she's so thirsty, she'd even drink my tears.

what can i say? life is pretty f'in sweet right now. modeling makes me feel strong, and feminine in a way few other things i've felt can. bossa nova jazz speaks to a sexy place in my soul, and now that i have my mac back with its new hard drive, i can play the radio stations of my choice through the miracle that is itunes.

i can feel my rapport with the artistic community growing, my life is now filled with a myriad of momentary critiques and random conversations with illustration giant, sterling hundley. it was interesting modeling for his class yesterday, but i am hesitant to say i agree with his approach. like my feelings on the illustration academy, i feel like his approach is one that works for some... but i wonder if his methodology doesnt put the cart before the horse, so to speak. the class was focusing on silhouetting the human figure, to really be sensitive to the nuances of the form one is looking at, you have to be able to SEE them. when looking at the figure, in traditional figure drawing classes, you begin by drawing the large shadow shapes, and learning what muscles lie under the skin to create the peaks and valleys, the bony landmarks and such. the longer you look, suddenly the more you see, the BETTER you see what is really there, that the human figure is rife with so many subtle variations of planes that give birth to thousands of subtle shadows. but how do you know what to look at when you haven't been asked to look for those things? the illustration academy is a stronghold of already accomplished artists with a firm grasp on what they are asked to look at, so i could well understand how people like hundley's approach could be an ultimate experience of freeing the learned from the constraints of their schooling, but like any language, one must learn the structure and rules before they can make poetry.

i have found a lot of the students on this campus really focusing on the contour, the outside line, as i have commented before... i suspect that more than one teacher is communicating the importance of the shape of the outside.

in other news, i might be teaching some workshops at the virginia museum of fine arts in the spring. we'll see what kind of curriculum i can pull together and submit. it's interesting that i've managed to avoid the economic implosion by latching onto the one part of america that will always exist: the school system. there will always be parents who will pay whatever it takes to get their kids a degree, as one final lesson before kicking them out of the nest. so i can always bank on a modeling job for that reason alone. it is big business. i walked away from school with a tremendous amount of skills under my belt, but not a lifetime of life experience or a shiny new job handed to me. i have to fight and dance for it, get lost and rediscover myself, but thanks to the security of the american university and their often useless art degrees, i will be secure in their need for figure models.