Today, I woke up and got to school on time, something I hadn't done in quite a while. Sunday, I had gotten to bed at a reasonable time. I had coffee, yes, and was getting very excited, since I found the Breeders are touring - but for only 3 dates in the country, LA, Las Vegas and Phoenix. I decided right then and there that this requires a road trip, that I would meet someone there at the show and for some reason, the events we'd have together would snap me outta my little funk - I dunno. I had picture my car plastered with the concert poster and perhaps, "or bust", written in with a sharpy - just to get those odd honks in my direction. I think I might have also gotten together blankets and pillows to use while I sleep in my car.
For the third day, I worked on a self portrait of myself. I have many self portraits of myself, as every teacher I have seems to need one, or ten, made. This particular painting was for a Figure Painting class - a class in the Illustration department. You may not believe this - I don't believe this still, but being a Painting Major requires almost no actual painting skills. In other words, I'm barely taught how to paint, as in, technique. This is well and good, because what I do get taught is Concept. I basically redefine post modernism on each critiqued painting. The weakness of this is that you're not well developed in the actual skills to pull a good painting off. So, I started taking illustration classes, which have absolutely no concept applied to them; you just try to make what you're working on look pretty, or, let's say, Correct.
I'm having major troubles following directions.
In my illustration class, we're learning a technique regarding painting a human figure. There are steps that you must follow to render an academically correct painting. I seem not to be able to follow these simple steps. I'm trying to make this self portrait to give to like, my Grandmother. Something she can hang up in the living room and wonder about and maybe smile. Every time I paint myself, it seems that the face looking back is tragic, expressing pain, tortured, full of emotions, but not the kind I want and my painting style isn't jiving with the assignment. The painting I was working on this morning was my second attempt at this painting. I may need a third.
About an hour into the painting, I looked closely at it. It gazed back at me. I snapped, and ran my hog bristle brush into its forehead. I then picked my metal paint tray and started crashing it against the canvas again and again; it ripped, as if it was really flesh that just tasted a metal pipe. I then took my index finger and unzipped the weak thread all the way down to the neck. Before I could do anything worse, I took myself outside and sat on a bench for a few. I never had done that before and I didn't know exactly what I was feeling. I decided I needed to go home and go to sleep. So I did. Until around 3, where Jack woke me up, staring down at me, on my bed.
He told me he was with a girl and if they could borrow my apartment. Last week, I was wandering around school and went into a drawing class. This girl asked me, "What's your brother's name?". I was about to say Chris, but I have a running joke with Jack, in that we're brother, he's the older, I'm the younger and we were conceived via different fathers, which explains the fact that we have different complexions, last names, etc. I told this girl, "Jack."
She replied, "He's hot."
I never thought I'd hear that before. Not that Jack is ugly, he's just been an asshole recently, since he hasn't gotten laid.
"Well", I said, "you should go out with him"
"I would, but I have a live-in boyfriend. I am looking for a lover though..."
"Well that's perfect! Make a note, and I'll make sure he gets it."
So, she does. The note looks like something I would make, but she didn't use crayons. It was a card made out of one piece of paper. Inside, it said something like, "Be my husband", and "I love you, be my lover" and signed with her name.
When Jack first got it, he thought someone was playing a joke on him, because that's exactly the kind of joke he usually either hands out, or receives back. Apparently, today they met. Jack basically asked her if she wanted to Fuck, and well, she said yes. Thus, I got woken up, asked if my apartment could be borrowed, asked if I had a Trojan to be borrowed, and skiddadled out of my apartment. But first, Jack asked if he could have his beer back. His beer was in my car, which was at school. Without thinking, I took my bike to school, picked my car up and drove it back to deliver the beer. I then went back to school to see the damage I had done.
Harry was there. He remarked, "I like it." It was true, it didn't look bad; if anything it expressed the emotions I was feeling - it was a true self portrait. But it wasn't what was needed. It wasn't an illustrated portrait of me, rendered in a very old master style. It was almost like my whole soul was rebelling against doing such busywork. As if, it didn't want to learn a technique, that it was just fine doing what it had been doing: making it up as it went. I've done many figurative paintings, I might even say that most of my paintings are figurative and I've never had this much trouble. I felt as if I was back in highschool and I hated art classes in highschool.
I came to the conclusion that the best thing to for me to do would be to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again; even if that meant trying the self portrait for the third time. I'm glad this is just a painting, and not, say, a heart transplant or a moon mission. I still felt crappy, so I went to the school store to buy supplies and went to the library to borrow a video on Keith Harring, whom I found I thoroughly enjoy. That gave me enough strength to go to a figure drawing session at the Temple Event Center:
and go back to school once again to prepare a canvas board for figure painting tomorrow. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow - I have to get my car tuned up for the road trip this weekend, give Molly my Photoshop 7 CD, buy tickets, get directions, get a map and think about doing another 3 hour figure drawing session after 6 hours of figure painting class. It seems that I need some practice.
