Crayon and pencil portrait

of a friend's son. This little toddler (who is also an artist) was busy drawing at my house and I felt like sketching him. I picked up a crayon and started to draw, but he wasn't inclined to share his his art materials - of course when you're two and a half you're just learning to own things so how can you fairly share? I fetched my coloured pencils which he had no problem sharing with me. I had to work very quickly before he took ownership of everything on the table. The portrait isn't a perfect likeness - he's a whole lot cuter. Mateo works in crayon and pen on paper, pastels on building paper, and acrylics on canvas working with paint straight from the tube on to the canvas, or from a palette. His main subjects in his visits are colours, train tracks, trains, "up up up", the wind, and chocolate chip cookies, particularly the white and/or brown chocolate chips themselves. I'll have to remember to take photographs of his work before he takes it home next time.

Drawing

Someone commented on my blog that I was brave to share my life drawings. Not at all. I post them for a few reasons, mainly to show the art that I'm doing at the moment and not just finished pieces. Although my drawings are a resource for my art, sometimes they inspire a painting (Warm Winter for instance), I draw for the sake of drawing. I love it. I think it's something anyone and everyone can and should do. Another reason is so other people can see there are so many ways to attempt a drawing but the main thing is to have a go. In drawing classes there are so many different styles among the participants. Everyone has a preference for a particular media - some like to draw with a pencil and sharpen it frequently - and there are so many different types of pencil to try - graphite, charcoal, chinagraph to mention a few. I particularly like my red chalk pencil. Then charcoal - some people love willow charcoal, I seem to use compressed a lot. I just took a photo of some of the things in the box of materials I take to life drawing class - some semi-hard coloured pastels are useful for a change, nice on black paper. I need to buy some more compressed graphite and charcoal and conte, I struggled this week with those little bits! You can see I've got a really big piece of willow charcoal that's fun to draw with. And white - compressed and in pencil form, are other items I use regularly.

One of the class participants commented to the tutor that she likes the "zone" she gets into when drawing over the two hours. I know what she means. And when I go into the studio it takes me an hour or so to get into that "zone". When I come downstairs at the end of a few hours I feel like my head is in another place and it takes a while before I'm all there! Must be something to do with that left brain/right brain thing...