Bruntcliffe High School, "Perspective" on

Hello April, it's finally nice to see the warm weather and in the words of McDonald's "I'm loving it". Anyway since we last spoke I have stopped having lessons which Charles, only because I think my weakest area now is actually the drawing, therefore I have enrolled with the La Grange art league for some basic drawing lessons but I fully intend to go back to Charles when I am more confident in my sketches. Another reason for the pause in the lessons with Charles is that in the next few weeks I will be spending a fair bit of time travelling throughout the USA ,hence I wouldn't be able to do my homework.

As I have mentioned before I have had little formal training in drawing and have relied on self taught and bad practices I have acquired,so i am hoping to pick up some basics and reinforce the foundations that my drawings are based on, good plan eh!
My instructor is a woman called Lois Hrejsa who is an ex-teacher and a dam good artist.

Yesterday was my third lesson and in this we covered perspective, and I must say I think I'm getting it. The two gems that I picked up were using a pencil to calculate where the vanishing points were, and the use of diagonals in dissecting a trapezium to find the middle.

Here is an example of the course work (excuse the dragon, i was playing)

Lesson two concentrated on using tonal differences in a drawing, in this we had to draw a white object (mine was a one dollar figurine of a couple being married, which i affectionately call the 1 dollar white wedding, see below).

Here is my homework, which i attempted purely in pen.

Lesson one introduced the concept of tones and we had to produce a five point tonal scale and then utilise this in the drawing of a leaf (see below).

Anyway that enough for me today.

ps
If anyone is stuck in Chicago whilst trying to get back to Britain i suggest you phone the UK embassy ,as we like many ex-pats are offering free accommodation to those in need, you just need to phone the Chicago office.


Anger management Bruntcliffe High School :

Am I wrong in getting more and more angry and bitter against Bruntcliffe high school ( Leeds) , and the quality of the teachers I had in the early 80s, it's just that as I progress through this project I keep thinking of what profession I would have be in if I had passed art and the ramifications this would have throughout all aspects of my life?
What also seems to be twisting that knife in my back is that my experience was not unique and is still happening to others, and I see no way of changing this as a fair percentage of teachers are just in it for the money.
Here in the USA the teachers are worse and very very unionised. For example as a trained analytical chemist with 20 years under my belt, I thought I could help out the local schools by being a teacher's aide (unpaid of course) but when I approach the schools they wanted me to do three years of chemistry (I think this is because USA degrees are substandard to UK degrees and yanks being yanks they apply their short comings to everyone else as they think they are No 1 ) and pay $60,000 for their guidance, needless to say I took a rain-check.

Please, please, please teachers, I know you think of this is as only a job but please understand unlike other jobs the mistakes you make will continue to snowball long after you have retired. If you can't accept this please do all of your prospective students a favour and do something else.

Anyway here's a question for you, in which profession is your wife most likely to cheat on you. Answer teaching.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings  i feel better now .