Life Painting on Canvas

Girl with a Balloon, acrylic on canvas

Unfinished as yet, and rather rough, but here is my first attempt at painting on canvas. Taking the advice of a friend I told the model I was not painting her, thereby excusing in advance the fact that it doesn’t look like her. More work to do on this so update coming soon – assuming it looks better not worse!

Portrait of Someone I’ve Never Met!

Life Drawing - Portrait in Pencil

Now that I am not doing classes my output of drawings has rather dropped off and painting has been non-existent. Must try harder!

Well here is my latest little Life Drawing effort. On the face of it (no pun intended) it looks like a reasonable sketch I think. Only one problem really, which is that despite my best efforts to draw what I saw, this picture looks nothing like the model (and family member) who sat for me. I mean, not even vaguely recognisably close. So, disappointment all around.

Life Drawing in the Absence of Models

Eve, a drawing of a statue of a bare lady, almost like life drawing

Here we are then. A couple of dreadful sketches from real life, courtesy of passengers on SouthWest Trains, and one of a beautiful statue in the V&A museum. It’s unfinished, time ran out and I had to be somewhere else. And it’s OK but not that good. More of a learning experience. So what did I learn? That I need to practice more, and that I need to measure better to get the proportions right – the body is too short and I have lost some of her feminine curves. I plan to go back and draw Eve again, but perhaps with grey paper, chalk and charcoal.

As for the commuters, both of these are unfinished because they got off the train before I had a chance to finish. I know, I know, the lesson is to draw faster. I just can’t seem to do it though!

Passenger 1, girl with a wide mouth

Passenger 2, bloke on the train

Twits on Twitter

Well I have closed my Twitter account in disgust. Not that I used it much. The only thing that ever happened with it was that I got the occasional “follower” via the link on this blog, and they always turned out to be links to “Adult Dating” web sites. Today I got another one of those and, in a fit of stupidity, I replied to it telling them to stop it. Well within moments I was getting spammed by them. Presumably they have a robot programme to help their link building strategy because every minute I got another “follower” and they were all total strangers from the USA or dating/porn links. And each one sent a notification email to my In Box so that was disappearing fast under a virtual deluge of crap. So social networking – HAH!!!

And another big HAH! to all the porn/adult dating sites and their link building strategies. You are scum. I bite my thumb at you all.

PS  How cheeky are the pornographers! Within less than 36 hours I had spam form a hard core porn site trying to link to this post and the even published a bit of my rant on their site.

Sunbathing

Sketch of Lady Sunbathing

OK so I have mostly been sunbathing, and jolly nice it was too. But I did take a moment now and then to draw and this is probably my favourite result from the summer weeks. Don’t you just love the way the spiral binding and perforations in the paper intrude on the subject? Hmmm… Must try harder and scale things to fit.

Haven’t booked any classes for September yet. I don’t know if I can afford it really, but I will miss the benefit of a teacher to tell me what I am meant to be doing, the regular meetings with like minded people, and of course the models without whom I will once more be reduced to trying to draw people in public. I may have left it too late to get on any good courses anyway.

The Search

slow motion pinball

I bounce between poetry

and art all my life

Vanishing Point

Vanishing Point

OK so it’s not the usual holiday photograph, and OK it doesn’t quite reach the vanishing point, but of all the things I saw on my quick tour of Europe this is the image that struck me most. I also called it Vanishing Point because this is a dockside so you could step off the decking onto a ship and sail over the horizon and vanish forever.  I saw Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon, Cannes and lots of other fabulous places. They were wonderful and doubtless many images from the holiday wil feature on the blog in the weeks and months to come, but I loved the look and texture of this simple wooden decking. It looks like a black & white photo but it is actually colour, the wooden planks were just so grey.

Strangers on a Train

Sketch of a man asleep on the train

Sketch of a woman on the train

Those crazy people the “Art Teachers” say we should practice our drawing on the way to work on the bus or train, just draw people everywhere we go. Well that’s all very well but easier said than done. For a start, once people realise you are drawing them they get all embarassed and self-conscious. I thought it was pretty much impossible until the other day I saw a woman on crowded rush hour train from Waterloo doing some intense life drawing. She was drawing everyone around her, and kept going from one to another and back round again to avoid making it too obvious that she was looking at anyone in particular. I was so impressed it made me want to try harder and do it myself, so here are a few sketches from train journeys and coffee shops. A coffee shop isn’t quite so bad, but on the train everyone can see what you’re doing and the person opposite you is so close it’s ridiculous. Still, we soldier on.

