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Letters from an Artist

May, 2005

5-21-05
Did my first good self-portrait in 10 years last week. I do them several times a decade, and this one was meant to be a simple half hour lesson plan for the portrait drawing class I was teaching the next day. Because I had a bunch of software to study for other classes, I didn't begin the self portrait lesson plan until ten at night.
   I spent half an hour setting up the mirror, the light, the easel and the chair, then put in my earbuds so I could listen to a talking book while I worked. For this exercise, I listened to a story about the sinking of the battleship Indianapolis during world war 2. As the voice in my ears talked about the sharks eating the swimming sailors over the course of the four days it took the Navy to realize the ship was missing, I began sketching my face in the mirror.
   Three hours later, most of the sailors had been eaten, it was one in the morning and I had an amazing drawing on my sketch pad. I wanted to keep working as the rescue vessels were just beginning to pick up the sailors, and I could tell I'd drawn the forehead too high, but I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning to teach portrait drawing.
     I'm not sure where this artist inside my head lives. I thought I knew the street and house, but when I knock on the door, he rarely comes out. When he does come out, he comes out in spades and does wonderful work. I can sometimes lure him out with a good story, like the sinking of the Indianapolis. The stories silence the critic, who lives next door and comes out whenever he sees the artist.
   I have no problem whatsoever getting the critic to come out on the porch to offer advice. He even comes out to watch me do mundane things like drive my cars. "Oh, you took that corner way too sharply...your losing it! You need to start riding the bus! You were so much better when you were younger. I can believe I've stuck with you this long."
    Several of my students did some extremely good portraits. One of them handed in a couple drawings that took my breath away. I asked her if she'd always been that good, and she said not really. She seemed a little in awe of her skill also and it's fun to think that I might have played a small role in helping her to create such beautiful drawings.
    I've been buried to the ears in lesson plans for this new class I'm teaching. It's a high end Photoshop class, and without lesson plans I've been using the book recommended by the previous instructor. Unfortunately it's structure doesn't fit my teaching style, and every week has been a struggle. I've only been able to spend about 5 hours a week studying my programming language, and that barely maintains the skills, much less moves me forward. The weather has been lousy. The plants love it, but my plans for climbing keep getting pushed back.

5-8-05
Driving through traffic on highway 18 I noticed the windshield filling up with tiny raindrops.

"Hey Mark," I said, "That water on your windshield, that's from the car ahead of us, right? He's probably cleaning his windshield."

"Well, if it's from his windshield wiper, he's going to be empty pretty soon because the road is getting wet too," Mark L. said.

"There is a lot of gray clouds up there. I wonder if that is the predicted evening storm getting here early, or some morning mist that will burn off into sunshine?" I pondered.

Mark L - "It could go either way, but whatever it is, it's getting thicker. What do you think, should we turn around? Or maybe we should just drive on over the mountains to the dry part of the state. Vantage is what, maybe another 2 hours from here?"

Me - "Ahhh, I don't think we should try to beat the rain over there, remember how we got rained and snowed out of Vantage a month ago?"

Mark L - "What about Leavenworth? Remember how we used to always sit on Castle Rock in the sunshine and laugh at the storm clouds stuck on Stevens Pass 20 miles to the west?"

Me - "Yeah, we could make some phone calls on your cell, my uncle lives over there."

Mark L - "Hmm. Want to just keep driving? See what it's like up at exit 38...it's only another forty minutes."

