March 26, 2017 March 26, 2017

Tomorrow I have my last Life Drawing Studio for this 5 week session. It has been a very different and valuable experience and I will enroll again later in the year. Probably the most beneficial thing is that I set aside 3 hours once a week for drawing.

I love to draw. I always have. I remember drawing  when I was in fourth grade and received a John Nagy  drawing set (obviously I was already drawing or I would not have received the set!). I used to create all of my own paper dolls copying stylish clothes from our Sears Roebuck catalog. I even buffed the surface of the paper with my finger to create the look of fur when I gave my doll a leopard fur coat. (not sure that Sears carried fur coats!)

During this last session I used all of the 2 minute warm ups for blind contour drawing and I also “blocked” my figure first hoping to improve the proportions of my figures. I felt like my drawings were better (though still imperfect). One thing I know…the human body is one of the most difficult things to draw!

This studio is at 9 am on Monday mornings. I call it my Nudes at 9 time… 🙂

 

 

March 6, 2017 March 8, 2017

This Monday I had my second Life Studio experience. Our model was male, lean and muscled and very good at holding challenging poses. I am using large sheets of newsprint for my sketches and am drawing with charcoal, ebony and graphite pencils. I also tried a sanguine Conte pencil this week. I want to draw with different types of drawing materials during this 5 week program. This is not a class. It is open studio and we all do our own thing. One artist works in watercolor and one uses her computer and completes her drawings digitally (the model was fascinated by this option).

I am working on my biggest challenges – hands and foreshortening…grrrrrr! Also for some reason I had trouble with proportions during this session. My eye-hand coordination was not as good this week.

 

February 27, 2017 February 28, 2017

Recently I have been struggling with motivation. I decided that taking a class might add the incentive to be more disciplined so I registered for a Life Drawing Open Studio. We had our first session yesterday and I really enjoyed it. My mindset is that this class is just for fun and I can sketch what and how I want but I did learn very rapidly the importance of placement in the room. Need to get there earlier next time! I am not going to post everything I did yesterday but thought I would post a couple.

Both are 15-20 minute sketches on newsprint. In a life drawing class it is rather unusual to do a portrait but I thought I would give it a try. Here is the result…

July 27, 2014 July 27, 2014

Well, I’m slow but I’m steady. I walk my dogs every morning at Ft Benjamin Harrison State Park. This is a vey nice, welcoming Indiana State Park on the east side of Indianapolis. Ft Ben holds one of the military’s largest finance centers (payrolls, etc). The Finance Center is still in operation but the other military functions were ended in the 1990’s and the fort is now a state park with two lakes, a stable and miles of trails full of joggers, bikers, skaters, dog walkers and families. I have always been fascinated by the old, weathered trees. I don’t know why, but old trees frequently seem to have a personality – a history that is written on their surface like the lines in a person’s face. I wanted to do a drawing of the tangled, interwoven roots in one section of the park. The soil has been washed away and the grand old trees stand exposed. I completed this drawing yesterday and was pretty happy with it.

July 7, 2014 July 7, 2014

For the last 18 months I have been struggling with my art. I had a burst of creativity at the time I lost my husband to cancer and since then I have generally been unhappy with my work. The weather and the seasons seem to be the only thing that inspires me. My watercolors are muddy and while I occasionally do a nice painting I seem to lack consistency. Everything I paint is a relearning experience. Whine! Whine! Whine!

I just returned from a family trip to Italy. As I prepared for the trip I went through two wonderful Teaching Company courses, one covered the career and art of Michelangelo and one Leonardo da Vinci. It suddenly hit me that all great artists are great draughtsmen. So I am going back to the basics, starting with drawing. This is actually a super “good thing” because I love to draw. I took one of my old beat-up sketchbooks with me to Italy. I didn’t have time to sketch until our last day. We were in Venice and I did two quick architectural sketches. neither is very good. The crowds were heavy, the sun was bright and I had to dodge and weave to see my subject. BUT it was fun and I lost myself for a few hours. Here is my rough sketch of a corner of the Basilica of Sam Marco.

Corner of the Basilica of San Marco

And her is San Giorgio Maggiore drawn peaking between visitors in line to enter the Doge’s Palace…very tough to see and to capture any detail!

