Ink sketch

Today I was working on the little canvases on which I drew the life model last week, starting painting them. Taking a break, I drew a couple of quick indian ink sketches from my music night journal drawings, and blocked in some of the areas with coloured ink. First, I'd tried drawing them from the book with a conte pencil but they just didn't have any energy, so I got out the black ink and brush and felt much happier with that. I'll do more of them (and see if I can get the hang of the guitar).

Life Drawing 11 June 2008

Black pen in A4 journal.

Life Drawing 4 June 2008

Our life drawing group is continuing even though we are no longer being funded through community education. Thanks to John Mulvay (the tutor, who is kindly lending his easels and boards and also his home for some of the sessions and arranging models) we're continuing to meet. I missed last week's group but saw the drawings of two artists and I think it's going to be an advantage to have a variety of venue as opposed to the classroom, with furniture, cushions and other paraphernalia around.

Last night we met in the studio of artist, Robyn Tucker. It was cosy and warm, and she had arranged a chaise with nice fabric draped over the end for the model to organise her poses around/on. At the end of the session I realised, though, that I had drawn only the model and nothing around her. So she does look a little like she's floating in space in some of the drawings. Must be because I missed last week, forgot about the whole composition. Which is why regular drawing is so important.

I can see in the photographs I must clean the camera! Most of the drawings are done on buff cartridge paper, some on white. I used either a French grey conte pencil or a red chalk pencil.

The three square drawings are done on 8" x 8" canvases - I'm going to paint these, maybe mixed media works.

The upside down drawing was done standing at the head of the model, so she was upside down in my view. I forgot to draw the chaise, so it looks rather weird!

Guardian - 13th collage for ICE 2008

I'd forgotten to take a photograph of this last collage before sending it for the exhibition/exchange. The recipient, American artist Jean Tock, kindly took a photograph of it and emailed it to me. The centrepiece of the collage is a photograph of mine that I named "Guardian", hence the name.

Doodling in my new Moleskine

I was given a voucher for Gordon Harris, an art supplies store, I bought a Moleskine...finally...and some pens. I'd checked out sources for these beautiful journals in New Zealand and I'd only found them available at Christchurch Art Gallery, so I was thrilled to find a new stand at Gordon Harris in Hamilton. Extravagantly bought the larger one - 13 x 21cm. I'm just going to doodle in it. I've a few other visual diaries on the go - for painting, design/printmaking and drawing that are pretty messy, lots of scribbly writing, bits and pieces stuck in.

These are the first two pages that I've drawn on. Actually I'm starting from the back of the book. The first drawing was of the girl on the rocks. Next day I continued on the page above, trying to link it in some way.

When you're strange

These are a couple of odd mixed media self portraits. I think at the time I was inspired by Francis Bacon, an artist whose work fascinates me. I was going to do more with them but decided to leave them as they were. The acrylic paintings have other media on them - it's not cracked glass!

I see that a triptych by Bacon broke a record for contemporary art auctions this week.

On You Tube there are videos of a documentary that I've seen previously where Bacon is interviewed. It's a fascinating documentary. Bacon takes the interviewer and the film crew to his studio - that is an eye opener.

There is also this little video of faces painted by Bacon...




If you're interested in watching the documentary, it's split into several parts. I won't post the actual videos here but the links are:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Life Drawing 14 May 2008

Here are three of tonight's drawings. The drawing on black sugar paper is done with a variety of media - compressed charcoal, conte, Neocolors, and sticks that look like conte but I think might be a dryish type of oil pastel. The drawing in the centre is on a nice buff cartridge paper with a French conte pencil, and compressed charcoals. The top drawing is done with willow charcoal - haven't used that in ages.

Our drawing class is funded in the community education classes at a local high school by the ministry of education - our town is only about 4000 people so the number of classes are a limited, and there is apparently a requirement we have 8-10 people and it looks like we might not make that. In which case the class will not continue. That is a real disappointment. Given the size of the town I would have hoped there would be some leeway to support classes like this. The fact that funding isn't consistent has got a lot to with numbers I'm sure. We had good numbers to start with, the room was full. If the class hadn't been cancelled and then started up late and at short notice I think we would have done better with numbers.