      The rain had had mostly stopped when we pulled into the parking lot at the base of the Exit 38 climbing area. The sky was full of white and gray clouds in all directions, with nary a spot of blue to be seen anywhere. Worst of all, the pavement was wet, indicating a recent shower. Wet pavement equals wet rock, and sane climbers don't climb wet rock.
      On our way back home, we tossed around some ideas for salvaging an adventure from the day and settled on a bicycle ride across town up onto the Narrow Bridge. While we were at his house exchanging climbing gear for a bicycle he took me on a short tour of his beautiful high bank beach front mansion.
      Years ago when we were all in our late twenties Mark and his wife Mary used to have parties in this same house, but back then it was a simple shack. They had been able to purchase the property because the house was in poor condition, mainly paying for the lot, which was prime Puget Sound high bank view property. If I recall correctly, the house didn't even have electricity, and they cooked for a year and a half on the old wood cook stove, which still sits in the living room of their mansion.
     Over the last twenty years, during which time we had lost touch, Mark and his wife had demolished the old house and built a lovely 3 story dream home. They did it all themselves, with a little help from their friends, using the skills Mark has learned as a journeyman finish carpenter building glamour homes for the mega rich in Seattle.
    Like many dreams, they've not been able to completely finish their dream home, although they live comfortably there, and enjoy the luxury of life on the Sound, with a 5 star view across the water, and miles of beach to wander. They park their sailboat there in the summer, and have a couple kayaks...in short, it's a lovely place to live.
   From the outside, the house is stunning with it's dormer windows and steeply sloping shake roof. Mark has built a stone entry way to the porch. It makes our simple rambler look like camping trailer. They live in the finished basement, with sliding glass doors leading out to a lovely lawn and stairs leading down to the beach.
    The two upper floors are unfinished with bare studs and plywood floors. We stood for a while talking as their puppy bounced around. I asked him why he hadn't finished the upper floors and he explained that just getting the house to the point where they could live in it had taken a tremendous investment in time and money. Mark had actually quite working outside jobs for a few years so he could focus all his time and energy on building their home.
    The progress he's made is quite amazing, but when I asked him what it would take in time and money to finish it, he said that 3 guys working full time could finish it in about 4 months, assuming Mark and Mary had the seventy five thousand dollars to pay for labor and materials.
   Our bicycle ride was lots of fun, and great exercise, although rather pale compared to the adrenaline rush of climbing. Mark has always been in better aerobic shape than I am. Even back in the day he used to leave Sue and I in the dust on the way up to the mountains. Guy must have a "super size" heart.
    We had our annual open house at the college last week. Our three departments had set up tables in the big tv production studio. The video department had curtained off a little 30 seat theatre where they were showing mtv style music videos and short films, all created by the students. All the films had loud sound tracks with lots of rock and roll music booming out into the studio.
    Our 3D Animation teacher had brought in his super computer and was demonstrating 3D Studio Max and Reactor on a big screen with a projector. As he created cars and figures from wire frames and rotated them in three dimensional space, pulling out arms, legs and wheels, the high school students came running, fascinated by the extreme high technology he was demonstrating in real time.
   When they got bored with 3D, they'd hear the booming rock and roll coming from the "theatre" and would run over there to see the movies. In between these two departments stood your's truly. I had a computer monitor showing a Powerpoint slide show featuring Photoshop and Illustrator work and some paper handouts describing our program. Needless to say, I didn't get much attention from the easily bored high school kids.
   None of them seem to realize that the high "Wow factor" of video and 3D has saturated the job market. In Web, if the student is very bright and has the work ethic and communications skills to apply themselves to learning and searching for work, they are almost guaranteed to find employment.
     Unfortunately, mediocre students are much less likely to find work, and if they choose to go into the saturated 3D and Video fields it can be challenging to find work. The video instructor was telling me that he has been placing some of his students lately in paid internships, and a few of his recent graduates are working, but, as an example one of them had to move to Alaska to find a job.
       He tells me that this area is a mecca for the tv industry because of it's high quality of life, and recent graduates have to start in a less attractive area to build up their skills before they can compete for jobs around here.
   Preparing for the open house wore us all down, and I was so tired I began calling students by the wrong names. We put our normal workload on hold (grading, lesson plans, etc.) while we concentrated on hanging display boards from the wall and gathering paintings and prints to mount on the boards.
        Now I'm sitting here on the weekend, trying to focus on something productive. Ideally I should spend a little time in programming, as it is my ticket to a better job, but I have lesson plans to prepare, and we really ought to visit my folks who we've not seen in a couple months. Life goes on...