Monday Madness

I've finally finished my painting of the Radium Beer Hall (can you spot where I got the title for this post?) that I was about to embark on in a previous post last year - although I keep seeing things I want to fiddle with... I spent hours on that guy's face on the right and it still looks like a fuzzy jellybaby, and in two minds about the ghostly figure standing on the bar counter (Mary Fitzgerald, a trade union activist who actually did rally her troops from the very same counter, albeit in another establishment).

Tim Quirke, our excellent teacher, has taken us step by step through a process of planning, drawing, leading the eye, thinking of this aspect and that artist, painting 'up' areas and leaving others understated. I kept taking pictures as I progressed - a little dangerous as sometimes you want to go back to a stage you've irretrievably wrecked - but a record for future reference. It has been painstaking at times, and thoroughly engrossing and free-flowing at others, but I've certainly learnt a lot and hope to put it all into practice in my own painting, or at least keep some of it in mind. Why didn't I find all these teachers when I started painting in oils 22 years ago? It would have saved a lot of trash-able canvases, maybe...though most artists have those no matter how much education they've had, from what I hear.

Life, oh Life

I've been back to life drawing sessions again - just a model and a group of fellow strugglers, no tuition. I stopped going some years back as I'd collected such a pile of drawings that I didn't know what to do with. It is one of my favourite things to do, when you get into such total concentration on contours, shadows and the subtlest of tones and hues that you lose all sense of time or whatever else is going on... but I did get to a stage when the whole exercise seemed a bit pointless, so since I've returned to it I've been trying to find new ways to interest myself - which for me usually comes by way of happy semi-accidents. Semi because I do use the watercolour very wet, and allow it to do its thing with just a little guidance from me. This one came closest to making me feel a bit excited to go further with this approach, with other more controlled or less successful attempts below. I tend to get some great bits, like an arm or a left leg, together with some awful ones, a bad torso or face, I need to get all the great bits together in one painting!

The model for most of these has been bringing her Jack Russell with her, which has provided another lovely dynamic to the poses (and two models for the price of one). A bit sad though as the little dog is old and not well, and so content to lie quietly wherever she's placed - the closeness between the two is obvious. 

The charcoals are quick poses, I think the first was half an hour and the others five minutes. The watercolours mostly half an hour - the one at the bottom an hour.

 

These are all quite big - perhaps I wouldn't have such trouble storing them if they were smaller, but strangely given all the small scale sketching I do, I feel compelled to do large figure studies - even A2 paper isn't quite big enough!

Objets Trouvès 2

I was thinking that I should focus this blog on urban sketching and not be such a scattered Jill-of-all-arts - but then I have these big gaps where it looks like nothing's happening, when it is. And I need to record it because I will forget!

 I've been busy with another of Greg Kerr's year long painting courses, this year called Objets Trouvès. Four weeks spread over the year, with plenty of homework in between (just remembered that I did in fact do a post about some of the preparation before we started back in January). To track back to what seems like an age ago in the progression of the course... we had to do a bit more slog - find an insect... I 'found' (thanks to my photographer nephew who had been given it by Pretoria university for a shoot) a nice big dung beetle, long deceased and easier on aging eyes than the little goggas that drop belly up on my windowsills... photograph it, construct it out of wire and photograph that - ready for the first session. Amazing how you can begin to feel fondness for such a creature when you study it so intently!

In class and already well acquainted with our bugs, we used our material to produce four big (40x55cm) charcoal drawings, each with an aim in mind - a history (or palimpsest - lovely word); architecture, tone and texture; spatiality and surface detail and; monumentality, complexity, personality. To put it in a nutshell - it took long hours of concentration, teacher inspiration and application!

Then... I'm rushing along here to catch up... back at home and keeping the creative force surging, we had to pick two or more of these drawings, photocopy or print (hold the toner) them onto watercolour paper to produce 12 formats on which we did different colour exercises in various mediums - watercolour, gouache, wax resist and encaustic, acrylic alla prima and glazes - to explore terms such as hue, value, tint, tone, chroma, complementary and adjacent hues...etc etc.