Sketch of a man in the coffee shop

Unfinished Nude

Unfinished Nude

Oh how frustrating is that! Despite being a pose held for two lessons I still didn’t get finished. I really wanted to come away with a finished painting, but the teacher kept pointing out the improvements required in the drawing and I had to make adjustments here and there. She said it was better to have a well drawn unfinished picture than a finished but wrong one and I guess she was right. But what now? The term is finished. Do I leave the picture unfinished or just buy some acrylics of my own and finish it from memory/imagination. I mean it’s not like I want to frame it and have a great big naked man on my living room wall, but I would so have liked to complete the work.

Now the question is what to do next. Of course I draw when I can but it’s so hard to paint or even draw in everyday life. I need a regular class to keep me going. More life painting, or life drawing, or maybe portraiture would be good. It would be nice to make my drawings look like the actual people they are of.

Work In Progress

Sitting Nude

Well to finish off the course we have a two week pose. Does this mean I will finally produce a finished painting? Or will I just work at half-speed? Usually I spend most of a lesson just trying to get the drawing right and then slap most of the paint on in the final ten minutes or so. As you can see above, in the whole of the first lesson I have not got much further than the “drawing” stage, and in fact it still needs some adjustment. Never mind, I will start next week with some final adjustments to the shape and the get on with it. Hopefully when I have finished there will be something better than usual to upload here. Shame it’s a bloke, it would have been nice to finish off the term with a traditional bare lady picture but never mind. It’s the art that counts. And then the question is what to do next. More Life Painting, back to Life Drawing, or something else? Hmmm…

Home is where the Art is

That’s my theory anyway.  One of my favourite places to see art is at the Tate Modern so throwing caution to the wind I will try to make a link to it now.  This is my first ever blog in case you hadn’t guessed.  Well that seemed to go OK so what else can I try.  I won’t put up one of my poems just yet.  Or publish my thoughts on life the universe and everything.  I know, I’ll try a photograph.

Sardinia Sunset

 

Well that seems OK too.  I’d better stop for now beofre I get carried away.

Amazing Discovery

I think not actually.  BBC1’s Antiques Roadshow did a big PR exercise to try to boost it’s ratings.  A week of stories in the media teasing the biggest “find” the show had ever discovered. The programme came from Newcastle that week.

What did it turn out to be?  Was it an unknown Titian masterpiece found in an attic?  A long lost manuscript by Shakespeare?  An inherited piece of rare Georgian silverware? No, no, and no again. It was a smaller scale version of the Angel of the North statue which the sculptor made when he tendered for the commission to do the real thing. And it was brought along by a member of the local council who had voted his approval of the project. Worth a lot of money and with artistic merit, yes.  But was it lost?  No.  Was it an antique?  No.  Did anyone discover it?  Did they buffalo.

So perhaps this weekAntiques Roadshow will come from South Kensington and perhaps one of the nice curators will “find” something of value in their museums.  Or maybe the show could come from BBC Television Centre where the producer might “discover” a total crock of sh*t.

I feel much better now.  This must be what blogs are for.

Haiku of the Day

Inspired by a news item I heard on the radio this morning about the problems caused by massive flocks of starlings dumping their droppings over Rome.

The Starlings

graceful flocks above

ancient streets splattered with poop

Rome’s new enemy

Christmas Party?

We had our company Christmas party last night.  Ridiculously early to have it on December 2nd but  circumstances dictated the date.   Great party!  Today it has been pretty quiet in the office and these words of wisdom come to mind:

The Flaw in Paganism by Dorothy Parker

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,

Love, the reeling midnight through,

For tomorrow we shall die!

(But, alas, we never do.)

Now that lady knew what she was talking about.

