Reflections on learning

This week has been very interesting.  I am not an artist but I have had moments of insight in the past when an artist explained something to me.  I decided that I could try learning more that would help me understand the students when I am substitute teaching.  I found it very interesting and curious that I had such a negative reaction to the New West gallery.  I found the scenes depicted as sterile and lifeless.  Even those with animals or people in them were lifeless.  That contrasted with the experience I had with Hans Kleiber's watercolor, The Ski Trail.  This work struck my eye and reminded me of Robert Frost's Two Roads Diverged in a Woods.  They both had the trail stretching into the horizon with the unknown before them.  Then as I sought another work that spoke to me I was drawn to a scene of pheasants in the snow.  This was a black and white positioned just after a series of waterfowl scenes.  My father fed pheasants under the Russian Olive trees in the harsh winters.  I noted that the artist seemed to be showing a fight with the third pheasant, female?, running away.  Winter is not usually mating season  Then I found out that the artist was the same as the one that attracted my attention before.  I guess I like his works.   The next day we learned about Quink.  I enjoy watching how the pigments run and separate but it is not very controllable for me.  It gets where I like what has happened and then keeps on changing, even after I thought it had settled.  This is frustrating to me.  I like having more control.  I see work others have done that have the control that I desire.  I guess I just haven't worked with it enough to understand how to get it to do what I envision.  I haven't worked with watercolors and probably if I had had more experience with that the Quink would have behaved better for me.  We had writing work interspersed with our other instruction.  I discovered that I am out of touch with the creative use of words. Then we moved into sculpture.  I enjoyed the miniaturization scenes.  I had some fossils I brought from home and decided to recreate a scene where they may have lived.  The corals, snails and ammonites inhabited a warm ocean bottom.  They were discovered on a high mountain ridge swept clean of vegetation by the blowing winds and covered most of the year by snow.  What a contrast! Then we started making molds and tried to make a sculpture to hang on a wall.  I chose to try to depict my family on a tree.  This is still very much a work in progress as I try to learn how to create frames from my molds to hang miniature pictures of my children and create the 3D tree to hang them from.  I have enjoyed the time I have spent here this week.