Sketchbook Skool Part 2

I started another course at www.sketchbookskool.com 2 weeks ago.  This one is called Stretching and the name describes it perfectly.  We are taking what we know and applying it to new techniques and new ways of thinking and doing.  The first week was with Jonathan Twingely.  Our homework assignment was to draw as much every day as we could - from our imagination, from our dreams, from our life.  THEN we had to cut all the pieces/objects out and glued them onto a piece of paper or to our sketchbook and make something new.  This was so so difficult for me.  Here is a photo of most of the pieces I drew.

I drew my dreams - an old bus, people getting on a bus, chairs, a Vespa, my parents when they were young.  I kept watching the instructional videos and drew the instructor many times because his face was so expressive, and he was so likable.   One day I was uninspired and drew the scissors sitting on my art table.  Then I cut them all out and looked at them for hours and days.  I was uninspired.  I arranged and rearranged and worried and got angry and fretted.  Little by little an idea grew.  I loved the face of the instructor and wanted to tell a story.  This is what I ended up with.

After gluing on the three faces of Jonathan I added a hand to the scissors and attached that then drew the arm, the background blinds and the light.  Then I looked back at my cutout pieces and played around with the words I had also drawn for the assignment and added "mistakes."  

But that is not the whole story, or even the correct story.  I did a larger collage first, hated it, felt it was too much, too busy, and trimmed off some parts of it.  Here was the original:

This lesson was a killer for me.  I don't even know how many hours I spent trying to come up with this arrangement, idea, story.  I worried over it so long that I don't even know how I feel about the final product. But even for the difficulties and the struggles, it was a huge learning process and makes me appreciate what my students go through when I give them an assignment that is difficult for them.