Burst Reach #40

I have been working off and on on this newsletter for like three weeks, typing whatever is on my mind at the moment and then deleting it later as things happen. In those three weeks I’ve been sick, dug trenches and chopped tree roots with an axe, started modeling for a figure painting class, got knocked out by a Covid booster and flu shot, returned to playing Digimon, disassembled and reassembled the pipes under my bathroom sink, and have been working almost nonstop on one thing or other.

Oh, and my father-in-law passed away amidst all of that. So this is a mess because I’m a mess. Enjoy!

I want to be less materialistic.

I also spent a lot of the energy I had while sick recently rearranging toys on display in the bedroom, with a bunch of nostalgic toys being prominently placed in one spot for me to remember what I loved as a kid and what continues to inspire me. I am fully aware of this contradiction, as well as the dangers of nostalgia in general, but rearranging those toys helped me better appreciate what I have, which is important to reducing those pesky desires for more toys and such. Reducing clutter helps my mind too. There are toys all over the floor in my office too that need rearranging and such…I’ll get to them eventually.

I’m also an advocate for physical media, which doesn’t help with this desire to be less materialistic, but I’m trying, y’all.

Purity Ring is one of my favorite bands because their music sounds to me like crystalline magic reaching towards divinity. Megan James just has this incredible, delicate voice that I adore and imaginative lyrics. Their latest single, iamanocean, strips back a lot of the electronics their sound is built on and includes a guitar for what I feel like is the first time for them and I’m in love with it.

“I’m just a body holding water.”

Our bodies are what, 60% water, right? That’s something I try to emphasize in my teaching for figure drawing. Steve Huston stresses it in his book Figure Drawing For Artists, pointing out the wavelike rhythms all throughout the human form, how we’re made up of curves. A queer photographer I used to follow who only shot fat queer models would use the hashtag #bodieslikeoceans in their posts, which I think is beautiful. They often photographed bellies, emphasizing the waves formed by the various folds of skin, stretch marks like the lines of light reflecting off of the water. The S-shaped curve of the spine is crucial when it comes to figuring out the basic structure of a pose, the gesture. Straight lines are inorganic. I also like to joke, based on my own studies, about how there’s not a single straight bone in our bodies, they’re ALL curved, no perfectly flat planes at all.

The figure painting class I’m modeling for now is the first class I’ve posed for since 2023, and mostly I’m trying to soak up the instructor’s teachings while I stand or sit there feeling two separate heaters blasting my naked body. I’ve only taught my own classes twice now, I still have a lot to figure out, but I enjoyed seeing her struggle during her demos to, well, practice what she preached before setting the students loose with india ink, gouache, and toned paper, at one point declaring “when in doubt, get more liquidy.” Her approach was so much different from my own, constantly bringing up how she didn’t want to see contour in the quick drawings the class did. I think my longest pose was six minutes? So she was hammering in how to find the overall form, only stopping for certain distinct marks like the turn of a shoulder or angle of a nipple. She’d declare a time for a pose and then psych out the students by asking me to end the pose early, or to hold it longer to get them to pick out and push certain details. I’m hoping to learn more as I go back to model for this class every week.

I’ll be at TriPride on October 11th, a vintage market in Abingdon on October 16th, the Johnson City Zine Fest October 25th, and somewhere between those is a dance performance I’m in and still need to put together a costume for, so there’s this Burst Reach’s self-promotion. You’re welcome.

Here’s a recent self portrait drawn from a photo taken in 2022:

I just got home from work and while I have so many things to do (the toys on the office floor keep staring at me), I am still very tired and sad and so I’m going to take a bath.

Take care. See you next time.