I have to admit that I got annoyed at myself around this point because... I know this stuff, I've been doing it forever (and forever seems to be running out). WHY don't I do this by myself in my own time, without the impetus and discipline of a class and an encouraging teacher...why don't I grow up and be a 'real' artist?
Well, now heading towards the fourth and final session, I think I've figured it out - there are big gaps in my art education, and they are being filled by this most excellent tuition - I'll keep you posted, will try not to take so long about it next time!

Draw, draw, draw

I have been busy drawing for my upcoming course, 'Objets Trouvès' with Greg Kerr which starts in Johannesburg next month. Part of our prep was to find an object - not your regular Still Life subject matter which may have been drawn and painted to death already - but something unusual and perhaps strange or unappealing that happens into your life or surroundings.
I had a few false starts with things I found - a woodwork plane - too linear, a toiletries travel bag - too tedious with its zips and meshes, a computer fan - too hard and mechanical... when one day a storm approached, the wind blew, a painting flipped off the mantelpiece knocking off and breaking an early attempt at turning wood on a lathe by my son - which made me a bit sad until...aha, voilà! I had my objets!

There's something deeply satisfying about completing and beholding 20+ drawings you've done of the very same item. I usually draw something, tick it off and seldom feel inclined to do it again, so before I began I dreaded all that slog before me, certain I'd be bored to tears halfway through. But tackling one frame at a time, and with options of different mediums to do it in I became absorbed in the challenges and new perspectives of each rendition.

Starting with three drawings with the humble HB pencil, moving onto six in charcoal and going onto my favourite method, water-soluble ink with bleach, water, brushes and pens (I had whittled a new bunch of bamboo pens while watching cricket on TV days before) which I explored and experimented with for the remainder of the 20 - I've only shown three of those ones here, will get to photographing the rest sometime. So interesting to play in this technique but be warned if you try, I'm told they won't last - the paper may rot and the ink fade!

Resurfacing...

It's been a long time! My apologies and thanks to all who have left comments over the last few posts, gone mostly unanswered, though not ignored - I have read and appreciated every one of them.

I thought this year would be a slow, relaxed stretch of time for sketching and painting, now that my son has finished school and no longer requires as much taxiing around and motherly ministrations (wrong about that too!), but it has spiralled into a maelstrom of activity. When I started this blog, it was partly to motivate myself to make art regularly - in that respect it has succeeded, and then some!

I mentioned some time ago that I registered for a year long course with artist and lecturer Greg Kerr. Four sessions of four days each, spread over the year with the surprise addition of plenty of homework in between. We're half way through that now, having just completed the second session.

The first entailed preparation of sourcing our own images through a programme that Greg and other university lecturers developed called 'The Dark Cloud', from which we made large charcoal triptychs.

Each panel is a full sheet - of Arches hot press 300gsm in my case - at the moment being displayed in the David Brown Gallery in Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton with eleven other student's work - a credit to Greg's teaching that all the work is so different, individual and good! It was chosen not on any merit system but merely those who had finished and submitted in time.

For homework we had to make 24 very small images from cropped sections from the source material photographs - I still have 6 to go (relieved to find we weren't in for detention or a rap on the knuckles for non-completion!)

These are on A6 sheets of Fabriano, with the images 120x85mm, and are meant to force the charcoal to be as photographic in nature as possible. When all are done, to be bound into a book form.

In the second session we took three of these tiny images and blew them up to large canvas size to make tonal studies in acrylic paint, with added interest of thin coloured edges - I left some areas of the canvas showing the coloured underpainting, with lots more thinking and work still to be done on them - very much work in progress.

I began the first full-tonal range panel on a big canvas - 1000x800mm but switched to smaller 550x750mm ones for the high and dark toned ones after I'd spent the first day filling in between the lines. Not sure where these are going yet, but I have no doubt there will be surprises in store the next time we get together in August for oil painting.

A big advantage of a course spread out like this over a period is that you learn to live with your work, think about and develop it, as well as the discipline of returning to it - to become a habit by the end of the course, instead of the workshop becoming a pleasant, but dim and distant memory - at least that is what I hope happens.

But wait, that's not all I've been doing! In between this was another short watercolour workshop that I'll write about soon, the Urban Sketcher's Symposium rushing up and needing attention - some preparation under my belt but lots more to do - a workshop that I've just given on sketchbooks and art journals, the lovely postcard exchange which deserves more time and effort... how did this all land up in the same year, I'm sure it could keep me going for five!

A Week of Hard Work

I was utterly exhausted at the end of an intense four day's looking, drawing and looking and drawing some more - but so satisfying to spend 8 hours, with a lunch break in between, not thinking of anything but how to achieve that tone and that particular shape or texture in charcoal. The first session of the year's course went by quickly after lots of preparation and worrying over whether I was doing the 'right' thing. Luckily, there was no right thing, just your thing, as the variety of very different work that the students produced proved. On the last day I grabbed a few minutes to scribble a sketch of the classroom with some of the new artist friends I met there.

Drawing course Day Two

 

Actually I can't remember exactly what we did on each separate day - I think we did some warming up quick exercises on the second day too, but the main object was to take some of the previous days 'sensual' drawings and work new drawings over them, not obliterating them, but trying to have some new feeling or meaning emerge from superimposing images - I'm not at all doing justice to Hermine's urging us out of the usual or the safe, she had us each enthralled in our own individual and different journeys of discovery. This time she had made a doll out of clothes, blankets, buttons and string, as a prop to the model, which in some of my drawings manifested as a rather sinister and ghostly voyeur.

 For our final drawings we were to use all the materials we'd brought as we liked, which were many and varied - and combine everything we'd learnt to create a composition. Not the most attractive result here, though Hermine kindly called it 'stone-like', I used an old chewed foam roller to draw out the figure, which made her look a bit like some of us post-course students (one artist was so coated in charcoal and ink you could hardly make out her features - wish I'd taken a photo!) and added powdered graphite and glue, charcoal and ink, and stuck on some textured paper - didn't get to the candle wax, sandpaper and crayons!

Drawing course Day One

I mentioned a drawing workshop I went on in October a couple of posts ago - I have only now got to photographing the results, and am glad to recall it before it disappears into the dim dusty recesses of my mind. It was an intense two day course devised by a fabulous artist and teacher, Hermine Spies Coleman, called 'Drawing with all of your senses'. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we had to bring a wide variety of drawing materials, scented things, music, and food (lunch!) We had a young newbie model not comfortable with disrobing completely, to work from, though formal life drawing wasn't the object so it didn't really matter.

 The first exercises were using a soft powdery medium like charcoal dust or powdered graphite, dipping our fingers into it and 'feeling the drawing' directly onto the paper. We then added glue or water to make a creamy mixture and continued the sensual experience of building the images with our hands - I was frustrated with how difficult it was to get the glue and graphite to do what I wanted it to, but persevered rather irritably rubbing from side to side to get the pigment to stick the paper, and was surprised and pleased to step back and find an interesting, evocative image (right) had resulted, as if she's in or made of water.

I have to admit to getting very bored with much of my life drawing last time I was doing it regularly, and this course forced me to leave my comfort zone and discover new ways of mark making and unexpected solutions to problems - and excitement. They may posssibly not appeal to many viewers who like their life drawing conventional, but I was happy to launch into fresh directions, and as I relive the workshop, am excited again to get back to the drawing board, the sooner the better.

We did a series of short exercises - drawing with our eyes on the

model only, not looking down at the paper, looking at short poses and then closing our eyes to draw them quickly and succinctly, drawing to music, trying to put the music into the marks and then drawing the model dancing to the music - a huge amount of concentration and being in the moment. The afternoon session saw us all exhausted, and returning to our old tried and tired drawing styles...

Rhino Day

Today is World Rhino Day. Here in South Africa we have as a nation, been horrified by the increased wholesale slaughter of these creatures for their horns - a chunk of keratin, no more, no less -  over recent years. This year alone 210 of them have been poached and the population has declined by 90% since 1970. I was in Zambia five years ago where we saw the very last white rhino left in the country, being followed at a distance by his personal armed bodyguard to try and protect him. I wonder if he's still alive? Game rangers and conservationists have resorted to removing the horns to try and prevent their destruction, but the animals are often still shot for the stump that has to remain intact for them to survive. In some cultures it is believed that the horn has medicinal properties as a cure for cancer, and as an aphrodisiac.

