People, Portraits and Figures
“Refugees from the Horrors of Syria’s Civil War”
Return to the Life Drawing Class after many months
Feeling a little rusty as I did the two following sketches:
watercolor portrait : From the Hills of New Mexico
Lawrence Street Gallery, Ferndale MI Summer Invitational Exhibition 2018
”The Dressmaker’s Daughter” is the painting below.
It is an acrylic painting with collage elements.
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Return from a Sail
My portrait and me at the Independent Painters Exhibit 2017. Following it is my other painting, where I am pictured with members of my family who attended, my husband Walt, and our daughter Lindsay.
These two paintings above were recently in the Independent Painters Exhibition at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association.
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“Arrival at the Top Floor”
Begun as a portrait of a model in the Independent Artists session, this scenario just kept screaming at me to be painted. The more I involved my thinking with it, the more it dictated how it should take form. Where the portrait was painted from the model using acrylic paint, so much of the rest of the piece was inspired by finding suitable collage elements, resizing their images, and going into them with brushes loaded with pigment in order to unify the entirety of the image.
The model above is one of my favorite people to work from. The painting of her above was done from a photo I took when working on an acrylic painting that I was doing at a session with her as the subject. Back at my studio, I decided it had the ingredients for a fine watercolor painting. I completed it last night. The next piece I plan to focus on is the acrylic portrait of the same model. The style here is more specific, and that piece is somewhat more impromptu in approach.
Painting from a model, I developed my subject seated in a bus station. He clutches newspaper pages from the time of Obama’s emergence as a significant factor in our lives.
Watercolor Portraits
I am into painting watercolor portraits right now. This one followed the one below it. I am also interested in playing with the design of the page, so I am exploring possibilities of shapes that can be used behind or with the portrait itself, trying to enhance the image by keeping its setting simple.
Watercolor portrait of model in the Independent Painters session I attend.
Figures Drawn from Models
The two drawings I posted here are from a 3 hour session where each of these 2 sittings lasted 1/2 hour. Completed in crayon and acrylic paint, these two drawings of a young woman took intense concentration to commit to the page. This top picture was embellished with gold paint on the right side, just to play with the effect it would have. One of the advantages when working from this model is that she is slim enough that I can define her spine and ribs in the process of drawing her. It adds to the interest in the drawing, but it also contributed to the study of the body drawn from life. She has the stamina to sit in a pose for long periods of time, a great help to the artists working from her.
The two drawings I posted here are from a 3 hour session where each of these 2 sittings lasted 1/2 hour. Completed in crayon and acrylic paint, these two drawings of a young woman took intense concentration to commit to the page. This top picture was embellished with gold paint on the right side, just to play with the effect it would have. One of the advantages when working from this model is that she is slim enough that I can define her spine and ribs in the process of drawing her. It adds to the interest in the drawing, but it also contributed to the study of the body drawn from life. She has the stamina to sit in a pose for long periods of time, a great help to the artists working from her.
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In this work I felt like I was running out of time, adding her legs speedily in the last couple of minutes. I was pleased with my results even though I faced a race with time.
During a figure session in which this model posed, his stance and imagination contributed to pleasing drawings. Here I was playing with drawing with a white oil pastel, and pulling it out from the negative space in reverse, using white acrylic to define the figure.
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This large acrylic painting/collage was a long time pulling itself together. The impetus has been the many figures I have drawn in my Life Drawing sessions over a period of a couple of years. My goal was to combine them with historical renditions of nude males throughout civilizations that include the Greeks and Romans, where they were an accepted way of representing the male figure. See my Blog, "Blogging in Color" for a guide to the various artists' figures that I selected to collage into my piece.
This male model did many seated poses in last week's sketching session. The poses were not very different from each other. I was experimenting with drawing and shading using large black crayons and a white grease pencil. I like the minimal use of the white highlights as I used them here,
Scroll down to see earlier entries
Included are portraits and figures from the independent painters sessions that I attend.
The drawing above to the right and the one immediately to the left are drawn with a grease pencil, and completed using liquid acrylics.
This drawing was done with a white grease
pencil, sketching the highlights instead of the
shadows. The negative space was developed
with liquid acrylics, to create more contrast.
pencil, sketching the highlights instead of the
shadows. The negative space was developed
with liquid acrylics, to create more contrast.
I loved that the structure of bones that defined the model were visible to include in my sketches. Here her ribs and spine became part of the drawing.
Many of these were 10 or 15 minute drawings. A couple were from 25 minute poses.
