In drawing class today we were forced to draw hands. This always aggravates me because I have my own hands but I usually don’t have naked people lounging around the house. So it just seems like a pointless waste of class time to draw them. Not to mention the tuition money.

The model was holding some kind of rock. I thought it was kind of boring and remembered this image from Art History class last week:

It’s called Girl With A Kitten by Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud and considered one of the most important twentieth century painters of the human figure.

So just to make it clear- I’m not a sicko. This is not a scene that depicts animal cruelty. I love kittens, this one is completely imaginary, and no kittens were harmed in the creation of this drawing.

Sometimes in a life that includes drawing for 4 to 6 hours per day you have flashes of insight. Last week I realized that men’s genitals are darker than the rest of the skin but that you don’t want to draw them that way, or they become a focal point in your work, and then the work becomes either creepy or a piece of pornography. I’m not really into that. You want your work to look good, not necessarily completely accurate. If it’s just nasty, what’s the point?

Today I realized I had had enough of drawing our nude model’s grody colorful genitals. I put a fig leaf over that mess and I am a happier person. For your viewing pleasure:

Got new brakes this weekend. The truck stops a lot more readily and the moderately alarming shrieking metal noises have stopped. Sometimes I wonder if the thing is even turned on.

The car place guy told me several interesting things about my brakes. Another word for that might be, “mechanic.” First, brake pads should be smooth, and not look like this:

He said it wasn’t the most worn out brakes he’d ever seen, but was in the top five.

He also said that a problem with the Toyota 4Runner is that it’s so “sturdy” that you get situations like this one- it will still stop pretty reliably even though you have no brakes, and it will drive pretty reliably even though there’s no oil in it, and stuff like that. So I should pay more attention. I told him I would but I have to say his expression upon hearing this was somewhat skeptical.