Life Drawing in Brookline

The two drawings above are from my latest life drawing session. The top one is the longer pose - about 35 minutes; and the bottom about 10. I am excited about the sense of volume in the bottom pose. I think it's acheived mainly through the curved lines that sweep through the figure, something a previous drawing teacher had tried to dissuade me from articulating. But the models I have the opportunity to draw as of late are substantial people, and I am losing the underlying bone structure because I cannot see beyond the changes in shape that their flesh create. It's all very exciting - and perhaps a weird thing to say, but having done alot of life drawing you typically see one body type; a super trim athletic female. Perhaps this is the only person willing to disrobe in a room full of strangers. It gets pretty boring to draw similar body types. The two sessions I have had in Brookline have been pleasant surprises as the models look like normal women with weight and mass to their bodies. It's great - they are very Rubenesque.

These two poses are from the first session. Again the longer pose is pictured first, the shorter second. I hope to continue attending and improving my observational skills!

She said, "Let there be background"...

and there was.

Slowly plugging away...

I worked on this piece a little more today. Really I was just putting in some details on the prickly pear cactus and some highlights on the open fig. I also tried to work out the feet. I stared and stared at my feet in the mirror, and I think I've ended up with statuesque Rodin sized clonkers on the ends of my legs. But...I may leave them out of proportion. I'm not really going for photorealism here anyway. I have been puzzling over the composition of this piece as well. It seems empty compared to its twin - the painting of Tyler, and I am toying with the idea of laying a ground and horizon line; but pretty annoyed that I am thinking of doing this now. It will mean some backtracking... hmmm.

More work accomplished

Not the past week but rather the one before I was able to spend a good amount of time working on this painting. I am really excited by where it is going. After a long week at work I feel derailed. And the whole diptych seems a little daunting - really ambitious. What the heck am I thinking?...But I'll muster the wherewithal to continue plugging along soon I am sure. I like the composition. I will be enlarging the roadrunner, keeping the tribble-cactus, painting out the back leg of the chair that descends to the ground under Tyler's right hand (because everyone thinks it's a cigar), and working more on Tyler's face. The photograph I am working from actually doesn't provide enough detail around Tyler's ear and neck. Maybe I'll have to photograph him again. Today I stretched the large canvas for the painting I am beginning of Memphis and Reagan. I really don't have anywhere in the house to store it...

More work on Tyler

I am slogging through it right now learning how to work when I don't really feel like working. It is time to hash out the rest of the composition of this piece and I feel like I won't find the answers to it today. So maybe I should put this up for a while. There are still some drawing issues to work out in the figure as well...

Desert Eve

I am finally finding the patience to build some complex compositions again. I am really enjoying working on this portrait even more so now that I am constructing a rich environment for the figure. The introduction of the cacti was precipitated by a hot and sweaty stroll through South Mountain this morning - which was inspired by Sina's continued postings of her encounters with Sabino Canyon.

Adam and Eve

Well of course I can't get blogger to format this post the way I would like it to. In the "compose" mode everything looks fine, but when I publish the post it goes haywire. The painting of Tyler is the lefthand panel of the diptych. I only began his painting today and it is still very rough. I was hoping that blogger would allow me to view these two images side by side as they are too large to view in the studio...need more space...

Eve

I have been working on this thing all day! And my eyes are beginning to bug out of my head. It is going well, but I have some challenges with my source material namely the photo of myself. I am not quite able to work out what is happening in the detail areas and may need to shoot the scene again in order to work out the face, hands, and feet.

Eve 42" x 42"

There's a lot to say today. I got back from a weeklong vacation to San Francisco and was eager to return to my paints. So I began mapping out and sketching in a whole new painting. The canvas is one I stretched myself - a beautiful fine weave linen that I picked up at the art shop round the corner at a fantastic price. I had some trouble with the first stretch and had to undo and restretch the entire thing. This has been a long time coming. I initially bought the linen with the idea of doing a similar composition but using my husband as the subject. Today I knew I couldn't wait until the weekend to begin and so started a piece from a photograph of myself. I think it is a happy accident...As now I see this piece as part of a diptych - using my husband in the other panel.

