Life studies

Last week's class was all about drawing details from life. Our model, a lovely man of a certain age with white locks and a very hairy body, sat in a chair and we had to draw parts of him as directed by Jan. I'm only uploading the face and hand from his clothed poses though! I was sitting to the side and slightly behind him which made the angles very interesting. And now I know why there are whole classes on drawing body parts - hands are so hard.

Drawing: Historical Approaches II

Back to class at VISA - and not a moment too soon. I spent all day yesterday and today in front of a computer, in a classroom, learning how to set up SharePoint. Well sort of, the subject is sooo big that two days only scratches the surface. Anyway, getting to art class was like shunting a locomotive: a switch was thrown and the engine went chugging off down a branch line. The scenery changed, the pace slowed, the rhythm was steady and people were laughing rather than groaning. Nice.

The subject tonight was to create an undersea creature composed of features taken from the contents of 5 mystery brown bags plus a vintage line drawing of marine life. I got a small wind up duck toy, a dinosaur finger puppet, a rubber bat with wings outstretched, a whistle thing that you blow and the paper curls out (you know), and a life-like papier-mache pea pod. The vintage drawing was of a Chambered Nautilus. Our first drawing was where we composed the creature and added features and detail that we liked. Drawing number two was a blind contour drawing - which are always fun to do. Drawing 3 was a loose rapid ink sketch done with India ink and a brush. Drawing 4 was a rapid pencil sketch using an "abundance" of lines.

Here they are:

1.

2.
3.
4.

Sketching with embroidery thread...

And this one...

Chinese Lanterns 2

Chinese Lanterns 2, originally uploaded by karinknowlton.

My friend Karin did this illustration with a Staedtler Pigment Ink Pen and coloured it with Pantone markers. It makes me very happy!

Eat your veggies...

A series of everyday things, small and familiar, related or not. That was the brief. All day at work, at every break from writing code, the words "paint food" popped into my head. Perhaps this was my unconscious screaming at me for more broccoli or perhaps I am a nascent cookbook author? I'm not sure but I did know that food on a plate was going to have to be the subject.

So here they are (and they are pretty much life-size!). I love painting small things; I love my 00 brush. Maybe I should try small scenes - say 2" x 2" - maybe then the landscapes would work for me.

This was our last class. But fortunately for Debbie and I, Jan is teaching pastels in July so we are signing up. I'll have to research miniatures in pastels, see what the precedent is...

See you soon.

Gerbera revisited

(the scanner failed me this time, it lost the many variations of orange)

Did you know that the Gerbera daisy is the fifth most used cut flower in the world (after rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, and tulip)? It is also used as a model organism in studying flower formation. And I had to paint it.

I tried, really I did. I didn't draw any outlines on my paper frst - I just plonked down some orange paint (carefully matched to the actual living organism) and used my brush to "draw" all the petals. It was a lovely loose collection of orange-y splotches arranged concentrically, but it was missing something. As much as I tried to leave it sitting there without definition I couldn't do it. I just happened to have a black triplus fineliner in my purse (a girl never knows when she'll need one) and I was much happier once I got to draw all the little petal edges in.

I know, I can hear you saying "but things don't have black lines around them in the real world" and you're right. But I can't escape my comfort zone it seems, at least as far as Gerbera daisies are concerned. I did banish the "stay inside the line" demon however and that is enough of a victory for a Tuesday night.