My painting for the NZ Art Guild 2008 collaborate project

Participating artists were each sent a board prepainted (in this case cadmium red medium) on which to create - mine is an acrylic painting based on an image I am working with at present in a variety of media.

Each of these boards will be put together to create one large artwork which will be exhibited in the annual NZ Art Guild exhibition at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland, in July. At the conclusion of the exhibition the artwork will be auctioned with a 20% of the profit being donated to charity.

The project does have a title and theme but I'll write about that later when the painting has gone on exhibition.

Life drawing - 16 April 2008

These are the longer drawings from last night's class.

The first is done with a red chalk pencil on white cartridge paper - the pencil is more waxy than chalky. I wasn't too happy with this one. I don't know what happened with the shoulder on the left (as viewing the screen). Either the model moved, or I didn't get my initial drawing in right because when I came back to that part of the drawing I had no idea what went where! Then while the hips more or less indicate where the weight is I haven't really captured that with the legs, and her legs and feet are a bit small, especially compared to the head! The model herself liked the drawing, though, and I'll give it to her later.

The red, black and white is again on white cartridge paper - black compressed charcoal and red soft pastel.

And the last drawing is done on white cartridge paper with a thick graphite lead in a holder. I decided to do a cropped composition this time. I always try to get everything in and I thought it would be good to select just part of the model to draw.

I'd have liked to draw the hair in, all the lights and darks, but there wasn't time. Maybe I'll work on it later, or take it to paint.

More life drawings

Life Drawing Class April 9 2008 - Male model

Here are most of the drawings I did last night. There were a few 1 minute drawings done with a black marker pen on white cartridge - only one posted here. It's a great pen to use to force one to decide what the line is going to be and draw it - no going back! I'll do more of these in the future.

The coloured pastel drawing was just a crazy drawing I decided to do after I'd walked around the model and couldn't decide from which position to draw. After teaching all day I'm not terribly energetic, and most of the time I just place the easel and stay there, moving it only a little sideways. Also, I seem to have forgotten whether I like to draw looking to the left of my paper, or the right!? (I'm right handed ... anyone got advice? Had no trouble deciding last year.) The class tutor reminds us to walking around before deciding where to place yourself to draw.

Most of the drawings are done with conte and compressed charcoal sticks. The sienna colour is rather harsh - one of those drawings where I started fiddling around, scribbling, rubbing in, cross hatching, layering over white ... and ending up in a mess. I do quite like drawings, though, that are closer to finished in one area and less so in others.

Again, due to the limitations of the blog, I'll have to post the remaining photographs in a separate post.

Mixed Media portraits

This is a mixed media collage I created while working with Years 5 and 6 students at school. The activity was to create a portrait in mixed media using magazine imagery, paint, pastel, ink and maybe some other materials because we're continuing on these next week. We spent some time drawing with large crayons first - exercises like drawing the person opposite you in one minute without looking at the paper, then drawing with the other hand - that kind of thing. The next day I provided them with big pieces of nice cartridge paper, and the materials and we spent a whole morning on the portraits. Some students pick through the imagery looking at what is printed on it while others "get" the idea of looking for dark and light and colour. Some cut pieces and use it like mosaic, while others tear or cut larger pieces and just lay them down, overlapping sometimes. Some students like to leave some pieces of the paper unglued so it will curl up from the surface. The paint is thin so as not to obliterate the collage, and they're also stamping onto their work with paint on corrugated cardboard, and drawing on it with oil pastel and coloured felt pens. Most have got to a similar stage as mine, and next week we'll continue to add more media.

Life Drawing

These are some of last night's drawings (though I hesitate to show some with their wrong proportions). I've used Gallery semi-hard pastels on black building paper, compressed charcoals and conte on white cartridge paper. We weren't able to use our usual room for last night's class and the replacement was a smaller room, long and narrow, so it wasn't so easy to move around and find a different viewpoint.

I think the longest drawing was 15 minutes. I felt like creating loose drawings last night, used the pastel/charcoal on its side quite often. It's difficult to stop with a drawing. Sometimes I get something I like then spoil it by continuing to draw on it. I'd done a very quick drawing using charcoal on its side of the seated pose. I then started to draw lines on it and at that moment I realised what was on the paper had captured something of the model and I should have left it alone.

Another thing I do when I'm not sure if I'm happy about the drawing, or feel I've got it out of proportion is to start adding tone with light, dark or midtone, making short, sharp or scribbly lines. Last night I worked the charcoal into the paper and thought that was starting to work.

First day of 2008

And another year begins. Our art sale / exhibition opened yesterday morning and we had a steady stream of people through - the population of Waihi Beach increases almost ten fold in the summer holiday. This is a photo of the venue, taken from the gate as people enter the yard. It's a marquee and we have a lot of work in there, and around the entrance. I was lucky enough to get the area at the entrance of the marquee. Was rostered on for the morning yesterday, and the paintings that we selling were mainly landscapes of the local seaview. Unfortunately I don't paint those! It's an interesting point of discussion. Some artists I've met have found that repeating something that is popular and sells isn't satisfying, their heart isn't in it. But if you want to earn a living at your art you need to sell. It's something I'm going to have a good think about this year.

New Years Eve started out at the Waitete Orchard Restaurant where Brian Shone was playing the guitar and singing - excellent singer and guitarist. Then went to friends where music was being played. (The boys are playing on the 13th January at the Waihi Summer Festival so I guess it could be regarded as practice...) At midnight we went to visit some friends to wish them a Happy New Year then went back to the music.

Waihi is very busy at this time of year. With a regular population of around 4000, the traffic and people in town increase incredibly for a couple of weeks over the holiday period. There's quite a lot to do and see at this time.

All the best to everyone for 2008.