Life Drawing

Man in a Cap

Much to the amusement of my work colleagues I am taking an evening course in Life Drawing at Central St. Martin’s College.  Of course I didn’t explain that to them right away.  I started by telling them I had to leave the office on time because from 6 til 8.30 I would be staring at a bare lady.  “What?!?!”  They couldn’t believe it.  “You mean NAKED?  NUDE?  Totally Naked?”  Well, yes, all of these things.  In reallity it’s not always a woman, and male or female, they are not always naked.  Actually I quite quickly forget, or maybe rise above the whole nudity thing, because as soon as I start drawing I am trying to represent the curves and contours, lines and tones.  I’m not great at it but slowly improving I think.  Here are a couple of examples;  a classic nude ”bare lady,” and a man who (I’m glad to say) kept his clothes on.  It was quite cold in the studio last week!

Do you like my pictures?

Nude Naked Bare Lady

Life Drawing Again – Another Bare Lady!

Another Bare Lady

OK the model at my life drawing class this week was a long slim willowy young lady. I couldn’t get the shape quite right but never mind, I think you get an overall impression. It was a pencil drawing, and unusually the teacher gave out teabags. All the fleshtones in the picture were added by dabbing with a damp teabag. Then once it was dry some highlights were picked out in white chalk.

There’s a joke in there somewhere but I’m not going to make it.

Haiku of the Day

Actually today is quite mild but this is right for lots of recent mornings.

trees dormant between
green patches on frosted grass
December sun shine

Two New Haiku

Today’s haiku are dedicated to SouthWest Trains (Grrr):

the train now standing

outside Waterloo station

full of frustration

we breathe the same air

germs in germs out commuters

share the common cold

Good haiku should be timeless, ambiguous and reflect nature. Oh well, try again tomorrow.

Alexander the Great

Sketch of Alexander the Great

I sometimes take my sketchbook to the British Museum at lunchtime.  Not a life drawing then, but a sketch of the statue (well head only) of Alexander the Great.

Jack said

This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is.

Jack Kerouac wrote this in his “Scripture of the Golden Eternity” and I think it’s beautiful. I mused on it many times in my Beat period a few years ago and bring it up now because I can feel myself going Beat again. The Beat generation though pissed me off a bit in the end. When I read “On the Road” I found it very disappointing. Perhaps I missed the point, or perhaps I was past the point.

Life Drawing – What, no bare ladies?

What a let down! Last night should have been the last Life Drawing class of term, an extra class to make up for a week when the teacher was off sick. Sadly the different departments of Central Saint Martin’s didn’t speak to each other and we turned up to find the building was being closed. Half an hour of standing about in the lobby listening to frantic phone calls and the eventual decision is that the lesson will now be on Wednesday. A shame as many of my class mates will have gone home for Christmas by then and I am not sure if I can make it either.

The upshot of all this is that I am short of a bare lady in 2008. Any volunteers to model nude for me? Actually you need not undress, clothed models are fine too. I just need somebody who will sit still for a while! (Oh, and doesn’t need paying!) Please get in touch by leaving me a comment on this site or directly on eclectnik@googlemail.com

Life Drawing – What no volunteers?

So far nobody has volunteered to model for me. Perhaps I should have advertised more widely. Never mind, the replacement class is tonight and I will be one of the few attending. I’ll put up the picture tomorrow (unless it’s too awful!). Think I will slope off to the British Museum at lunch time and get some practice in by drawing the statues. I find drawing is like sport, it helps if you warm up a bit first.

Life Drawing – Chalk on Blue Paper

Bare Lady in Chalk

The last Bare Lady picture of the term was a study in chalk (and a little charcol) on blue paper. I think I used too much chalk as some other people’s pictures left more blue paper showing and the greater contrast was effective.  I quite like my drawing though, except I have made the model look mean and grumpy when in fact she has a lovely sunny personality!

