A Hornets Nest

Collage at the college on Thursday morning. Earrings man handed out large sheets of white paper followed by sugar paper in black and beige, plus paper plates of glue and a chunk of cardboard to spread it with. Another nice messy technique for the fashion clones to get their heads round. In fact they are already showing signs of increasing individuality in their attire, an observation noted by talkative tutor last week. He's seen so many classes and groups, of course.
I was asked to do one long pose for the entire session - with break - perched on the edge of the table sort of half-standing and half-leaning. I used my dressing gown as padding, as usual. I had to point out the student who was holding his paper plate sideways as he concentrated on drawing my outline; I just couldn't bear to say nothing and watch his glue drip all over the floor.
There was an observer sitting in for the first part of the session, I'm assuming that earrings man is another tutor-in-training, and maybe that was why the group was so much quieter than normal. But strangely the absolute silence continued even after she'd left, and after the break. Serious concentration broken only by the sound of tearing sugar paper.
I have to say their drawing is improving. Perhaps it's because they all knew the initial sketch would be covered over so were looser and less fussy in its execution, but both I and the tutor were impressed at how much better they are now compared to where they started a few weeks ago. None of them managed to finish their collages in the time allotted, but they're going to continue working on them next week and the one after, when I won't be there. I'm booked for a village hall group instead.
Friday morning was one of those, a portrait class but featuring some of the same students that I'd previously met as a life model. I passed a dead deer on the side of the road as I drove across Somerset, quite a small one but the first I've seen outside Exmoor. It wasn't there on the way back though - probably on its way to someone's freezer.
It was a three hour class, entirely inhabited by women, a newly-formed group and late starting. I did three twenty-minute 'warm-up' poses (I suppose they're still called poses when it's for a portrait rather than full body?), and two hour-long ones, less the break-time. Coffee and chocolate digestives.
The difficult part of sitting for a portrait is keeping your eyes still. My gaze was darting around all over the place, prompting a call of exasperation from one of the artists, so I had to find a technique for staring fixedly at one spot. I used it as a meditation, rather like staring at a candle, and counted slow breaths. But then the first hornet was discovered...
There was a fair amount of distracted discussion as to what it actually was (a queen wasp, perhaps?) and how to remove it safely, accomplished by a down-to-earth woman with cup and sheet of cardboard, and they took a while to settle down again. About half an hour later the second one appeared in a different window. We came to the conclusion that there was a hornet's nest in the eaves, and they were falling in through cracks in the tongue-and-groove ceiling.
At the end of the session I heard the clicking of cameras, and wondered why no-one had asked me if I minded having my photo taken. Then I realised that I was fully clothed, for once, and it didn't matter.

Back to work

Great to get back to work today after a week off, despite the grey drizzle. I need to use my time constructively when I'm in one of my spaced out and 'distant' states, as I so often am.
Lots of little black or grey lambs in the pastures, more ploughed fields. White blackthorn and pink flowering cherry. Primroses in my back garden. Spring keeps coming earlier.
So this morning was the Adult Foundation Course at the college, and they were doing portraits. It was an easy session for me. The first twenty minutes or so they were copying muscle structure from anatomy hand-outs so I had nothing to do except chat with the tutor and sit on the radiator, until it got too hot. Then I sat on a big cushion on a table staring at a black mark on the opposite wall, for half an hour, trying to smile with my cheek muscles not my mouth (it's very difficult to keep a smile with your mouth for long, the muscles get so tired and droop. I learnt to raise the cheek muscles and 'smile with the eyes' while singing, it's a very useful technique for Eastern European and Georgian songs, in particular. Alters the resonance).
I didn't manage to get any writing done during half term, as I'd planned. My daughter was in a show all week, and in-between taking her there and helping out front-of-house I just relaxed. So yesterday I started actually writing my novel, and promptly slid into a mini-depression. It will be a triumph of self-help psychology if I ever get it finished.
After the break, our students had a demonstration on how to work with gouache. There are 'hot' colours and 'cold' colours, and the hot ones need to be daubed on first before layering colder ones over the top. I loved the names - cadmium, prussian blue, cerulean. They remind me of a set of Lakeland coloured pencils I had as a child with magical names - burnt umber, burnt sienna, crimson. Back to the original pose for me as they started painting over their pencil line drawings, with constant help and advice from the tutor. At the end they all had to turn their pictures round, unfinished in most cases, for appraisal.
I do like working with this group. They are mainly mature women, of varying standards and experience, and they give me hope and inspiration.
On the way home I called in on a friend who was printing out a story for me - my printer is currently non-functional - and I posted it off to a competition. The deadline is tomorrow...
This evening I had the Adult Learning and Leisure group again. The previous one had been cancelled, and only eight people turned up for this session, one of them half way through after bad traffic on a motorway somewhere. Their brief was to work on sight-size drawings this week - strict measurement with rulers, drawing me exactly the same size as I appeared from their various viewpoints. The tutor set them an experiment to start with, to do two drawing, one in charcoal and one in pencil, whatever size they wanted to. The aim was to see whether they drew larger in charcoal than pencil (some did, but not all), and how much larger than sight-size they usually worked. When they'd done those they had to measure and do a calculation as to the difference - most of the sight-size drawings would be half or a third of their normal ones. The evening ended with some titchy little fairy drawings of me sprawled on a mat for forty minutes.
Not sure if my aching shoulder muscles are due to the modelling, yesterday's gym session, or so much driving. Probably a combination of all three. I must book another massage.