It Has Been a While...

Hi everyone, I have had to take an unplanned bit of time off from blogging and all. Sometimes life can become a bit chaotic.

I have been working four days a week at a women's clothing store here in our little town. Health issues have led to exhaustion, and painting and drawing has slowed down. Not stopped thank goodness! The health issues are being addressed and will take a bit of time but I am happy to be on the path to wellness.

This is a transition time in my life (again!). Issues like these always come up in our lives to give us a chance to stop and think and to hopefully take positive action.

It has been a busy summer in many ways. Summer is the time for many in our little town to make enough income to survive the slow stormy winters. The store I work in is one of these and our summer has been very busy indeed.
Summer is also a wonderful time for the band I am in as we play a lot of outdoor gigs. We will be playing at the local Farmer's Market next Friday. I love going to our little Farmer's Market where I stock up on veggies and fruit for the week. This week I also picked up a bunch of sweetpeas, a bottle of flower essence, and a tin of lavendar shea butter for my hands. All locally made and crafted.

There is always music too and I like to sit and sketch after I get my marketing done. Here is a quick sketch of a musician friend playing at the market.

©2013 R.L. Delight, Farmer's Market Sketch, graphite on paper.

And another quick sketch of his musical partner when they were playing at the opening of The Beehive, a local tea and coffee hang out.

©2013 R.L. Delight, At the Beehive, graphite on paper.

I love filling my sketchbook with people and places. It is a relaxing habit to have as I make no expectations on these sketches. They are meant for practice and for my own enjoyment so I only occasionally share them with others.

I have sad news to share too. Our beloved and beautiful dog Twill is now 13. She has had problems walking and had to be carried into the house on Monday evening, in spite of ramps. We took her to the vet the next day and found out that she has an advanced case of bone cancer in her hip. There is not much we can do but make her comfortable and lavish her with love over the next few weeks. She is on medication for pain and has perked up. She is able to still go on walks and sniff the smells as well as get into the occasional bit of mischief.
I took this picture a couple of days ago. I walked her down to the beach. It will probably be her last time on the beach as the sand is really hard for her to walk on. She ate a lot of things she found so we headed back home.

Our beautiful Twill

We knew she was approaching the end but we are going to miss her. Until then we make her comfortable. She is a joy.
I have plans to get back to wave painting when the fall storms arrive. I even have new foul weather gear! Until then I sketch and continue to slowly work in the studio while healing.
I will try not to go away for so long from the blog too!

New Experiences in Life Drawing

I have been trying a new-to-me medium and technique in life drawing. Due to the small room and problems that solvents can produce, we are asked to not use them. Understandably so. I wanted to try sketching the figure from life in oils so I ordered a few tubes of a water-mixable oil paint. Royal Talens Cobra paints to be specific. I ordered a tube of burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, and white. Here is my second attempt using the paints.

This is painted on Fabriano water color paper that I gessoed with three layers and then added an acrylic grey tone to. I am struggling with three things at once here, working with an unfamiliar medium, an unfamiliar technique, and of course the ever present building of figure drawing skills. It can seem overwhelming at times but actually, it is a heck of a lot of fun! The paint really does seem to be in between an acrylic and oil paint. It certainly doesn't glide like oil. It feels sticky to me. It dries faster than oil and slower than acrylic. I think I will be able to adapt to it with a little bit of practice though.
This oil sketch was done over a one hour period.
Here are two ten-minute gesture sketches. One has more detail than the other as I focused on different goals for each one.

With this one (above) I was really focusing more on getting the nuances of the gesture than on proportion. There were so many interesting things going on in this pose.

I worked to get the gesture on this one too but I also wanted to get a bit of the form in and the interesting angle of the head. The model is reclining against a wall with his right arm crooked over a pillow.
I am slowly working on my still life. I really would like to get it finished as I want to spend some time painting quick color studies. It is taking longer than I thought but then, I made it more complicated than I had intended. All part of the learning.
The sun came out today and is supposed to visit with us for a few days but it is still very chilly. Too chilly for my fingers to be out plein air painting even though I can't wait to get out with some frequency.
We shall see if spring decides to stay awhile this next week as there will be several minus tides (neap tides) and therefore tidepools to explore...
-Renee

In Between the Showy Stuff

It is one of those weeks where the work in the studio goes slowly and, while progress is great, there isn't a lot yet to show for it. I am slowly getting the details on my grisaille refined before moving into color. I have also started getting an hour of gesture sketching in everyday. It isn't quite a habit yet as I haven't been doing it long enough but I hope to make it one.
Before you ask, I am not using a live model. I am using poses from Pose Space. I figure for gesture sketching a live model isn't quite as crucial. I have purchased about five poses plus two additional free poses which I put in into an iPhoto album. I then set it to a random slide show full screen. Each pose has photos taken from several angles, for example one pose has 28 pictures giving 28 different views of the same pose. This makes for a lot of random photos for the slide show. I can set the time to 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc. I get a good range of gestures this way. So far it seems to work fine.
There is a life drawing session here in town which I attend but, while I am grateful for the opportunity to have inexpensive access to a live model, it has its drawbacks. Most of the artist, all but one in fact, are not interested in doing gesture sketches. They don't see the value in them so we often only spend the first ten minutes doing gesture sketches. However, I understand why people want to get to the longer poses. I guess I just got used to the way things were when I was in school. So, I do my own gesture sketching. One of these days, I will to be able to hire my own models to work with!
In the meantime, here is the second still life set up:

This is a fun set up for me. After a storm, there is often a lot of stuff washed up on the beach. These floats pop up now and then. I have been able to find a few since we have been here. I picked the most colorful ones that I have and put them in what is hopefully a somewhat simple set up.
All around town people hang these found floats in their yards. I love looking at all the colors and hope I can find a few more on the beach in my favorite colorways.
I am not sure how long it will take until the grisaille is ready for the next major step but will publish the progress made in the next post. I haven't started on the above set up but when I need to wait for paint to dry on the first one or need a break from it, I will.
A final note, in school we used a wonderful charcoal from France called Nitram Fusians. The man who made the charcoal retired and it has no longer been available for a time. There is good news though, A Canadian man bought the business and equipment and is now manufacturing the charcoal again. The drawing charcoal was wonderful to use. I have just ordered some of the new charcoal and hope that it is indeed up to the previous standard. It is not cheap but after having to use other charcoal on the market and even made my own, it will be worth it. I should have a review of the new charcoal when it comes. In the meantime the charcoal can be found at Nitram Charcoal.
That is it for this week. Hope everyone stays warm and dry!
-Renee