Rachel's in Germany!: Mezzotint + drawings from Prague

This is the second weekend of my monthly mezzotint printmaking course. We met at the Kunsthalle (art museum) downtown at 11 am today to go in the library there. It is a library with all kinds of special books and collections. They have open hours certain days, and you can go in and ask for the books or works of the person you want to look at and they will bring them for you. Our teacher, Louise, gave us a lecture on a bunch of mezzotints they had there. Some of them were pretty old, like from the late 1700s. She lectured in German, which was good. I tend to glaze over after a while, but it's still helpful to hear the language being spoken because it helps me learn new words. The library is so cool! It has shelves and shelves of old books. I saw a bunch of huge Albrecht Dürer books with fancy patterned covers that were all frayed and falling apart at the edges and wished I could look at them. Maybe I can go back with Marni sometime--she's into bookbinding and would probably love to see the old editions.

We left the museum around 1 and took a lunch break, then met at school at 2. I went to Boesner, the art store, for a new sketchbook. My old one is almost full. Yay! I love getting new art supplies. I used to hate it because they tend to be so expensive, but now I've gotten to the point where I don't mind the price so much because I can't wait to put them to use. Blank sketchbooks and watercolor blocks are especially exciting because there are so many possibilities for what to fill them with, and it feels like collecting treasures as I put drawings, paintings, and colors on the pages.

We were in class until 7 (of course, it didn't feel that late because the sun still had a couple hours to go before it went all the way down). I got started on my mezzotint series. We are going to each make a series of five prints and then put them all together for a student portfolio. The theme is "Zeit" ("Time"). I was having trouble for a while deciding what to do, but then I thought of life cycles and aging and started drawing my grandma from the family pictures I have seen of her throughout her childhood and adult life. Louise said it could be a really nice series to draw her progression of age, so that's what I decided on.

Dinner tonight was a hot dog and some potatoes I had to use up, plus a yummy berry smoothie that Indra kindly gave me. (She accidentally left her pasta dish on the stove last night and I put it in the fridge for her because I didn't want it to go rancid, so this morning she made a smoothie for her breakfast and poured me a thank-you cup.) After dinner I worked on planning out my mezzotints of Grandma. Indra hung out with me in my room and we listened to her recording of König Salomo, an oratorio her choir performed a few years ago, and her soundtracks of The Lion King film and Der König der Löwen, the German version of the musical. (Der König der Löwen is a permanent show in Hamburg, like the English version is in Las Vegas, and has been here for more than ten years. They have a special theater down at the harbor where it is performed.) Indra also showed me her yearbook and told me about all the kids in her classes. Lesson learned: Kids are kids, no matter where they live. Cliques, drama, goofing off in class, and bullying are pretty much universal, at least in Westernized society. The only difference between Indra's high school and American high schools is that the kids speak German and have German names. Instead of Emma, Andrew, and Justin, you've got Svenkje, Markus, and Jan.

Anyway, it's late and I have class again tomorrow, so I should go to bed. But here are a few drawings from the past couple weeks, including Prague: