This is another watercolor I thought I'd share. I started this one over July 4th weekend. I actually did most of it while lounging around at Gooseberry Falls, but only finished it up last weekend. I'm hoping to do a whole series of these mysterious, slightly sinister Edwardian children. Whenever I'm in an antique store I snatch up some of the sad discarded photos they usually have in stacks somewhere near the counter. I always wonder about those. Where do they come from? I assume the photos come from estate sales, where someone has died and photos are left behind and they figure why not sell the photos to people like me, who buy them for their own weird purposes. But why wouldn't relatives want them? Everyone must be dead who knew the people in those photographs, and now they're just being sold to strangers in some store. Sad. Anyway, I modeled this intense little boy on a child in one of those antique store photos. I have plenty more to work with. Next will be a scary little girl named Clara, who I suspect likes the seaside, caramel apples, and dead trees.
Tomorrow is my first class of the semester. I'm as prepared as I can be (without going overboard), so tonight I hope to relax and get some sleep.
Oh, and you've voted and Jay Gatsy wins the presidency! Great choice, old sport! And seeing animals is your favorite thing to do at the State Fair.
3 comments:
I use to wonder about those photos too, then I had to go through a giant drawer of fuzzy, old, unlabled photos after my Mom's folks passed. It was image after image of people and places that the collected daugters, sons-in-law, cousins, and grandchildren couldn't identify. It was mundane and yet strange: Old people sitting in kitchen chairs in fields, old men laughing in a meeting hall, farmers eating sandwiches and coffee in a kitchen with snow in the windows. I wanted to know more about these people and this strange moment captured. It is like some kind of touchstone to think about other lives.
Anyway, cool watercolor. I'm looking forward to seeing the one for Clara.
Hope your first day of class went well.
Seems like there's a novel in there somewhere! It's also weird to think of a time when there are strangers looking through old photos of moments in your own life, wondering who you are and what the story was. You know the stories/feelings/moments in those photos, and it's odd to think how at some point all those stories/feelings/moments will just be a mystery for someone else, like it is with you and the folks you see in your grandparents' photos. Maybe when I'm retired (should I be lucky enough to do so!), I'll start a project where I gather my lifetime of photos and write a story on the back of each. But by then photographs themselves may be an antiquity.
My first class is this afternoon. I'm sure it will be fine. The first day is pretty basic, with me just going blah-blah-blah, giving them the class policies. The scary part is the "first impression" aspect. There's more role-playing on this first day than any other day, and I have to come off as professional, serious, strict, enthusiastic, positive and caring, but also establish high expectations. All at once. They'll be making their judgments about me. And I, of course, make judgments about them (who's going to be the student who causes me the most headaches?). Next week will be the real test. Thanks for the good wishes!
I wonder what people years from now would think about a picture of the stuffed leg we had hanging out of the laundry shoot? People would imagine quite a story behind that photo:)
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