The “Roid Week 2009″ flickr group said to bring on the “seasonal Eye Candy” so I figured one fall leaves picture wouldn’t be bad.
I was wearing this gold scarf today and one of the last remaining bushes with leaves caught my eye so I took up the opportunity to sit in front of it and take this portrait. For some reason my eyes in this picture really remind me of pictures of myself from when I was little.
Look Ma, no cavities!
I really wanted to play too, so today I contributed to the What I Wore Today (drawings only) group pool on flickr.
It’s no marvelous work of art, and I’m no fashionista. I’m actually the girl who was just in Macy’s recently, running around saying “wow, they have really nice clothes here” in a truly surprised fashion. My actual outfit was pulled together entirely from Old Navy (the skirt and the tank top) and Target (the cardigan and the purse). I really wouldn’t have bothered to draw the purse if I hadn’t just changed it out for another bag I’ve been carrying all summer. Once I slung it over my shoulder I was surprised to see that the exact same color of my cardigan was matched in the pattern of the bag. I’m not the type to try and attempt or even care about such things normally, but I was drawing a self portrait of myself today.
Check out the flickr group and if you contribute, send me a link!
Yes, I’m still alive and kicking.
Some things I’ve been up to:
-reading, reading, reading (blogs, books, etc.)
-going to lots of different functions (family reunion, wedding, 4th of july, etc.)
-matt’s birthday was last Friday, so we went out to eat several times, and we’re going out with his family tonight
-doing a little bit of playful sketching, and ink drawing on a larger secret project
-plenty of lying around (partially because of the hot summer and partially because of the sprained ankle)
Really, I didn’t have anything really important to share, just thought I’d drop by to say “hey”. Please check my twitter for more frequent tiny updates and linky goodness :)
Until next time…
* edit* after posting this I noticed that the address had a “2″ after the title, which led me to find this earlier post from a few years ago. I especially enjoy the quote from Matt about drinks needing to be drinkie not eatie. AND uh-oh, probably the first mention of making my art themed geocache. Good thing I put it on my list of things to get done this year, otherwise who knows how many years later I’d still be talking about doing it.
self portrait colored pencil, originally uploaded by robayre.
Here is my Archive Friday contribution. My first reaction finding this in an old sketchbook was “awesome, this is definitely my friday archive piece” but looking more and more at it, it makes me kind of ill. The face is so asymmetrical and my eyes are too far apart, or are they too close? At any rate, I decided to keep it remembering that it was just something that I did very quickly so of course it will be far from perfect. Here is a link to other self portriats I’ve done, mostly photographs, so that you can judge for yourself. I think the reason I like this drawing so much is it’s bold use of color. I used to be such a light drawer that many of my high school assigned art pieces are no longer visable because the graphite was so light it just wore away over time.
When I see this picture I am immediately taken back to a different time.
From the fall of 2002 till the summer of 2004 I was on hiatus from graphic design and took a job as an aide at the local middle school. I like to say that I taught study hall. Yes, taught. I was supposedly replacing an aide who would let the students stand on desks, scream and destroy classrooms. I was coming out of my experience in art education (a year and a half of college classes) and had been working at my Sunday nursery job for 7 years. I kept the class very organized and the students were required to work on homework. If they didn’t have any homework, they must bring a book to read or artwork to work on that would keep them quiet and from disrupting the rest of the class. I was happy to encourage them to draw and carried around colored pencils and paper for them to draw on. Sometimes I would even create coloring book style pages for them to draw on that began to come into demand.
The students would stand in line for help on their studies and I would help them tackle anything from multiplying fractions to understanding their 7th grade science (which I can’t for the life of me remember what was in the curriculum at the time). If they were well behaved they were allowed five minutes at the end of the hour to quietly socialize. I learned a very important thing about education at this point. Book education is important and the reason why they are going to school, but social education (learning how to become members of society) is what they are geared towards. As much as we teachers would try and keep them from socializing, it actually is very important part of their education at this point. They are very much like sponges, taking in all things social and society. It is very important because at this age they are really at a stage of formation to who they will become as adults. Despite the creases in my forehead (I perfected the teacher glare that shuts a kid up with just a glance) and the piddles of paychecks, I really did enjoy this job. 1. It was incredibly low stress. 2. It granted me loads of time to work on whatever I wanted. Whether it be reading my own books, drawing or knitting, I got paid while I worked on my favorite things. My sketchbooks from that time are just filled with so much inspiration. The pages are brimming with ideas, journaling, and lots of drawings and sketches. I found quite a few drawings of my students’ faces (that I drew while they had no idea I was drawing them). I’d draw empty classroom desks, or schoolbooks and materials. This particular drawing I did is a self portrait, that I did during my first hour class. I think I had taken a camera phone picture of myself on the way to work and drew it from off of my little phone.
While I worked at the middle school I felt pretty ashamed that I, a college graduate, was working this aide position, which is normally held by uneducated people, hence the low salary. I really, really wanted to get back into graphic design so that I could again hold my head high and return to a productive career. After I secured my current job, one thing that I was surprised to miss about the aide job, and was a bit of a hard habit to break, was being able to write/draw whenever the urge hit me during the workday.
I guess that is all that comes to me when I see this self-portrait. I just think of the era that I had kids calling me “Mrs. Wells” even though I was unmarried :)
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