20°C, 
Dreamweaver: busy with that web-tutorial for school today. I really like the new version, it’s so nice to use.
Today is the first day ofg the year where I wear shorts. Anything above 18°C is enough.
First day in shorts
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Category Archives: Work
Jenny Saville
2.4°C, Sleet
Cycling: ‘Orrible ride home in the sleet & headwind. Shouldn’t have bothered.Jenny Saville: a colleague bought a book on her painting recently which I looked at yesterday. A later lesson – I was pulled by by a morbid curiosity to look again. The pictures were full of blood, light by strip-light green and portrayed women who appeared to have had surgery- cosmetic surgery. They had stitches, were soaked in blood, and mostly were naked. The pictures in real life are very large indeed. In close-up the paint is boldly applied, in thick daubs with a palette knife and usually not densely covering the canvas.
The pictures seem to be about human beings as lumps of meat, objects for the surgeon’s procedures- helpless and injured. they look as if actually dripping wth blood, anatomically vivid but also often distorted by wide angle lens of just mounds of body fat.
Jenny Savile can really paint. She has insightful colour vision, solid anatomy and the people depicted are really alive with a warm sympathy. The pictures are frightening to say the least-and so test your stamina; repellent, but curiosity draws you back- how can a mere piece of canvas cause such a strong reaction? I haven’t even seen the paintings in real life, it’s been years since seeing any of her photographs as well but now I must have this book. It such a compelling desire that I don’t care how much it costs financially.
Autodesk Inventor: Played with version 8 during a free period today. I really regret that we can’t use this in teaching, it’s a very competant program- far superior to Pro/Desktop.
Where’s all the bankrupcy?
2°C, wind + sun
Economics: this to me is the most mysterious thing. How does the UK stay in business? We don’t make anything, there seems to be nothing supporting our wealth and yet there is plenty going around. We all have more food, more transport than we need, and heat our homes hotter than we need. Where does the money come from to fund this? We have enough money to spend on extras- things that benefit no-one: lots of people are employed generating and manipulating needless and useless statistics. I work in an industry that uses "target setting" like a drug. It can’t seem to stop setting targets for everything, no-one knows why they do it, but plenty of money is spent on this activity. There is clearly more money here than we need. A poor nation could not afford such decadent luxuries, it seems to spread like a disease
Our school has recently failed it’s target for the number of pupil attendances, we had ( for a week or so) 12% absence due to illness and so Walsall has failed some kind of target. Someone was paid to dream up that target. No-one told all the kids suffering with influenza viruses though. There is no link between the target and any solution to the cold though.
Viruses: I have one. It makes my nose fizz and my joints ache.
Apostrophes:
"We had to use a range of formulae’s in Excel"
Y9 wrote in coursework today. That brightened up my day.
Poor Charlotte
2°C, sleet & rain
Something odd happened at school today. There were police, other people who I’ve not seen before, and another clue was even more troubling ( in that Kafkaesque way). Overheard in a corridor , a few girls were having a conversation:
"Charlotte changed into a skirt at lunchtime"
anything else is hard to come by at this point in time. I hope she’s ok.
Kokoshka
7.5°C, cloud, dry
Teaching: Days like this make the job worthwhile. I have a year 10 student who paints like Oscar Kokoshka. Unlike most of her peers, her painting is more capable than her drawing, but in both the’s a natural. I may break with habit on these pages and post a picture that’s not mine. It’s well worth seeing!
My turn to paint: preparing the ground for a new picture. The idea is a person floating at sea, I’d like the water to look deep. The canvas is ready with a coloured ground ( burnt sienna & pthalio blue). Also started an oil sketch to sort out the composition & some colours.
I need lots of think-time for this one, perhaps a think-tank full.
Flashy
10°C. dry
Tecchies installed the new version of Macromedia Flash (v.8) on a few machines on the school network today. It’s part of the whole Macromedia Studio. Having a short period to play with it, I’d say it’s vastly easier to use than the one I have played with before. I feel encouraged to actually learn this app. properly now.
I have something to show now. A slideshow that displays pictures from one of my sketchbooks. These files can be locked so that the contents can’t be extracted. I can also easily change the pictures, so perhaps it’s a good idea for my web-site’s splash page.
Sample slideshow:->See here
Oh yeah- and it’s term’s end now. I’m going to drink some tea.
Watched
9°C, clear & dry
"observed" by one of the bosses yesterday in an IT lesson. Finally rated as "Good" in Ofstead terminology. that’s the second highest rating so here’s greatly relieved. the group were great- Y10 GCSE, so thanks guys!
Lots of online shopping recently. Many shiney things, lights for the bike to prevent a violent death on the way home. Gears for the racing bike which look very shiney indeed in the advert. Look!- Just look how shiney it is.
The racing frame has the thread of the bolt left in the hangar, I expect it’s going to be a devil of a job getting that out. the bike shop explained that it should work with 8-speed gears with no problem, not even a narrow chain is necessary- *waits to see*.
It’s slightly unethical though, getting advice from a shop then buying online.
. I promise not to do it again santa. Can you tell that I’m a bit stuck on what to write today. November is a dull month. Not even my birthday can save it.
bring the canvases home.
17°C, clouds and sun & things.
Pictures at work: they went down well enough, I will leave the printouts of work-in-progress there in a folder but I can’t wait to get the canvases home. Can’t carry them home on my bike tho’.
the cut eyes one was best liked. Even though there is something wrong with one eye that really must be fixed- as pointed aout by a colleague. He’s right as well ( drat!). So it’s not finished after all. I hate these patches of bare wall in here.
Short entry eh?
We’re going to have known nothing like it (again)!
GCSE results day.
News report this morning must have bene easy to plan- just use the same report as lat year, add the same controvesy and film a high ranking school as they open their results. Then have a debate about it getting easier, standards and kids working hard.
Easy television. Art: Stone, art & public/private money all debated on the BBC
It seems the press have ignored the facts behind the story in case it spoils their sermons.
We’re going to have known nothing like it.
A-level results today, GCSEs next week. No doubt they will be higher grades than ever, no doubt the arguments in the press will revolve around "are they getting easier?". No doubt we’ll have known nothing like it!
So the debate- are they easier, is the teaching better, are the kids getting more intelligent (as someone suggested this morning on breakfast news). Normally the alternatives are presented as 1 OR another OR another. the debate has a momentun because each has their case, each has sound reasons for holding to their view. That’s the trouble with dogma, it’s no timpossible that all sides are right. Does anyone consider the possibility that the exams are getting easier, easier because the kids are better taught and possibly more intelligent as well. So it is possible that all of those explainations are occuring at once.
Intelligence does go up when people are better fed, they also grow taller too. that brings me to my next question- are people better fed over the last 10 years? Could someone out there look into the range between the malnourished ( McDonalds) generation and the middle-class diet. I don’t want to hear about the rich-poor divide, I want absolutes. The poor are better fed these days too, it’s just that the wealthy are even more so. There is no gain in turning the discussion into a pseudo-marxist rant. As one woman on TV said this morning, the A-level’s results make up 4% of 18 year olds. A tiny drop compared to the vast majority, one fifth of whom are semi-illiterate ( apparently*).
Anyway, I’d better go into school to see my tutor group & get some materials to plan for the start of term. It’s going to be a perfect day – the weather anyway.
* why not look through the list of updated spaces, plenty of illiterates there- and that’s from a group of people who like writing!
Micycle 