Friday Night

Good evening and Greetings of Peace from myself and my friend James (Blunt) who is serenading me tonight. "Back to Bedlam" is a little gift to myself for passing my road test this past Thursday.

I just can't believe that it's over,
We were chilling out on the sofa,
Digging how the guitar goes,
In a song that no one knows.
Did you lick that line yourself,
Or did the voodoo magic help?
Does everyone have a different take?
Do you seem real but I seem fake?
Does everyone get hypnotized by your fire?

....

So what does a single girl do on Friday nights? After admitting to myself that I well and truly have no social life to speak of, I decided to work my painting. Oh, and just for the record, I have no problem with the fact that my social life consists of pilates, painting, grocery shopping, the occasional babysitting job, the library and of course, the virtual world...

Bill Reid, a local architect and artist is my water colour instructor for the class I take on Friday nights. I really love the class; There are 3 students (myself included) and so he is able to help us individually. We've done a variety of paintings, tonight we worked on street scenes and perspective, which incidentially makes me cringe. It's weird, because when I was working on my engineering degree I was often required to produce highly detailed sketches and technical drawings, both freehand and on programs such as AutoCAD and ProEngineer. I have no problem doing those types of drawings. And I love drawing and being creative, but give me something that requires me to be both technical (i.e. perspective) and creative (it's still an interpretation after all) and I usually end up frustrated. Part of me wants to measure and be precise, and the other part wants to wing it and go wild. Hence, the dilemma...


So this is a picture (of a picture) of a street scene in Ireland. Bill wanted us to interpret this and try to use the rules of perspective at the same time.


So here is attemp #2. Attempt #1 did not make it to the blog.



I went a little 'wild' with my camera. Here is the same thing in black and white:


The same street...


The same painting...

~~~

So there is snow on the ground now. Not very much, and it hasn't been really cold yet but nonetheless I think I can feel it coming. Tomorrow the sun rises at 9:04am and sets at 5:42pm. After Sunday (which is daylights savings), the sun will rise at 8:04 and set at 4:39 with a few minutes lost everyday. So, needless to say, it is quite dark. My mother keeps telling me to buy a SAD lamp, and apparently it is important to consume Vitamin D when you don't get very much exposure to sunlight.

I was talking to a lady the other day and she said you measure how long you've lived in Yellowknife by how many winters you've been here. So if I make it through this winter it'll be an accomplishment.

But who knows what the future holds anyway, right?