PAFA Day 1

Well it finally arrived, my first official day of class at PAFA as a student. It seemed like it was a long wait for it to finally happen, I guess in part because I have been planning it since the winter of 06. Also Echo was full time last fall, so i was there at school quite a bit, including my CE anatomy class, but to be there as a student at last was really great.

Yesterday we had a big labor day BBQ blowout at Casa Del Manley, lots of friends and food, then it was sort of a restless night as I was sort of like a kid waiting for Santa to arrive. Finally I did fall asleep, only it seemed to be instantly jarred awake by the alarm an 6:30...agggh! Ok, this will take some getting used to. I have often been going to bed very late these last few months due to deadlines and my natural nocturnal tendencies. Sometimes I was going to bed between 5 and 6am.

It was a glorius morning though, bright sun shown down and over the city and through the windows in class as I waited along with a few early students for class to start. My first class was a sculpting class with John Horn, but today I had to drop it till next term. The class has two sections, an instructed and non-instructed. I am not able to take the non-instructed and found out that because we would be sculpting from the live model, I'd only have 50% as much time by having only one section, so I switch in a another Cast Drawing class instead. I'll take this sculpting class again next term.



Here you can see across to where the old school building is being raised to make room for the Convention Center expansion.


My life painting instructor Douglas Martenson was really affable and funny, and everyone seemed to enjoy him, he gave a great first day talk and a demo and supply list for what we need next week. I learned for instance that he cleans his brushes with Baby Oil. I've been using Olive Oil, but maybe I'll give the baby oil a try. I'll have to go back and get some more masionite board cut a Home Depot or the local Ace hardware. We'll need that for class. After class I hit the Acadamy Art store and bought all the paint and brushes I didn't have.

I had lunch with Echo, new students and friends Park and Judy, in the 11th flr student lounge, (where the students kept going out on the balcony, setting off the alarm). I ate fast and headed off to my Life Painting class with Martenson. last was the Art History Class which was a lot of fun and the whole day went great...and fast. I didn't even mind that one of the pictures I took to the gallery to drop off had a cracked glass, or that the meter maid, or man gave me a ticket for $41 as I had to double park for 2 minutes to run the stuff in. Maybe it's like a bird shitting on you, it's supposed to be good luck.