New York, I'm back!

After a lovely and very relaxing christmas break back home in Scotland, I am now back in the big apple and ready to take on the next semester at school!

I’ve had a great first couple weeks and have settled back into the swing of things nicely! I am very happy with the classes I picked this year, this semester we got to pick one elective to go with our four mandatory classes, I picked observational life size painting in an effort to push myself out of my comfort zone and since our tutor encourages us to ‘throw’ a lot of paint down on the canvas in a kind of Frank Auerbach style it is pushing me not to be so precious with my work in its initial stages which is exactly what I needed! In sharp contrast to that, this semester in painting class we are learning about indirect painting methods, this is the more commonly classical style of painting in a series of layers of glazes on top of an imprematura - an initial drawing in a transparent toned ground - building the image up slowly. This technique is all about value and temperature and is a far more illusionistic approach, lots to learn and I couldn’t be more excited for it!

I’ve also decided to make more of a conscious effort this year to go out more, I found myself, as lets face it I normally do, worrying and stressing about deadlines and everything in-between last semester and didn’t feel I took full advantage of living in New York. To that end I’ve been to a few gigs already, found an awesome wee Scottish bar to have burns supper and even went Salsa club this past weekend with a few of my latin friends here, suffice to say I confirmed my long held suspicion that I am about as good at dancing as a spider on a hotplate and likely never will be any form of a good dancer but I had fun nonetheless!

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