Better or Worse?

Self-portrait with more paint

So here it is. The same picture with more paint applied. Is it better or worse? One (family member) critic asked “why the beard?” so I guess the shadow is a bit heavy. Somebody also said it was an unhappy picture. Well that’s just how it came out, I didn’t feel unhappy whist painting it. Anyway we move on.

The self-portrait was followed last week by some painting to music. It felt a bit odd, I must say. Listen to the music and paint what it conjures up, a picture without a model or solid subject to work from. Once I got going it was strangely liberating. The class had several goes at this to different pieces of music and after each one all the paintings went up on the wall. There was of course a huge variation between them and we discussed the various approaches, use of colour and mark making. It was great fun, but I did put pictures straight in the bin at the end of the evening.

This week it was back to more serious stuff. We bagan a life painting and the model will be back next week so we can finish off. I didn’t take a photograph of the work in progress so will just have to wait until it’s finished. I was much relieved though to find we had a female model sprawled naked on the cushions. A bare lady is Art, but frankly nobody really wants to spend an evening looking at a naked man!

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.

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.