Kincaid – Week Seven Recap

This week, I cleaned up the pages of the first chapter of the Arlys stories. I decided to redraw a couple pages, which set me back a few days. When I was cleaning up, I would catch any mistakes I’d made, fix a panel’s composition, and add the speech bubbles. I tried a different method this time, which was writing the words on a separate piece of paper, cutting them out, and sticking them into the panels with washi tape. This way, I can play a bit with how the speech bubbles are arranged. So far, I’ve filled up at least a third of my sketchbook with just drawings from the first chapter, and I’m happy with how far I’ve come with it.

I kept going out every morning to do live sketches, and I went to the Saint Louis Zoo on Tuesday. The original plan was to revisit the Art Museum, but I decided at the last minute to go to the zoo instead. I had a lot more luck there than I’d have had at the art museum, I think. A lot of the animals were active that day, and even though they were moving, they still stayed in the same general position, so they weren’t too difficult to draw. It was probably the best day I’ve had with live sketches this week.

I worked a lot more on Sonnet 81 this week. I looked for a recording on YouTube, because I wanted to hear it spoken. I found a really good one by Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies (among other things). It really helped me get my bearings, and I understand the language a bit more now. I read through Here and Now by Stephen Dunn, and started Poetry Speaks, which is a huge compilation of poems with audio tracks and artist bios included. It will probably last me until the end of senior projects. In addition to that, next week I’ll start in on When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Further List of Possibilities by Chen Chen.

I kept going with the vocabulary from last week, and this week I’ve been memorizing another new set. I’ve also been reading paragraphs from the book, and seeing how much of it sticks. I’m really enjoying Arabic so far, and I hope to continue with it next year. (Truman unfortunately doesn’t offer classes, but I hope I have enough time to study on my own.)