A Lovely Haiku

It’s not one of mine. I read it in a magazine at the Poetry Library one afternoon when I should have been at work. It’s by a lady called Doreen King, I don’t remember what the magazine was called so apologies to the publisher. Doreen King, thank you – it’s fabulous!

when the rowboat
reaches cherry blossoms
rest the oars

Merry Christmas SouthWest Trains

A special thank you to SWT and Railtrack for installing the new ticket gates at Waterloo station. The journey to work will be just that little bit harder from now on. Just another irritating obstacle for commuters. And most of all, thank you for putting them into operation on Christmas Eve just to remind us all that next year will be full of obstacles AND you are about to put the fares up.  AGAIN.

The decline of Commercial Radio in the UK

bland unchallenging

research driven corporate

format radio

Two haiku about the business of radio. The one above was written some years ago when radio began to go badly wrong. The self-indulgent one below just came to me as I was writing this post. I dedicate them both to everyone who worked with me in commercial radio over the last couple of decades, plus the RAB and the Radio Authority (now Ofcom), various govenment ministers and civil servants, and all those Americans and Australians (you know who you are!) who did so much to help the whole industry nosedive into the ground at full power. Thanks guys, for my increased leisure time and the chance to explore new career opportunities.

I played my part in

radio’s rise and demise

but did not survive

Has anyone noticed how, when GCap were desperate to make their radio empire look like a going concern so they could sell it, they told the truth about how the cost of DAB (digital radio) is unviable to the point of insanity. They started closing down or selling off their digital stations. DAB is in fact a total farce which has crippled the industry, and most of the problems are nowhere near being solved despite years of development and £millions flushed away. Now the new owners, Global, are desperate to renew their licence for Classic FM so they are saying DAB is the way forward, best thing since sliced bread…

Never mind the Boat That Rocked, radio is a ship that is sinking.

Life Drawing – Back to the Bare Ladies

Bare Lady on a bench - charcol

So, back on the treadmill. First Life Drawing class of the new term today. Hopefully tomorrow I can post some more bare lady pictures but meanwhile here are a couple from last term.

Bare Lady in Pencil

Yet Another Bare Lady!

Bare Lady from Behind

My first bare lady of the new term. Not the best picture I’ve ever done, but not the worst either. I didn’t set up in the best place so had to make do with a back view. Drawings of backs are sometimes really interesting and full of detail, when done by other people. When I draw a back, I struggle.

And some of the charcol rubbed off on the way home, despite being “fixed” with Tesco’s Value hairspray (29p for a big can, it lasted all of last term and I think there is still plenty left).

Life Drawing – Another Bare Lady

Standing Nude, or Bare Lady with her Foot on a Tin of Paint

Back to the chilly studio again for another bare lady life drawing class. And it was chilly, I don’t think I would want to take my clothes off there. Anyway, it was a day for drawing with a putty rubber on a big smudgy ground of charcol. It’s a messy business but someone has to do it. Work, work, work…

Life study from in front and behind

Cold Studio

Rather chilly bare lady

Yes, another bare lady picture, and as some have noticed already, yes she is the same model.  It was realy cold in the studio this week so she sat huddled up.  I was trying to convey the cold in this picture.

We also did a head study but mine was unfinished and not so great so I have not posted it here.

The Perfect Antidote to Commercial Radio

For a while I thought listening to BBC Radio 4 was the answer to CRF (Commercial Radio Fatigue). Then one day my car radio, for no apparent reason, said it needed it’s code number put in. I’ve been meaning to rummage in my drawers and find the little card with the number on, but you know, weeks have passed and I have come to enjoy, even relish the silence of my morning drive to the station. Do I miss the music? A bit I suppose, even though it’s the same old songs round and round. Do I miss the inane banter of Breakfast Crews, Zoos and sad lonely DJ’s? Let me think…

Sometimes, especially on the way home, the silence becomes a bit oppressive. When this happens I just sing a rude song at the top of my voice and my spirits soar once more. It’s the Yellow Bird song if you want to know, and I learned in years ago in the Territorials (before I became a pacifist obviously).

No bare ladies this week. The class was cancelled because of the snow and let’s face it, it was too darned cold to ask anyone to get naked.

One for the ladies

In contrast to most of the other posts on here about life drawing this one has no bare lady. In fact it has no picture even as I haven’t got around to photographing it yet. Will do soon. Anyway it was definitely “one for the ladies” as the model this week was, in the teacher’s words, a “very well defined” young man.

