What good is sitting alone in your room?

Hello! Back to my nice quiet blog after almost drowning in crowded, noisy Facebook. It's such a long time since I posted, I don't know where to start, so I'll just start... been doing quite a bit of figure drawing and painting lately, with the Figures & Form group I mentioned before and in a workshop - more of which soon - which was very hard work! These two watercolours on Arches cold press were sold hot off the easel as a birthday present for the model, so apologies for the bad photos. I would have liked to get more varied angles but the class was full and I couldn't squeeze into another position.

Figures & Form

Ecoline watercolour and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

Graphite and marker on cartridge 59x42cm

Ecoline and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

I spent the last Wednesday mornings of May at lovely figure drawing sessions held by the Figures & Form group in Parkhurst, in return for a 10 minute talk on urban sketching on my last day. It was lovely to slow down and spend whole hours looking, drawing and painting. These were from a session with the theme of Flappers - the top and bottom ones long poses and the middle ones two 5 minute poses. Such fun, but what does one do with all these studies..!?
The talk went well in spite of nerves, I'm a drawer not a talker!..but I had stacks of sketchbooks on display, and inspirational sketching books like The Art of Urban Sketching and One Drawing a Day and Danny Gregory's books. The group received it enthusiastically - ten minutes wasn't actually enough to say all I had to say about urban sketching. I'm hoping  a few more will join Joburg Sketchers, as well as start their own sketchbooks and journals. I forgot to take a photo, as I always do :-/ but I have to say the display looked quite impressive, I never feel like I sketch enough, but when they're all spread out - whew - 100's!!