Portrait Painting SMC: Class #5

I woke up today and was just a great big ball of whiney. Exhausted and not looking forward to the events of the day to come. First on the agenda was a tangle with our storage unit which you can read about here. Second was my fifth week of Portrait Painting. Even though I was tired I was partially looking forward to class after the positive results from last week. Unfortunately, class today was to be a bit of a disappointment to me.

I just can't seem to follow our instructors formula even when I try. Today we were really working hard on warm vs cold light. What I learned was that when you have warm light hitting your subject you get cool colored shadows. When you have cool light hitting your subject you end up with warm shadows. We had both types of light hitting our model so we were supposed to paint one side warm and the other cool. Again, the instructor took up the first hour of class demonstrating and explaining how we could make this happen. I think I started out ok, but towards the end my brain was mush and I think I just stopped caring about what color I was mixing as a warm or cold versus just getting my painting to at least look like the model. Sigh. Hopefully I will have better luck and more time with the assignment next week. Two hours really isn't long enough for me to sketch and paint someone.

Initial Sketch and "underpainting"

Final Painting at end of class.

Curvily Yours: Super Pole 1

Now that I am back in class I thought it would be good to start taken supplemental lower level classes to help build my strength. So I took a Super Pole class for levels 1-2. Where we would work on the most elementary of tricks. None of the flipping upside down stuff that has my family freaked out. It was an awesome workout. Although since there were two poles and only two of us attending the class my shoulder started wearing out towards the end. Good thing I had a four hour break between the Super Pole Class and my regular class...

I love working on pole tricks. It's like flying. It's like playing on the swings but on steroids because you are using your own strength to control your speed and height.