Before Self-isolation

This is from the last "long pose" before the big shutdown and I picked it to be on my April newsletter - but it had to be cropped to fit the space so here is the full head and shoulders pose....mixed media. As I said in my newsletter, some artists like to get a very smooth effect with pastels by I like to retain the feel of the chalk strokes. Sometimes I think I'm a frustrated portrait painter - I'd love to be able to just paint and draw people all the time. The trouble is, I don't seem to be in the right marketplace for that. I think would be possible to draw at a 2 meter distance as that is about where I was from this model.- but, right now, the art centre is closed and everyone is self-isolating anyway... will just have to hope we can return to it all in the future...

High Noon

Here is my pastel of Michael as Gary Cooper in High Noon . the drawing is done on a rough hand-made paper as I felt it suited the subject.  I love doing figure drawing and I feel that drawing is really important. I usually do Life Drawing once a week and save some drawings, The warm-up one and two-minute poses are drawn on newsprint and I usually just put them in the recycling bin. Right now  I am drawing with a white pencil on black paper - just exploring the effects of the light making highlights on the figure. There are more pages in the black sketchbook than I originally thought so it is going to be awhile before I get back to colour. Maybe I'll work with water-soluble crayons then - or even watercolour for awhile. This pastel work is from a different day - usually every other week - when we have a "long pose" and I often  work in mixed media - in my case - pastel over acrylic and acrylic pastel gel which you can see in previous posts.

Betty Boop

I  just sent out my newsletter for July and I chose this as the illustration- one of our last Friday Long Poses of this session. Shelley posed as "Betty Boop" the 1930's cartoon character. Betty was based on a caricature of the singer Helen Kaine, who, in turn, mimicked the style of the black singer Baby Esther Jones. She was the first rather sexy cartoon character and, as such, created quite a stir. She as supposed to be sixteen years old and was depicted with a curvaceous body topped with a larger head with big eyes and gorgeous eyelashes. She was sometimes threatened by villains but always maintained her virtue - her boop-boop-a-doop. Shelley did a great job with hair style and make-up as well as projecting the personality so this made it a fun session. I used the mixed-media pastel method I have been using for these sessions. I like the way I can get different background effects rather than be limited with a set colour of pastel paper. I won't go into all the detail again here as I have described it in earlier postings--watercolour paper, acrylic colours, acrylic gel for pastels, pastels. But no more Long Poses until the fall now.

Black and white for last "long pose" of the season

This was our last  Friday "long pose" as we can't book daytime space once the schoolkids are out and kid's classes are running all the time. I decided to keep it simple and draw in Chinese ink. Paper does make a difference. The top drawings were warm-up poses of one minute each and are drawn with a Chinese brush on cartridge paper. The brush and ink has a lovely flow for doing the quick sketches. The next shown was actually the third from the long pose and I had shifted my position a little.  It is done all with a brush and ink on "terra-skin" - the paper that isn't really a paper as it is actually made from stone. The ink wash puddled a bit more as terra-skin is not as absorbent - so it took longer to dry. I don't really like the mottled effect that results. The next drawing is on vellum paper - a bit creamier and thicker. The washes sunk into the paper quicker so there was more control. The last one is also on vellum paper and there was some pen used as well as the brush. These were all part of a roughly three-hour session - which means a little over two hours of actual drawing time. Although we can't book daytime sessions during the summer, fortunately we still have our Wednesday night Life Drawing.  It is not likely that I'll work in Chinese ink then as we are more crowded and I need a bit of room to work with ink.

Pastel Life Drawing

This is from last Friday with our smaller group for "Long  Pose". It works out to around 2 hours drawing (or painting) time - allowing for breaks for the model and time to set up the pose and lighting. This piece is done with mostly soft pastels or grey pastel paper- no mixed media this time as we were in a smaller room and there wasn't comfortable space to get up, apply paint, pastel gel etc. We have a sturdy step stool now and with sufficient padding on it, it makes something a bit different for the model to perch on. So, we get away from the flatter "girl in chair" type pose. My position meant that I had a nice angular view - and a bit of challenging  foreshortening. "Foreshortening" just means perspective as applied to the human form. If we had  more storage space, we could have a chaise lounge or other things that would give an interesting set of options for poses - but we don't. The step-stool has the virtue of folding flat for storage. Some people call pastels "paintings"but I think of it as more of a completed drawing since there is paper left uncovered. Some fast painters can complete a painting in this time, but I don't paint that fast so I was happy to be using pastels for this .

