Life Drawing 24th May

Having not been in the studio as much as I would have hoped of late, (as per usual!), last Thursday was my day one day last week, with a whole day working on one painting and then life drawing in the evening, I love Thursdays in the studio. Sometimes though, despite best intentions, things don't always go exactly how you want them to, which is nott necessarily a negative thing. it can be a lesson learnt. Determined to plonk myself in a spot where I hadn't been before, in the humid heat and gorgeous evening light I neglected to notice that my chosen spot was devoid of artificial light, thus becoming a problem as time passed. What I came out with at the end, was not what I intended in the first place, but it got a special mention in Tom's blog, which surprised the hell out of me, and really made me consider what I'm going to do tomorrow, which is going to be exciting, with a new model and all!

Steve, Oil On Canvas, Thursday 24th May

Recent Life Drawing

Thursday 10th May 2012

My recent attempt at life drawing was a little weird - I'd got super wound up during the day for god knows what reason, and decided in the evening's life drawing I would turn my rage into creation, I had in my head large scale, graphite, unfortunately I had been working during the day and was not very organised, so with no time to prepare I grabbed a large piece of paper (turned out to be packing paper) and started drawing with a dark brown crayon. Weird things were afoot - I overlooked the tiny little t. rex hand as I got obsessed with the tiny head, which then developed into a perfect portrait of an ex-boyfriend, and then I got this. Anyway, it was nice to draw, and it was nice to draw big. Sometimes, it's just that simple.

Work In Progress, Still Life II

Thursday 3rd May 2012

Drawing A Line (2)

28th April 2012

6th May 2012

The previous post's title was actually meant to refer to my first painting in a series of still lifes and halfway through typing I subsequently found myself going back completely on my sentiment of leaving this painting in order to capture a looseness and freshness. The image that appeared on my screen seemed so disparate to the vibrant textured painting to what I'd seen in the studio, I decided I couldn't bear it and fiddled again. Still life is a new challenge for me, but I'm not purely chasing realistic representation, of course it is an underlying hope, but I also want to push myself to see what I can do, see how I can interpret what is before me and contrast different ways of thinking. Even the act of leaving this painting alone, is proving to be a challenge. This raises a tug of war between two ways of thinking, why impose rules on myself if I can see flaws in a painting? Well, because perhaps applying more and more paint to a painting isn't necessarily going to make it better, the key to a 'good' painting involves every layer, including it's foundations, so leave it, learn from it and move on. And so here is the first of this ongoing series. 

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Drawing A Line

Richard, Acrylic and Pen, Thursday 29th April

 Is that the cheesiest title of a blog post? Ah well...I've always been a cheese addict. I had a strange life drawing session on Thursday, I'm continuing in this vein of using pen, paint and ink to prepare myself for submitting some work for an illustration project, but Thursday was a real struggle, I had such a clear objective in mind, perhaps too clear and that was probably part of the problem, I kept measuring and it looking wrong, and scribbling, in the end I took to a method of painting over the wrong bits, a bodge of drawing, but something to learn from. 

P.S. It is the last week of the Batley Open Exhibition this week, with one of my little paintings in there somewhere. The Batley Open is at the Batley Art Gallery, above Batley library - why do Kirklees banish their art galleries to above underused libraries?! Anyway...so here is the address: Batley Art Gallery
Market Place,
Batley,
WF17 5DA

and opening times are 9:30am - 7pm, last day is Saturday 5th May

Splishy Splashy life drawing 19th April

Acrylic, indian ink and pen on paper

After the measured work of the weekend, I fancied having a bit of a splash around with acrylic and a scribble with drawing pens, over the top of last week's drawing, which didn't quite make it up here. Recycling is good, wish I could find a more environmentally friendly way to use oils, ie not using white spirit. Any tips anyone? Anyway, I quite like the top half of the drawing, the bottom is a little confused, perhaps more contrast was needed between the leg and the negative space.

Life Drawing Weekend Completed

Lately, I've been pondering the concept of my paintings taking on, what I would call a 'quiet' turn of late, a somewhat more understated feel, as I begin to naturally think about composition, colour, subtleties, the contrasting effect of this new way of working, however, is that it's getting me really excited painting. I'm really pleased at the outcome of this weekend, I attempted the whole figure within it's context, incorporated formal ideas of composition, colours and their relationships, all the things I've always been thinking about except I can feel my knowledge and experience all coming together at once, fluidly, like it hasn't really done before. It's amazing what a little extra time and space can do. What an absolutely exhilarating weekend. Thanks to Suzi, and as always, Tom and Tony!

Tom decided to take pictures every quarter of the way of everyone's work for his blog. It's such a real insight to see how my weekend's colleagues progress and work, fascinating stuff.