Wylie bath 2

This painting was also completed just before Christmas. It is the second in my Wylie series.


I like the composition; how the figures are arranged to focus on the ladder to the rocks. I also like the way the rocks turned out. There are a few problems with the figures but what I've noticed is they are a lot less obvious when the figure is not the sole subject in the painting.

Masterpieces from Paris

The blockbuster exhibition from the Musee D'Orsay Paris is in Canberra and worthwhile seeing, even though I had been in Paris last year and toured D'Orsay plus Le Orangerie, and Musee Picasso. This time I was seeing it through the eyes of a painter, noticing tones, colours, brushstrokes and composition. It is quite a different perspective from one who is interested in the story behind a painting. The story of the impressionist and post-impressionists is not new to me, and with the crowd being 3 deep, it was probably wiser to just focus on the painterly aspects.

There are several paintings that stand out for me.

Monet's Villas at Bordighera: Bordighera is on the Italian Riviera, just a short distance away from the border and Menton. We drove past Bordighera last year, where I mentioned the villas and gardens, to deaf ears as the driver sped past so that we would 'arrive' damnit!

This painting is less impressionistic than Monet's more famous paintings. There is harmony in the colours, with lovely shadows. It reminds me of our vacation in the Italian Riviera town of Rapallo, where the villas are not dissimilar.

Cezanne's Rocks near the caves above the Château Noir: This painting struck me as being very similar to the Australian landscape.

The boulders look Australian, and so do the trees in this painting. There are many colours to his rocks and yet the painting remains convincing.

Not in the exhibition but on display at the Australian Painting section, was this gem by Tudor St George Tucker. The shadows are beautifully done, and the light soft, as it is in the evening.

Portrait of my husband

I've made numerous attempts to draw my husband but he is frustratingly difficult to draw. He has the impression that he is less bald than he is and less jowly too. I chose only to return to this subject only because the Musee D'orsay impressionists are in Oz and a self portrait of Vincent Van Gogh was featured in posters everywhere. Vincent has a beard and my hubby has chosen to grow a goatee recently to make up for his lack of hair. As we all know, I'm no Vincent but an attempt in his style would be a learning experience.


Unfortunately Vincent had a full head of hair which lent interest where my subject lacked. It is a reasonable likeness of hubby although he is not as sombre in real life. Of course I was not aiming to capture his essential personality, rather just imitating a style.

Flamenco dancer

After the study on capturing motion I decided to try capturing the colour and motion of a flamenco dancer. Celina Zambon is a famous dancer and her hands are wonderfully expressive. The swirls in the back represent her skirt swirling as she swirls. This is a large piece and I finally conquer painting with large brushes purchased from the hardware shop.


Here is a close up.

Wylies bath completed

In a spurt of pre-Christmas energy I completed the painting of Wylies Bath. Hooray! I accomplished what I set out to do more than a year ago.


And here is a close up of the people.


This picture reminds me of lazy summer days at Wylies where I'd do a few laps in the cool water and then reward myself with a massage! Bliss. Wylies is not usually busy on weekdays when I escape work and domestic life.

Last class for term 4

Today we had our last class where Olivia modelled. Olivia was often sullen previously but appears to have loosened up. She was great today, striking several very interesting poses. This first one was a 10 min pose while waiting for the class to assemble.


It has been a very social class. We even ended up having lunch to mark the end of the term. I've enjoyed the artistic companionship and was quite productive even if I had less time to devote to art. The company, David's gentle suggestions and seeing how others were working gave me ideas which then led to other explorations at home.


As he did previously we did a composite drawing, 5 mins of 4 people drawing. This turned out better than I had expected.

Ocean pools

I originally took up life drawing to learn how to draw figures for a beach scene. Ocean pools are my favourite spots in the whole world and they evoke summer and a lovely cool dip in salty water. Anyway, I got diverted along the way but finally inspired by a few exhibitions where ocean pools and beaches were the subject. Started on a canvas of Wylie Bath in Coogee one of my favourite hang outs.