As we have discussed before, surely the true purpose of Art is Bare Ladies. Fair enough to have a bloke once in a while I suppose, but really, who wants to see a naked guy?

One for the Ladies

Grapefruit, Fluxus, and Yoko Ono

Here’s a poem I wrote some years ago following a visit to an exhibition on the Sixties and the Fluxus Movement by Yoko Ono at the Royal Festival Hall. The exhibition was fun and inter-active. There were films including the one where a fly crawls all over a woman’s naked body, and I like bare ladies as you will know if you’ve read my blog before. Reading my poem now it seems a little harsh and critical which are certainly not feelings I have about the exhibition or the artist. I guess it is just an illustration of my reaction to the exhibition and where my head was at the time. Anyway here it is. The formatting hasn’t worked out as the words were originally spaced out differently on the page, but you get the idea. I would love to hear from anyone with an opinion on the poem, the art, Yoko Ono or anything else.

Grape fruit

south bank sixties
retrospective
Art must be seen
to be
effective

anti-art art a scam
and a half

cheeky film and a blank wall
we can nail bits of our
sad selves too

one by one
the flies creep down
your back

Lick their lips and peep
i
n
y
o
u
r
c
r
a
c
k
by struggling against the grain
all you did was prove again
everyone likes a nice arse
nobody likes the smart arts
oh no Yoko
Art is free Art sucks
and nobody gives a flying flux

(by eclectnik)

Another Coup for Antiques Roadshow?

You may recall the hype surrounding the amazing “discovery” on BBC Antiques Roadshow, when the council brought in a smaller version of the Angel of the North, which they knew they had and is not an antique. Well don’t you just bet they are already planning to “discover” this model of the Angel of the South in a few year’s time.  Yes Kent is to have the biggest statue of a horse that anyone’s ever built. A towering 50m or 164 feet in the old money (how many hands is that?) and costing a mere £2,000,000.

Even ignoring the Antiques Roadshow potential there is still so much fun to be had here.  “Kent, it’s a one horse county.” And depending which way it faces, visitors coming at it from the “south” will be able to gaze straight up the biggest horse’s arse in the world. “Kent, UK, home of the biggest horse’s arse!” Surely something we can all be proud of.

Without even pausing to consider how many life-saving operations might be performed for £2,000,000, how many Tony Blair peace missions to the Middle East could be funded (4 apparently), or how many starving people could be fed, there is one extra-bright spot on the horizon. It hasn’t got planning permission yet. Perhaps it may never be built. And then just think how that will push the value of the brand new antique model of the world’s biggest horse’s arse that never was!

The View from the South

A Handful of Stones

I have found a place
full of sparkling clarity
a handful of stones

My Struggle with Life Drawing

Well actually I have many struggles with life drawing as you will know if you look through my blog and see my efforts. Butat the moment I have a particular struggle. Last week I went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw this lovely self-portrait by Paule Vezelay, an abstractionist. I found it inspiring and it made me wonder about a few things.

Firstly, though it may not be obvious from my drawings, I have pretty much been striving to represent what I see in front of me. To copy it as closely as I can. How on earth can I look at a live model and create an abstract like this? Something like the original, yet simplified, stylised, beautiful and communicative.

And secondly, all the efforts so far have been about drawing “the model.” Might it be more interesting to draw “the person” as a recognisable portrait? I have tried a few portraits, some live and some from photographs but neither has been successful in the past. Certainly those kind enough to sit still for me have been un-impressed by the results! I think it’s time to try some more, and if anyone has any tips or advice I’d be very glad to hear them!

Probably the best photo I’ve ever taken

Caption competition?

Bare Lady in Pastel

Willowy Nude in Colour

Last night’s class was a new challenge. The model had a pale complexion all over, made paler and greyer by the flourescent tube lighting, and we worked with white chalk, red, dark brown, pale flesh pastel on a light grey paper. I went for a more stylised and slightly abstract approach but I ‘m not sure if it worked really.

Lunch-hour Drawings

King Charles

A couple of drawings I did at the British Museum this week. King Charles got his head chopped off of course, and Chrysippos founded Stoicism. The things some people will do to get famous!

