Grrr.  To have absolutely nothing prepared for today is just inexcusable.  Make no mistake, I WILL bring this up in the course/instructor evaluation at the end of the class.

When I left I decided to drop by the art supply store to get the few things I didn’t have already.  Which by the way wasn’t the one recommended that was clear across town.  We have an outlet for one of the biggest art suppliers in the country at Blick’s just a few miles away from this campus but, no, we’re supposed to go to this other one waaaaay over there.  Interestingly, we’re going to mostly do charcoal drawing in this class which is a bit different since it’s usually pencil.  So I needed to get charcoal paper.  The material list has a specific type/size so I looked for it and there were actually two versions – one has sheets of varying tints of white to grey, and the other is the “earthy-friendly” hemp/recycled paper.  I don’t like drawing on recycled paper and they didn’t have it in the right size anyway so I went with the multi-tint pad.  I’m getting the distinct feeling that this instructor is going to annoy me somewhat.

After that I decided I wanted to go to the movies.  I saw that Legion was out this weekend and I remembered that I liked the previews so I went to see that.  Gah!  It was terrible.  It was one of those “end-of-times-wrath-of-God-but-humanity-has-one-last-chance-to-stave-it-off” movies.  If you’re in the mood for something like that then I recommend The Prophecy with Christopher Walken.  It’s a hell of a lot better than that mess I watched today.  Fortunately I won 10 bucks playing video poker while waiting for the movie so I’m only out the money for the popcorn and soda and two hours of my time.  Oh well. 

So how was your Friday?

Back To School January 21, 2010

Teachers, books, dirty looks, etc.

Yay! School starts tomorrow! I’m taking a class on Fridays this semester and for the first time in many years I’ll actually be going during the day time instead of after work. I’ll feel like a real college student!*  But since it’s just one day a week though so it’s going to be a loooooooong class: 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. What’s the class, you ask? Good question!  I’m taking ART 101: Beginning Drawing. Now, some of you who are familiar with my work may be giving me the ol’ ugly eyeball right now and think that I may as well be taking “English as a Second Language” or the like. Well I’m not taking this for an easy “A”. Although, I guess it probably will be. No, truth be told I’ve never really been all that happy with my drawing skills and I see this as an opportunity to sort of rebuild them from the ground up. It should be exciting! It will also be fun to blow away all the real beginner drawers. They’ll all be like “Whoa, look at this guy!” 😀

*To facilitate this and more easily blend in with the actual real college students I’m tie dying some t-shirts‡ and won’t trust anyone over 30.
‡Seriously!  I’m not kidding about the tie-dying part.  I already have the dye materials and now I’m just waiting on my shirt order.   Come on Hanes.com!  Send me my shirts already!**
**And underwear. Yup, gonna dye me some underwear. And socks. And towels. Hell, even a few skeins of white cotton yarn too. That’ll be cool to knit and/or crochet into something.