At Susan Kester’s drawing class this morning, we started with a blind drawing warm up. Pushing a pencil through a hole in a sheet of cardboard, which his you hand from view. You just draw what you look at. These are two sketches of a table lamp. I rather like them. Odd drift down to the lower left in both.
Working purely in graphite again. A good model at last, and in fact a lady I know from my swimming club. We did two, long drawings. The first was not all that great, but I quite liked this scribbled one, with some of the studio context. I used a 9B graphite stick which I bought in Brooklyn, which is lovely for fast sketches.
Just completed a one day workshop run by Mark Kelland on Drawing like Raphael. Not sure if I achieved that quite, but it was fun and this was the best of about 12 drawings. Good to spend a day just drawing.
This has been months in the making and I don’t know if it has been worth it. Last summer I caught a glimpse of a landscape as I drove through Wiltshire. A single bent tree on a horizon of ploughed fields, with sun lit masses of cloud either side. I must have seen it for less than two seconds, but I have been trying to recreate it ever since. Final layer of colour on it today, but I am unconvinced. I may tackle it again one day.
At Keith Simmons life class in Stroud. Could have been a disaster as the model rang up to say her car had broken down on the motorway and burst into flames! Don’t know how she sorted that, but Keith’s wife stepped in at short notice, so we had a good session. I am endlessly frustrated by my output. I can’t get proportion right to my satisfaction and I try too many media, which often don’t work together. Just have to soldier on.
I was not pleased with these after I drew them, but in reflection they aren’t so bad. I am not a flower artist…
The flowers are actually under the muslin, which was our first exercise, just using white chalk on black paper.
Then all was revealed and I floundered, trying a pastel drawing of the whole lot. It really didn’t go anywhere.
So finally I just drew the hyacinth in charcoal, and when it looked reasonable, I scrubbed in some pastel colour. I find the problem with floral painting is that there is no anatomy or structure I can wrap my mind round, so my hand doesn’t know what it is trying to do.
This is a study in pure charcoal drawing. The body is blocked in with charcoal powder on cotton wool. Then highlights taken out with a putty rubber and shadows put in with stick charcoal. I have been trying out the outrageously marketed and priced Nitram charcoal. It is OK, but no more than that. It is not as black as compressed charcoal, which I used on her hair, or a subtle as willow charcoal, which I used almost everywhere else. I’ll stick with it, to give it a fair run, but can’t say I’m initially impressed.
Again, no show from the planned model. Really unsatisfactory. Someone’s friend stood in and was very good, but clearly wanted to keep her clothes on. Working in graphite, using powder followed by soft graphite sticks. Quite pleased with some of the outcomes. It is almost like sculpting in 2D.
I went to Keith Simmons Saturday session as I am getting very rusty at drawing. A very good model, who I have drawn several times before. And a relief to be drawing a young woman for a change, rather than an odd assortment of old men, which seems to have been the staple for the last few weeks. A range of media, from pastel pencil, through charcoal to simple pencil. I think pencil works better on a smaller scale, so I must try that sometime. I just tend to fill the page, whatever size it is.
After two weeks in Tanzania, I have produced just one painting. Of zebras, which fascinate me. Done from a photo as it was not possible on the move. Acrylic on a small canvas.
Back home at Susan Kester’s drawing class. A fabric study in charcoal. It started out terrible, but got better.
JEGS ART 