I'm listening to Barron Storey talk about his career in a podcast. I should really be watching Bob Ross videos in order to prepare for some plein air painting I'll be doing for fun tomorrow alongside Cherry. Oh well. He talks about painting what one knows and experiences, rather than an idea one has about something with no personal connection to it. For example, as a young illustrator he is obsessed with death and shows his drawings to his teacher, who laughs at his Halloweenish attempts. Barron finds his way into a morgue, yet still he cannot find death, only flesh. Finally, he finds the true image of death in his mother, who is lying in a hospital bed after attempting suicide. He draws her and shows this to his teacher, who acknowledges that he has indeed captured real death in his art.

Lately, I've become quite aware of how important it is to continue learning, especially in my art. After reading a novel that went into great detail about an artist and her mentor, and how much more she learned when interacting with this person, I've been feeling the need to learn from others. It's not very common here for "master" artists to hold classes and workshops, unlike in LA or NY. I've managed to help organize a small weekly event where some local artists get together and create. Tonight we made an exquisite corpse drawing and it was so interesting! I didn't actually get to draw in this one because I accidentally peeked, which negates the whole point of the exercise. Can you believe that each of these sections of drawing was created by a different artist without seeing what any of the others had done?



I'm looking forward to next weeks drawing! We'll also be getting a model to come in once a month for us to draw live. I'm especially hoping for each of us to run a 1-2 hr workshop where we demonstrate our techniques and whatever the others want to know about our process. Years ago I dreamed of holding events like this but I never thought I would really be the one to help orchestrate it.