Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. I went in to teach in the morning. Discovered the model had canceled. (Every other person seems to have a bad case of the flu.) Luckily we were able to get a substitute at the last minute, a favorite model for some students so there was no problem.
For one of the exercises, I put the model in the closet (I’ve done this with him before so he didn’t mind, didn’t take it personally). The students had to get up from their seats, go to the closet, remember what they saw, and go back to draw. It’s hard. I’ve done it in art school myself. My teacher used to put drawings by Inge at one end of the room with the model in an adjoining room and we had to draw the model (in the other room) in the style of Inge. I’m not great with visual memory drawing and so I was often the one who got up from my seat the most.
Yesterday one of the students had brought in a big container of popcorn she had made. She put it near the closet and the students could grab a handful on their way to and from looking at the model. Very entertaining!
At about 11:30 (class is from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm) I told them I was putting them on the honor system: they’ve paid their tuition and it is a rare privilege to have a live model to draw (and we almost didn’t have one yesterday) and I had a plane to catch at 3:15. They were fine about it so I headed home to pick up Lila and Sean (who is staying with her while I am visiting Tamar and family).
I made it to the airport with time to spare. But was told the planes were delayed because of bad weather in New Jersey. Low ceiling on the entire Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. Once we were almost about to board when they told us all planes were stopped in Newark. Another hour’s wait. In total I waited four hours to get on the plane. It was a mildly bumpy ride but I’m here at Tamar’s. And after a good night’s sleep, feeling good.