Beautiful
Found this laying on the grass in the backyard today. It's about 1.5 inches in diameter and very light and fragile.
From its shape I'm guessing that it's what's left of one of those orange flowers(?) we call Chinese Lanterns.
A quick web search turned up a name—Physalis, or "ground cherry." It also turned up even more beautiful images like this and this.
I made mine by placing the object on the glass of my Canon scanner with the lid open. Scanning 3D objects like this creates a marvelous depth of field effect, with only the portion closest to the glass being in sharp focus.
The countdown
In Portfolio Preparation class we're moving into the final stretch. On the whiteboard are the weeks remaining, with critical due dates marked.
This year I'm not requiring that everyone go to the AIGA Student Portfolio Review, mostly because we had our own mini-review just two weeks ago. I'd like them to spend their time working on both our end-of-the-year portfolio show on May 11-12 and on strengthening their portfolios. If the AIGA event were later it would be a better fit with our priorities.
It was encouraging to hear that several students had been making calls to add people/companies to our publicity contact list, and that they'd generally gotten positive responses from the folks they talked to.
I know these weeks will just fly by. Not altogether a bad thing. I've been feeling kind of stressed myself thinking about the students who have a long way to go before they're ready for the job world, and trying to figure out what role I can play in that process.