More self portrait

Am I overworking things?

Self Portrait

I am getting some good work done on this piece, and I am very excited about it. Today I worked a pattern into the portrait's background.

Self Portrait again

I have gotten a couple of more hours work in on this portrait, and am currently working into the face with glazes. I hope it will give me a subtly of color and help mask the texture of the underlying canvas. After photographing the image I notice something strange in the shape of the right eye. It probably has to do with the dark I layed in below and to the right of the eye. Also I haven't articulated the folds in the eyelids yet.

Square self portrait 10"

I am into square formats right now. I like their equal sides - they seem less like "windows" than normal canvases do. It was time to get back to simply showing up at the canvas. My foray into woodworking has been distracting me, and I have been working WAY TOO MUCH. (But let's not talk about that.) For this picture I am wearing my new oversized plastic beaded necklace.

Tyler

I have wanted to paint Tyler for a while now. And this weekend we started small - a one hour sitting. We'll be back at it again next weekend. So I'll have updates of this piece to post.

I think it's going really well today. I loosened up and reintroduced the "mark" into the surface of the face. I also stopped worrying about the background (and the composition). Who cares?..

Earlier today I walked to the library and checked out their only book on painter Lucian Freud where I read a good quote. "If I'm putting someone in a picture, I like to feel that they've fallen asleep there or they've elbowed their way in. That way, they are there not to make the picture easy on the eye or more pleasant, but they are occupying the space of the picture and I am recording them.' Composition, in other words, is never more important to a painting than the subject. 'In my case the sort of odd ease and calm of a composed picture could take some of the life out of it...One of the things in Stanley Spencer I'm so conscious of is his composition'('Shall we put this there?')...I felt that the way I put things looked awkward, in the way that life looks awkward."

Just an updated photo of my painting. It's proving challenging, and I'm a little frustrated; but I am going to keep going.

Beginning of a self portrait 20" x 16"

I like a painting when it is in this stage of emerging. Today I started a new self portrait over an old piece that I never finished. After recently adding a few links of artists I enjoy to the blog I remembered how much I admire juicy oil portraiture. It inspired me to get back to the figure myself (for the first time EVER in oils). I was so surprised by the result as I have never been able to achieve the same sort of subtly with acrylic paints. I think this is going to be a fun painting.

Long pose and fourth sketch

Here are three more life drawing images that I couldn't load on the last post. (Did I mention that I am not particularly technologically proficient?!) One is a quick 15 minute pose with a detail image also posted. The second is the long pose I spoke about in the previous post. I didn't take time to crop these images either; i.e, nevermind the bar code and sales price on the sheet of paper with my long pose...tee, hee.

Life Drawing

My first life drawing session in six years! Wow. I'm glad I didn't think about it too long else I would have gotten too nervous to enjoy it. I was definitely rusty - it was hard to quickly get the poses onto paper, like I had forgotten how to look; and my shoulder got sore (even with all the whisking and lifting I do at work in the kitchen!). But it was so good - so, so good to get back to it; to let my hand glide along the newsprint with the charcoal nub between my fingers. It works like an extension of your body - like your nails could be made of charcoal and you are just drawing with your hands...

The session was in a woman's home in Cave Creek - an offshoot of the Arizona Artist's Guild group. And they were lovely, warm, and welcoming. What more could you want for a return to life drawing?!

Here are a few of my more successful sketches. The poses were 10 to 15 minutes in length. The final image is the drawing I completed during the long pose - not too successful I think; but great for the little practice I've had. I got really involved with rendering the face and may have done better paying attention to the organization of the entire piece. But then again, it's nice to be indulgent...(I love to draw faces). Let me know what you think.