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beer and seminudes
Thursday, March 3 2016
I salvaged more wood from that tree I cut down yesterday on the bluff south of the Chamomile. The load I assembled weighed over 130 pounds, though 21.35 of those were infested with Carpenter ants (which, since the weather had turned cold once more, fell out of a piece I split as if they were dead). 109.7 of those pounds would be going inside, though not immediately. I planned to remove the ashes from the woodstove soon and didn't want to have to subtract this wood as part of the indoor remainder.
This week Ray couldn't make it to the live drawing class, and Nancy and I decided to do it at BSP in Uptown today (instead of on Monday at the shirt factory). She also invited Susan & David to join us, and they arrived soon after we'd set up with our easels and Nancy had bought me and herself beverages (Lagunitas IPA was on tap). I should mention that, though admission is $10 at the shirt factory, it is only $3 at BSP, suggesting the event expects to pay for itself mostly in alcohol purchases.
As for the models, there were two of them, and they were young and hot. One of them wore a long braided white whig and the other had short hair that was metallic blue in the front. Unfortunately, they mostly avoided nudity in their poses, and their ruffly skirts, scarves, and, yes, even a mermaid tail tended to get in the way of what I wanted to paint. I'd brought a bigger 18.5 by 14.5 piece of particleboard that I'd gesso'd black, and I'd put it in the loaner easel in landscape orientation. During the one minute poses, I painted tiny figures in the middle of the board. When they posed longer (for ten and even twenty minutes) I painted larger figures around the edge. By the end, from a distance it looked like an especially grim Hieronymous Bosch painting. In addition to the beer, I was under the influence of kratom tea. I wanted to see how it would affect my focus and mood. I have to say, while it intensified my empathy, it also made me more self-critical in a way that adderall hadn't. Nevertheless, a couple of strangers and even one of the models had good things to say about what I was doing. I should say that, again, I was the only one painting. Everyone else was drawing on sketch pads, and there seemed to be more than a dozen "artists" there. Though there wasn't usually much to see, it was, at the time, perhaps the cheapest strip club in the Hudson Valley.
Today's painting.
Back at Nancy's house, I drank some very nice (peaty) scotch while chatting with her and their friend Eric (the guy who painted our Wall Street rental). Neither had heard me tell the story of "the Dead Man in the Concrete Bench," so I gave them a somewhat-abridged telling. Ray returned from his restaurant job while I was still there.
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