No drawing to accompany...

...but overheard yesterday...

Three blokes comparing their tattoos.

"It's too dark. It's supposed to say 'LIFE IS A GAMBLE', but you can"t read GAMBLE.

Splash it abaht

Want to be more, I think the word is 'painterly', in my work.

Was in the National Portrait Gallery introducing a friend to the delights of John Singer Sargent, and how his work is as much about the paint as the person. And in the BP Portrait competition exhibition there is a piece by Simon Wright I liked which was as much paint as portrait. ( And somehow not as good online as it is in front of you )

Was pleased with this piece from the week before last.

Still way off what I want to be able to do, but in the right direction. 

I get too enslaved to wanting to do "a good drawing". I need to loosen up more. not in my paint or my hand, but in my ego. 

A happy accident

At Life drawing...

Was playing around a bit, and did a thick dark wash and then started scrubbing the colour back to lighten the wash in preparation for drawing the model, and the holder area just seemed to magically appear on the paper. So I let it develop more and ended up with a drawing ( painting really ) I am very pleased with.

Scanner has picked up paper shadow, so enlarge it too see it better.

But then spent the rest of the session trying to recreate this and ended up with over worked stuff I do not like.

Is this an example of the 1 % that the rest of the drawings were leading to ?