Imaginary vs. Real

Inspired by Carol Marine's Daily Paintworks 'Ten Minute' challenge (which she posted back in February) but which is still open, I adapted the task to two 30 minute pastel paintings. The left apple was painted out of my head and the right one from life. The left one looked like an apple until I painted the real life Pink Lady next to it - it now resembles a cherry, I think!

I've drawn a few pears recently and may paint some more for inclusion here; if I do, I'll try to do it Carol's way - four or six to a page. We'll see.

For info, I used Unison and Sennelier pastels with a touch of Conte crayon on Clairefontaine Pastelmat (Natural Sienna).

Surreal Landscape

Last week I made another happy visit to Cass Arts after visiting the Mall Galleries. (I go to either the small but well-stocked shop behind the National Gallery or the huge three-storey Islington shop which always threatens to make me miss my train!) This time, I picked up a box of artist quality Winsor and Newton oil paints (10x 21ml tubes). The RRP is over £46 but these were on offer for £17.50! (Cass Arts prices are always competitive.) I can't use turpentine or white spirit so I use Zest-it (no headaches). I used a touch of Liquin in this image but prefer the Zest-it.

This image is a small 4"x6" painting on W&N canvasboard. The sky is a graded blend using a large watercolour brush and the land was done with a painting knife. I did it for no other reason than to enjoy the buttery feel of good quality oil paint.

The Duck and the Woolly Beast

When my younger brother and I were small we used to fight a lot, though mostly for fun. When he grew taller than me, I had to find another way to manifest my big-sister-tyranny, so I began to make menacing drawings for him. His character was a duck, a peaceful and quiet fellow who was always hunted and mistreated by my character, the woolly beast, in classic Tom & Jerry style. Each year for Christmas, I make a card for him with these characters, mostly something that in some way represents my present for him. This year my present was a T-shirt with a fish-print, hence the fishing expedition. For many years, these "Duck and the Wooly Beast" drawings were the only finished drawings I made.

Illustration Friday: Winter

I have wanted to submit something to Illustration Friday for months and have often made sketches for drawings, but never really found the time to finish something. Now, finally, I have time, and made this little drawing with watercolour and charcoal.

This week's topic is "winter". Here in Denmark we have minus 10 degrees Celsius and 30 cm snow, but that is highly unusual, so snow doesn't really represent winter for me. Instead I think of the pale blue winter sky on cold days and dark naked trees. For some years I worked in a building next to a field with a row of trees surrounding it. Late in the afternoon on winter days, after the sun had disappeared, a large group of crows would gather in the threes. Sometimes there could be a couple of hundreds. At some point, they would suddenly all take off in a large flock. I remember vividly the sinister feeling when walking home through the dusk, I would suddenly see them rise over the city and hear their screams.

More lifedrawing - now with pastels

Sorry about the lack of posts. I got stuck on one of Ann's challenges and couldn't decide whether to move on to another exercise or give it yet another try. Luckily, I had a really good day at the life drawing class yesterday, and now feel more confident and ready to draw again. I wonder why drawing always must be like this? - shifting between excitement and dejection, between confidence and paralysing self-critique.

Sharon showed me how to work with pastels in the spring. I did buy a pack of soft pastels from Winsor & Newton and a pad of pastel paper, but I have not really given it a try before yesterday. Then yesterday morning, I couldn't find my pencils and instead grabbed the soft pastels and a pack of pastel pencils before I ran out of the door. At the class, I just had to get on with it. It is not perfect, but for a second try (see first try here) I think it worked out really well! I am definitely going to work pastels again next week.

15. Join a life drawing class

I have begun at the life drawing classes at Ruskin's School of Fine Art and Drawing here in Oxford. It is kind of an exclusive club which is only open for "members of the university", that is, either students or staff. It is a good, solid, oldfashioned lifedrawing course and is a good antidote to expressive fashion illustration courses. We don't learn much about personal expression; it is about reworking your drawing over and over to get the proportions absolutely right. We work with 45 and 90 minutes poses and last year I found it terribly difficult to work on a pose that long. I hardly ever left with something that looked like finished drawings, just raw sketches, smudged by repeated alterations. I almost had to force myself to sign up again this term - three hours drawing lessons after an eight hours work day with a teacher that never praises and corrects everything you do is not something you do for fun, but I learnt so much from the course last year, so I signed up again. I made this drawing last week in a 45 minutes pose, and I am so pleased with it. For once, I managed to use the time really well. It is not a great drawing, but the proportions are really good and I feel that it really shows how much I have learnt.

P.S. I have been wanting to upload this for 1½ week. I have tried to scan this at work, but it is difficult to scan as it is drawn on really large paper (larger than A2), so you will have to put up with this poor quality photo. I will try to make a better scan next week.

Chase

The next exercise is "Draw movement". I used an old movie "Charade" to draw from. There is a great sequence where Cary Grant is chasing Audrey Hepburn through a metro station in Paris. I stopped the film repeatedly to be able to study the actors movements and how the their clothes move.

More drawings here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35208838@N05/tags/movement/