an english painting place

I spend lots of hours in here

(the sunlit studio procured for the nurturing of  creative thought)

 It's a place for painting, and more of that sort of thing accomplished by art students.

Sometimes Miss Eve comes to paint and watch movies with us. 

We all watched Tangled today, and drew pictures.

I love love love it when she asks to borrow my gesso. It's adorable. 

her toes and her paintings

(and herself)

 foot picture, in honor of Brynne

 and some projects of mine

today

the weather sounds like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony   

(the Allegretto, of course)

 it's dark and bright at the same time

(this is how it looks)

  

this is real life

This is what it's like being a student of Peter Everett's:

If you're me, you wake up after breakfast (later than everyone else) and run to class in your slippers with your fuzzy, sleepy hair stuck to one side of your head, and you're only awake enough to yawn all the way through the critique. 
What's coming up next (what's coming up next should only be deserved by people who are alert and prepared) - he briefly instructs you on behavior around special collections art that will be displayed at the British Museum - he has called ahead and arranged for several originaldrawings - by Michaelangelo and Raphael and Bruegel (Dad, you would've died) and Van Gough (and Rubens and Van Dyck and bel Sarto and Rembrandt and Peruzzi and Verrochio and le Lorrain and Millet and Durer and van Ruydael) - to be brought out from the museum's catacombs of artistic history for his students to come and study.
Today my face was inches a way...maybe less...from penned sketches done by masters from the Renaissance. My fear of them and my flabbergastedness made it difficult to breathe.

Study for Adam, Michelangelo Buonarotti, 1510

Elck, Pieter Bruege, 1558

La Crau from Montmajour, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

gosh, right?

sightseeing

So, maybe today I got in trouble with a guy dressed up in Medieval garb because I was trying to sneak some photos of the crown jewels.

(this is the only photo he let me keep from the exhibit after flipping through my "illegal" shots)

  Ijust thought it'd be fun to photograph some rocks that are worth more than ten of me (eleven? twelve?).

Anyway, we went to the Tower of London today (the morbid little fortress where dear ole Anne, and others, got the chop).  

Last night we saw Shakespeare's Richard III at the Old Vic (oh, hello Kevin Spacey, you are Richard III. And Mrs. Dashwood from Sense & Sensibility as the ragged Margaret? Hello to you too), an artistic and captivating performance that made today much more interesting for me.

In the play,Richard of Gloucester kills nearly everyone in his pursuit of the crown, including his two small nephews (the tiny dukes of York).

Today, in the Bloody Tower, we saw where they were banished and where they mysteriously disappeared (their quiet deaths are still not proven to have been by evil Uncle Richard's order, though he seems to be the most likely suspect).

interesting

 

Maybe a few of us got carried away running off Muppet Treasure Island quotes, who knows how it even came up. Clueless Morgan. 

               

mum and dad, this is for you:

I ate fish & chips today, didn't even hate it (what's more, this was at a pub formerly frequented by the Dire Straits, which I had to pass George Orwell's flat on Portobello Road to get to). Thank you.

referencing george orwell's "shooting an elephant" - deciphering silence

 (the things we think about in writing class)
Peter and JB have been asking us to figure out silence and write about it.

I think of growing in silence as a discipline. It is uncomfortable, even when we are responding to something, because we are forced to come face to face with the deepest reaches of ourselves - the dark things we hate, the annoying habits that we can't seem to tame, the rawness of us, us the way we are. Maybe I'm just talking about myself here. And all the rest of the world who can't sit still and just think in a quiet place for long enough to make anything meaningful out of it.

Through learning our silence, learning to embrace it and soak it in and accept what comes with it, we can learn to be teachable, to be open, to direct our thought and focus toward importance (like a painting hanging on a wall, a few words lost in the fine print of a heavy book, maybe someone around you who is struggling). I want to get better at learning in silence, or just experiencing it I guess. 

             

caused a scene in the national gallery

Today

Peter took us up to the top of our flat and showed us our studio.

Can you think of anything better conducive to creation than a small, bright and sunlit room for a few little artists? I love it love it love it down to the last wood plank on the floor

and and can't wait to get to work. 

Guess what else? 

I saw my first Vuillard painting today...in real life.

The Earthenware Pot, 1895

I really did. He was my favorite growing up, doesn't everyone know already?Maybe I dropped my sketchbook,

this is the sketchbook that i dropped

covered my mouth, and gasped quite audibly when I saw it. Oops? The colors were so deep and milky...or buttery...just something edible - you can't capture even a fraction of it in a picture.

This is just what London is supposed to be like, thank you.

Peter told us to go to the National Gallery and spend at least an hour looking at one painting, a painting we'd pick apart and search inside to write about. This is a practice we'll be expected to keep up throughout our stay here, and I'm thrilled about it. I found that sitting down with one piece of work for that amount of time and attention created an atmosphere similar to what I experience in the temple. The world quiets out and I contemplate on purpose and the mind of someone else's mixing with my own. What a beautiful feeling.

How amazing would it be to paint something that someone could blissfully gaze at for hours, and walk away from on cloud nine? or cloud TEN?