First week of school is up!

Hola Hola,

Jessica and I survived the first week!  We have not started painting yet, but have or canvases prepped and ready for action.  This studio is very concerned with the process and doing everything exact from the beginning in order to have a beautiful smooth painting.  One of things i found quite odd was the addition of oil into their gesso.  They do not buy buckets of wet gesso like in America, rather mix their own latex, powders, and water.  On the last coat of gesso, he added black ink and oil into the mixture.  It goes against the whole oil should not be mixed with water and latex that i learned back home, but i am here to learn, so i abided.  Today i am going to finish my preliminary drawing to show Professor Xie tomorrow.

Professor Xie showing us the mixtures...

The gesso that we created

Our beautiful still life i will be investigating for the next three weeks

Everyone chose their own still life...this duck is amazing

quack

quack

Yesterday we spent all day at Chime Long Water Park.  It was a unique lesson in humility.  Everywhere i go, i get stares.  My visit to the water park further escalated this awe in the Chinese people.  Being over six feet tall, hairy, bearded, tan (by comparison), and light eyed is everything these people never see.  I get wows from people just walking through the park.  I received cheers when sliding down one of the large water slides.  Mind you this is my first visit to a water park and i do not quite know how things work.  The next water slide i went on was larger and i went down feet first without a mat.  I was gifted a chlorine water enema from the high speed.  Live and learn.  After my unpleasant blunder a huge thunderstorm hit and sent us all running.  We ventured home eventually and i slept for about 12 hours.  Now i am off to draw!

Stormy

Very stormy

pool with Winnie and Alex

Smiles

Bye!