It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It.

Friday - time to blog, and I've got arty things to share!  So here goes:

A little while ago - mid way through March, I think - I booked to do a life drawing day at Tewkesbury Art Studios , which unfortunately had to be cancelled at the last minute due to the model being unwell.  The reorganised date was on Sunday of this week so, rusty but excited, off I went with my friend Louise.

I'd not been to this venue before - it's a bright airy studio space in an industrial building not far from the town center.  It's run by a lovely lady called Jane, who provides several different arty workshops for folks of different abilities.  The life drawing was an untutored session, so there were six of us drawing and painting I think including Jane, one life model, and no-one hovering over my shoulder making me feel self conscious!

We started with several short poses to get us into the swing of things, then an hour-long one, and an hour and a half pose after lunch.  It's been such a long while since I've worked directly from a model, but I'm really pleased with what I managed to achieve:

This was the hour-long pose - worked with white and Payne's grey acrylic on a cardboard sheet.   I like his hands and arms, and I feel I captured his face quite well in this one. There are a couple of things which are a little out of whack, but for a quick painting using the cardboard as a mid-tone (which therefore makes it difficult to correct mistakes), I'm happy with the end results.

This was the longer afternoon pose - on a cheapy hobbycraft canvas in black, white, and Payne's grey.  This pose looked easy, but there was a cushion under the model's hip as they were trying to get a slightly twisted pose, which put his legs out of balance a bit and made it hard for him to stay completely still.  I always like a position like this - looking up the body at an unusual angle throws things into different perspectives.  I think I caught the basic shapes quite well this time - I love how his foot came out, but I don't think he'd mind me saying that I appear to have shaved a good 20 years off of his face!

I have to say, working in a room with other artists was a lovely thing.  I felt capable, and as if I belonged - what I was doing stood up well within the range of work that was made on the day, and though we were all at different points in our artistic lives, conversation was easy and there was a lot of mutual interest and respect.

I've made a good start on my commission, and the commissioner has seen progress shots, and seems pleased with how it's going.  I'm hoping to have it finished over the course of the next week.

I've been trying to think of different ways to advertise myself, with a view to hopefully generating some more commissions, and so for my next project the very lovely folks at our village pub The White Horse in Soudley are going to have a portrait of their beautiful rottie Eva which will hang in the pub once it's done.  They've kindly hunted down a wee selection of photos to work from, so I'm excited to get started on that!

Perhaps I'll start a series - Pub Dogs of The Forest!