I did a quick still life demo with one of my virtual Elite Students. The goal was to gather a few items from the room and organize them into some sort of still life tableau. I am teaching seven day a week this summer so my work is bouncing all over the place depending on the student’s needs.
This is a painting of a bottle of port, a bit of garlic and a coffee pot that I have never seen used. I figured the Eiffel Tower might add an international flair. The goal wasn’t to create a finished painting but to demonstrate how to block in the large masses of a painting.
The COVID series is still happening but at a much slower pace. I have to steal an hour here and there just to research and keep up with the state of the pandemic. The highly transmissible BA5 variant is spreading like wildfire infecting those who were infected before and those who are vaccinated. The country is “done” with the pandemic which allows for plenty of spread for the virus.
Maintaining six feet of distance used to be the golden rule but now you can get infected just by walking past someone both inside and outside. BA 5 is the second most infectious disease known to man. My standard since the start of the pandemic has been to maintain 4 head to toe bodies lengths between myself and the next person. That is about 22 feet. That standard is impossible to maintain with people stopping to look over my shoulder as I sketch, so I am always wearing a cloth mask outside and a KN95 held in place by my cloth mask inside. I am always the only one masked and that is just fine.