Paper and Threads

My blog post today recounts two museum experiences this week.  The Neue Galerie is exhibiting Egon Schiele drawings and paintings, and I love to draw his figures, even the tortured looking ones.  This figure was drawn over a prepainted page.  When I'm away from home, I use up the extra liquid watercolor paint so I can close the palette by brushing it on sketchbook pages, starting on the last page of my watercolor sketchbook.

At the very beginning of the exhibit I was really attracted to the very clean lines of this portrait of Karl Otten, and went back to try to capture it for myself.   Someday soon I may return to the exhibit just to draw several pages of Schiele hands!

MoMA has a Toulouse-Lautrec Print exhibit that doesn't end until March.  This month they announced twice monthly figure drawing sessions associated with the exhibit and the first model and the props really captured the Café Society that Toulouse-Lautrec loved.  While I was waiting for the session to begin, I made a quick sketch from the artist book on my table on another prepainted page.

I'm posting the first few and last few figure drawings that I did.  The one on the right was a one minute warm-up and the only one I sketched with her form-fitting, one-shoulder black knit dress with very long fringe and black bootie.

In the one on the left you can see her long black gloves and the tulle fascinator she wore on her head.

There were café props - cocktails, champagne, hats, cane, boa to name a few.  These were the last few drawings I did - each not more than 5 minutes.  The Art Educator really structured the experience - and the 90 minutes moved along very quickly.  The museum will continue these sessions twice monthly through March.

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I love figure drawing, and I wanted to draw some figures, channeling Matisse.  There is a Beyond the Cut-Outs Studio at the Museum of Modern Art every afternoon except Tuesday, so I am trying to build my stash of figures that I can turn into cutouts for collage when I attend.  Here are three sketchbook pages.

I need to "deliberately practice" drawing hands and feet - and I keep a sketchbook just for that purpose.  The poses at the figure drawing sessions are never long enough for me to concentrate on hands, so I clip photos from magazines and use those.  I'm HOPING that someday this work will pay off.

Posted by Shirley at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matisse Cut-outs opened at MoMA in mid-October and it is quite wonderful.  There are several that I've never seen, and many that I'm thrilled to see again.  It is extremely crowded and it is recommended that visitors get timed-tickets online for the day of their visit.  When I was there last Thursday, the line for general admission/timed tickets for 10:30 was already very long by 9:30! 

MoMA has an activity project to accompany the exhibit, much like Print Studio in 2012 when they had two huge Print Exhibits in the galleries.  I loved Print Studio which was open in the education building 6 days each week.  Last week I went to the exhibit in the morning and to the opening afternoon of Beyond the Cut-Out with friends. Here is a description of the activity program.

Opening Day at Beyond the Cutouts:

There were scissors, glue, and many different plain and printed papers to play with and I chose the project inspired by artist Arturo Herrera.  For this I made cut-outs that will be made into a book.  I love Matisse's figure cut-outs, so that was my focus for the afternoon.  Here is a series of 4 I made as a start.  

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I started attending drop-in figure drawing sessions at the Society of Illustrators in New York City on September 16, 2009.  This was a huge step for me, mostly because I had just retired and was finally ready.  But I asked a friend to accompany me so she could ease me into a setting that she already knew.

I loved it and set as my goal one session per month and was able to keep on that schedule until 2013 when I replaced my monthly drop-in sessions with a weekly Figure Drawing class at Fashion Institute of technology.  Since then I have combined drop-in sessions at Society of Illustrators, Battery Park City (from May through Oct), and even Parsons.

Last week at Battery park City we started with 30 second sketches for warm up and then did 10 one minute sketches of John.  We usually begin with 2 minute sketches at Society of Illustrators and I was pleasantly surprised with my quick 1 minute gesture drawings.  I couldn't do this before, so progress is being made!!! 

Posted by Shirley at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I love figure drawing.  And often practice drawing faces from photos that I collect.  This portrait is an exercise from an unknown source, but it allows me to try to work with the same facial proportions as the original photo.

I also clip and copy hand photos from magazines in order to practice drawing hands.  Live model poses are too short to draw hands carefully, and slowly I am making progress.

Battery Park City Figure Al Fresca uses clothed models and here are my first 4 one minute sketches and 3 ten minute drawings.  These are photos from 11 X 15" paper.

Posted by Shirley at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)