Weekly drawing challenge number 3

Something that has been repaired. Quick and dirty.

Weekly drawing challenge

A friend of mine decided I needed a drawing challenge so every Monday she gives me a new topic. We're only on week 3 so far; here are weeks 1 and 2.

Week 1 - a clock.
Week 2 - more than one musical instrument.

I'm keeping them small and trying to do them fairly quickly as a way of being more disciplined.

This week's theme, week 3, is something that has been repaired. Why not join me and play along?

A new year of life drawing

Had a day of life drawing on Saturday and our Tuesday evening sessions started up again this week so drawing for 2018 is off to a good start. A friend has decided to set me a weekly drawing challenge too so news of that coming soon.

Still alive...

Well, that's a bit rubbish isn't it. No posts since February. The last few months have just been so ridiculously busy, with All The Things happening, that there just hasn't been time for any non essentials. 

Some creative stuff has been happening; I was going along quite nicely with the above soft ground etching and looking forward to things easing off a bit, only to have my press break a couple of weeks ago. Aargh! Feel like my right arm has been cut off. Haven't had time yet to do anything about getting it fixed - that's top of the agenda this week (after all the chores, work, Aged P appointments of course...).

Life drawing has finished for the summer, as has the Beginners / Improvers course I was co-teaching (maybe I'll post some images from that) but I'm preparing to teach a soft ground workshop next month which should be fun. I'm enjoying the research for that. 

Hopefully the dust has settled a bit and I'll get some time to do my own work over the next month or so. My main focus is going to be on drawing. Am reading an interesting book - Experimental Drawing by Robert Kaupelis. Planning to try some of the exercises to push my drawing forward - more on that in the coming months hopefully.

Tuesday life drawing

Saturday life drawing

 We had our monthly life drawing day at the art gallery yesterday. No painting for me this time; spent the whole day drawing. The drawing I made from the long pose was pretty much complete which is very unusual for me - and the figure has a head! It was such a great pose - loads of foreshortening.

This may be one of the most successful life drawings I've made. Pity the cat lay on it when I got it home and carried off a lot of the charcoal on her coat! Ah well...

 

Here's the drawing before and after it had been 'improved' by the cat.

Tuesday life drawing

 Didn't have time to prep etching plates for this week's session so it was literally back to the drawing board. Drawing smaller this week, charcoal in an A2 sketch pad. Not too happy with these. Hopefully back to the etching plates next week.

Portrait commission

It's been a really creative start to the year. As well the life drawing based etchings, and making three submissions for Small Faces (delivered to the gallery yesterday), I also completed this portrait commission. This is a drawing of the client's mother in charcoal, also delivered yesterday. And it's only 21 January! I'm hoping the year will continue as it has started.

More Small Faces

Three submissions for Small Faces; the graphite drawing already posted, a hand-coloured etching of good old PB and a soft ground etching entitled What We Remember.

December life drawing

Charcoal drawing - 3 x 5 minute poses

It was our monthly Saturday life drawing session at the art gallery at the weekend. This month I took along some etching plates to draw directly onto them to capture the full energy of the drawing on the plate. This gets lost when transferring a drawing from paper to plate as you stiffen up and lose a lot of the extraneous marks made when searching for the image. 

The images below show the drawing as made on tissue paper laid over a soft grounded plate (left). The images on the right are the tissue paper taken off the plate and scanned to see the drawing more clearly. 

The first pair of images were made on the plate shown in my previous post so when etched, there will be fragments of the previous drawing. The second pair are on a new plate which will gradually become layered with images; a palimpsest of figure studies.

Evening life drawing

When the Hamble life drawing class folded, I was really disappointed. I found a fairly local evening class to attend in the interim but unfortunatley it's on a Tuesday evening so clashes with Cowprint and the Harbour Lights opening of Imprint2. I've missed a few sessions therefore.

The course is run very differntly to the Hamble sessions and indeed most of the life drawing I've done in the past. It's much more focused on teaching basic drawing skills so the tutor has us do various exercises. I try to go with it but much prefer to just do my own thing. Yours, Wayward of Southampton.

