We drew skulls this week…

We had a heap of over 30 animal skulls from the local art college. We had to draw them in a range of media. First, five skulls in dry media. Graphite, dry pigment, chalk, coffee and just a little ink work

Then take one skull and fill the page with it, using household emulsion paints ad ink applied with a large feather. Some was done with the tip of a quill, but most was done with the feathery end. There were a few minutes left at the end, so I sketched in a little one in the empty corner.

It is a very mixed media class. I’m the only man there.

New watercolour class

I’m taking two classes at the moment, the second one is for “Watercolour improvers” with Mark Kelland, who I know well from many years back. We were concentrating on producing an art work, rather than an accurate drawing. The subject was wild flowers. masking fluid, wet paint and finally ink sketching over. I like the potential wildness of watercolour and this is what Mark is focusing on. The result for this week below

Further forays in mixed media

Build a sculpture out of a sheet of paper… It looked terrible and I didn’t keep it, but it was just meant as a starting point.

Draw it using lines, six times in six colours, all on top of each other.

I actually like this approach and I;ve done it with life drawings, but first time just as an exploration of shape. Sue said she liked it, it was very dynamic. Hmmm.

Then draw it just using tone. Charcoal and chalk on grey paper seemed to answer for that.

At least you can see form this why I didn’t keep it. It is actually quite an accurate drawing of “it”. I liked the frilly bits, they look quite frilly.

Then explore just parts of it with collage. I went for the Matisse cut out approach.

Everyone liked the last one in teh bottom right and I have cut it out and have it pinned up in my studio. Very different from anything else I have done before, which is a sign of a good class. No idea what we are doing next week.

New drawing class, exploring mixed media

I started a new drawing class today, run by Sue Rae here in Stroud. Drawing in mixed media, which could mean anything. Nice to have a new tutor, and nice to be just drawing. We were exploring line,tone, texture and “narrative” (beats me too)/. I think she mainly wanted to get a handle on what we could do.She insisted that we drew from real objects, which we had piles of. That I liked. I have been to classes where they work from photographs, and that is rarely satisfying. You can work up paintings from sets of photographs, but drawing them seems fairly pointless.