Paper and Threads

Met Breuer NYC is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the death of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.  50 works from the Met's Scofield Thayer Collection are in the exhibit, OBSESSION, Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picasso.  I like all 3 of these artists, and figure drawing, very much and sketched one Klimt and one Schiele.  The Schiele was painted at home. 

This is the link to the exhibit, which will be on view until October 7th. 

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/obsession 

Posted by Shirley at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I posted a technique that I'm exploring for figure drawing, and the method is outlined briefly in the last blog post. Those drawings were done from photos.  Figure drawing, using this quickly drawn frame, was done from live models last Wednesday at Battery Park City.

These are two 1 minute drawings from the 20 that we did for warm up.  These poses might have been harder for me to draw in 1 min without my line of action structure.  You can see the quick lines drawn first.

This was one of the four five minute sketches, and you can see a few of the lines of action in this pose.

These are two 10 minute poses using the same system.  The five and 10 minute poses were drawn with a General Sketch and Wash pencil, and then a waterbrush was used to spread the graphite for the gray tones.

Posted by Shirley at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Line of Action or Gesture Drawing:  I love figure drawing and although I go to sessions with live models, I wanted more experience drawing bodies in action.  I watched Suita Shirodkar's Craftsy class and liked her line of action concept, and now I have my way of establishing the lines of action quickly.  I'm still learning by using photos, because these types of actions in real time are so brief that I can't remember them well enough to study them.  I save ads, or magazine photos and take less than 5 minutes, after breakfast in the morning, for the quick drawings. 

These are the most recent ones, cut from 1/4th piece of used copy paper.  I collaged them on one page of my sketchbook.  You can see my very quick pencil lines of actions, if you look closely.  The next three illustrations show my steps.

Art After Breakfast: Reference Photo from New York City Ballet Season Program

Quick Pencil Line Drawing 

Pen lines added: Almost as Fast

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After weeks away from Figure Drawing, I returned to Figure Al Fresco at Battery Park City, and we had a wonderful, new young model.  These are my 4 five minute drawings - drawn with a General Sketch and Wash pencil which I spread with a waterbrush to obtain the gray color.

During a break after this 10 minute pose, our model told us that she teaches figure drawing, and likes to throw in a few poses requiring us to draw with foreshortening.

These drawings were bigger than my scanner and were photographed. 

Posted by Shirley at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Direct Painting for 30 X 30 Urban Sketchers June Challenge:  Last summer I took a 3 hour workshop from Urban Sketcher Anne Watkins.  I love her style of painting random people, especially those that she does onsite at Weddings.  https://annewatkins.com/about.html

This image seemed perfect for the day after we left Martha's Vineyard.  It was painted from an image that I previously sketched from a photo, and the only pen work was the tie on the sun hat.  I'm not sure that I will ever acquire the skills to do paintings like this live.

Sketchbook Page:  In order to do every day of the challenge I had to sometimes do 2,3, or 4 direct paintings on one page of my Teesha Moore 16 page watercolor sketchbook.  I marked off the areas with 1/4" artists tape before I painted.  The flower and razor clam were painted from direct observation.  The blue jay was painted from a photo I took of a wooden sculpture.

I still need to do a painting for June 30th to finish my book and the challenge, but we arrived home from vacation to a full schedule of grandchildren and it takes me longer to do a direct painting, than with pen, ink, and watercolor washes.  

Posted by Shirley at 6:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)