In high school I was a big fan of our art teacher, Mrs Costes. I went on several trips with her and really appreciated her spontaneity and joie de vive.
Joie de vivre - that's your fancy French phrase for the day. It means 'joy of living.'
I've blogged about her before. She was absolutely nuts. And I man that in the nicest sense of the word. As my senior year approached she asked if I was going to sign up for her honors art class. I was, um, honored but I expressed my reservations because art has never been one of my particular gifts.
Where I really should have been paying more attention was English because I have no idea whether 'honors art class' needs to be capitalized or not.
She responded "Well, it's true. You're just not quite there but we can find other things for you to do! Just sign up."
I should have asked her to be more specific about what she wanted me to do exactly.
A month into the class she announced a major project that would take months to complete. We would be creating a painting on a large canvas of a human subject. The subject would need to wear the exact same thing to class every day for three months, the subject would need to be perfectly still while they were being painted, the subject would blah, blah, blah.
Kids...the subject was me. Her bright idea was to have me be the model thus allowing me to take the class without actually having to create any big masterpieces.
So, every weekday for three months I showed up to class and put on the same pair of jeans and long sleeve shirt, combed my hair the same way as the day before, put on the same dang shoes and socks and crawled up on top of a desk and leaned back against some stairs for an hour. The novelty of it lasted about 35 minutes.
And this, dear readers, was one of the results:
"Does my butt look big in this picture?"
So in attics or junkyards all across the Southeast a portrait of me sits. Or in some cases my parent's bathroom. See, one of the students in my class was a true artist. Only click the above link if your a grown up, cuz it's for grownups. That means you, Nephews. As in, that's what she became when she grew up.
This sketch took EK about 3 minutes:
So...by the end of the assignment I had lost a little bit of my joie de vivre for art class. It's a good thing it didn't make EK lose her joie de vivre for it, cuz' she's really dang good.