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Below and to the left , with the peach tones behind the figure, is my favorite sketch of the day. I was working on tan paper today with either a grease pencil or a graphite stick. The paint was liquid acrylic.
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Model in Hawaii
This painting has been transformed by me to transport our model in the studio to somewhere serene and beautiful in Hawaii. Wish I had gotten to go there with her, but alas, I am still in Michigan.
Below right is another drawing that does justice to the model, at least. I spent a lot of time today experimenting with choices of materials for drawing: graphite pencil, graphite stick, charcoal pencil, and my liquid acrylics...which got me nowhere this session. It was good practice, but nothing to shout about. At least there's always next time. Let it be known, though...I took no performance enhancing drugs in preparing for the class, or even on breaks, when I stuck with my usual chocolate chip cookies to give me the energy boost I needed.
New Figure Drawings, February 2013
This is a sketch from last week's drop in figure session. I'm finally getting around to posting it here
Figure drawing of last week's model
Several drawings turned out well last week. I felt that I could see the drawing on the page "in my mind's eye" before I actually drew each one. Some sessions are like that.
"Longing"
This latest Mixed-Media piece of mine was begun in the Independent Painters group I participate in. The model was a gentleman who models frequently in my life drawing sessions. I have depicted him sitting in a windowseat gazing into a nearby exterior landscape of tall trees.
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This model prompts me to create good drawings on a regular basis. I drew her in today's figure session.
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Heat in the City
This is the recently updated version of this mixed-media piece. It was developed from a model in the Independent Painters group, based on his pose painted in acrylics, and developed using collage elements to build a location for the figure. I'm having an exciting time with my re-entry into the world of mixed-media work recently.
"My Favorite Pink Hat"
The Model is quite enamoured by her pink hat, which she says casts a pink tone over her face. This was painted on a large canvas I brought for that day. The portrait seemed to expand to fill the space.
Marching Band
Moving forward, together now, this band performs their synchronized routine meticulously with a driving force. The precision and repetition of the uniforms, with plumes afloat, the legs proceding forward as "one", the confident stance of the musicians, and the music that we unwittingly hear, even though we aren't there , contribute to the excitement that such a band creates. This group is one I saw in Half Moon Bay, CA, on a trip to the San Francisco area. although the colors of the band's uniform have been changed to enhance the effect I was seeking.
"The Seated Model Lost in Thought"
This Mixed-media Acrylic painting incorporates corrugation, rice paper with natural grasses and plant materials in it, patterned papers, all cut and pasted over a painting that was only half completed in a session for which the model sat , a couple of weeks ago. I was bored with its early beginnings, so I decided to shake things up a bit with collage.
"Syracuse Piano Bar"
36"w x 50"h
Here is my first oil painting from my college years.It was probably painted in 1961 or 62. I haven't added it to my website before because it was standing behind some things where I couldn't get it out to photograph it until now. It was painted on a canvas I stretched in class cut from army surplus canvas, and primed with white house paint. Now that I am 200 years old, I would say it held up very nicely using those cheap supplies!
Good model for figure work today
Liquid acrylics on Strathmore toned paper
This was one of the longer poses today, however, when I reached this point in drawing it, I knew that I had said enough, so I ended my session. Too often the temptation is to keep working, adding more detail, until "time is up" for that pose. Whenever I do that, letting time be the"boss" , I take it too far, losing the sculptural simplicity of the pose. In this pose, the model seemed as if carved out of stone or molded from a lump of clay. I wanted to hold on to that quality in my sketch...
This was one of the longer poses today, however, when I reached this point in drawing it, I knew that I had said enough, so I ended my session. Too often the temptation is to keep working, adding more detail, until "time is up" for that pose. Whenever I do that, letting time be the"boss" , I take it too far, losing the sculptural simplicity of the pose. In this pose, the model seemed as if carved out of stone or molded from a lump of clay. I wanted to hold on to that quality in my sketch...
Below are more figure drawings, including a slide show of images.
"Channeling Matisse"
I began this painting at least a couple of months ago working from a simple figure I had drawn in a drop-in figure session. It was an experiment to see how I could take one of many drawings I've done, and embellish and develop it as a more complete piece of work. The ceramic pot is loosely interpretive of one that I own that I've painted into a watercolor still life that's on the page "Still Life Paintings", on my website.( See the site map to the left) After I began painting the piece, I put it aside, not sure how I wanted to proceed. This is the way I completed it tonight.
