Martine Emdur

Years ago, when my brother in law was married to an artist, Martine shared a studio with her. At one of the many exhibitions we attended, her work was featured. It was startling at that time - she really managed to convey the effect of sea water, particularly Sydney's beaches and the feel of diving into this cool, green environment where the light was filtered and ripples made the most fantastic effects. Anyway, one of her works then cost $1,000 and I asked my husband if we should purchase one. Sadly we were too inert to do anything even if we had the money (which we probably didn't then). Her latest exhibition is at Tim Oleson Gallery and her works sell for $40K a pop! Anyway, Martine, you are an inspiration. Here is the link to the SMH article featuring her. http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/out-of-the-blue/2009/02/20/1234633036698.html

Portrait Class Week 2

This week's focus was on breaking the face up into planes. Pina gave us quite a few tips:

• the eyes start from the eyebrows down to the bottom of the eyeballs (quite often there will be creases, there is an anatomical name the eludes me).
• eyes are parallelogram shaped.
• eyes are positioned in a V shape on a face
• noses have wedges at its tip

There was more but she uses their anatomical names that I cannot for the life of me, remember. The model was Eric again! For those who haven't been following the blog, he is the 60 year old model. For his age, he looks great, he has all his hair even though they are white, and he has nice muscular definitions for a 60 year old. He sure pops up in a few places. Here are a few illustrations from the class.

I then went home and thought that "here is the solution to my struggles to get a likeness". I was determined to try it on my long suffering husband, who was working on his laptop. It worked really well as this is the closest I've got to capturing his face.

Further to the pastel experiment, I did this pastel painting (sort of unfinished but will get there when I brush up on pastel skills), again on a subject dear to my heart. It is a depiction of my 5 year old daughter playing tea party with her Nani and her favourite dog, Harry. I like this because it captures a typical scene when they are together - Nani is very very fond of her grand daughter.

Louise Portrait in Pastel

I've always wanted to try pastels but lacked knowledge about the colours. Then when sketching a portrait of Louise in charcoal on an A3 pad, I realised that the paper, whilst no heavier than cartridge weight, had the necessary grooves to hold pastels. As an experiment, I put pastel over the charcoal sketch. I am pleased with the colours achieved in the shadows, etc. Pastels are ideal for finer work and touching up a painting because you can add so much more detail.
The art shop did not have cream coloured paper in stock of the pastel texture, so I've decided to just paint a ground across acrylic paper and make further attempts this way.
Pastels are a medium that I'm familiar with, having dealt a lot with charcoal plus it has the advantage that one can stop and start anytime. It is easier to get some art in between chores and family life. As it doesn't dry up like acrylics, one doesn't need 2-3 hours stretches to make it worth while. However, it does present a limited palette even if it is possible to blend two or more colours on paper.
Louise writes: "I like it A LOT and T (her daughter) thinks it looks just like me. Well done- now can you get rid of the wrinkles and grey hair on my real face !!!! "

Portrait for my mother in law

My mum-in-law turns 80 in April and she has always been a great supporter of my art work. For a gift I wondered if she would like a flattering portrait of her (she is very vehement that flattering is a necessity at her age) or one of her son and grand-daughter. I thought I'd try the latter because it is easier to get the subjects together and I might even be able to coerce them into posing whilst I added the finishing touch.

The results is not a total likeness but close enough. I managed to get my husband to pose for the finishing touches but no way was the 5 year old able to stay still for longer than 30 seconds. He then said that I had to add more hair because "surely my forehead isn't as empty!" Ha-ha... Anyway, to satisfy him, I did so and now the portrait looks like him 10 years ago!
I continued to struggle with getting a likeness of the 5 year old - children are HARD to paint, they have little defining features and have generally smooth complexions. There is not much to distinguish my little darling from other children.
However, I'm not unhappy with the results because this shows them as they are a lot of the time, enjoying cuddles and a closeness between father and daughter. I feel sure that my mother-in-law will like it - she adores her grand-daughter.

Portrait Drawing Course week 1

Today I began a portrait drawing course at the SCCC under Pina Bartolo's tutelage. I've recently begun some portraits but struggled to get a likeness and thought that it would be great to get some direction/ ideas from a professional.

