15 April 2026 Wednesday

(written retroactively, 16 Apr 26)

i've gotten behind with this journal this week. i 
got a bad start on sleep over the weekend, and 
between work and evening art classes, have been 
sapped. i started to catch up yesterday, at least
got down enough notes for the preceding two days 
that i'll be able to sit down and fill in the rest
when i have time. but then i didn't write a new
entry for yesterday. 

came straight from a work appointment (i work 
mostly 'in the field') and picked E up for our
oil portrait painting class. the community art
center is so close, we keep meaning to walk. one 
of these days we will.

our instructor said, "i'm realizing a class like 
this should be more like a 30 week class, rather 
than a 4 week class." he then said, "in the first
two classes we established the 'wireframe' for the
portraits. this class and next class [the last class]
we'll be working on filling in the values."

i made more slow progress on my portrait of Grampa 
and i. he was such a wonderful man. i've been thinking
of him so much. he passed away on Easter weekend in 
2020. Gramma passed away exactly thirty days later. 
they were both in their nineties. i wish i'd lived
closer by in their later years. that's one of my 
great regrets. in my fourty-second year, now, i have
really begun to understand the saying, "youth is 
wasted on the young." i apply it to myself. 

E said several times that he felt he chose "exactly
the wrong photograph for this class." the photo he 
chose, from a vintage magazine, was very washed out
so as to look almost two-dimensional. he also said
that he felt he was coming at it too much with the
mindset of picturing a final outcome, rather than 
working with the process, as that's how he approaches
his art in certain other mediums. but he felt it wasn't
suited to oil paints. i told him any way he does it 
is right, it's his own style and it's just about 
learning and doing. i could see how he did seem to 
shy away from blending and was blocking in areas of
thick color, rather than layering. it will be 
interesting to see how we both progress. 

next week we will miss the final class, as there's 
a concert in the nearest city by Uli Roth, who was 
formerly in E's favorite band, Scorpions. E is very
sentimental about Scorpions, and any chance he's 
ever had to see them (or any of them), he's taken it.
i might be more resistant, if i didn't know how 
important it was to him, and if the instructor himself
hadn't told us we'd be doing more of the same next 
week and we wouldn't miss much, that we should just
keep working the way we've gotten started. 

he shook our hands. i so appreciate people who wish
to share their talents and knowledge through
teaching. in a way, i teach now, working in mental
health. but i do miss teaching in a more formal 
setting, as i did when i was in grad school, or 
when i worked in after-school media art programs.