Life Drawing Interlude

I have had to take a break from the weekly life drawing session due to being so busy with other art stuff and life lately. I was going once a week and now it is once a month. One of the things I miss the most about school was the regular opportunity to be drawing from a model. I will be getting back to going once a week.
As you can imagine I am a bit rusty! Here are three sketches. The first two are fifteen minute poses, the last is about a 20 minute pose. I use charcoal or pencil on 18"x24" newsprint. That allows me to not worry about making mistakes and just draw. The last drawing I grabbed a sketchbook and moved around the room to get a couple of shorter sketches from a 30 minute pose.

life drawing, charcoal on newsprint, 15 minutes. R.L. Delight, 2012

life drawing, charcoal on newsprint, 15 minutes. R.L. Delight, 2012

life drawing, graphite on paper, 20 minutes. R.L. Delight, 2012

I want to take a moment to welcome new readers and artists, and of course, dear returning friends to my blog. I am going to be adding new artists blogs to my reading list as well! My day off is usually spent catching up on my blog reading and enjoying what others are creating and experiencing.
Got to run. Thankfully this week life will slow down a bit and I can spend more time in the studio! Looking forward to reading what you all have been creating!
-Renee

Making a Mess in the Sunshine

A wonderful thing happened this week, we got a taste of Spring! When you live in a cool, wet, gray climate, the sun coming out to play for several days in a row is cause for celebration. Don't get me wrong, I love the climate here, but warm sunshine in February is a treat.
It also causes me to drop everything in the studio and head out with my plein air setup. I haven't done a lot of plein air painting. In fact, I could probably count the times I have been out on one hand plus an extra finger or two. I tried to get out more last year but I kept getting too cold. I would get caught up in painting and even though I had warm clothes on, wouldn't realize how cold I was until I finished and disengaged. I would be shivering uncontrollably all the way home. With this warm spell, the cold was not a problem. I headed out to my favorite spot, Hug Point.
Hug Point is a spectacularly beautiful spot where the Pacific Northwest forest meets the sea. The cliffs are water-carved sandstone and basalt. Quite dramatic. The only trick is, the tide has to be right to access it. I got to Hug Point just as it was possible to get around the first point. I had two hours until the tide turned. This particular area of Hug Point is dominated a waterfall cascading to the sand and tower of rock. The sun is lower this time of year and the rock glows golden. I placed my easel where I could see the ocean out of the corner of my eye and get a reasonable angle to paint. I never turn my back on the ocean. Sneaker waves, riptides, and floating trees are notorious around here and can and do take the occasional life.
I decided to concentrate on the color relationships and temperature for this oil sketch. I know that I am not up to painting a plein air masterpiece at this stage of my career! The warm winter sun brought out amazing colors in the rock. I made a glorious mess. I did take photographs so that I can do a few refinements in the studio but here is the mess I made:

Hug Point, plein air, oil on canvas 12"x12"

As you can probably tell, I concentrated mostly on the rock tower. The trees above the cliff I hastily suggested while eyeing the incoming tide. I really didn't want to get trapped there. There is a cave on the far left created by the ocean waves. Not a gentle place when the tide is full. Hug Point has a wonderful and interesting history that would make for a very long post. In short though, a bit further along is a road that was carved into the rock.  It used to be the only way to to get to where I live. Even before the road was carved there were (and still are) hand and foothold carved on the cliff by the First Nations people. One had to literally hug the point to cross. Needless to say there are stories of people, horses, and cars that were swept away by rising tides and, I suspect, sneaker waves. The road bed is covered with sea life such as large barnacles. I will post a picture of it another time. Here is a picture taken on a different day when it was gray and misty of the same area as the painting. My husband is standing on the foot of the rock. It gives a sense of scale that is not apparent in the painting.

Hug Point

I was painting from a completely different angle of course!
The final thing I have to show for this week is a sketch from today's life drawing session. I talked them into splitting a 40 minute pose into two 20 minute segments so that we could get a more dynamic pose that the model can hold.

Life Drawing, charcoal on newsprint 18"X24'

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the drawing. I felt it was still a bit too stiff.  I admit I am a bit out of practice. I have been working hard on so many other areas. I will get my skills back up to snuff soon.
I have errands and appointments tomorrow then I will be back at it in the studio...unless the sun decides to favor us with another day or two!
-Renee

Figure Sketching Interlude

Well, no daily paintings to show this week. I had a few unexpected interruptions and decided to use the odd bits of time I had left getting a few things set up, rearranged and ready to go. I have also been tweaking a few things around the studio to make it more efficient. One of those weeks. I will be reporting on some of the rearrangements in a future post.
In the meantime, I wanted to share a figure sketch I did last week. This is a 30 minute pose. The sketch is a bit distorted by the camera angle making her head look different from the actual drawing, but the general sense of the drawing is there. The reason why I wanted to share it is that I really resonated with this model. She has an unusual and subtle beauty that I found artistically intriguing. She has many tattoos, some of which are artfully positioned on her face but they add to her overall beauty rather than detract. I would like to paint this young woman's portrait.

