Talent Exams

This is my first post of 2009 so before I get started, Happy Belated New Year!

On Monday I had my exams get into the Stredni Umelecka Skola (Art high school) in Ostrava (you may remember from previous entries I mentioned the school or the portfolio they required each student to create). I had already sent in my application in November and I got an invitation to the exams in December. so on Sunday the night before the big day I was frantically gluing pictures to pieces of cardboard, sorting them by size and theme and making little touches to the pictures here and there. After a night of dreams filled with waterlogged portfolios being handled by sticky fingered children I grabbed my huge folder and art supplies and drove half an hour to Ostrava.
When I got there I was distributed a number: 167. I stuck that number on all my stuff so that the judges could examine my portfolio anonymously. Then I was shown into a room with a huge drafting table and about 8 girls sitting around it. Our instructions were to paint a picture depicting “the way to the treasure”. I made mine a sunset in the desert and foot prints leading to a cave guarded by a dragon, there was also a vulture flying above with the treasure map in it’s beak. I’m afraid I didn’t have the foresight to take any pictures. I was nervous about it not only because acrylics are not my forte, but I saw a girl doing something very similar.
Round two was drawing a portrait of a live model. I was fast and did two. That is something I feel pretty comfortable with, especially since I had drawn the exact same person two days before in the preparatory course. The model kept yelling out tips from her chair, which I’m not sure models are allowed to do…
After a break for lunch with I spent freezing my artistic nubbins off, we all shuffled back to the school and drew a still life in pencil. I didn’t quite finish that one.
We had an hour before they posted the results. My parents and I then waited half and hour on the stair well before they let us in. We all stood there straining to hear the man read out peoples numbers, starting with Painting and then Illustration. He read all the Illustration numbers and just when he got to the end somebody yelled loudly so I couldn’t hear if my number had been called.
To be continued...