And how many tutors are there around who are prepared to bring a trailer full of easels, boards and provide clips, materials and other resources, ring around organising models and fit in with the whims of community education funding?

Waihi has a history of being a town of artists and craftspeople - a life drawing class should be well attended. Perhaps it's something to do with the demographics of the town. Are people prudish? Too cosy at home to venture out at night? Shy? Maybe people don't draw any more? Maybe. I hear the photography class is oversubscribed.

Oh well...

Printmaking experiments

Some snapshots of a few of the prints I made during the printmaking course with Bev Truloff.

The prints in the first photograph, apart from the red collograph print, are gelatin prints. When I was told we were going to try this, I took a look on the internet to see what they were all about. I wasn't that interested in them, thought it might be a good thing to do with students. BUT when we started making these little prints the next morning I loved the process! You brush thin acrylic paint or watercolour on the gelatin plate, lay over the paper and press by hand. There is something about the fluidity of the medium on the gelatin...it is so different from using ink on a hard surface to print from. The grey print is the most liquid looking of the three in the photo, the others I'd laid paint on thickly in places to see the effect. I made a lot of these little prints, it was fun.

When I went to buy printmaking paper the shop had pretty much been cleaned out and the paper that I did buy had a texture on it that didn't lend itself very well to my printmaking. I've just bought some new paper so I'm hoping to get back to the collographs this week. The red and black prints are two collographs that I made, the red printed first and the black second. I've some ideas for exploring this idea further. The green print is a probably a monoprint - I rolled the ink on the perspex plate, and then drew into the ink by laying over a paper drawing into which I'd cut lines. The coloured image in the same photo is a mixed media monoprint with watercolour and oil based ink.

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.

Experimental printmaking

This week I'm at an interesting course about printmaking - not the kind you need fancy presses and acid and so forth for but quicker, more experimental printmaking. I hesitated to use oil based inks as I'm a bit wary of the smelly solvents but with good ventilation at the studio decided to give it a go. After working with my acrylic ink and watching the others for a couple of hours I could see that the other inks were rather nice. We've used oil inks, acrylic inks, watercolour and acrylic paints, made gelatin monoprints (what fun that was!), printed with found organic materials and man made materials, made collographs, and we've still got two days to do. Today I was making a monoprint on a glass plate using one of my life drawing images and after printing a few layers went on to paint on it with watercolour. We're doing mixed media on Friday and I'm really looking forward to that. I've made a collograph of the same subject and have posted a picture of that above - it's got wet ink on it but I cleaned that off deciding it needed more shellac to protect the card layers and I might make another tiny cut or two.

It isn't easy working alongside others in a small space but particularly so with printmaking which needs a LOT of space. We have prints drying all over the place, on the floor under tables, hanging up inside (too wet to hang outside - so much rain this week), on the deck under cover.

I've finally used that shellac I bought a long time ago (to protect the collagraph plates). That is an interesting material and it has such a history.

It's fantastic watching people really getting into it and making enormous numbers of prints because they're obsessed with a certain shape or whatever.

I will post some images at the end of the week.

Life drawing poses

Note added 6.5.08 - originally had a different title for this post.

I was interested to read a comment made on one of my posts
(Click on the link to see which post but WARNING - rough drawing of male bits on show.)

I was initially surprised at the comment, then had a little LOL myself (which is netspeak for "laughing out loud" if you didn't know) and the thought that someone would be shocked or surprised in this day and age considering what's around on the internet.

Last night I caught part of a documentary about Manet's "Le Dejeuner". This painting, and others of his, shocked society at the time partly because he openly portrayed a contemporary woman with no clothes on in a time when only religious or mythological nakedness was acceptable in paintings. The comment was made on that programme, and in articles I've read on the internet about it since, that people today aren't shocked by nudity... as long as they keep their legs together I suppose.

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.

Life Drawing Wednesday 16 April 2008

These are the first drawings from last night's life drawing group. The class is for two hours in the evening. We're lucky enough to have the tutor provide easels, back boards, clips, and even paper and conte and charcoal to buy at cheap rates if we don't have our own.

There were a few short poses of a couple of minutes - those are the coloured pastel drawings on black building paper - then longer poses of between 10 and 15 minutes I think. I was quite rough with the soft pastel, blocking in shapes using the side of the pastel, then roughly drawing in some line on top.

