Backgrounds

Tonight the roommates and I went on the usual walk around campus barefoot and with frisbee in hand. We took the normal route. Up the stairs in back of Hope, through the walkway in McNally, past the Library and the art gallery, between the SUB and the cafe, past the music building, and to the front of Emerson.
We usually like to throw the friz around while at the well lit and spacious area in between Emerson and Horton.

However, on our way there we ran into one of our friends, Ian, who was on his way back to his room.

My being an art major, and Ian being an art minor with a major in film,
We stood about and had a nice chat for a bit, then Jojo and Kenny got impatient and started throwing the frisbee. I stayed and continued talking with Ian.
We talked about art classes and how we learn more than just art from the professors.

While we were talking about difficulties in staying committed to one drawing, I was thinking back on my last semester's figure studies class. I always saved the face for last. And I never wanted to actually finish it. I was never able to do it justice, and that discouraged me. it still does to this day. One of the reasons I don't sketch regularly s because I don't like that my sketch doesn't look like the actual object.
Ian offered his thoughts on it, like fro some reason besides drawing that I didn't want to finish it, saying that you have to start out small and build up to the greatness of the desired sketch.
It made me think about how I like people's stories. I've been going around asking people to tell me their life story, which is very hard because the people that I really want to hear are the ones I don't see that often. But it made me think about how I love the background of things. Like with DVDs. I love the second disc. The one with all the behind the scenes footage, and the "making of" bits. I enjoy those more tan the movie itself.

I've always been a backstage kind of person. I prefer working in the darkness behind the actors, where i"m not in the spotlight, but still in the thick of it, helping out in anyway I can, making the show possible.
So I can't fill in the faces because I don't know the model's story. Or if I do, how can I put everything they've been through into on sketch? I could draw in laugh-lines or scars, the result of those stories. But I could never put in their actual story.
Maybe that's my purpose as an artist. To strive to tell people's stories. To draw or sculpt the face in a way that people can get a sense of what they've been through, or at least to make them wonder so they'll look into the person's story too.

During our talk, I asked what Ian wanted to do with film. He said he wanted to incorporate it into the theater somehow. He then told me how his dad does work for their church back home and how that inspires him and how he wants to put on a show here at school. I was so excited when I heard this. Just the other day I was reminiscing about the shows I used to be in, and then this summer how I worked at the theater. I was close to begging him to let me help him. When I told him I'd love to lend a hand, he was so excited! He said that he needed help with it and I would be welcome, so YAY!!!!! Kenny and Jojo are excited to help out too.

We'll see what God has in store for me. I find it a true blessing that He revealed things to me in a conversation like that.
It was a wonderful night, and I feel very blessed.
-Brena Kathleen