The luxury of a straight-edge

Friday April 1, 2011 Day 275

Charlotte posted a link on FB to an NPR story by John Burnet having to do with the lone pine tree which stood against the tsunami a few weeks ago. When I arrived in France, I closed the door on U.S. news for the duration of our stay here. In some ways it has been nice. In other ways, not so much. I miss NPR and its in-depth news coverage, its interesting side stories, its music, Prairie Home Companion . . . . I know that I can still get those if I want them, but I wanted to try to stay focused on France instead of hanging onto every happening in the U.S. Indeed, a part of me did so with much enthusiasm - I hate how the media hammers home negative news so repeatedly that I could barf. I hate the manipulation and lies of some of the media, the screed, the vitriolic partisanship. I could do without that forever. It creeps in a bit on FB, and Roger has Yahoo.US as his homepage on the computer, so he keeps up a bit more. But for the most part, I am content to leave U.S. news behind. John Burnet will be there when I get back. I do love his twang.

I cleaned out the freezer today. It was building up quite a layer of frost which we had been ignoring. But we are having company tomorrow and I decided that I want it to look presentable in the likely event that one or more of them opens the freezer door.

I worked some more on the drawings today - I have three paintings in the drawing stages. I have realized that I want to paint more “serious” paintings, paintings that I have spent more time on than just an hour, paintings that have more work in them. Those kinds of paintings take more time and preparation. Two of the paintings I am working on now have humans in them, which makes them much harder - I have to worry about getting proportion correct or they look “off.” The third is of a shop with lots of straight lines, so I have been spending time with a straight-edge and a calculator, measuring and making sure I have the perspective right and that I have caught the symmetry correctly. I sprang for four new straight-edge tools today. I had only a 6 ½-inch (16 ½ cm) ruler made of wood, and it is not long enough to draw some of the lines I need for my 30x40cm paper. We checked at the one euro store and the two euro store, but there were no rulers there, so we dropped into a sort of a stationery/travel store and splurged on a four-tool set, including a ruler, two triangles and a protractor. Almost 4 Euros - such a luxury!