Sculpturing

Well, while Sarah has been exploring Paris, I’ve been taking art classes! This summer I am doing a series of 5-week intro courses, two in drawing, one in sculpting, and one in painting. My sculpture class just finished up today, and before I forget everything I learned and my sculpture falls over and shatters into a disaster of clay-dust, here is a little bit about what I took away from the experience. I’d never done anything with clay before (the closest I’d come were adventures in the land in the play-doh). And I made some discoveries.

1) Clay is squishy.

            Can I just talk about how wonderful it is for a minute? It’s just so perfectly earthy and solid and yet malleable and smooth. In fact, if anything could ever make me more comfortable with the word “moist,” it’s clay. But now that you’re uncomfortable, I’ll move on.

2) Sculpture doesn’t lie.

            Well it probably does. Historically, people do like their sculptures to go a little beyond reality.

For reference, Brad Pitt would barely reach the top of that tree stump at the bottom.

But when you’re sculpting, one mistake is going to show up in 3 dimensions, not just 2. This means all sorts of complicated things. But basically, all possibility of fudging your shapes and angles goes out the window. You can’t make the model’s shoulders too broad, because then you’ll also have to make them bigger from every other angle, and all of a sudden the smallish 20-something woman has turned green before your eyes and is the Incredible Hulk…

Yikes. This is no good.

 See? When you’ve got 3 dimensions to work with, your mistakes become apparent incredibly quickly. Actually, I like this. When I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I want to know it as quickly as possible. Assuming I know how to fix it, of course. 

3) Sculpting takes forever.

            I don’t do much of anything quickly, whether I’m eating a sandwich, writing a blog post, or finishing an art project. Even if I’m being incredibly productive, I will spend at least an hour on a drawing the size of a sheet of toilet paper. But, making a sculpture is like doing 360 drawings. When you’re drawing you can agonize over every single angle and shape, but you only have to do it once. Move around your sculpture 1 degree to the left and bam! there’s a whole new image to be perfected.

              After 15 hours of sculpting class, my piece is still a disaster of lumps and bumps and deformities. Take my 6 hour per drawing average, multiply it by 360 for this added dimension… So, give me about 2,160 hours and maybe then I will have something else to show you.

            For now, here’s what you all have been waiting for…

Take a step back. It really was a pretty pose.

Last but not least...my personal favorite angle

Of pie-charts and Paris

There has been, shall we say...a bit of a lull around here.  It has to do with several things, a few of which being: It is now "summer" [cue sparkly lights and angel choirs] and I am on "vacation" [see previous bracket set] in Paris.  These two things combine to have changed the pie-chart of my life thusly:

Not-Summer 

It seems I neglected to put my second job in here, but you're not here to read about filing, fixing copiers and making spreadsheets anyway.

Summer

I should point out that, regardless of season, actually producing art goes somewhat randomly into whatever slice of pie is not already overfull. 

It should be noted that these are mostly completely erroneous representations of my life, as anyone with a little mathematical prowess and or knowledge of my day to day grind can attest.   However, we do learn that the slice of pie that explicitly deals with Delicity Art has been on a bit of a diet.  

I did have grand plans of sitting in Parisian cafes, sipping espresso and sketching out the beginnings of my own French inspired masterpieces.  The problem is, I only brought graphite pencils and paper.  While these are very easy to transport, cheap to replace and all in all make up a marvelous medium, it is the only one with which I am consistently disappointed.  Maya does beautiful graphite work.  Even my stick figures are afraid to be seen in just pencil.

So, to tide you over until I track down some supplies that I can afford or write a couple museum reviews, I will shortly be posting some pictures and info about the progress of a project that I left at home.  It's in it's last stages and will (hopefully) be complete soon after I return to the states.  

Au revoir!

~Sarah

Here we are!

Sar·ah /ˈsɛərə/ n. Pacific Northwest cocktail involving 3 parts sarcasm, 2 parts wanderlust and dashes of creativity and intelligence, to taste. Served on ice and garnished with lime.

Or, for those with less of a passion for light intoxication, a (mostly) native of Washington State, I have been doodling and wasting ink and paper since before I was completely stable on my own two feet.

Photochop Alert (I promise there will be real art here too!)

To this day, one of the things most likely to make me light up with glee is a new pen and fresh paper.

I love trees, dogs, rain, swing dancing and traveling to the far reaches of nowhere and everywhere. During the day, I teach Spanish to unruly, thrillingly creative, frequently obnoxious teenagers at a small, arts-integration focus school. In the evenings, I dabble in what you will find here at Delicity Art, on my blog Luscious Wit (check it out!) and generally search for new and interesting ways to feed my all-consuming wanderlust.

Adventures to date have included: wanderings around the US, two trips to Europe, Mexico, and longer stays in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This summer will find me on the terraces of Parisian cafes, sipping cafe au lait and taking in the beauty of the City of Light.

What can I say? It’s a life.

May·a /'mīə/ n. the curly-haired flute-playing portrait-drawing one

But for a little more detail...

It’s difficult to pinpoint the source of my recurring obsession with creating things on paper. But to give you some idea here, in all its glory, is my first known portrait:

Yes, the levitating pig-creature is me. And as a good, loving, pig-creature girl, I gave the self-portrait to my dad who has no doubt cherished it ever since.

A handful of art classes and a few years later, I got around to doing another one.

You pick your favorite. I like to think sometimes that I’ve made progress as a human being and as an artist. But as far as self-abasing comedic value goes, I am fully aware that I don’t hold a candle to my 5-year-old self. Although I guess I’ve grown up a bit, I have continued to distribute drawings and other artistic creations to friends, loved ones, and acquaintances. I’ve also become a flutist and private music instructor (find out more here!), Seattle-ite, swing dancer, and lover of sunshine, food, the ocean, impulsivity, and the color green.