They say time flies when your having fun. The perception of time passing depends on if you are waiting for something to happen, if you are happening, or if it has happened. You wait forever for the weekend to get here. The weekend flies by in a blur. The next thing you know you are trying to remember if something happend this past weekend or six years ago. Little kids are always waiting on something, but they are always doing something too. They are learning constantly and that puts time in a unique perspective for them. There used to be parenting commercials about “Kid Minutes.” The idea is that when you do things with children that involve time, you should remember that the child’s age in years is the number of minutes that seem like an hour. That is to say that to a three year old child, three minutes feels like an hour. All week long Girl2 whined and cried for her mother. “I just want to snuggle her and hold her forever,” she would cry. The wife came back from her conference in the wee hours Saturday morning. When we went to pick her up, the kid ran full speed and dove into Mom’s arms. There was much kissing, laughing, and hugging. For about three minutes. Then she went to her coloring books. The bride and I have been trying to spend as much time together as we can without (killing each other). It still wasn’t enough time and we soon have to go back to work. I believe that I will quit referring to the “speed of light” and instead I will speak in terms of “the speed of weekends.”
At 2am this morning, I was relieved to see the EDM challenge was a free drawing. At least I didn’t have to traipse around outside or search the internet for a reference. A quick sketch of my Pentel Clic Eraser and I was off to bed.
Also, now that my beautiful young bride has returned to me, I once again have access to the digital camera. Now I can post the results of Tuesday night’s figure drawing group. 
There were a couple of these that I really liked. I was late getting there and felt rushed for the first thirty minutes or so. It was obvious in my sketches. There are a few things I learned this week though:
1. I don’t like using oil pastel sticks for sketching. I guess I can’t feel it on the paper and I find myself looking at my paper more than the subject. This may change over time, but for now I believe I will switch to conte crayon.
2. I find it very disconcerting to make eye contact with the model. I am the kind of guy that within five minutes of meeting someone of the opposite sex I begin talking about my wife, even in my dreams. When this stunning young lady made eye contact with me, I began looking more at the platform she was sitting on, the other furniture in the room, and I even stopped to watch the progress of the artists on either side of me. Not very conducive to skill development.
3. I learned that my knowledge of scientific anatomy (B.S. in Biology) has little or no bearing on artistic anatomy. As a matter of fact, knowing the parts are there made me want to draw things I couldn’t see, but it did not help me understand the structures that I could see. I found myself filling in things not there, and getting the proportions and placement wrong. Especially after having to look down for the oil pastel stick.