San Giorgio maggiore

November 2, 2013 November 2, 2013

As I mentioned in my last post, I struggled with this drawing, the third in a series of ATC’s I’m doing for my family as Christmas gifts. I am really interested in Western and Native American Art and one of my favorite artists from the IMA collection is Victor Higgins, one of the original group of Taos artists (learn more here). Did you know he grew up in Shelbyville, Indiana? Many of his works are in the collections of the IMA and The Eiteljorg Museum in downtown Indianapolis. But I diverge…this drawing was a struggle and you can see the struggle when you look at the photograph. I had to erase areas that I didn’t like with Dr Martin’s Bleed Proof White. You can see some of this in the photo but this is photographic pentimento. The actual ATC does not show the scratchy looking lower right corner or the heavy outline of the braid. The Bleed Proof White must be so reflective that it shows through when photographed.  I am continually learning… It was the white feather in the photograph that caught my eye. Hence the title.

White Feather – ATC

October 31, 2013 October 31, 2013

When I start a new series of paintings or drawings the first one flows out like magic, the second takes more effort and the third is a challenge. That is proving to be true with the Native American series of ATC’s I just started. My husband supported two of the schools out west and each year we received calendars. My latest piece is from a painting showing two women doing their daily work. One is looking into the distance. I liked the posture and abstracted it from the painting, making some changes and put the focus on her face.  I tried to keep her expression neutral. I want the viewer to decide – is the object approaching good or bad? Person or animal? I hope many of my works of art let the viewer write their own story…

They Come – ATC

 

October 28, 2013 October 28, 2013

Hmmm, I see a pattern. As with last year, I had a busy Fall season and let my family Christmas presents slip my mind. You may remember that I try to do ATC size works of original art for my close family. I stick them in with their Christmas card and I hope they realize how special this tradition is to me. A few weeks ago I visited the Quest for the West exhibit at the Eiteljorg Museum of Native American and Western Art. This stimulated my interest in Native American culture and I am always inspired by the art of Gretchen Del Rio (see here) which is heavily influenced by native spirit and culture. My first ATC was inspired by a photograph of an Ojibwa woman that is in the opening pages of National Geographic this month. I modified the composition adding a bright harvest moon and pushed the values to create a work that (I hope) reflects a feeling of nostalgia and melancholy.

Ojibwa Moon – ATC

Is the moon rising or setting? I will let you decide…

October 16, 2013 October 16, 2013

Near the end of my visit to the Napa Valley I spent time under a large tree at the Beringer Winery. Me and my pad and pencil. The Rhine House build by one of the Beringer family is magnificent as are the winery buildings. It was such a lovely site and it was cool under the trees with a slight breeze. I actually wanted to relax and take a nap….but I didn’t. I did this sketch. The architecture is very elaborate and ornate and I don’t think I really captured it. Oh well – next time!

Rhine House – Beringer Winery

 

January 13, 2013 January 13, 2013

Another page of sketches from Gulf Shores. I was amazed at the color diversity I saw looking at Heather’s shell collection this year. I have never seen a green shell when collecting in the past. I also have never seen the fragile beauty of the tiny shell with the purplish stripes. The green, purple and pinkish/gray shells were all tiny, fragile things – obviously not drawn to scale. I was just trying to capture the general shape, color and direction of the stripes and blotches. I really mangled the purple stripes which were a delicate purple/magenta color much lighter than shown. Oh well – I was on vacation… I’m always too hard on myself. It’s our nature, isn’t it?

Just a quick note about the BP Oil spill. Workers were on the beach two days during our visit searching for and cleaning small blobs of oil from the beach. This activity ended while we were visiting Gulf Shores. I did not see any oil in evidence but my son-in-law saw two small blobs. The birds and fish and dolphins appear to have recovered but I thought you would find it interesting to know that BP continued to fund clean-up until January 2 or 3, 2013 and that it has now stopped. I hope the municipal areas continue to monitor the situation since this was such a massive environmental disaster. Again, I must be honest – I didn’t see any problem during my visit. Here are my shells:

Gulf Shores Shells