One Fine Day....

I woke up today and fell in love with the world.


Living in the middle of an old (and relatively dirty) city, as cities go, does not often lend itself to breathtaking moments.  This morning, however, I was fortunate enough to walk through a tunnel of some of the loveliest, most concentrated autumn colors I have ever seen, barring Maple trees.

  In the spring there aren't many MICA students who don't notice the overpoweringly awful smell created by the ornamental pear trees blooming along Mount Royal Avenue, but this fall they put on quite the fiery display.  I noticed that they were very colorful yesterday, but overnight many of the leaves fell onto the sidewalk on the row house side of the street.

Had I not been a bit late for class and parked on the corner of Mosher and Mount Royal in order to not have to walk up from the Station Lot, I may have never have stumbled across this magical path.



It was quite a special moment, considering I was fairly tired but managing to stay in a decently good mood thanks to Coffee and Starbucks flavored syrup.  Walking through them rather reminded me of the scene when Dorothy & Co. go through the field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz.


Later as I was moving my car, I also noticed that the ginkgo trees are making their own show of it.  I passed a guy just leaning against his car having cup of coffee (twice, since the first time I forgot my phone in my car and had to go back and get it) and felt prompted to say hello.  That marked the start of my being nice to practically everyone I have encountered today.  It's funny how seeing the beauty of nature just makes you feel like a better person.

It turns out that the ginkgo, maple, and pear trees are all in full color right now, so if you get the chance, definitely take a walk around Charles Village or Mount Vernon, since it's really spectacular.

Otherwise, today was Painting for Illustrators, this time doing color string mixing for our various stuffed animal still lives and applying the paint to our raw umber wash ins.  I took a nap during lunch and couldn't really wake up afterwards, so I didn't get too much done on the painting, but I feel like I learned a lot from mixing up the color strings.  My instructor James Warhola had us painting onto a light wash of oil to give a wet feel when painting over dried paint, but it felt very slippery and I couldn't get the paint as opaque as a wanted.  Also, these photos are a little off color wise (you'll have to forgive my dumbphone).

Colors used were (from right to left) gamblin cadmium yellow medium, gamblin cadmium red medium, utrecht yellow ochre, gamblin ultramarine blue, winton raw umber, gamblin ivory black (all tints done with utrecht white)

Also, a classmate brought in a book of Alberto Vargas' amazing pinups.  I snagged the book while she was finishing up her lunch and spent a good part of the second half of class paging through it.  The poor guy had it rough, but in terms of painting relatively accurate and surprisingly classy nudes (for pinups), he was an incredible artist.