artefaccio

Hah! I can tell you exactly why people like S-curves! Just read about it a few minutes ago in a newsletter:

Esoterica: I [i.e. Robert Genn] often think the best advice is what I call "Osmotic advice." This is where casual remarks (particularly in workshops) are overheard and inadvertently soaked up. It helps if the remarks were intended for someone else, but in your private wisdom you secretly know it was intended for you. Here's an example from the great workshopper Tony van Hasselt: "The 's' curve can be found in the human form, in animals, plants, flowers, in anything alive. Keep the straight lines for structures, created from 'dead' materials."

This is from www.painterskeys.com, which is a great website and the twice-weekly newsletter is incredibly interesting and inspiring.

I completely agree with you about having assignments to complee and part of the school thing is being "forced" to do them in a set time, as well as learning self-discipline (which I severely lack!). The 2-year college I went to treated the program like a job. If we were late for a class, we were marked absent, if we had three absences (w/o a valid reason) we were kicked out. For me, I was profoundly grateful to be able to do art for four or five or six hours a day. Plus we had university transfer academics. I worked full time most of the two years to be able to afford to go. I'd worked for the company for several years already, and all my boss said was to show my face in the office once a week during the day, otherwise I did all my work at night and on the weekends.

I slept for 4 hours a night during the week, 10-15 hours on Friday and Saturday nights, and really only made it through because my best friend who happened to live across the back alley from me would cook me a real meal three times a week, even if it was at 10 pm, with proper cutlery, sit at a table, have a nice chat about our days -- it was like a mini-vacation of an hour of peace and quiet in an insane day. Afterwards, I did my final English and Art History credits in Europe on a 3-month university/college trip. At one point I had three part time jobs, but I paid for all of it myself as I went.

If you really want it, just do it. Take weekend classes, night classes -- I have never stopped taking some type of art class, now jewellery. I live way out in the boonies now so I can only take occasional jewellery classes, but I do hours of online research about what I'm interested in and watch videos. www.wetcanvas.com is offering free web seminars now that I'm finding useful as I never did watercolour much, and I never did abstract stuff. [link]

Let me know if you want any information that I can dredge out of my very fried brain. I did learn a lot at art school which I still use even while making jewellery. I hope to teach drawing classes when the new arts centre is finished something within the next 8 to 12 months. I sold my jewellery in the gallery shop at the old place and they were always bugging me to have an exhibition there or teach, so... why not? hahaha