when will the online class ‘landscapes in lines’ be there?

When I’m doing a project I love I can’t shut my mouth… I want to shout it out to the rest of the world and keep on talking about it. So, that was what happened when our plan rose to create an online painting class and we recorded our first one, titled  ‘Landscapes in lines‘, late September. It was amazing! My enthusiasm couldn’t be tempered, even if the process wasn’t going as fast and spotless as we wanted. But now, the crowd is waiting and asking where my online workshop is… So, while my partner is busy editing, I’m writing this to explain.

perfection glasses

For me it was almost the first time to be filmed. When I was still making music, we made a clip for my song Your Embrace. That is almost 10 years ago already! And my only experience. So, I am a beginner. No wonder that I was a bit excited when we planned our first sessions. It’s like you put on perfection glasses and look with other eyes to yourself than you use to. What clothes should I wear best? Does my hair look good? In daily life I do not worry about how I look like, I never use make up and things, I asked myself: Don’t I look too tired? We had the brilliant plan to start recording at the time we did our half yearly detox. And I felt tired, so I looked that way too. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I had big bags under the eyes… O my gosh, what a good idea that was. We postponed our plans to a week later, which was even better because I had no students that week because of autumn holidays. We had a lot of time and the weather was still pretty fine. My face was the healthy Dutch red cheek one again, without bags. So I thought I was ready.

acting like myself is the best way to act

Although I’m teaching for years right now, everything changes when I start talking to a camera instead of people that can talk back, interrupt and ask questions (what can be very annoying too). The camera says nothing back, nor does my dear. And everything’s on tape. Are you ever ready enough? Yes, when you allow yourself to just do it. Giving myself time to do it over and over again was good. Also that Anthony was patience with me and I was patience with him, because he struggled too. Man, we were doing something new! And we were having a lot of fun with it. I begun to feel comfortable with my new teacher role. I discovered I could act best as I was myself, like I use to do when I’m giving art lessons to children. Of course its different when you’re talking in a language that is not your first language, constantly searching for words and how to build up your sentences. But I improved along the way and can say this is becoming great! For Anthony, it was all new to film since he’s a photographer. It was particularly hard to watch the recording sessions from a small screen and constantly putting on and off reading glasses. Also we had to find out how to make the sound as good as possible and we had to find ways to sync our videos with that sound.

new enemies

Next to all beginners challenges we met with two enemies: wind and airplanes. The wind was making so much noise, that we had to skip our background sound. Also I had to take care of my drawing stuff that could fly away… and of course, as we’re both long haired creatures, fought the hairs out off our eyes… Is my hair still okay? No. Never mind. Everyone sees it’s blowing like crazy. The planes were at some spots taking off and landing every minute, and they were making so much noise that we couldn’t even hear the wind anymore.

creativity everywhere

Luckily our sessions at home were more relaxed, at least when it comes to noise. However, when we came to filming the painting process Anthony had to find a solution for placing the camera in such a way that we could film the work from above. He invented a construction to put the tripod for two-third on the table, and tied the camera on the window so that it wouldn’t fall down. And that didn’t happen, all of our indoor days.

just uhm and eh-diting…

After our recordings there was still a lot needed to be done. My part was almost done, except from working on a new English website. But Anthony still had an awful lot to do. He had to put all fragments on the computer to edit them in Premiere Pro and had to sync. ‘Just’ editing was asking for so many new skills that I thought it would took forever to get the job finished. But Anthony’s still going strong, learning piece by piece and every time he improves. The hardest thing about editing ‘me’ is that I am a very agile person. Especially when I’m in my enthusiasm mode, which I was almost all the time wile recording, I’m moving my face, hands and sometimes my whole body. And as English is not my first language and I was constantly searching how to say things I ‘eh’-ed ‘uhm’-med more that I’ve intended! :). Each time when Anthony removed an ‘uhm’ I was already moved in another position so it looked like something was missing. It was a hard job to put other footage over each ‘uhm’.

now we’re going somewhere

But now, as we’re both working in the room that actually is my art studio, I’m hearing sounds like: ‘This is gonna be so cool!’ and ‘Well, now we’re getting somewhere!’. I feel delighted when I see the first videos and I am so proud that we are doing this! I’m looking forward to see all and really can’t wait to announce the date when we will be launch it!