Life Drawing 20.8.08

I bought some Crayola crayons - these wind up and down. They're called twistables. The small twistables didn't have a great deal of pigment in them (purple drawing) but the large twistables (green and blue) were fabulous to draw with. They glide over the paper, don't catch at all, have a greasy feel and yet they don't smudge. Nice and bright but only a few in a package. I'll buy them again. The other drawings are compressed charcoal and conte. All done on white cartridge paper.

Works in progress

It's ages since I've painted and to kick start myself I decided to try and work differently. I put away those earth colours I'm so addicted to, and used my hands. Yes, my hands! That is right out of my comfort zone. I lay down the paint (acrylic) for the backgrounds with my hands, I did have to go and wash them several times to take away the icky feeling... I deliberately chose these colours that are so far away from anything I've done, tried not to have an idea to begin with but just to let things develop.

I worked across a few canvases, changing when I found myself thinking too hard about what I was doing. I have no idea where these figures come from.

That pregnant lady just keeps appearing on that canvas. I've painted over it twice now (the canvas) and it seems impossible to make her go away. So she'll have to stay.

I intend to continue working on these in a variety of media, but I'm putting them up here as impetus to keep painting. It's all too easy to hide beginning works away and never go back to them.

Life Drawing 13.8.08

This is a real mixed bag. These are some of the drawings from last night. Chalk pastel mainly and some conte on buff cartridge. When using pastel or conte or charcoal, I often block in the form of the model with the side of a short piece of media. Once I've worked that in I deepen the edges or shadows, and often leave the line until last. The pink drawing is done directly onto the canvas with soft pastel, then I used a blending brush and acrylic medium to fix the image to the canvas. I'll paint on it...probably...possibly. It's nice to draw directly onto the canvas, I've done this a few times now, because it captures some kind of freshness that copying doesn't. We didn't get any standing poses or quick gestural poses last night, though I could have done a variety of quick or gestural drawings for each pose anyway if I'd thought about it at the time. Personally I prefer short poses to long. I'm a bit lazy and don't shift my position very often if at all. I've been thinking about what to do with the enormous rolls of drawings I've collected over the year or so of regular life drawing. Perhaps I'll sell some. One of the models would like to have as many of the drawings of her as possible, and that's fine by me. It would be quite nice to have a good journal and draw each week in that, pen or pencil.

Quick sketches

It's the middle of the night and I photographed these sketches from a A5 journal with a flash - not the best.


A friend of mine has started two huge oil paintings that will be hung in Marley's music shop in Waihi - Music Oasis, a specialist music store. Take a look at John's work in progress.


I didn't make it to life drawing tonight - I have a cold. I've been going through my journals and thought I'd upload some of my scribbles from the local monthly music club nights. And they are scribbles. It's pretty dark at the venue...that's my excuse anyway. And when drawing flat on the table, the subject tends to get a leaning, flat look to him/her.

The musicians seem to be quite tolerant of one or two of us sitting there right in front of them, drawing. Thank you to those who might read this, and apologies for the drawings! One night, a friend was with me and she quite fancied one of the drawings and she asked if she could have it. She tucked it into her bag. When the musician finished singing he came over and asked if he could take a look at the drawing, it was quite funny when she had to fish it out of her bag to show him. Especially when we'd written a title on it ... "dark and handsome". I haven't got it to post here, probably a good thing.