My day started out well. Erik actually got up before me so we enjoyed some morning time together, as well as bacon for breakfast. 🙂 I am becoming quite the meat-eater… I have both guilt and glee about this. I was feeling very nicely balanced and wondering whether this was due to regular exercise or to the morning pages. I did laundry and used my newish yard-sale mirror to do a self-portrait. This came out too broad, but there is some resemblance. Before I shaded it, it looked surprisingly cartoony:
And then after I shaded it, I was pleased with how much volume I was able to achieve with the vine charcoal smudging. But the likeness now looks very childlike, which is odd because it doesn’t look anything like *me* as a child. I wasn’t a fat child, and this is. I think she’s cute though. 🙂 Beaming.
I think it’s a very good idea to do self-portraits every couple of months. This will be as good a measurement of my improvement as an artist as any. Here’s October 2007, February 2009, April 2009, and June 2009. I’ve also just noticed that in the first two, I drew my mole where it really is, but in the second two, I drew it where the mirror image puts it. Aha. This is something I’ll have to remember!!
Drawing seems to make me hungry. I was ravenous for lunch by the time I finished the portrait.
After lunch, things went downhill. Erik nagged me to call LADWP regarding a bill that shouldn’t have come, and then I got an unhelpful email from PayPal about a problem we had. So I had to do a lot of annoying stuff that should never have been issues in the first place, and I hate that. After that I was very grumbly and blah-feeling, and didn’t get as much done.
For tomorrow, I am considering going to SFMOMA to see an exhibit on Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams that Kimber liked. That’ll be my out-of-comfort-zone experience for the week, if I go; if not, we are hoping to have lunch with Dorit and her husband Fred on Saturday, and that’ll be something new too, as we haven’t seen Dorit in probably seven years, and we’ve never met Fred at all.
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