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.

Fantastic Memories

I found this in the window of a second hand book shop on Charing X Road. The shop was closed so I couldn't check out the interior illustrations by Dali.

Life Drawing 18th April

I haven't drawn on an easel in 7 years & it shows!! I thought I'd try it this week if only to appease our tyrannical drawing 'instructor' but I could barely figure out how to position the easel let alone draw on it. Try again next week.

Corfu

I'm back! Had a lovely time on this beautiful island. We got there before the high season had truly kicked off so we had entire beaches to ourselves! I left the brush pens at home this time & decided to force myself to use materials that I'd not touched in a long time. I took a thick Fabriano sketchbook of multi-coloured paper & a compact watercolour set. I present the results below.















This is a silly doodle I made in the hotel guestbook. I modestly portrayed myself as a Greek god!



'Tigris' is a collaboration by Nikos (aged 4) & Matt (aged 30).


Artefacts & antiquities spotted around the island.


Venetian & French style architecture of Corfu Town.

The big three-oh

Alexander the Great had conquered the known world by the age of 30. My thirtieth is next week so I'm beginning my bid for world domination in his neck of the woods - Greece. I'm off to warmer climes for a week to lament the passing of my twenties. Here's a piccie of the great man I made on my last trip to the region. Catch up with you all in 7 days.

Skizzenbuch

Meet Monsieur Carnet. He's my best friend, he comes with me everywhere.

LIFE CLASS

No life drawing for me this week but here's some I did back in 2000. Steve Roberts who runs the animation course at Central St. Martins set up an open class after hours. We were tutored by a lovely Spanish lady named Isobel.