Skull

I recently bought myself an anatomy book to help out with my life drawing. My sister tells me skulls have been 'in' for a couple of years, and as usual, being the laggard I am, I have only just recently bought myself a skull tshirt. Given this, I thought it might be appropriate to start my anatomy drawing skills with a skull, who somehow seems to look inordinately happy with himself. It must be those nice shiny teeth!

Saturdays

This is some of the work I've done in the class I have on Saturdays. It's always a total struggle to get out of bed to make it to class, but it's definitely been worth it. The first one is using tertiary colours, which were really cool to mix and to work with. The charcoal one is based on a 3D construction I did in class which itself was based on drawings of dead plant matter. Part of the piece I've then recreated into an oil painting which it sounds like it will be part of the student exhibition at Leith School of Art in December. My first time being in an exhibition, pretty exciting! It's cool to now look back and see where the Saturday morning class was headed and to have some output to show. I'm also glad to have such good lecturers!

Colour pastel

More life drawing, this time in colour pastels. I enjoyed drawing this model.

Pastel figure

My figure drawing class is proving somewhat challenging but I'm slowly getting into the swing of things. Last night we worked on 3 sketches of the same pose in pastels. This is the most finished one though as you can see her arm still has a bit of a way to go. I'm still struggling with tones, and mid-tones especially. I recently went to an exhibition of Astrid Trugg at the henderson gallery www.thehendersongallery.com/current.html. I really enjoyed her pieces, especially the boats (and was checking out her use of tones) and the way she collaged pieces of newspaper into her work, which I thought worked really well. I am also very much in love with one of the paintings showing at the moment at the Open Eye Galley but it doesn't look like they have it on the website http://www.openeyegallery.co.uk/. I'll have to find out the artist - I wish you could see it.

Starter nudes

I went to my first figure drawing class tonight, which was cool. We did contour drawings. I faithfully stuck to the not taking the pencil off the page, hence the wobbly legs and feet, but I always get a kick out of contour drawings, so maybe was also bit more creative that I was meant to be. I think my flatmate was a bit shocked about me drawing nudes, hence the "You draw naked people??!") comment, but drawing people is the best thing. Other news, went to see Impressionism & Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy yesterday. Stand-outs for me were William McTaggart's "The Storm". Awesome, passionate painting, you have to see it full-size but for a little taste see http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/5139?initial=M&artistId=3308&artistName=William%20McTaggart&submit=1 . At first all I saw were the stormy waters, but then the more I looked, the more I picked out other things in the painting. There was this amazing figure of a woman in the painting, so small, yet you could see her hands tucked up tight to keep her cloak close, with the wind sweeping her skirts against and away from her. Other stand-outs for me were James Guthrie's paintings with their gold hues and dappled lights.

Portrait of a friend

This is a portrait of my friend taken from a photo when we were in Bristol lately. She wouldn't let me sketch her on the spot, so mmm, I've had to resort to underhanded means, but hey, my friend, if you see this and you want it deleted, no problemos. One of my flatmates recently let me sketch her while watching tv which was cool. It turned out differently, but had more hard lines in, which was good for me, because I want to put more contrast in my work. Other things going on - went to Vanity Fair exhibition last weekend. Very cool. There was some very cool 1920s/30s shots of celebs and there was one of the more recent ones which for some reason I really liked. It was of an artist wearing t-shirt and shorts standing front-on to the camera in his studio with his painting to the left and his art gear strewn around the room. I thought it was not so much "arty" but just very honest. I liked that. I've been writing some poetry lately and I've taken inspiration from this book of women Scottish poets I'm reading and find that there too, I like the poems which are honest. I don't think I'm doing a very good job of explaining this "honest" concept, so I'm going to go. Starting a figure drawing class next week, so hope to post some stuff from that soon. Adios amigos.

Cavalier No. 4

This is me capturing the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals, 1624. He was an unknown gentleman who was apparently 26 at the time he was portrayed. It doesn't have much in common with Hals work but I am trying these days to catch the vibrancy and the spirit of things otherwise I get too bogged down in the detail. I am completely, however, in absolutely awe of the old-school painters. They were incredible and it would be my dream to be able to paint as they painted. However, in the mean time, I read an article on Liza Minnelli the other day and apparently Judy Garland had said to her that it's better to be a first-rate version of yourself than a second-rate version of someone else. So that's the plan...just got to get there...somehow!