This is the background which is now ready for me to paint sun bathers in the foreground. I may have to rope in my family and friends to model for me! My daughter has obligingly posed as a diver and expects to see herself in a picture soon.

Jacqui again

Last week the model was Harold, a 77 year old West Indian. He has a magnificent physique for his age but alas as he was old, he did a lying pose which meant that we couldn't see his shoulders or chest. This week Jacqui returns. When requested to do 2 min poses she offered a series of ballet poses. She was with the Australian Ballet for years and years. The strength involved in keeping pointe for 2 mins! Incredible! Here are two of my favourites from this session. The second has us attempting to use tones only, no lines.





Poor Jacqui has to have a hip replacement at the age of 47. Ballet is not body friendly.

Joanna again

At the sketch club on Sunday Joanna was the model again. She is as gorgeous as ever, and has these curves, very feminine. What I adore is her rounded belly and breasts. She looks like what a woman should look; not thin and anorexic.


I made a few sketches on coloured paper, with some pastels.


Look at how graceful she looks. I would love to paint Joanna.

Study in motion

Further to our experiments in capturing motion, I did some drawings of a flamenco dancer from a YouTube video. She was simply gorgeous. Just pausing frame by frame I did 5 stills which I overlaid with the following results.


For those puzzled, it is meant to be 'read' left to right. At the start she is poised ready to move her arms, at the last frame she is in full motion. Interestingly, flamenco is supposed to focus more on feet tapping but there are very distinctive arm movements as well. Flamenco dancing is not fluid, it reminds me of a sleek large cat, long pauses ready to spring and then the frenzy of the kill.

Jacqui the dancer

Jacqui was our model this week. She was a dancer in her past life, and her body is the typical ballet dancer - slim, not busty, fine boned and with beautiful hands. I guess ballet teaches one how to hold the hands elegantly. All of us in the class really appreciated Jacqui because she was willing to hold more difficult poses for a longer period. Also because she was a dancer, she struck the most elegant poses. Continuing our theme from last week, David wanted us to draw motion. This time, he asked Jacqui to hold 4 positions for 1 minute. Each position was a continuum in the movement. I attempted to draw all 4 in one spot, which resulted in a tangle of arms, legs, etc. Was not a good idea. Then, just to make things even more challenging, David asked her to repeat a series of movement for 4 minutes. At first, I was perplexed... how can one capture anything moving?? But then I realised that capturing her arms would be good and this time, draw the arms offset from each other. Then the legs. This is the results - which I'm pretty pleased with.


I think that I may have found a way to convey motion at long last! I've been attempting to capture flamenco dancers in action by pausing the video frame after frame, the results so far have been less than satisfactory. Another picture I was pleased about is this portrait, which tried to convey a mood. She appears pensive. I would have liked to have captured Jacqui's exquisite hands better, but ran out of time.


In the class, one other student was experimenting with different media. We both tried black paper today. The trick with black paper is that you have to highlight the bright bits and rub away the dark bits. It is sort of reverse of a normal charcoal drawing. Anyway, here is my attempt.

Male model

This week we had Andrew pose for us. Male models don't appear as popular because people like drawing the female form. For myself, I find men interesting in that their muscle tone are better defined. However, the ding dong at rest is still a problem to draw. Especially when you get a well-defined set as happened today. To focus on it would be pornographic, to ignore it is not realistic. To add to this dilemma Andrew likes ropes as props which lends shades of bondage to the picture. How would I explain such a picture on my wall to my mother, for example? Hmmmm....


As you can see, I've extended my technique to include ink and wash this week. Made some attempts at capturing movement but that wasn't too successful. This next one was a pastel attempt and I really like it.


You can see my attempts to fudge the ding dong. My husband rarely looks at my art works, except when they are in front of his nose but he scrutinizes them intently when it's a male model. I don't know what he's looking for .... But it amuses me greatly!

