A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Michael and I have a couple that we bike and fellowship with through church whose husband is a 3rd year art student. This year he is studying portrait painting with oils. He was sharing his love of that particular mediam over Sunday brunch with us and stated he was looking for subjects to paint. He would pay his subjects $8.00 an hour. They usually get people through running an ad in the paper, sometimes having them wear certain outfits, etc. Being as my work schedule was reduced to nothing at the time, I volunteered thinking it might be fun. I had no idea what goes into a painting! My job was to sit on a chair that was on a short table and stare at an object out the window for 22 minutes without moving. He would set a kitchen timer which would allow me 7 minute breaks as well between sittings. Sounds easy, no?? It's wasn't. I kept falling asleep after about 15 minutes. I found it very hard. I did have a walkman to listen to and found that classical music was the only form of music that kept me awake. Don't ask my why. One would think talk radio would do it but that had no effect. It took approximately 2 months. I had to always wear the same clothes and the chair was marked so that it was always in the same place. We also would do it at the same time of day so the rays from the sun through the window would be the same each time or close to it. His teacher would stop each day and give him ideas on how to improve each part. I never thought my hair had so many hues or that my blue eyes actually have green tones in them. I thought I looked to serious and a bit too old but then I'm a difficult critic when judging myself.
Last week was the final spring showing of the artists work. There are approximately 50+ artists at various stages of development of their art. Dan did a great job and even though it was hard and I wouldn't do it again, I found it was a wonderful learning experience of which I am proud to have taken part in. I'm including a shot of Dan with Michael in front of a self-portrait Dan is working on. (Sorry about the body portrait behind me. Hope nobody's offended. It is one of the subject art forms used for some of the students)