EMILY VAN ENGEL

Not a native French speaker, I often find myself in basic conversations when I throw out the line, “Parlèz-vous Français? Oui oui? Moi aussi.” Asking someone for their favorite color or where the library might be could turn into a fascinating conversation identifying colors within the room or a spoken tour of all the stores in a town.

Out to dinner with some friends the other night, a non-native English speaker asked me “what do you like about art?” I giggled out of shock — no one had asked me to justify my decision to return to school in what felt like such a direct way. I told him that I liked to make things and that I liked how art captures a moment in history and its styles or social struggles. Reflecting further, my final answer would be that it tells a story.

In my most recent painting, I was tasked with painting a white object with a white background. For the painting to work,  you need to differentiate between warm and cool tones. I painted a shirt hanging against a white wall, and I wanted to tell the story of the solitude of this article of clothing.

I am posting a picture of the props I used as well as of two pictures of the painting. Can you tell which one is the finished piece, and which one was a snapshot a few hours before I finished?

OK, I’m not actually one of the guys on car talk, but I’m going to treat my guessing game of last week like they treat their puzzlers. I posted the paintings of pieces of popcorn from all the students in my class and asked if folks could recognize which one was mine. I got 16 entries!

Painting 5 certainly won the popularity contest, but in fact, I am the artist behind Painting 3. Gail Schneider, Lynne Van Engel, Agata, and Davey all correctly guessed my painting — good job guys! I drew names out of a hat at random, and selected Davey to be the winner of a chocolate bar from San Francisco. Way to go!

Thanks everyone for playing!

My dear friend Marla commented halfway through her degree at Wharton, “what did I think this was going to be… a walk through the park?” Although I had remembered this warning, I seriously thought that art school would be a walk in the park for me. Yes, there would be some late nights pouring my soul into a canvas, and some early mornings showing up to an art history lecture in a dark room wearing all black, nursing my newfound caffeine addiction, but generally, my fantasy of returning to school required the least amount of effort yet produced the most glorious of results.

Finding out my class assignments for the semester did not squelch my dreams of what my life would be like as a student. In fact, it only heightened it. I figured that a life drawing class on Fridays would help me relax and wind down for the weekend. I’d gracefully whip out drawings of the human figure, go to a yoga class, and then meet friends for cocktails.

A month into school, my drawing class is clearly the most demanding class of them all. The class is six hours long, with minimal break time. On top of that, the teacher assigns six hours of drawing assignments for homework each week. Once Friday afternoon rolls around, I am completely exhausted.

Despite the harsh reality that the class is not easy, I’m really enjoying it. I’ve started to look at people and see imaginary structure lines on their faces that mark the correct angles and distances. I’m posting some drawings from my most recent class where we focused on accuracy in proportion, and I hope to be able to draw the figure with the correct proportions soon.