End of October

It hardly seems possible that we are at the end of October already and that our GuessWho? sale will be THIS SATURDAY!   I have been busy organizing for it - I think there will be more paintings than ever - and the quality is outstanding. We have lots of people returning from previous years but here is the information if you haven't attended before.  All the paintings are 10x10 and are on gallery-thick canvas. All sell for $100 each - a tremendous bargain. The trick is that you don't know the artist until you buy as the signatures are on the back (or covered). Some people recognize certain artists styles and will buy on that basis, but the important thing is that the purchaser likes the painting - so - really, is who painted it all that important? It could even be a lesson in finding out what you do like without being influenced by a signature. I can think of many well-known artists who painted some real masterpieces - and also some pretty bad stuff. Most of us do some serious weeding from time to time. You have to be willing to take some risks to grow - but not all the risks are successful, especially at first. So, a lot of tossing takes place and most artists damage the work in some way so that it is not possible for it to be "rescued". - but I digress- The point of this sale is to find what *you* like. $50 goes to the artist - who - at that price- is making a donation too - and the balance goes to Richmond Food Bank . So you get something you like and help support a charity too. The date is November 5th, the time is from 10 to 3pm and the venue is the Pioneer Church at #3 and Steveston Highway. The sale starts at 10 but there will be about 15 minutes for viewing before then- then we blow a whistle and you can snatch the painting that caught your eye.Many paintings re by members of Richmond Artists Guild but we also have well-known local artists like Chris Charlebois and Leo Hu as well as high-school students (the next Picasso?)Since they are they same size, they are nice to collect for a gallery wall.
     The pastel above is from our small-group Friday long-pose (and is not part of GuessWho?) I had planned a mixed-media approach and found I'd forgotten the acrylic pastel gel I needed - and I also didn't have the heavier paper for straight pastels. So, I used a lighter weight pastel paper from a pad  and decided to just make the best of it. In the end, I was fairly pleased with how I had captured Amanda.

Drawing on red pastel paper

     This is last night's "long pose"  - which is about 2 hours as there is set-up time, always a bit of an adjustment to make with lighting, and then breaks for the model, then clean-up time- so a three-hour period is not three hours of drawing. The evening gown was a sort of iridescent silver grey with a lovely shimmer. However, when I applied grey pastel, it looked greenish. I think that was because of the red paper. The grey took the complementary colour. I had to combat that by using some lavender pastel first and also using pure black and white as well as greys. Still, it was interesting working on the red paper as it made the set-up more dramatic and gave a good underlying warmth to the skin. I might consider making a painting of this and I do have a reference photo as well- but the skin tones and light on the dress show so much better in the pastel!

Trying something new

On the theory that not much is going to happen to any of them, I like to try different things on our Friday "Long Pose" days. We are a smaller group than Wednesday evenings - so there is more room. For this pose with Amanda, I first drew her in charcoal on watercolour paper. Then I did a wash of red acrylic paint and used a dryer to get it dry. This is where more space helped as I moved from where I was drawing to a table to use a blow dryer. Then I painted over everything with acrylic ground for pastels - using a foam brush, not a good painting brush as it is fairly gritty. Then back to the blow dryer. Then I worked with regular pastels but I found it easier to keep it loose. This was partly because of the way I had started fairly quickly to draw in the pose and the wash of paint gave it all a rougher look. Even the way the "ground"accepted the pastels was a bit different. I quite like the results but I have no major plans for it. As a pastel, it would have to be framed and glassed and it is a full sheet of watercolour paper  so that would be fairly expensive. I will probably show it at next year's DoorsOpen - but I think it is just going into the cupboard in the meantime. Wednesday night's long pose will just be on pastel paper as I won't be able to have the room for this - but I definitely intend to try this somewhat "mixed media" approach again. I haven't tried this before and haven't seen it done in actuality - but I did see this method on a website so I got the acrylic ground for pastels - which I hadn't know existed- and gave it a go.