This afternoon I went to Chengzhi Mao’s exhibit at Barnes and Noble, and watched him paint bamboo and write poetry in black ink in various dilutions with water.   A very kind fellow and talented painter.   His family lives in our neighborhood and we have had a meal together.  If you get a chance, go see his watercolors on rice paper, on exhibit for the next month at B&N in South Burlington.   He also has exhibited some beautiful paintings on fans.  I hope I can get him to come to my class at UVM.   His daughter, a physician at UVM,  can translate for him if he does come.   Perhaps I can get someone at UVM to help out as well.   I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera with me to take pictures to upload.

These students are shown working on ink wash (last night,) the final medium we will use in this class. Now aware of graphite, charcoal and ink, most students will find a favorite to use in their research projects.  The latter range from explorations of Egyptian funerary objects in the Fleming museum and visualizing the steps in building a guitar to the physics of baseball and the life of the yellow perch.

Last night in class (at UVM) I told the students I was breaking the rule about turning off cell phones. Merissa (my daughter) was about to deliver her first child and our classroom is right across the lawn from the hospital. As it turns out she waited until about 6 a.m. when Nicholas Michael Bushey arrived, 6 lbs 4 oz. Both mom and baby are doing well.

Last night in A&S 095 at UVM we did ink wash on watercolor paper using TOMBO pens. The drawings came out very well. Spencer drew his ipod and headset and, as most did, got the hang of this technique. Now everyone is well acquainted with ink, graphite and charcoal. Each will have favorites to use in the preparation of their research papers. We are doing these in a series of multiple drafts, with collaborative sharing and critiques as the papers develop. A variety of topics are being researched, from the physics of baseball and guitar construction to Egyptian burial objects in the Fleming and alpine plants on the ridgeline. I’m looking forward to seeing the development of these topics both visually in the images students draw, as well as in the descriptive texts which accompany these. Each student will give a formal presentation of their work in the last few weeks of class.

The Drawing for the Terrified class in North Hero. These students don’t look terrified, do they? The drawings at the bottom resulted from about 40 minutes of work with charcoal.