Funky Gee: A big boy's pistol

I've been keeping a video diary, lately. Just filming things at random, editing them down, adding music and then "stitching" them together to create a sort of "snapshot" of a period of time. For anyone interested, this is the part of the diary that relates to this specific art class. The full video - with better picture quality - can be seen here, if anyone is interested.

The timing is a bit off, but I tried to line up a lyric from the song with a scene on the video. It never really worked, though. The song is called The gutterati and it's by The Fratellis. This is an acoustic version, and it can be found on the Little noise sessions album. The line is "I may not have a big boy's pistol, but I'll help you any way I can."

This class was held in Inverness. I had a bit of a struggle finding a venue at first, but then I remembered a class I held last year, at the Beauforth Hotel. That was a very fun class, with some really nice girls, so I was hoping that a return to the same venue would bring about an equally fun class. An unscientific approach, but it still worked.

I took the train to this event. Normally I take the bus, but this time I left it too late to book a ticket, so lost my chance. But it's a nice journey - up through Aviemore and Pitlochry. Always very picturesque.

And it was a beautiful day. Nice and bright and sunny. I filmed a lot of the scenery from the train window and incorporated a fair amount of that into the video diary, too. All of which made me feel less disappointed that the finest day of the year - so far - was largely spent on a train. If it had been at all possible - if we'd had access to a remote, private venue, for example - I would have definitely suggested we hold the class outside in the fresh air.

The room we were given had two big windows. One of them overlooked the car park and the main road running past the hotel. It was only a first floor window, so people walking past would have been able to see into the room quite clearly. It wasn't an issue when I was first preparing the room, because I was able to stay just out of sight of the street, but eventually I knew that once the class was running it was going to be a distraction. I was always going to have to keep it in mind and make sure I wasn't inadvertently creating a show for a less receptive audience. It was a bay window, though, so I was able to pull the front set of curtains closed and leave the sides of the bay open to let a decent amount of natural light in. The other window was on the other side of the room, so I didn't need to close those curtains at all. I just arranged the chairs so that I had no need to walk over there.

I introduced a new feature to this class. An attempt to find out a bit more about what the girls actually anticipated, so I could tailor my approach to them a bit more efficiently. And also an attempt to recycle those sheets of paper that had become scruffy and couldn't be used for future classes. I tore the sheets into strips, then distributed them among the girls, and told them they could write any thoughts or suggestions down. I said that I'd do the first couple of poses and drawing challenges, then I'd read out what they'd written and hopefully incorporate some of the thoughts into the routine.

It was only a partial success. In the end, I had to threaten to start deducting points from anyone who didn't write anything. It wasn't even an idle threat - I do like to deduct points for various random reasons.

It was definitely another fun class, despite that. And I'm sure the lack of success with the suggestions element was down to my own clumsiness in describing what I had in mind. I'll try it again, with my next couple of classes, just to see if it continues to fail, and then I'll ever improve it or discard the format.

I did a couple of poses using the girls as models, this time. We were in no real hurry to conclude the class, because my return train wasn't due until 5:30 PM, so I had plenty of time. The downside to this is that as the class proceeds, I can start running out of ideas for the challenges, and sometimes end up recycling a couple of them. This time, I picked one of the more vocal girls towards the end and returned to the extra model idea. The ideas did continue to feel fresh, though, even with the slight element of repetition. I feel that the creativity doesn't rely so much with the type of pose, but more with how it's carried out or interpreted.

Towards the end of the class, one of the girls had to do something at the bay window - I can't remember what - and I didn't pay too much attention to what she was doing. About five minutes later, I looked round and realised that the curtains were suddenly wide open and I was in full view of Culduthel Street. Thankfully, there weren't any shocked and scandalised people standing around and getting offended, but it still gave me a bit of a jolt. I can't help wondering whether the girl opened the curtain deliberately as a practical joke. I don't blame her, if she did. Under different circumstances, I might have done something similar, myself.