Collage

December 10, 2012

I’m back to cows and collage…

Male Model makes a nice change!

October 31, 2012

John was a brilliant model, so incredibly still and some good poses.  I found it quite challenging to draw a male figure – somehow the muscle memory that draws soft curvy women most of the time didn’t help with John’s longer leaner harder shapes.  It was a really good exercise, although I wasn’t terribly happy with the resulting drawings.  But that is the joy of life drawing…constant learning and appreciating the amazing detail of the human body.

Art bars again (using slightly different colours) on the same Acrylic paper.

New term at Life Drawing

October 24, 2012

The model was Kate, very experienced, curvaceous with a beautiful back!  I used Derwent Art Bars exclusively, no paint this time, on paper meant for Acrylic paint.  It has quite a strong regular grain which I dislike as a paint surface, but it picked up the thick waxiness of the art bars and didn’t buckle or warp when I sloshed water around.

We started with quick gestural drawings…

then went on to longer 10, 15 and 20 minute studies

Jenny Saville exhibition at Modern Art Oxford

September 20, 2012

My all time favourite painter and one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen.

A superb display of massive painterly flesh.

Slightly disturbing but utterly compelling.

The textural layers can only really be seen close up where the underpainting shows through and fat gobs of paint have dripped and dried all thick and wrinkly.

Complex and beautifully crafted multi-image drawings – truly ravishing.

Rodin Studio Day

August 17, 2012

A fabulous drawing day arranged by Dave Bissitt at English Bridge Studios in Shrewsbury.  Five gorgeous models wafting about chatting, posing, drinking and eating while artists tried to capture the ambience on paper (with monsieur Pip serving us glasses of wine).  Mostly quick gestural drawings but a few slightly longer poses ending in a circle of three of the models facing outwards holding hands…absolutely brilliant!

ART EXHIBITION

June 28, 2012

Much Wenlock Open 2012

Delighted to hear today that one of my pictures has been chosen to be exhibited at The Edge for the 2012 Much Wenlock Open Art Exhibition.

http://www.edgeartscentre.co.uk/openartexhibition2012.html

Life drawing tutorial

April 27, 2012

We had a rare lesson in art materials at a recent life drawing class.  Robert Guy, a well known local artist, distributed various media to a rather large class (25 or so?) and we did 5 minute drawings of the model to get a feel for chalks, compressed charcoal in various sizes, art bars, conte, pastels, etc.  My favourite was the large chunky square compressed charcoal – although I had to draw rather larger than normal and therefore more quickly to get all the information I wanted from the model in the very short 5 minute pose.  I also loved the art bars and found the colours I was given very pleasing.

Derwent Art Bars

I was lucky enough to be given a fabulous massive 72 bar box of these little beauties.  Using them for the first time at a life drawing class at English Bridge was rather a challenge but what a pleasure!  I played with various ways of using them (drawing onto pre-wetted paper, spritzing a drawn line, spreading the wet line with a paintbrush, using a paintbrush directly onto the art bar to pick up colour, etc.)…the possibilities seem endless and the colour goes on beautifully and vibrantly.  I ended up with two or 3 ok drawings and extremely messy fingers!

Experiments

March 07, 2012

Following on from the 28 day drawing challenge, I’ve decided to take one of the images and experiment with various media, colours, textures, etc. to create new works.  

For the first picture I used acrylic paint on top of an old life drawing picture.

For the second one I cut out the hands from an old monoprint (oil paint on tracing paper) and then used a water-soluble blue crayon on top of a pale blue wash to draw the face.  I used a small amount of pastel in the same colour as the hands to create accents on the face.

I’m finding it really difficult to work in a completely different style.  I meant this picture to have more solid blocks of colour but was sidetracked by more collage material!

A rare black and white attempt!  Charcoal lift out on cream pastel paper with white pastel  highlights.

Newspaper collage (and I have filthy black fingers)