A brave oncologist in Malaysia has recently spoken out against this myth - as he says, you may as well chew your fingernails...

The good news is that this week police have arrested eleven people, including two vets, two safari operators and a professional hunter whom they believe to be kingpins in a rhino poaching syndicate that has been relentless and professional in their killing, with more arrests on the cards. But as long as the demand continues, somebody else will doubtless step in. 

Thanks for reading - not sure what good it will do, but the more aware people are I'm sure, the better.

Here is a link to an article about who uses rhino horn and for what purposes.

Off to see the world

Another daughter has ventured forth and flown off to London to find her feet - if not her fortune. In January last year I did a post about her sister going off to Dubai, and dug out some old sketches I'd done of her. This child, being the one who never sat still, and then later who was always 'out', has far fewer of my efforts expended on her, I had to really scratch to find these. I suspect we may hear more of her news now that she's far away than I did when she was home, in between work, netball, yoga, party, party, party, scuba-diving, rock climbing and just hanging out with her friends. Well I hope so anyway!
Though none of these sketches look terribly like her, they all remind me of the various stages of her childhood. Endlessly interested six-year old, happy confident niner, slightly sulky sixteen-wishing-she were-somewhere-else, and sunny excited just finished school and off on her first unsupervised holiday with the ever-important friends.
She arrived at Heathrow at 5.30 this morning, and we've had a message from her to say she found her way to her destination on the tube all by herself!
God Bless, golden girl - I hope London and wherever else you roam to, will be as wonderful as your wildest dreams.

Life continued...

These were all done at the local recreation centre, where there is a model every week, but no tuition. I did a lot of trying out of techniques...above left, graphite with watercolour, right, conte with Caran D'Ache neocolor II Aquarelle crayons. You can see here models come in all shapes and sizes! Water-soluble pencil and conte crayon on the right...

More conte and Aquarelle crayons, and charcoal ...

I was getting braver to leave the charcoal/conte drawing and just use straight watercolour. I was hoping to get to a Georgia O'Keeffe style of clean, pure watercolour, but I couldn't let myself get that simple!
But I am quite pleased with the last one - that's the one that I may frame, though it's very pale.
That concludes my life drawing so far - hope it won't be too long before I do some more.

Life classes past

I was planning to post some little sketches I did on Sunday, and talk about my cat, BUT... the zeitgeist currently is pushing me in the direction of life drawing, life classes and groups. I read Africantapestry's post on it a week or so ago, and thought I'd love to get back to that, then my sister did a post on it yesterday, and this morning I found Katherine Tyrrell's usual thorough, well-researched and well-linked post on the subject.

So I spent the morning, unrolling dusty, cobwebby and fishmoth-chewed drawings from life sessions past - I've had them hanging around, some records of almost rapturous autumn mornings spent with an inspiring teacher, some stiff ungainly forays back into the genre after long absences, some I wanted to frame and hang, but was too protective of them from the 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' brigade. All of them with the long-asked question hanging over them..."What on earth to do with them all?"

So this is what I'm doing - I've photographed them, rather badly probably, cleaned up the chew-holes and critter-droppings in Photopaint, and am posting some today, some tomorrow or the next (there are rather a lot), and then they'll all be here (forever?), and the gogga-food can mostly move on off to the recycle depot, I guess. Maybe I will frame one.

These are from classes and workshops with a wonderful teacher, Hermine Spies Coleman, who has since sadly for us, moved to Giverney in

Kwa-Zulu Natal. She was the most encouraging tutor, seeing promise and excitement in the greenest and most nervous life-newbie's efforts, and urging us all to seek the personal, the unique, our own interpretation of every model and every pose. She wasn't too hung up on proportion and measurements - as you can no doubt tell from these - but movement, thrust, animal-like qualities (pic 2 I was thinking of a cheetah I think), machine-like qualities (a spine becoming a drill in this one below), bone, muscle and sinew stretching and straining, she'd push us to break out of our comfort zones and we'd go home exhausted but elated.

The studio was sun-drenched, so strong shadows sometimes fell on the model - but that was turned to advantage when we were encouraged to see the abstract emerging on our pages.
This last one has bitter-sweet memories... while I was engrossed in capturing the twisted movement, my car was being pinched from outside the gate!