Erica

Our model this week was a pleasant surprise: Erica is plump and uninhibited. It's nice to see someone so comfortable with her body even if it's not model material. David had us try drawing contours and overlapping them with some great results.


I suggested that it would look great as brush and ink or even abstracted further and coloured in. Which excited me so much that I made an attempt at home.


I used canvas which was not friendly to pencil and cannot be rubbed off much to my annoyance! An improvement is to offset the colour slightly from the ink to lend it more interest or to vary the line thickness which I'll try next time.


Erica's curves made me feel quite good about my own body. How to feel good- draw someone fatter than you!





This last one is a portrait of Erica done to practise facial proportions. Erica has a very pleasant face : she appears very approachable. I decided not to include her pendulous boobs here so as not to distract from her face.

Life drawing class 1

Having decided that my art could do with the discipline of regular practice, I enrolled in David Wilsher's life drawing classes again. Tutors tend to make certain that lighting is good and they always have tips to share. Our model was Olivia and once again I struggle with shading. Also met Leanne who was in the NAS course with me. She is very good and I think I can learn a lot from her as well.

Figure drawing workbook

After borrowing John Raynes book from the library I was very tempted to try his exercises. There were many excellent photos in the book, which is rare since models these days do not like being photographed. I took on one photo and decided that my painting skills could do with some more practice.


I liked the composition which was a play on triangles, there are triangles on the quilt, her legs and arms. In fact in the photo there was a spiky plant which made more triangles. But I omitted it on the basis that there was enough going on in the picture. Here is a close up.


I also decided that it was time to get some art works on the wall. I've produced quite a number of works but because I didn't use similar subjects, colours, media or canvas sizes it was going to be difficult to hang art aesthetically. I've since concentrated on canvas as it's cheaper than framing and if something didn't work out, I could just paint over and start again. Of course I could learn how to frame but that is another diversion I can do without. On that basis I decided that the painting of Joanne could do with a plainer background that was painted thickly, more in the style of the body. Here are the before and after.

Belinda

Our model for the sketch club this month was Belinda, we had her before. She works in industrial abseiling and has powerful shoulders and arms. Sarah agreed to try longer poses : this is to help us paint. I found it difficult to draw Belinda. Because she is so muscular I kept drawing her like a man but she is obviously feminine. This last pose was more successful than the others in capturing her, mainly because it does not highlight her muscles.

Acrylic painting revisited

After spending most of this year using pastels or charcoal I was led by chance to reexamine paints. In my first post I attended a painting course to learn how to paint figures. Since then I have hardly painted because it is not a medium that took kindly to interruptions... With a young family interruptions are constant and results in either dried paints on palette or tantrums by various members of family (including husband)! I wanted to convert the charcoal drawing I did of Joanne to painting but without a reference photo or life model, I was forced to adopt a semi abstract style that would hide the lack of detail. I had always admired the style of painting where bold strokes are used, with the result that finer details are unnecessary. Of course a few highlights or reflections are added to give the impression that some care has been taken. Here is my attempt with this style.





I was pretty pleased with the results. Which is now leading me to experiment with a few other styles that I found in a figure painting workbook.

Joanne

Joanne was the model at our monthly sketch club. I had not attended the last one due to the school holidays. She was a treat! Gently voluptuous, she assumed some very beautiful poses. I loved the way her tummy was rounded like a real woman. Some models are too thin.


The other thing I noticed about models and humans in general, is that we all have a favoured position. Some like to hold their own hands, many pose modestly, minimizing the exposure of their private parts, and others are totally uninhibited. Joanne's poses were naturally artistic.


Since I hadn't done art for a while I was slow with the shorter poses. But with the longer poses I even found time to incorporate colour.

