I love life drawing, but all classes were cancelled during the lock down. There was a huge boom in life drawing via Zoom, with models desperate to carry on working somehow. I’d never done it before, but it does feel a bit like very soft porn at first. Looking at naked people over the Internet. But it works.
There seem to be two approaches. Live or saved videos of models posing, or still photos to work from. Pros and cons to both. One definite pro is that models can adopt extremely foreshortened poses, with the camera below their feet or over their heads or in very difficult/unstable poses which they can’t hold for more than a few seconds. These are just a few. There are so many that I have been binding them into collections.
Very early in the lockdown, when we were all meant to stay home, our local art shop, Pegasus Art (Pegasusart.co.uk) set a daily challenge to keep us focused. I didn’t do all of them, but they were a stimulus, which was welcome. These are a selection of what I produced.
Old Harry Rocks from Studland Beach. Pastel pencil on boardSikkimese prayer flags. Pastel pencil on board. Skinny dipping in the sunshine. Acrylic on canvas. (I gave this picture to the swimmer)Self portrait. Pastel pencil on boardDonkey. Soft pastel on Canson paperCarcassonne. Pencil sketchSummer’s day. A really poor digital sketch.
This work started before lockdown, but was only completed well into that time here in England. A multiblock linocut on Chinese rice paper that I called Dance of Hope. The central figure is in the Nataraja pose against a Sikkimese endless knot. This was a Bhudist symbol we saw everywhere in Sikkim in February, a time which seems a life time ago, but was only earlier this year. Hand burnished with a wooden spoon, this is the largest print I have made to date. Until I put the final black layer on, I thought it was a complete failure, the colours just didn’t contrast enough. But with the black it just worked. I only produced about five as hand burnishing is really slow and the paper is very fragile.
This blog has been static for a long time, so time to catch up.
This first work is the last piece I completed before the full lockdown in March. Drawn at the Ardington School of Craft in Jonathan Newey’s class on drawing wildlife with watercolour and coloured pencils. He advocated use of water soluble pencils but I have never got on with them, so I used standard non soluble pencils. First a pencil outline. I am unsure of this, as it is little more than tracing, which I don’t like, but the result is good. Then a broad painting with watercolour washes. This gives a very basic colour scheme. Then overdrawn with colour pencils. This really worked. It gives a greater depth of colour than just using the pencils by themselves. You can also manipulate the colour endlessly. I was very pleased with the result. Happy to say, these birds now live with a good friend in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Happy birthday Carol!
Lockdown started just days after this was finished, but it is a technique I have used at home several more times.
The branch is left in watercolour, but the birds are extensively overdrawn in colour pencil.
JEGS ART 