Anything but the brush...well, almost

I've been playing around with paint in a visual diary (journal...) and using paint roughly, wiping back and through, applying it with alternative tools and few brushes. These are a couple of portraits I've done in the diary.

The blue painting is another exploration of using anything but the brush. I didn't intend to place a figure on the canvas, but it appeared, and I'm happy with it.

What will I do with all the drawings ...

This is one drawing from last night's life drawing group (compressed Pitt charcoal). I prefer shorter poses as it's all to easy to start overworking a drawing. My preference is for more gestural life drawing. Several in the group prefer longer poses so I need to think about a technique to use that will work for me for about 20 minutes. Usually after about 10 minutes I start ruining the drawing!

I've been thinking about how to use my drawings as a resource for painting. Still favouring textured painted surfaces, I'm thinking about how to create some figurative paintings, but I'm not aiming for realism. So this is the task for the next two or three months. Lately I've been working on small canvases not very happily, seems I like to work larger. Next step then is to plan some large paintings using my drawings as a resource...

I've booked into a short course with Bev Truloff at the beginning of December and looking forward to the inspiration.

This week's life drawing

Here are a few drawings from this week's class. The gesture drawings, though I noted them as 1 minute, were really 30-40 seconds. The other drawings are 10-20 minutes.