Re-purposed, Entry 1

From Loraine

She writes:

This is for Alyssa and Andrew!

Been meaning to do this for a while.... I spray painted an old board in navy blue, (sides already have a rustic white in them) then used oil pastel and acrylic paint. Screw on back to wind wire around for hanging... 

 

Some Old Exercises

Our finals are entered now at school, ready for the revue, so we thought we'd share some previous exercises from the classes.

From Leah --

Here's one of the first exercises in Portrait class. So fun! I love eyes!

This is an exercise in Color Pencil class that I did before I worked on my final.

Here's an exercise from Color Theory. I love the apples!

From Sarah --

Eyes and noses from Anime class.

Color Pencil bird on black paper. Really fun. I'd never tried black paper with pencils before this.

Negative space practice in Drawing 101. That was really interesting, and something I hadn't heard of. And yes, I free-handed the box around the picture instead of using a ruler, which is why it's so crooked. Haha. :)

Blind contours (Lego Movie characters here) were something we did as a warm-up and for homework in drawing class. The idea was to get your eye used to following shapes and outlines, and to switch into right-brain mode for increased artistic thinking. You closed one eye (or not) and looked at your subject/reference while moving your pencil on the paper. If you had to look down at your drawing, you had to stop making marks until you looked away again. We were usually timed. These were done in fifteen seconds each.

It's hard to believe classes are really over! It was a lot of fun, and I definitely learned many things. We'll try to get some pictures at the revue and show the other finals next week.

End of Trip Pictures

One More Medieval Town

Where one enters his walled town

The local garden shop

The gable on the right was for hoisting goods up with a pulley into the upper levels.

Water receptacles should be pleasing, too.

The fountain above is the one in this picture, by the stairs

Looking over a wall

The old style fire hydrants

We wandered into a church and found that a midday function (maybe a funeral) was about to start, so we wandered back out.

A bigger fountain also with flowers. This was at the base of the church hill.

A courtyard paved with zodiac mosaics in natural colored stones

A view from that courtyard to the castle. Brick towers are fairly unusual. These were built in the 1600's. The rest of the castle is much older.

A street of houses that forms a wall below the castle hill.

We took a walk outside the town, looking up.

And up...

Then we came back and took these stairs up to the town - 94 in the first run here....

.. and look who was doing the same climb. If a snail travels at about two feet per minute, without rest, and he has to go up the vertical of the step (8")  and across the tread (11"), then how long had this snail been en route if he was  2/3's of the way up? That is your math problem for today.

The snail was on the first visible step here - impressive, like Maria's walk (if he did it all, hmmm)

His cousin gave up. two steps higher.

The castle and town overlook the lake.

Fancy castle towers

In an outer courtyard of the castle

The former moat

Just inside the inner courtyard

The inner courtyard, now city government offices - "Let's take the best place."

The portal with drawbridge, and bridge over the moat. Then good- bye to that town.

We drove the scenic route home and stopped to see this very old church, barrel-vault, basilica style, with remnants of ancient frescoes.

Behold remnant of ancient fresco - probably Saint Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar.

In the interior shot in a previous picture you can see the hanging lights. They are carved wood of the historical depictions of  the symbols of the four evangelists. This one is Mark, with lion (reference to the beginning of the gospel about John the Baptist in the wilderness).

This one is Luke, with ox (reference to the story of Jesus' nativity).

This one is Matthew, with man's head (reference to the Gospel's emphasis on the humanity of Christ).

This one is John, with eagle (reference to the soaring majesty of the Gospel's poetic treatment of Christ's divinity).

An unusual placement of the altar, on the side, by the pulpit.

And then the rain started, after three lovely days of fine weather.  We decided to take a little detour to see the town of Lyss, just for Alyssa, who didn't get to see it when she was here. This... mmm, turnip?.... is the welcome to the town.

It was a fairly normal town.

The church complex

A music school across from the church.

And a chapel. Now you can say you saw your namesake city, Alyssa.

Reminder

Don't forget, we have two contests running now, both due by the end of the month.

1. RE-PURPOSE some materials into an art work. SALVAGE. RE-CYLCE. Send a picture of your creation.

2. Art or Craft class. Pick one (see post on May 19th) and write why you would like one. E-mail to me.

Trinity and Layers and a Long, Long Way

Blessed Trinity Sunday

So we all have a feast on this feast day, right? Here, we made a three-layer dessert: bottom of crushed butter cookies (our version of Graham crackers) and chopped Basler Läckerli (a spice cookie with citrus peel), middle of vanilla pudding from raw milk and raw sugar, and top of spiced apple and rhubarb. The eating populace approved it.

The dessert. We recently tried a another new recipe with rhubarb: a savory pastry with chicken and rhubarb, and an egg/créme fraiche/onion/herb top that we think is a keeper.

Maria got to eat hers later. She went with a co-worker to try a 100-kilometers-in-24-hours march yesterday and today. A little crazy, yes. But she is one tough cookie and did 91 of those kilometers in 22 hours. The scent of wintergreen salve still hangs in the air.

She walked from the other side of Zürich to and along the Albis and along Lake Zürich about to these mountains in Glarus. This is what they looked like at 6:30 in the morning going to pick her up.

The last steps on aching feet to go check in and check out. Then Mama took care of her.