Monday

It was a long day yesterday. We were busy from early in the morning until late at night, exhausted when we went to bed. Kippy had to wake us all up at 8 this morning for class. I never had a chance to get on to the computer. So I'm writing for 2 days now.
Here's how Monday went: At 9:00 a.m. we were at the easels. Another student, Meg, arrived. Meg, an American, is a journalist who has lived in Paris for 30 years. We worked on poses for about 3 and a half hours. By the end of the day, each student had 3 pieces. At 4, after Eva quit for the day (or so she thought) several of us worked from photos of the last pose until 7ish. We were served wine as we walked into the house, guests (Chantal and Paul) arrived, the table was set: pork roast, wine, cheese, more wine. After dinner, probably 10:00 or so, we put Eva back to work. A photo shoot in the bathroom: we set up the lighting (lightning as Asti keeps saying), filled the bath, Eva disrobed, got into the claw-foot tub, bathed, got out of the tub, dried off, brushed her hair...all while Kippy, Asti, Warren and I (Meg is not staying here at the house) frantically photographed her from different angles We probably each took about 200 photos. Eva earned a little money and took a bubble bath at the same time! After her bath, Eva went to sleep, we stayed up and oohed and aahed over the photos on the computer. Once we figure out how to put them all together and print out the good ones, we'll have some excellent references for night times in the studio.

For lunch yesterday, we had terrine, a salad and cheese. Here's wikipedia's definition of terrine: A terrine is a French forcemeat loaf that is served at room temperature.Similar to paté, a terrine uses more coarsely chopped ingredients.

Today, Tuesday, at the easels at 9:00 again. Eva posed--a nude. Lunch, back in an hour and a half to the studio. This time we work from photos of Eva. I did another demo, using one of the bathroom scenes we took last night.


The objective of this workshop is to acquaint students with my pastel method, using the figure as the subject. We start with a live model, then we'll work with photos of models. The purpose for using photos is to teach them how to make it look like you're not using a photo. Once they're fully acquainted with the method and constructing the subject as if working from life, we'll go out to the nearby villages and Paris to take more complicated shots like people at cafe tables. We'll then return to the studio for a full day working from those photos.