drawing it out

today i attended my first visual arts (drawing and painting) class in many years. i decided to begin a short course at the community centre with a friend to give my brain some more food - yes i feel like it's going to sleep!
and yes i had an excellent time. and yes i think my brain got worked because now i'm entirely exhausted. in highschool (and well primary) i enjoyed all types of visual arts (i actually changed schools in yr 12 to have the opportunity to do so) and only completed one year of art in 1st year uni. at the time i found i wasnt enjoying it so much and had many a grumble about the unit chair. so i guess i havent really done a thing since. it was really enjoyable to get out there and do some more again. this class is run in a very casual and non-structured manner in order to cater to all levels. this frustrated the hell out of my friend but i found it quite pleasing and was able to approach the whole thing in an impartial manner.
i've often thought that the main problem with my uni art experience was actually more to do with my ego than anything else. i really want to be able to approach this new course as a beginner and try to take on board whatever i can to learn and extend myself. ..although it might be noted that this might not be entirely necessary and that if i wanted to ignore the teacher and any advice they have to give then i could clearly get away with it -as SOME members of the class have been doing for more than one term.
today we did still life with pastels. it was a basic construction of pears, a plate and a knife. i had an excellent time playing with all the different colours i could manage. and felt i really experimented with the limits that i could take it to.