Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Adventures in Watercoloring

Professor: "That looks too yellow."
Me: "Yeah, I know."

Professor: "All this looks good but that over there disturbs me."
Me: "It disturbs me too."

Professor: "Make sure the reflected shadows fade out and have soft edges."
Me: *looks down at paper* "Uh, whoops."

That's just about how all of last Thursday went.
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"She couldn't draw at all, and however bright, the colour were in the tubes, by the time [she] had mixed them up, they came out a kind of khaki."
Sebastian Flyte (Brideshead Revisited)

Today blue and red kept making a green instead of purple. I don't really know how.
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We have a watercoloring class this semester which is the first of its kind I have ever taken in my life. I took art classes in high school and watercolored a tiny bit and then was thrown full force into it my first (sophomore) year at Notre Dame. I freaked out about the horrifying process of dumping water all over the paper you spent hours drafting on, stapling it mercilessly to a dirty piece of plywood, and then putting color to the paper. It still occasionally feels like an act of murder. Needless to say, that first project deserves a good bonfire along with all my other first semester sophomore projects.

I remember the first time I stepped into Bond Hall and saw a large rendering of a Corinthian capital on the wall. My initial reaction was "Oh no, I can't do that. That must take some natural talent." and soon after I thought, "Well, this is why it's an architecture school is it not?" Lo and behold. Three years and a couple of choices later I'm stuck in Rome. So, here's to hoping that we all continue to get better at the things we struggle with.

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