30 minute Figure Sketch, charcoal on newsprint

Speaking of portraits, I will be stepping up to portrait studies this year. That is one of the things I was getting in place last week. So much fun to have all this wonderful art and challenging growth to work on!
Monday is an appointment and errand day for me and then back to work in the studio. I have the next daily painting set up and ready to go.
-Renee

Liberace Workshop - Day 1

Wow! It has been quite a day. We arrived on Whidbey Island yesterday evening and are now ensconced in a funky little cabin overlooking the ferry route on Puget Sound. There are twenty or so attendees at the workshop which is hosted by WIFAS. The first half of the day was a demo given by our instructor. Rob Liberace is a wonderful instructor and amusing speaker. He is also able to do a drawing demo while talking which I find impressive. After his drawing demonstration we got set up to start our own drawing and then stopped for lunch. The rest of the day was spent drawing and working on what we had learned and saw.
I am hoping this blog will be coherent! Even though I am not as tired as I thought I would be (yay green smoothies!) my mind is on overload with all I have seen and did today. Before I continue, here is my work for the day:

The materials are Prismacolor Verithin colored pencil in terracotta on paper toned with water color and sealed with shellac. The purpose of the finish is to push the pencil into behaving more like red chalk. The Verithin pencil gives a very sharp thin line when properly sharpened.
This drawing was done in a four hour time period, and boy did it go fast! The emphasis was on the torso so the head, at least in my drawing, and the legs and feet have little detail. There were a few people who had more skill and experience than I have who were able to add more detail to the face and limbs. Their drawings were quite lovely and gave me encouragement.
Our models are quite wonderful. During one of the breaks they dressed and then demonstrated a kind of acrobatic yoga that was amazing to behold. It would be pretty fantastic to draw those poses but alas, they could only be held for a very short time.
I am learning a lot of wonderful things and am doing my best to take it all in. It is great to have instruction and feedback again. I really do miss it.
Tomorrow we have another day of drawing and then the last three days will be painting.
We have friends to visit with tomorrow after class so I am not sure if I will get online to post. More to follow though, never fear!
-Renee

Drawing from Life

Meet one of my all time favorite models. This gentleman drives down from southwest Washington state over an hour to pose for us. Well, of course we pay him but he doesn't really make much when you take into account the gas money and probably a meal. What makes him my favorite is that through much experience he really knows how to model. So many people think that it can't be that hard, just hold still. Set your timer for three minutes and hold a pose. Unless you are laying on your bed, it isn't always easy. Now imagine holding a pose for 45 minutes, without a break!
Of course, there is more to modeling than holding still. This man knows how to move gracefully and seems to instinctively understand how to make even a simple pose interesting to the artists. The pose above was a 15 minute pose (charcoal on newsprint), as you can tell, there is not much detail or muscle structure. I was really focusing on getting the gesture. I knew this model was going to be here that day so I brought along my nice charcoal drawing paper and my good charcoal as well and got a nice drawing in on the final pose, which was 45 minutes.
I think I have mentioned it before but one of the things I miss the most about school (besides my teachers and fellow students of course) is the access to frequent live model sessions. Three hours, two times a month is just not enough!
I am still working bit by bit on the still life paintings. I will show those when there is enough progress to show. It has been going a bit slower lately as I have had to turn my attention to a few life matters.
I am a couple days late with this post as Sunday was filled with life drawing and then a cast party for a readers theater group that my husband has become involved with. Yesterday I went north to Astoria to stock up the pantry. We have a snowstorm bearing down upon us. They are calling for 1-2" here on the beach (needless to say, sea level), and about 18" on all the passes that we would have to cross to leave the coast. We should be snug and warm. I am hoping I will be able to get some pictures of the snow on the beach.
Off to catch up on reading some of the wonderful blogs on my list!
-Renee

Retrospective-A Year at the Ashland Academy of Art

Well, it has been a while since the last post. We have been busy getting settled in. It always surprises me how much time that takes. We are more or less all unpacked, registered, addresses changed, new library cards, Co-op memberships, etc. We are slowly finding where everything is, meeting people, and attending community events. So far the verdict is: I love it here!
I am not going to be getting into a post about our new home town just now. It will trickle in between the lines of the future posts. Right now I am going to post a retrospective of my school year. I narrowed it down in twelve photos. That was kind of tough to do but it is enough to give a good idea of the growth of skill. The pictures don't even come close to telling the whole story but gives a general picture.
The next post I will be talking about the great number of changes, both for the blog and for my art life. I know what direction I will be heading in and will be sharing it soon. In the meantime, here is where I just been!

Next week I will be talking about my new studio, what I am working on now, and where I will be going from here.
See you next time!
-Renee

Figure Drawing

This has been a very busy week. I am back at school and we started figure drawing. It feels good to be standing at an easel and moving around instead of sitting. We are doing mostly short poses this week to warm us up and get into the rhythm. Figure drawing is a progression. We start with short one minute poses, move to 2, 3, and 5 minute poses and then a couple of 10 minute poses. Thursday afternoon we did a 2 1/2 hour pose ( the model poses for 20 minutes at a time before taking a short 5 minute break so a 2 1/2 hour pose is broken up into 20 minute segments with the model taking the same pose after each break). So here is what a one minute pose/sketch looks like:

The most important factor that must be found first is the gesture. Without a good depiction of the gesture, perfect proportions and detail would not be relevant. You would have a pretty picture but it would look stiff and not realistic. As one can imagine, we work hard at capturing gesture and it isn't easy, at least, not for me at this point!
Here is a 3 minute pose:

At this time, we are working with charcoal on newsprint. This next pose is a 5 minute pose and I am starting to put in shadow:

This final pose is in charcoal on Canson Mi Tientes charcoal paper and is the 2 1/2 hour pose. Notice there is still very little detail as at this time I was also working on getting the proportions right. That is still a challenge for me, specially with the human figure.

Friday afternoon we were back to construction drawing but now of plaster busts. A challenging and exciting week all around. I really do like figure drawing so far.
On the home front, I have a new easel and have had to make room in my little room for it. I have been going through boxes and bins cleaning out and shifting things around. Today I managed to convince my husband to pose for me over an hour to get a bit more figure sketching in, and try out the new easel of course! Next week will be interesting, exciting, and challenging too. Until then, -Renee