It is an interesting habit of the human brain to claim to dislike every aspect of an activity that an individual actually enjoys. For example, I am an art major, yet as I hack my way further and further into the deep, dark, graphite-smeared jungle that is my drawing class, I find myself being grumpily opposed to many facets of the art world.

Fact: I don’t like soft pencils.

Fact: I don’t like charcoal.

Fact: I don’t like still lifes. (Or is it still lives? I’m still having this debate. If anyone has any input on this topic, feel free to tell me.)

Fact: I really don’t like self-portraits.

Fact: I don’t like when the model only poses for one minute. (Interestingly, two-minute poses are fine. I guess I was warmed up by then. I got some decent little sketchy things.)

And yet, somehow, despite all this, I still like the whole messy business.

Anyway, yeah, as you may have guessed, we’ve moved on from doing still-life studies (two mortal weeks of staring at rusty pots and my own amateurishly smudged paper. Dios mio) and have, as of today, progressed to drawing live models. Yes, the model was female; yes, she was naked; no, it wasn’t awkward at all. Honestly, I think nudity is fine as long as it’s tasteful. (For an example, check out one of my favorite works of all time here. Make sure you read the description. Also, you might want to check it out at home, what with the whole maturity filter thing. Just because I think it’s fine doesn’t necessarily mean the school will.)

In other news, we have received details on our midterm project assignment. We need to go buy a high-quality piece of paper from the paper store we conveniently have on campus and use it to make a collection of between twelve and twenty portrait sketches, in ink, of people belonging to a category of our choice (for example, famous actresses, Civil War generals, or the 2010 starting lineup of the San Francisco Giants. I’m sure the fact that our professor is a huge Giants fan had absolutely nothing to do with that last one). This is the one project in which we’re encouraged to work from photographs instead of real life, so the possibilities for creativity are much greater than what we’ve been doing. As for what I’m doing? I know, but I think I’ll keep you in suspense just a little bit longer…

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