I Made Art

So, I finally finished my painting! The one with the mountain and the fuegote I showed you earlier! Brewskies all round! Okay, not really on that brewskie thing.

I really like it. I really do. I mean, wow. And just two months ago, I loathed art. It's not that it's spectacularly painted, it's more that I had a vision in my mind about how I wanted this to look, and it came out like I wanted it to. Yeah, the mountain's bigger than I wanted it to be (thank you, Mr. Painting Teacher Whose Name I haven't Learned Yet), but it came out all right. I think that, for me, the best part came out with the reflection of the water. I was really looking for a sunset, so I probably made the sun a little too bright, but the reflection in the water came out well.

I was working outside, so people who were walking by all stopped and looked at it. My sculpture teacher complimented me, my drawing teacher offered suggestions (which I ignored because I didn't want to risk messing it up when I had just got it the way I liked it), and my painting teacher completely ignored me. I told him I was done, and he said to the class, "Hey, the gringo's done! Hurry up!" and went back to what he was doing. Didn't even look at it. Oh well. Screw him.

Some guys from the art College that's part of the school were walking by, and one guy said that my painting was the only one he liked out of all the ones in my class. And it's not (I think) because it's the best painted (it's definitely not), but rather because it's different. I made my painting by purposely doing the opposite of what my teacher said, Landscapes don't use warm colors (red, orange, or yellow), they don't use colors not mixed with white (like most of mine), they definitely have houses and/or trees, and they DEFINITELY are made from photographs, or paintings that other people have made, and not even the SLIGHTEST tiny bit from the imagination. Everyone else followed all the rules, and even had the teacher paint parts of the painting for them. The teacher says that he's "fixing" the paintings. That's the word he uses, "fixing." When I mention this to the other kids in my class, they all say he's teaching them, but I don't see it. I mean, the kids get up and go talk to other students, or get something from the snack shop, and he keeps right on painting for them. It's like when you're helping a little kid, and you get the urge to just say "Let me do that for you," only he doesn't suppress that urge. But you know, maybe I'm just looking at it through my American lens.

Hey, speaking of that picture, I got the most amazing thing ever. Photoshop CS3 in a portable version, one I can carry on my flash drive and takes up all of 87.4MB of space. Of course, it is all in Spanish, but oh well. It's a whole lot better than Paint, which is what I was using to make my pictures before. You can tell by the effect I put on the American flag on top of making it slightly transparent.

That's all for now. Thanks for commenting, Ben and Mom.

¡Ciao!