scenic painting!

oh delight! i got an email from grant last night saying this is the week to paint the set for she stoops to conquer! i was free to paint today and friday night. all day long, i went to my classes in expectaton- i didn't feel like lugging around extras, so i wore my painting clothes all day. in set design we went to pilsen to take photos. we have to design a set with a house based on photos we took today. it made me nostalgic, and missing ruth. who doesn't love the amazing jumping bean cafe? it was a beautiful clear sunny day today- it seems we've been getting more than our fair share of those recently. like, all of a sudden it's april and 1/2 are days are clear. work was all lame mending. then those 13 drawings i did at g's on saturday? i'm glad i never got around to transfering them last night. cause i have to do them again. frances was in a rare good mood today, and she seemed to really like my designs, which is good- quite a relief. however, i need to show her people sketches on friday, then re-clothe them for monday and have them rendered by next monday. bleck. i wish i could draw. luckily jared has to show her figures, too, so it's not just me with remedial drawing skills. grrrr. BUT! after her class i decompressed with my salad and my anne lamott, and then i went to the scene shop where grant was waiting for me!! he was removing ceiling tiles, trying to make enough room for the drops to stand up. i helped him, but it didn't quite work. we ended up just painting them on the floor. they're muslin covered theater flats, and they'd been primered already, and so i taped the windows (so we'd get minimal paint on them) and then grant taught me to... shoot! i can't remember what it's called! spackle, smudgen, schreken, ,spurfen... anyway, you take a brush in each hand, and one's light paint and the other's dark, and you kinda weave the strokes together. it makes a really nice texture, and isn't as hard as it looks. then we splattered on it with 4 different browns. it should be a good base. the fireplace and the door weren't dry yet, so we couldn't start those. but i'll be back friday! i love scenic painting. i just do what i'm told, and i get to mess around with these great big vats of color, these brushes as big as my hands. you slap it on, you make a mess. you haul around big wooden things and you grunt. it's a great combintation of feeling like you're being creative, but also hard physical labor. and the creative part isn't really hard mental work, like meticulous costume renderings, or even planning what part of your watercolor stays white or where your shadows and highlights should be. it's just copying the model. only Big! and in Color! i felt so alive when i was leaving. the sun was setting and the sky was pink fading to blue, pearl was playing andy stochansky, an el train was rumbling by, my dreadlocks were exploding out of my bandana and my chuck taylors were covered in paint. i must remember this, how alive painting makes me feel. this is what i'm paying for: when i'm in a down mood, so blue i can't move, when the tiniest things shoot me there, that's just the flip side of this. to feel no sadness is to feel no happiness. that wanting to crawl out of my skin and die friday nights is balanced with wanting to burst out of my skin with joy spring evenings.