The QI logic

I've been invited to a wedding.  For the first time ever, one of my clients liked me well enough to invite me to attend her wedding.  It's in Pitlochry later this year, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Worryingly, it's going to have a Medieval theme going on, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to swing that.  I don't have any clothes available that I can use.  I'll need to try to get creative, somehow.

For this class, I worked with two tutors.  Edith and (arriving slightly later) Marie-Dominique.  Edith was presenting the class for the first time, while Marie-Dominique was mostly observing.

One of my favourite drawing challenges in this class was the "straight lines" challenge.  It's always a fun one and it's always pretty cool to see how people would get renewed confidence as a result of it - girls who thought they couldn't draw would suddenly find themselves making some really cool pictures.  But this week, they seemed to be even better and more artistic than usual.

I was going to choose one particular picture that had some great, angular lines but I got outvoted and ended up going for the one where I supposedly looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster, but with a six-pack.  I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, but it was still a good picture.

Since the random points element of the last class went so well, I returned to that concept and briefly explained it to Edith.  I was going to tear a page out of a sketchpad, like last time, but she spotted a scoreboard, which we used instead.  I'll use that at future bookings in The Standard from now on.  It's going to save a bit of paper.

Using the QI logic, I deducted points as well as awarding them throughout the class.  Towards the end, one of the girls had a very good lead while another had lost loads and gained none.  This girl tried to talk me into contriving some sort of scenario where she would get enough points that she'd still win.  It was definitely tempting, but in the end I played fair.  Not through any moral high ground situation - just because it, at that point, it seemed like that would be more fun to do so.

The collaborative challenge had some particularly creative interpretations going on this time.  One group ended up dividing the body in a very imaginative way.  This group didn't divide me into the usual three key areas of head, torso and legs.  Instead, they took individual parts from all over my body, then tore up the sheets of paper to make them all fit together.  The first photographs where they held all those parts up over my body to illustrate what they had in mind didn't work anywhere near as well as when they simply laid them all down on the floor.  I'm really glad I got a picture of that myself, because it worked amazingly well, when it was laid out like that.

I've been asked occasionally about what I'd do if there was a man in any of my classes.  It's happened before and I never had a problem with it at all.  This is the sort of question that honestly, genuinely surprises me. I'm standing naked before a lot of women and I don't feel remotely self-conscious.  I can't figure out why people would assume that the presence of another man would cause a problem.  There was a man in this class as well, and he seemed to have as good a time as any of the girls there.

Also... for the second time this year, I had a group where there was at least one girl who would have been happy to get naked as well.  For a moment it looked like she really was seriously considering it, and trying to decide whether it would be a good idea or not.  Ultimately, however, she kept her clothes on.  Though later, she mentioned it again and commented on how she thought it might not have been appropriate.

This is the sort of thing that I think is down to the dynamics of the group.  When there are a lot of clothed women (or mostly women) and one naked man, then everything is pretty clear.  If one women gets naked, that would tip the balance of power, and then the dynamic would shift a bit.  I'm not automatically opposed to that happening, though.  But it's definitely something that should be a group decision.  It would be interesting to see how things would go if anyone ever did join me, but I'm definitely going to wait for it to be something that happens naturally.  Still... it would be an interesting world if there were more exhibitionists like me in it.

My favourite picture this time, was really heavy on the black charcoal and looked very artistic.  It was one part of one of the collaborative challenge, and probably wasn't all that flattering to me (there was a certain lack of size going on) but it looked cool, so it just had to win.

It definitely was a fun group.  And a good one for both Edith and Marie-Dominique to be part of as their first.  I still don't know if I'm going to be able to get to the wedding, because that depends on a bit of scheduling I've got going on that weekend.  But I really hope I'll be able to get there, because it sounds like it'll be a lot of fun.