There is one drawing on brown paper, in compressed black, sienna and white media. That was a difficult pose to capture. Actually there was no negative space between the left arm (as viewed on the screen) and her body, but I kind of wanted the pose more balanced. The foreshortened body was difficult. The collar bones were fantastic - I didn't get those finished.

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.

Collaborative painting for fundraiser

At our new year exhibition there was a painting being created to raise funds for the Zippy Fund which the (Waihi) Beach Vets have in place for clients of limited means to pay for necessary veterinary care.

An artist created the background and all the details were added by visitors to the exhibition with the intention of auctioning the painting with proceeds to go to the Zippy fund. The occasional artist added to the painting when they were on duty at the exhibition. Actually people had a lot of fun thinking up what to add - what about the lifeguard with the shotgun!? A lot of people said "but I'm no artist"! But many were encouraged and persuaded to contribute.

So here it is. I believe the painting was purchased and donated to be hung at the Vets'.

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.

Pastel on black paper and spam comments !

This is drawn on black building paper which has a sheen not easy to deal with in a photograph. The media is Gallery semi hard pastels.

I've noticed that there are people spamming comments on blogs and the only way to deal with this is probably to use word verification in the settings. I would guess that the spamming is done automatically with some computer programme and up until now I don't think they can handle that but I guess the day will come. Anyway, if you see comments that say "Click here" or "See here" just don't. It comes up with some screen inviting you to activate a virus cleaner or protector or something. I did some googling to find out about these comments as I received one myself and because I have comment moderation I could see it before it was published.

Life Drawing class 2.4.08

These are a few of tonight's drawings from our life drawing class. All done in compressed charcoal on brown paper. The portrait is a quick drawing - the second pose of the night, 2 minutes I think. The first was drawing is on the same sheet of paper but I blocked it out before posting it because I wasn't at all happy with it. The drawings have been photographed at night with a flash so not the best. I'll post another tomorrow which was drawing on black paper and can't be photographed at night.

For most of my drawings tonight I used the charcoal on it's side, blocking in the forms, looking at negative spaces and geometric shapes in the form of the body, then started working up the dark areas. I most often draw in lines at that point, and sometimes add white charcoal or a third colour. I like red but have run out so am using a sienna colour conte.

I should spend more time being more systematic about proportions, and I get lost sometimes focusing on something like a foot or the face, or a shadow, and then lose my proportion ending up with an elongated chest or a head out of proportion! I've been taught a few ways to do this - the body is x number of heads long...the midpoint is....put in dots at points like the side of the head, neck, shoulders etc...use one's pencil (I don't use a pencil) and hold out your arm to measure...I have no patience for those...maybe I should learn some!

10th Annual International Collage Exhibition & Exchange is online

It's always a thrill to see this exhibition go online. 159 artists from Japan to USA, from Denmark to New Zealand, from Australia to France & Romania, make 13 collages - one is exhibited online and at the TART Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. It then travels overseas to be exhibited at and become part of the collection of the Amarillo Museum of Art in Texas. There is also an online exhibition of one collage from each artist that is for sale - do take a look!

I leave it to the organiser and curator of the exchange and exhibition, Dale Copeland (see my links) to choose which of my collages she would like to exhibit and put up for sale - so it's always a surprise for me to see which of the 13 she has chosen. She chose High Dance of Innocence for the exhibition that will travel to Texas, and An Appropriate Contract for sale.

At some stage I'll receive a large envelope containing 11 collages from other artists. Dale is incredibly organised and in the past we've received a list that cross matches our collages to the receiver. I'll be waiting for that list because the very last collage I made wasn't photographed. I was working at night and meant to photograph it in the morning, clean forgot about it, and now I can't even remember the title! So hopefully the eventual owner of that collage will be kind enough to send me a photo of it.

I haven't painted for a while. The first part of the year my thoughts were only on making the collages. Now I've started life drawing and again it's taking me a while to settle back into paint. Lots of ideas in my mind though.

I'm also booked into a printmaking workshop at the end of the month (Design is one of my majors and printmaking will be part of that work). This is not convenional printmaking though. The course is described as "Experimental Printmaking with an organic approach". The title and the list of materials is very interesting. The tutor is Bev Truloff. Click on her name to see some of her work.