Brooklyn Art Library

Did a sketchbook for the Brooklyn Art Library. Great fun.

Here are a few pages from it.

Sent it off and just got na e mail back saying it has arrived. That gives me great pleasure. I will post a link to it when it has been scanned and is viewable on their site.

Pose

From earlier this year.

Quick pose

In between poses at life drawing, the model covered up and knelt to check her phone, and it was so nice I had to catch it.

Funny to sneak a drawing of the model clothed in between session of drawing her naked. Like a reversal of things.

Bird

Reworked an old life drawing sketch.

I don't know either. Off the pain killers so can"t blame them !

Border breaking

A 20 min pose from last Thursday session.

Like how the figure is outside the border at the bottom and behind it at the top. Completely accidental but something I am going to explore some more. A happy accident.

But I also think I have made the torso just a bit too long here.

Always forwards.

20 min Torso

Have posted this on the Life drawing site, but it can lodge a place here too.

Am pleased with the translucence of the paint. Something to work at more. A little overworked as well, so curb it back next time.

The red continues.....

From the other Sunday at St Albans...

Like the small marks of colour around the torso.

Welcome to Burlesque

Anyone seen that Cher film Burlesque. Brilliantly silly. I like the bit where the new girl in town decided to research Burlesque and gets all the books out of the library on it.

Anyway, after many opportunities, finally went to a Burlesketch. The model was Chici.

An interesting experience. Maybe a little too objectifying for me, but it made me smile. Chici said she usually got more whooping from her audience. And we were told we had to applaud when she entered, which we dutifully did. In the silence of a life drawing class her beads rattled like anxious insects.

Maryam

The model this week was Maryam, who had fantastic hair that just asked to be drawn.

More feet

This one looks better as a photo than it does in reality.

The background colour was a pre-painted experiment, works well but haven't revisited it as a colour since.

Feet

Have done 2 studies of feet at two different sessions. Both 20 min poses. In truth, to do feet justice you can't really do the rest of the body as well in that time. So I focus on this one bit and to hell with the person attached to them.

It's survival of the feetest.

( groan )

Red Again

Continuing the theme.

More red

I think this was a 10 min pose, so not a huge amount of time, but it benefits from that as it is just big washes of two colours, with a quick drop of shadow just to sit the body down.

And walk away from it.

Good model.

RRREEEEEEEDDDDDD

Say it like Chiwetel Ejiofor in "Kinky Boots". Rrrreeeeeeeeeeddddddduuuhhh.

One of the developments last year was the suggestion and adoption of red backgrounds.

Stops the skin colours looking so dead, like they do on black.

Will post some other examples over the next few days.

Back

Life Drawing.

Always enjoy a good back, especially one as animated as this one.

Sometimes you get it all right and a drawing just comes together and works. 

The Physical

Seeing, and aiming for, the physical weight of the body. Trying to feel it through the paint. Weight. 

Sit down, take the weight off...

Someone referred to this as the one where she is wearing shin pads.

I can see his point.

Foot rub

This was part of a pose from life drawing the other day. Wasn't sure what to draw so focused on the hands holding the foot. Not what I intended to draw, have flattened the image out too graphic, but kind of like it anyway.

Torsos

Been following an idea of the way classical sculptures have been eroded by time/weather/man to the partial forms we see in museums. Of carrying that image across to life drawing.

Not there yet but here are a couple from along the recent way.

Glow

As Ella Henderson says....

" We will Glow, oooh ooh  oho ooooh ohhh."

Like how the colours seem to glow in this life drawing.

Stood Standing There

Very pleased with this one from Life drawing.

My mate Tiff, who is a regular reader here ( hiya ) and had flown in from Ohio, gamely came along for the session. She had never been before and I didn't want to push too much because, at the end of the day, it is NUDITY.  But she said she enjoyed it and did some cool sketches.

I guess it isn't the first place people think to take visitors to London. Naked people in a Quaker meeting house isn't exactly up there with Big Ben or the Tower. But in my opinion it should be.

An idea has just occurred. A travel company that finds oddball Meetups to take tourists to.

Dragon's Den here I come.