Jane Joseph: Seeing the Space

Jane Joseph ~ Foot bridge and Tower, etching

Interesting exhibition of drawings, etchings and linocuts by Jane Joseph on at Southampton City Art Gallery at the moment. I like the large charcoal drawings.

The artist has also curated an exhibition of drawings from the gallery's collection which is more interesting (to me at least). A couple of Auerbach's in there.

Another grumpy self-portrait

I made another A1 sized self-portrait last week, again thinking about Auerbach's techniques. This time I put a tone all over the paper with charcoal before I started the drawing and used a putty rubber to pull the subject out of the background. Well, to pull the highlights out of the background. I think it's fairly successful though of course, there are elements that don't work - like my left eye. More practice needed.

Life drawing week 8

1 hour 10 minutes

Another good session at life drawing today; feel like I made progress again. Rather overdid the foreshortening on the 1 hour pose but actually, I think it works okay. Managed to work the paper more (thinking about Frank Auerbach still) but much more to do. ALWAYS much more to do!

20 minutes

3 x 5 minute warm ups

 

Self-portraits as historical records

Charcoal on paper, A1, November 2015

Inspired by Frank Auerbach's portraits, and feeling the need to practice more with charcoal, working big (how ridiculous that I've only discovered the wonderousness of charcoal at this late stage!), I made the above self-portrait this weekend.

Self-portraits are good exercise when you don't have another model around; and made periodically over the years, they provide a useful record of the progress of one's work and skills as well as a history of ageing / personal change. I'm rather ashamed of the drawings from 2009 - didn't think I drew that badly. I can't remember... maybe they were intended as rough sketches... Nasty. The regular life drawing is definitely helping my observation and drawing skills.
 

Graphite on paper, A3, May 2011

 

Graphite on paper, A4, August 2009

Graphite on paper, A4, September 2009

Frank Auerback at Tate Britain

Head of JYM II 1982

Friday was a good day, despite the rain. I don't get up to London to look at art very often these days so it was good to have the opportunity to go to Tate Britain to see the Frank Auerbach retrospective.

I've been craving a good exhibition of paintings for some time; and for me, that's what this is. 

The work ranges from the 1950s to present day with the same subject matter often repeated. Portraits of the same handful of sitters, paintings of the same scenes around Auerbach's studio, views of his own studio. These provide a good sense of the way his work has developed over the years; subtle changes from thick layers of brashly coloured paint built up in almost sculptural relief, scraped back to more subdued tones on a flatter surface. The paintings lose none of the energy and movement and noise of the earlier works though.

Self-portrait, charcoal on paper, 1958

Head of Catherine Lampert II, 1985

Interior, Vincent Terrace, 1982-84

In the Studio IV, 2013-14

 I love Auerbach's charcoal drawings - from the early self-portraits (see above) to the later, more abstracted ones. The marks and the energy are compelling, though I don't understand how he got to this point (yet... I bought a copy of Catherine Lampert's recent biography of the artist so am hoping to understand his working processes better).

I think the thing I like best about Auerbach's work is that it makes me work hard. I have to look at one of his paintings for some time to try and gain some understaning of it. I don't just mean to work out what's going on in the painting... I'm not explaining this well. I guess I get sucked into the painting - the rich colours, the indistinct forms, the light and shade... the mystery of it. These works hold my attention in a way that I don't really expect or understand. Not sure if that makes sense... Anyway, I left the exhibition thinking, thinking, thinking about the work and wanting to know more. That has to be one of the signs of good work.

Life drawing week 7

3 x 5 minute warm-ups

After the half term break, it was good to start life drawing again. I missed it during that week off.

Having felt that I was getting worse before half term, I felt I made some progress this week. My measuring was better so the figures were more in proportion, and I managed to get pretty much the whole figure on the paper in both the longer poses which I was pleased about. I really like half-drawn suggestions of figures and often, just part of the form works very well in the drawing. However, I need to be able to place the whole figure properly too.

25 minute pose

 Still a lot of work to do of course, but I feel like I'm moving forward again.

1 hour pose