Arianna and I settled into a couple Hoegaardens and a wandering conversation about color, design, typography and ultimately fashion, friendship, writing, music, artistic self-image, how grateful we are to have such good-hearted friends and our relative identifications upon the Hipster scale.

"I mean, I'm a hipster but I..."

"Wait", I interrupted "You just said you are or you aren't?"

"I am."

"Wow. That's great. You're the only other person I know besides myself that admits it."

"I mean, I live in Williamsburg. I have thick rimmed glasses. I'm an artist. I wear skinny jeans. I like sitting outside coffee shops and talking about art. I'm into fashion. It's just the segment I most identify myself with."

"Agreed."

"But I don't consider myself to be a total hipster."

"Me neither."

"I'm sort of a mid-level hipster I guess. And I don't think I'll ever get to the top level, because you sort of stop being a real person."

"Well, to be the hard-core hipster, "hipness" is your thing. It's what you dedicate your energy too."

So there we were rambling on an on. Completely enjoying the flexibility of a course whose curriculum was set solely by ourselves.

Arianna had given me some options. They were:

1. Design a poster for you
2. Acrylic or oil painting
3. Learn the Pen tool in Illustrator
4. Attend a life drawing class

I opted for let's decide when I get there.

Which is partly how we ended up rambling. After viewing some of her work, Arianna explained some techniques and then gave me a piece of brown paper. We were both going to sketch her sewing machine. Here's the object and how they ended up.





Because, we both enjoyed the lesson and didn't get around to the vast possibilities we've decided to continue as a series of lessons. In exchange, I've offered my services as music tutor. (This offer goes out to any of my volunteer/teacher/friends.)

I'll be happy to report the future progress.

One overall observation was how quickly musical analogies came to mind when discussing the process of creating work. The universal frustrations and doubts; the euphoria of achieving a good piece; the constant excitement from new arrangements or even the most familiar elements. I have a hunch that this common yarn will wind around the spool of the coming month.

Pics of Arianna and a Typography source book below: