Okay, so last night's shopping spree wasn't what I thought it was going to be. The store I needed (Guiry's) closes at 6:00 p.m., so by the time we ate dinner and got over there, it was 6:34 and I'd missed my window of opportunity.

I got paper and some charcoal from Michael's, a few storefronts down the strip mall, and I'll try Guiry's again this weekend. For ink and pastels, mostly. I haven't called Oksana yet to ask more specific questions about the ink. I'll do that later today.

Of course, when I got home last night, I had to sit down and play work with my new toys tools. Sadly, the 24-hour interval between the class and the practice session were sufficient to erase from my aging brain the precise techniques Oksana showed us for applying charcoal.

I produced six or seven more draft sketches of various landscapes, none of which were particularly successful. I produced one page full of "bark effects" for tree trunks, all of which resembled palm trees instead of the oak or elm I had in mind. I discovered (fool that I am) that different paper produces different results.

The biggest problem was composition or, rather, not so much composition (how to lay things out) but what to draw. (If you're not "visual" then no landscape you've ever viewed, no matter how impressive at the time, has stayed in your memory with sufficient clarity to enable you to produce even a rough approximation of it.)

Anyhow, I will persist this evening. I have some ideas, we'll see how they pan out. There's one half-successful sketch that I think I can add a couple of elements to that might help.

And this is just one of six drawings I have to produce by Wednesday evening, all of which are going to need extensive practice. My weekend is going to be rather full of sitting in one place. Only the landscape is supposed to be done in charcoal, but using pencil for the others just means that the draftsmanship (the actual drawing) really needs to be of a slightly higher caliber. Sigh.

It's like writing. I have plenty of ideas. It's my execution that fails me.

Don't let me fool you. I'm having a great deal of fun. In fact, as soon as I've had coffee and finished a project with the Tweenybopper, I intend to Buckle Down and Practice, yes, here at the office.

Double sigh. The R.C.'s birthday is fast approaching and I am, as usual, failing to come up with any brilliant inspirations for how to spend the day. (Well, not the day, because I'll be gone to class, but the following Saturday, which is when we'll be sort of "celebrating" the event.) We are moving from gift-giving to more doing things because we both have enough (more than enough) "stuff" (and we both buy a lot of "stuff" which makes it difficult to find something the other one wants but doesn’t have) and the R.C. is very fond of Doing Thing. I have had some ideas that I've presented to her. Let's see if she likes any of them.

In the meantime...it's time for coffee.