Sorry if the photos are a bit fuzzy – took them with my phone and they are only small sketchbook drawings to start with.

I think I’ll start on the Roman statues next.

Chrysippos

Another Bare Lady in Pastel

Reclining Nude

Somebody was kind enough to suggest this was a little bit like a Matisse. At least I got a slightly surreal quality from the purple paper and used a bit of pencil as well as the pastels. I think my pastels have been stored in the airing cupboard too long as they were much more crumbly than last time I used them. The brown thing isn’t really right. It was brown in reallity, but I didn’t know what colour to make it in the picture.

Sketches

Roman Woman, drawn from a statue in the British Museum

A couple more lunchtime sketches of statues in the Briitsh Museum. Some people are so strange. You stand there drawing and they come right up to you and lean over to stare at your drawing. I don’t mind if they walk past slowly and take a discreet look at my picture but really! Worst of all is when they talk to you, but I find wearing an i-pod discourages all but the most determined moron.

Another statue drawing of a Roman woman from the British Museum

Writing on the Wall

For ages I meant to go and photograph the Banksy “One Nation Under CCTV” work on the wall of the Post Office yard in Newman Street. Then I read in the paper that I was too late, the powers that be had it painted out. Sure enough the next time I went up Newman Street there was a neat, freshly painted rectangle of Wermacht Grey. But wait, all is not lost. The words still show through the paint! Great, I thought, I can come back with my camera and photograph it after all, diminished, but not quite suppressed.

One Nation Under CCTV, scaffolding and paint

So today I went back to Newman Street with my camera, but for the second time I was too late to take my picture. I guess I was not the only person to notice you could still read the message, because the scaffolding is back and I think they must be giving it more coats of Wermacht Grey until everything is obliterated.

Unless of course the scaffolding belongs to Banksy and he’s putting his painting back on top.

Reclining Nude of the Week

Yet Another Reclining Nude in Pastel

The product of this week’s Life Drawing class, another pastel drawing of a bare lady. The model said she was bored after about half an hour, but strangely I find I can do this class week after week and never get bored at all.

Last Bare Lady of the Season

Last of the season, a bare lady drawn in sanguine

For the last class this term I decided to try sanguine. It didn’t smudge as easily as I expected, perhaps because it was a stick rather than actual sanguine. I will try the real thing next.

Freda’s Photo

Gustav and Friends, a photo by Freda

This wonderful phototgraph was snapped by Freda at a cafe while on holiday in the south of France, probably about 1958. What a fascinating narrative picture it is. The group of interesting characters around their table, and the lone woman at the next table taking more than a little interest in them. Thank you Freda.

Paint!

After thinking that life drawing was hard, this week I started a new class in life painting and discovered that it’s a lot harder. I’ve signed up for a course at the City Lit, great as it’s half the price of Central Saint Martin’s and the materials are included. Sure enough we got three brushes each, paper and paint. There were boxes of palettes and jam jars. Everything the budding artist could wish. Er, except ability. We used only black and white acrylic paint, and had to start by using a very pale wash to “draw” the model, then once the composition was correct apply more paint. Well, by the end of the class everyone had a finished monochrome painting, everyone except me that is. I was still drawing, still trying to get the shapes and proportions right.

No picture to post on the blog for you (not that it was worth seeing!) because they get stored in a drawer in the class room. I guess this is so that at the end of the course they can pull out the crap from week one and say how much we have improved and learned. So I hope my painting improves by then!  Frustrated but not dis-heartened, I am looking forward to next week.

Painting is Hard

Bare Lady, an exercise in tones and colours

As hard as I thought it was to draw people, painting them is harder. You have to try to get the drawing right for shape and proportion, and the paint runs, and the colours and tones are difficult, and… Well I’m sure it will get better with practice. As usual I am struggling between trying to represent something real and wondering about artisitic style. This was an exercise to look at tones; the first picture using colour and also the first picture I’ve posted here from this new class I have joined at the City Lit. The painting is of course quite dodgy and is made worse (or better?) by the fact that I could only photograph it on my phone.  At least the teacher is very positive and patient. Well let’s see what tonight’s calss produces and if it’s any good I will post it up in a day or two.