There are 16 persons in the class which made it very crowded. It probably is not possible to do painting given the space constraints. It would be nice if we could, though. There are easels everywhere and Pina could hardly move around the room.
Our model is Olivia who is of possibly hispanic background. Olivia is beautiful but in a sulky way. Her expression at rest is one who is comtemplating some minor grievance... although I am sure she is a nice a person, really.
Today's lesson is to get the structure right. Because we focus so much on features in other people, it is a bit of a struggle to draw them because we immediately dive into drawing the features. In reality features take only a small percentage of the head. To make it look realistic, we have to draw the shapes of the head, neck and shoulders convincingly or else it does not look plausible. This is a similar lesson to that in life drawing - geometry first to 'set the scene'.

Drawings from the SCCC Course

I enrolled in September 2008 at a life drawing course at the SCCC, having finally found the opportunity to do something for myself amidst responsibilities with work and family. This was the catalyst to rekindle my interest in visual arts. My tutor, David Wilsher was great. Very encouraging and gave me some new techniques to try. In the beginning, I was of course, not very good at all. But slowly, I discovered my preferred style and was even confident enough to attempt very foreshortened poses.

Drawings of my family

Over the last 4 months I have been drawing my family wherever the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, it is not so straight forward to draw my 5 year old daughter who does not stay still much. I've had to photograph her first before drawing. Of course my spouse is not exempt. But as he seems to spend much of his time in front of the TV or sleeping, it is not as hard. The other life drawing opportunity I get with my daughter is of course, when she is asleep as well, but funnily they sense you are looking at them and wake up to ask you what you are doing. My mother-in-law, who turns 80 this year still looks terrific and is very sprightly. She said she would sit for a portrait, so I drew this as a study, intending to take her up on her offer.

Life Drawings from the Art House Hotel

Art House Hotel The most recent life drawing was with Catherine earlier this year, when we both went to the Art House Hotel, paid our $3 for a life drawing session. The model was a petite lady, but muscular. At the Art House, it appears that the model dictates how long each pose was held. She was obviously not an artist herself because she did something like 20 x 2 minute poses as a warm up. We were not just warmed up, it was too frantic for us to get anywhere. Subsequently, she did some 5 min poses followed by some 10 min poses. These were better for me, although no less intense because of the concentration required to capture something in the very short time. I was quite pleased with the results although I left feeling somewhat exhausted. Some experienced artists did quite well but I will not be going back for this model again!

Red nude - an attempt at composition

This painting was done from a sketch at the NAS course and a late inclusion to the blog. I was attempting to get a good composition - the shadows at the back are the easels of the students. Lying down poses are generally difficult to get right and I struggled with this picture.

Portrait in red and green

My friend Eunice has masses of lovely red hair which I was always itching to capture. She has the pale complexion found in redheads but no freckles! Lucky lady. Anyway, Eunice obligingly posed for a portrait.

Because of her red hair, I decided that a yellow-violet combination would not go as well as a red-green colour scheme. I did this over a few hours and painting is so much easier than drawing when it comes to portrait because if it doesn't fit, just paint over it! Erasing drawings is messy and leave smudges.

When I showed this to my 5 year old, she identified Eunice enthusiastically and immediately and when I asked if it was because of the red hair, she agreed but then added that other things 'looked like Eunice'. Eunice thinks that a 5 year old will always be honest.

further painting experiments after NAS

Working large From the course at NAS I observed my classmates painting on huge canvases and wow! It sure has a dramatic impact. So my next venture was to try the same. Using a photo of Linda, I worked on this A0 size canvas. What I realized was 1. Composition is vital. You can't crop a mounted canvas - well, not easily at any rate. So if the picture is odd, best to redraw. This composition had the figure looking to the right so more blank space was required to this side. 2. A large canvas demands large brushes otherwise it gets too detailed and slow. It isn't easy to have confident brush strokes if the biggest brush you had only makes only a thin line. 3. A good memory of paint mixes is crucial as work is done in several discrete stages - not so good if you could not match the colour again. More repainting then! Here is the results: I has to make the ear and hands much larger after the paints dried as I realized how small they looked. I think the larger brush strokes would have resulted in a more spontaneous painting but my daughter liked the results anyway. "Mummy, don't sell or give away the lady in the hat..."