Today I started to do some layout sketches for two paintings I want to start and finish, and I ended up doing portraits of about 5 or so of the girls who I volunteer to tutor every Tuesday.
They're all African refugee kids in one of the town's upper class religious schools. There's another school I volunteer at as well, and there is a larger group with more Sudanese girls. One picture of two, another of two and another of three. There was some
overlap, as they all wanted a picture with a girl whose name sounded
like Atuin but was spelt differently. She's leaving for Canberra next
Term. Someone was crying at the other table.
I was paid for my tutoring efforts, back in Thailand, but that was a different society, and there's less call for it around here. The parents might be just as anxious about their childrens' success, regardless of country, but they express it differently. The volunteering was a blessing to find out about. Money's not as important as keeping my head on straight. Loneliness is a wicked thing, and the holidays don't help.
The drawings were pretty poor, to tell the truth, and I bowed out with the excuse of a sore wrist, but the girls were delighted nevertheless. I wanted to do better, but when they're full of life and constantly moving and wanting to talk about the vicious and dangerous dancing community they're all embroiled in, it's hard to get them to sit still long enough for just one picture, let alone a comforting number of work-up sketches and studies. I really have to learn how to capture likenesses faster and easier.
I went up to my sister's room to talk to her, and I saw the pages of Toulouse-Lautrec prints for an art assignment. I wanted to cry.