Life Drawing 30th May

Pre-class warm up drawings.















These kids were sitting opposite me on the train on the way home. They were snogging the face off each other, or rather SHE was sucking HIS face! Her hands were all over him! Those of us fortunate enough to be able to HEAR their tongue gymnastics tried to avert our eyes but in the end I couldn't resist drawing them since they were oblivious to all around them.

RIPE

This is another small painting inspired by my recent trip to Greece. We saw this goat on the roadside as we drove by. She had ENORMOUS udders full of milk. The lemons that grow in gardens all over the island were equally plump.

Carnet Avril/Mai

Sketchbook drawings I've made over the past month or so.




Drew this chap from memory after tailing him in my local supermarket. He was barely more than 5 feet tall & I could only see him from behind but his trapezoids were about 5 feet wide! Mustn't make a habit of stalking bodybuilders . . .




Elmore Leonard recently came to promote his new book at the National Film Theatre. It's a collection of his western stories & tied in with a season of movie westerns at the NFT. Leonard screened '3:10 to Yuma', one of the first film adaptations of his novels.
He told us a remake is in the works with Tom Cruise & Eric Bana.

Mentor & pupil

Well, waddya know, I was rooting through the archives on the weekend & I found an old pic of me with Art Babbitt!

LIFE DRAWING 2nd May 2006

No life drawing for me this week but here are the drawings I made at last weeks session.


Rapid 30 sec - 1 min. gesture sketches.



5 min quick study.




15 mins.



20 mins.



20 mins.



20 mins.

Weather

The latest theme in the Eurovision Art Challenge was 'weather' & I had made a couple images that fit the bill.
The first one was for my South American Journal to illustrate my Dad & I getting toasted on the beach in Argentina.


With the second one I wanted to show the good old days of British weather reporting when Michael Fish gave infamously wrong forecasts! In my memory the suits were brown & the weather was grey. Surely there's an Anchorman style movie begging to made set during the 70's heyday of boring weathermen?

Ronald Searle POW

Review of TO THE KWAI & BACK, excellent but harrowing collection of Searle's drawings made whilst a prisoner of the Japanese during WWII. Check out my Ronald Searle Tribute blog here.

POSEIDON

The POSEIDON image from my 'GREEK GODS' series started as a more figurative design.


I thought it could be pushed further & wanted to make the figure more abstract & monumental. Perhaps it could go further?




This is the final working drawing.


I made the small painting first then used elements/textures from it for the digital version below.



For the colour palette I had in mind Picasso's 'Two women Running' as inspiration.

Greek gods

I've been working on a series of drawings based on characters I've drawn on my trips to Greece. It all started with the first two drawings here. Exploring Kos 2 years ago I saw these locals on the roadside & drew them later from memory. The Greek islands are beautiful & the culture & environment so relaxed but it got me wondering what became of the Olympians & the lesser Greek gods? Did they grow old & retire? Do they tend olive trees & pick lemons? Do they now live amongst mortals?

HERMES


PERSEPHONE


CLOTHO (one of the Fates)


POSEIDON ( God of the ocean & guardian of the beaches)

The painted sketch above helped me work out the colour scheme for the digital version below.


DIONYSUS (In a restaurant I sat close to this Greek businessman who stuffed himself with wine & food while taking calls)


SIREN (This beautiful apparition will lure you to certain doom)

Skinny model

These sketches are oldies but this model was particularly fun to draw since she was so bony! I don't often go as far as caricature in the life class but I couldn't help it here.

He's INCREDIBLE!

Big update on my tribute to British newspaper caricaturist Gary over on my Garycatures blog.
(All images are copyright Gary & Times Newspapers). Link on the right.

Life Drawing 25th April 2006

The smaller drawings here represent a moving pose. The more developed ones are 30 second - 2 minute warm ups.


Struggled to get the tension in the shoulder & arm that the model is leaning on. It needs subtle drawing in the muscles & position of the shoulder blades but I ended up making a hash of it. Limited time on this pose (20 mins) meant I was trying to find some quick marks to indicate the muscles bunching up but there's too many meaningless marks here.


Interesting to draw the hoop in these poses - it helps one gauge space & dimension when drawing.

Sunday Times Magazine Photospread

'A polar bear with a fresh kill, on drifting ice in the Arctic Ocean off Svalbard - an archipelago situated between Norway & the North Pole.'
Photograph: Pal Hermansen, Norway





'Mallam Galadima Ahamadu with a captive hyena in Nigeria. Last year, Ahamadu was travelling as part of a group of entertainers parading hyenas, monkeys & pythons through the. The hyenas are tranquilised & captured in the wild, trained, & disciplined with a stick.'
Photograph: Pieter Hugo, South Africa

March People

Observational sketches made in March.

London Exhibitions

We're fortunate in London at the moment to have several superb exhibitions running. I've seen the Art of PIXAR show which is great fun then over the Bank holiday last weekend I visited two excellent shows on classical artists. Firstly, 'Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master'. This does exactly as the subtitle suggest in two ways - it allows you to get within a couple inches of these breathtaking, 500 hundred year old drawings & it also gives you a sense of who the man was & how he lived. There are 90 drawings on display & several letters from & to him. There's correspondence between him & a nephew where he's thanking him for a gift of cheese & giving him advice on finding the right girl to marry!


It's a pleasant surprise to find great big enlargments of Michelangelo drawings on the Tube.





Interesting article here by Waldemar Janusczcak in the Sunday times Magazine, 5th March 2006.






This is a copy I made from a Michelangelo drawing on the advice of a fine artist I once worked with on a job in Cardiff.
It's a good exercise & helps you learn a lot about what kind of marks best portray form, bone, hair, light on skin etc. But I got the ear in the wrong place though!



Found this illustration by John Glasham in a collection of his work. I was not familiar with this artist & thank man about town Brendan Amphlett for introducing it to me!



'TUTTO SPIRITO E FOCO'

The second show I saw, & even more grandly titled than the Michelangelo, is 'Tiepolo: All Spirit & Fire' at the Courtauld Institute. It's a fine collection of oil sketches made as quick studies to work out compositions & get client approval before embarking on the finished fresco. The man could make a ceiling look like this -


These are some quick thumbnails I made while I was there.