Get off your arts

The school holidays has put a significant jar on my artistic endeavours as we went overseas to visit my family. Just before I hopped on the plane I had to work so that clients would not miss me too much, and when we got home, I had to catch up! One of the school mums Jodie was organising an art competition GOYA or Get off your arts. I was invited and attended the opening night, which was held at a church hall. The entries were in visual arts, picture book, performing art, and even films! Very diverse which meant that the opening night was a treat for the senses. However it also meant that the entries in some categories were scarce and the quality of the winners not up to scratch. Jodie tells me that it has only been run for 3 years and she received a government grant as a subsidy. Fees are charged for entries and a commission retained from proceed of sales. It was a great night and you can catch GOYA at Cafechurch on St Johns Rd in Glebe. Also look at their website http://www.getoffyourarts.com/

Dr Sketchy anti art school

A model I met told us about Dr Sketchy which is life drawing with a twist : the models dress up in burlesque costumes and assume dramatic poses. In Sydney this is held on a fortnightly basis at the Art House Hotel. Intrigued, I managed to gather a few friends and booked us for an evening. Most of us were not artists but were happy to drool not draw. We turn up at the Attic Bar which is like a large gentleman's club, furnished with leather Chesterfields and low mood lighting. There is a stage in the centre around which the regulars and serious artists clustered. There were two models; a busty lady (gender in question) wearing a curly blonde wig and red satin corset, high heels and fishnet stockings. The other was a brunette, slim waisted and moved most diaphanously.


Well the clothes came off slowly like a bit of a strip tease but they were never naked. I loved drawing the brunette and here she is in an exotic costume reminiscent of 'the dance of the seven veils'. The poses were short : 10 min max and it was frantic trying to do colour but oh! How to resist when the costumes were so colourful and over the top. Brunette also did a show where she emerged in a fringed bikini and a cowboy hat. At the end she took off her bikini top but hid her boobs with the hat. The blonde was much harder to draw because of her wig and smile. Here is an attempt where I ignored her face.


Everyone had a good time and we'd do it again. If there was one criticism it is the mood lighting. Very hard to make out what tones and shadows : the models really needed to be in spotlights.

The trouble with portraits

When I review my works I think and my friends tend to agree that my portraits and life drawing are better than my landscapes. Drawing people is hard but the results are much more immediate and 'grabs' attention. However I've had some issues with sitters not in terms of likeness which they agree is good but with their dismay at the unvarnished truth - do I really have that many wrinkles, jowls or grey hair? Even very old people haven't let their youthful self image go! Should art flatter? I suppose given a commission I would stoop to it. But not otherwise! It is also difficult to imbue the personality in a portrait : that is the challenge faced by accomplished portrait artists and novices alike. For now I've taken a break from portraits although I am likely to begin again when I visit family in KL next month.

Completed grain silos

I finally completed the grain silos from the farm visit. The shed on the right is very run down and missing a roof. It probably was an old farm manager's residence. My plan to draw more farm scenes has to be postponed till the next visit. Hopefully the greening of the farm continues (with fresh rain much to my friends' joy) as otherwise the palette would change too much to paint complementary pictures.

On a totally different subject I have started a new blog on crime novels I've read. Over the years, I've certainly covered a lot of ground and have decided to record what I read and what I enjoyed.

Sketch club at Art Est June 2009

I managed to get my friend Fiona to come to the sketch club at Art Est this month and we both left our respective spouses in charge of the children. It was very good to get away from it all! This month, our model was Jen who is about to return to Canada. She is slim and tall, her ankles and wrist look like they could break! She has a dancer's body, with strong muscles despite her slimness.

I wanted very much to produce some pastels this session and knowing how impossible it is to complete anything in the short time a typical pose lasts, I brought some A4 paper. These two were 10 min poses.

I took the opportunity to make a more complete drawing in the following 20 min poses.

This last one is rather difficult because the background wash was so dark. I had to erase the dark bits out rather than lay it on. A reversal of techniques.