Painting the Nude

Painting the Nude Model

Last night’s model was a rather rotund gentleman with a shiny bald head and, while my preference is for nice bare ladies, he did make an interesting subject to paint. The exercise was about using small strokes of different colours rather than big flat areas of pre-mixed colour, and also using the direction of the brush strokes to create shape and texture. It’s not a portrait of course but I think I captured something of him.

I still find Life Painting incredibly hard and I cannot work as fast as I would like to. The picture isn’t quite finished as you can see, the lesson is never quite long enough! But I feel it was going in the right direction and with another half an hour or so it might have worked out quite well.

Painting Exercise – Limited Palette

Nude Model At Rest

As always, the exercise was pretty hard at my life painting class last night. We had to use a limited palette based on a favourite painting of ours. Mine was painted using only red, blue, black and white. As usual there wasn’t enough time for me to finish so the result, as you can see here, is rather rough and messy. The most outstanding feature is his ear, a bright red mess which I would have sorted out with a little more time. I didn’t intend to draw attention to it really. You can also see very clearly how wrong I got the arm the first time I painted it (well several times actually!) but I think it ended up pretty much in the right place. Also the left leg seems to have disappeared; I painted it quite dark because it was in shadow, but in the photo you can hardly see it at all. The model’s name is Philip and he’s putting on a one-man show at the Hackney Empire next month about his experiences as a life model. Should be fun, I will put in a link to the appropriate page when one is available.

Painting Another Bare Lady

Redheaded Nude

Ah, back to painting bare ladies! Male models are all very well, but the female form has much more appeal to most people of either gender. Here the angle was awkward making for some difficult foreshortening which I have attempted with only very limited success. The lighting was difficult too and I have ended up with some odd effects here and there. My photography skills seem to have let me down as well this week but never mind, I’m sure if you look at the picture you will get the overall idea. As a warm-up before the class I tried sketching people sitting on the benches in Soho Square. It was OK but honestly some people get so paranoid when they see you looking at them. Do they realise I am drawing them I wonder, or do they just think I am another wierdo to be avoided in this big city full of wierdos. Anyway, the luxury of a proper professional model was very welcome after the public paranoia experience.

Another Bare Lady Painting (am I getting any better at this?)

Bare Lady Reclining

Well this week’s painting effort is shown. As always I found the drawing hard so, whilst bits of the picture might work OK on their own I don’t think they combine to make a believable human form as a whole. Something has gone a bit wrong with the relative positions of the head, shoulders and breasts, and the fore-shortened arm is much too small. That said, I do feel like I can see some progress at last. A few areas of the body have worked out quite well. One of the good things I learned in this lesson is to slap the paint on a bit thicker. We are using acrylics but the teacher said I was using it like watercolour and would I try using more paint. I am going to take her advice and thicken up my paintings from now on!

Painting Without Nudes?

Watercolour painting of an old pub

Just for a change, and because nobody will sit still for me, I abandoned Life study today and did this watercolour of my local pub. It looks a bit pinker and a bit more ramshackle than the real thing but on the whole I don’t think it’s too bad. Maybe I could offer it to the landlord in exchange for a free beer or two. OK maybe just a diet coke. Whatever. I will be glad to get back to my Life class tomorrow.

Signs

Sometimes you see things that really make you wonder. I’m not talking about signs of the mystical or divine. I’m talking about signs that make you wonder about the sanity of the people who made them, and the future of the whole human race. Anyway these two amused me this week.

Do Not Climb On Kangaroo (Waterloo Bridge)

Actually the Kangaroo sign is probably necessary because it is just the right size and I was tempted to mount. If there was somebody there with me to take a photograph I would probably hop aboard.

The other sign however is from a school art room where I went to see an exhibition. I thought it was an exhibit, a strange machine with rollers and canvass and odd handles and with this sign on top saying “ON NO ACCOUNT MUST THIS MACHINE BE TOUCHED.” Apparently the sign is functional and it is not a work of art, but that’s just a matter of opinion.

ON NO ACCOUNT MUST THIS MACHINE BE TOUCHED