Figuary 2020 - LIFE drawing

February is FIGUARY!  I have joined in on the FIGUARY 2020 challenge at Vimeo Croquis Cafe, doing life drawing from models on Vimeo.  It is an excellent way to improve on your overall drawing skills and it is FREE!

Often I can not make it to the life drawing sessions available in Edmonton (see Harcourt house courses ).   This is a great alternative way to get some instruction through the lovelifedrawing  instructors on YouTube, then you go over to Vimeo Croquis Cafe for the actual model session.  Unfortunately YouTube does not allow life drawing videos because of the nude models.  Vimeo however does and has some excellent life drawing sessions to practise with.  Posting your life drawing sketches also can cause some issues on Instagram and Facebook because of the nude poses.   (sigh - I would like to go into a long rant here about art / nudes post vs violence / hateful posts but I will withhold my views).

If you have any 'nude' issues than the tamer SketchDaily website has excellent animal and clothed people photos to practise on.  HOWEVER, I find it interesting that a number of the clothed photos on this site are of women in 'sexy' costumes and seem more degrading to women, than any nude models on Vimeo.  In one of my figure drawing classes at university, one of the female models refused to wear 'sexy' lingerie items, as she felt they were offensive to women and I had to agree - the lingerie seemed to create a more 'porn' feel to the pose. Rant over.

The time commitment is minimal as the videos are about 15 minutes long.  It can start with 30 second to 1 minute poses, 2 minute poses and finally one 5 minute pose.  The 2 minute poses are my favourites - not enough time to get into detail, but just getting important lines and movement sketched in.  FUN!

Day 3-  2 min poses

I am noticing an improvement in my sketching in these first 7 days - the tips and instruction on lovelifedrawing  are helpful.  

 Happy Sketching.

Day 7 - 2 min poses

Day 7 - 5 min pose

INKTOBER - Draw it out!

'Ring - yup yup yup - phone'...ah Sesame Street, what would I be without you.

Mindless - Day 2 prompt

It is always a good idea to keep your drawing skills up.  September the life drawing classes start again. October is Inktober 2019  where you follow a prompt (if you like) and draw every day in October.  The first 2 days have been easy - might get more challenging as it goes along!

First Artist Demo

Yesterday was my first ever artist demo at The Fernie Arts Station. Being a beautiful Saturday afternoon I was not surprised that the audience was small, but that was probably a good thing as I wasn’t nervous and they were nice with no heckling!  I was surprised how quickly the 2 hours went by, initially thinking I would wrap it up early, but did not.

What worked well:
I did the demo in a similar fashion to the baking shows.  I had 3 canvases of the same size. One was just a gessoed and toned ‘blank’, the second had a completed under painting and the third was the fully finished version.

I started with my blank toned canvas and described how I prepped the canvas. Then I showed my sketchbook and talked about my drawings and studies for prepping and planning
I began the drawing on the canvas with diluted oils and got half way done, then asked if they had enough and wanted me to move on to painting.  UNANIMOUS yes.

  Hmmm... it was a good time to throw in a joke - why did Van Gogh become a painter? Because He didn’t have an ear for music. GROANS. Moving on.

Started the darks and shadows first with thinned oil paint.  Then mixed up sky colour, then lightest grass colour and covered the largest areas first. Then tackled the house and soon enough time was up.There were of course questions throughout which I hope I answered without babbling too much.  I think I would sometimes go off on tangents but hope they got their questions answered.  I showed the completed version earlier on in response to a question.

I think I would be good to go if I ever had to do another demo someday.  The pre-planned and finished painting steps worked well for me, as there were no surprises.  I do like to plan ahead!

All in all a positive experience for me, hope it was okay for the audience.  It would be worthwhile having someone video the talk so I could cringe and watch it all later to see what was working best. Many thanks to Jackie at the Arts Station and the women that attended!

Fernie Arts Station
 
Photo courtesy of Jackie from the Arts Station

Sketchbook

One of the most important parts of a good painting is always your initial sketch.  When I took my first art class I took a watercolour introduction.  Like many first timers, I wanted to get straight to the colour and found drawing 'boring'.  The more classes I took, the more I realized I needed to learn how to draw better.  Now I really enjoy drawing and sketching and am thinking of joining the Edmonton Sketchers group, part of Urban Sketchers, to get out of the lonely studio now and then and too improve my skills.

Today, here is a peek into my past week's practise.  The first two sketches I tried as much as possible not to lift my pen from the paper and get one line - I wasn't that successful with the faces.  These were both done from photos, one from an art book on Lucien Freud.  The other from a photo I took.

 This very quick sketch below was done on my iPad with my fabulous iPen in Notes.  Done from life of my dog lying nearby.  She did not like me staring so intensely at her and when I started the second one, the one of her head on the top, she got up and left, so that's where the drawing stopped.  Good practise for sketching in public I guess.

What's up with that?

I often feel like I never get enough time to paint. I still prioritize other things like housework, community commitments, etc before art.  I think because art doesn't feel like work, I feel guilty working on it when there are 'other' things that need doing.  However every good practising artist I have met says you have to treat it like a job - 9 - 5:00 pm and paint if you want to actually get serious about it.  I am hoping to take that advice and get serious.

Since my last post, I have kept busy on lots of projects. As a board member of our community league I planned and helped carry out a Canada 150 celebration - 500 people showed up and it was almost a full time job in the week or two leading up to it.  I also created a couple of giant puzzles for Art in our Park and ran an interactive painting project for the crowds.  That was fun and went really well too.  Here are the puzzles, one was after Lemoine Fitzgerald's The Harvester and the other after Emily Carr's Haida Totems:

Fitzgerald - The Harvester

Emily Carr - Haida Totems

I am also taking a Figure Drawing night class.  Below is my attempt at a self portrait.  I can't post much else from this class as it is mostly nude figures we are sketching.  Figure drawing REALLY helps improve the ol' drawing skills.

self portrait - sketch on paper