First class starts with an introduction round. How I keep hating this. Never know what to say in a few minutes about myself. There is too much to tell. Much happier when we move on to our work.

Teacher asked us to bring something we've been working on recently. I have been fascinated by faces for a while now. Worked with charcoal and ink last year, now I think I am ready for paint. I had made a beginning of my children a while ago, but never finished it. A month ago I picked it up again with the intention of making a likeness of my children. But as the work proceeded, I got frustrated with the look on their face and decided to make two fantasy figures. My children are happy children, these two had a strange look that I could not bend. I just had to go with their sad expression.

Teacher seems really interested, and gives a great deal of attention to my work. I am getting good feedback. He encourages me to really look how a a face is constructed and work with a model, or a photo. There's nothing wrong with that, lots of artists work from photo's. It will teach me to investigate what is really there. He says that my paintings can not be qualified a naive art because it misses some sort of concentration. I could work on that too, but for now I should focus on reality and just see what happens.

He wants me to continue the half finished painting of myself I also brought to show, with the help of the original photo.

Each student in the class gets his full attention. It is very inspiring to look at each others work and hear what teacher has to say about it. He is making comparisons with lots of modern artists, so part of my homework will be to look those up, as I am not familiar with most of them.

To be continued.