Sans Eyes, Avec Serif

I mentioned that my art project is taking a Shakespearean turn. To be precise, I'm trying to incorporate the "seven ages of man", from Jaques' monologue in "As You Like It". In the studio today I spent several hours measuring lines and writing the passage out in ink, in what I hoped would be a characterful script. Many were the yelps of frustration at irredeemable fluffs but the finished page is not without charm. As with life-drawing, the pursuit of calligraphic perfection demands many hours.

Life Drawing

Weekly life drawing sessions started today at college. That meant about twenty of us standing at easels in a room on the top floor, next to the vasty fine arts studio *. The tutor gave some instruction - including limbering up physically at the start - and the model gave us poses of increasing duration - from thirty seconds to forty minutes, over two and a half hours.

That length of time is helpful and I'm looking forward to seeing the difference in my style at the end of the four weeks. I got all the angles and proportions wrong some of the time but the tutor liked the way that I draw.

Here is my final piece of the session.


* My illustration project is heading in a Shakespearean direction.

Enclosures

I'm learning about archaeological surveying and the interpretation of aerial photographs. At the moment I think I understand it. The latest assignment will test that. I enjoyed the reading for last week, An archaeologist's guide to classification of cropmarks and soilmarks by Jonathan Edis, David MacLeod & Robert Bewley (Antiquity 63 (1989) 112-26): it features a good number of diagrams and drawings, the most pleasing being the following three, illustrating types of enclosure.