278. Lecture. Reading.

Page 1 – This time, I brought four books and a magazine. I'll be staying 15 days. My Bible, always with me. I brought a pocket-size version…unreadable without my glasses. My big study Bible weighs a ton. But I also brought several books that I'm anxious to read.

Page 2 – One of them is "Le Petit Traité de Morphologie" (Dealing with morphology) by Agnes Maupré, Futuropolis edition, about the courses given by Jean-Francois Debord at the Beaux-Arts (French National Art School) in Paris. It was recommended by Nicolas Ancion, writer and colleague at the School of Applied Art in Montpellier. I had looked briefly at it in the bookstore, but it hadn't really captured my interest. Then, I saw that Nicholas had made mention of it on his blog. Blogs can be helpful this way. The other books I brought with me: "Le Sens de l'Univers et de la Création" (The meaning of the universe and creation), by Claude Tresmontant, former professor at Sorbonne. The last book I read by him astounded me. And "Les extraordinaires pouvoirs de transformation du Cerveau" (The extraordinary abilities of the brain to transform), by Norman Doidge, an amazing book that I started a couple weeks ago, and about which I've not been able to stop talking. I begin reading "le Petit Traité de Morphologie". It's an intelligent approach to drawing the human body…living. There aren't many good books about drawing. There are a lot of indigestible books, about how to draw this and how to draw that, using the perspective with lines like this and definite points like that. I've been teaching a drawing and sketching class since last October, at the School of Applied Art, in Montpellier. A two-year school. In other words, they really have to work hard. 14 students in my class. They're cool, and motivated. Fun. They need to read "Le Petit Traité de Mophologie". I'm going to recommend that they read just one book for the moment: "Dessiner avec le cerveau droit" (Drawing with the right brain), a book that I like a lot.

Page 3 - What I would like to see published are the drawing courses of Joann Sfar, the ones that were published in the magazine Delcourt. Intelligent courses, full of life. But, their publication seems to have been done away with. The more I teach, the more I think about how to teach, how to help the students to see, how to help them to enlarge their horizon and to think about working hard and trying everything, to be the professor that I would have liked to have had. A good challenge.

I listen to Guns and Roses for a while. "Sweet Child 'O Mine" What a fantastic piece of music! And Axel Rose has just put out a new album of "Guns", without Slash, of course. And the controversies are many, for or against, good or bad. I enjoyed four our five tracks on the album. A CD I've waited for from Axel, a different sort of rock from Velvet Revolver, with violins, piano, more lyrical.

"Petit Traité de Morphologie", page 14, 30, and 31. We pass over Greenland, and then Canada. The clouds part, and we catch sight of the expanse that divides up the earth – dark – and the white snow…