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!

Goals: Level 1 (YAAAAAYYY!!!)

This week's progress report is marked by something special - a commission!!!!  WHOOP WHOOP!!!

A friend (not telling you who!) has commissioned a painting (not telling you of what!) as a gift for a friend of theirs (not telling you who!).  I am all full of seeecrets, lol!  And possibly a little giddy at the confidence that's been put in my abilities, and, well just plain chuffed to bits to have been asked.

I think it's not giving too much away to say that it's going to be a pet portrait, and so to put me in the right frame of mind to get started, I did this at art club this week:

working from this photo of our dog, River (which was on my phone at the time and therefore quite small to be working from)

There's quite a lot about this drawing that isn't quite right, particularly in the angle and volume of her head, but I was quite pleased with how her body and legs look - I think I got the angles and foreshortening quite well. 

I've been thinking about squaring up next week, just to see how it feels to use that method.  I feel that I'm doing reasonably well without it (and it feels a little like cheating), but then I watch art competitions on tv and everyone's using their tablets to square up and working from the flat image rather than from life . . . and I can see that it makes getting the skeleton of the drawing correct faster and easier, so perhaps it would make for a better end result?  I'm not sure . . . is it just pride that's holding me back?  Ah well, we shall see!

I've also spoken to a couple of people who are asking about drawing classes.  I've never seen myself in a teaching role, but I'm wondering whether it might be a gap in the market that I could fill . . . there's a wee (new oil tank sized) gap in our finances just now which could certainly do with being filled, so maybe it's worth having a think about!

***Any and all commissions welcome!!!  Just give me a shout!***

Until next week -
Mippitt xx

Promises, I'm keepin' 'em!

Ok - second Friday in a row.  Yeah - get me with the reliability!

So as promised, the arty stuff first:

This is the finished drawing, and here's last week's for comparison:

So, I finished off I's hair, fixed B's mouth, and just generally worked on getting the shading deeper and putting more contrast in where it was needed.  This was all worked over 3 art club sessions (about 6 hours, give or take some chatting time).  I wish that I'd taken more photos along the way!  I'm thinking that blogging will help me to see what I've done a lot more clearly.

In other crafty news, I went to Wonderwool Wales last Sunday - a bit of a long drive, but I had friends with me to keep me sane!  It was fantastic as always:

And my (smaller than usual) haul:

The spectrum of mini skeins which I've already wound are sock weight merino from Moonlight Yarns (https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/moonlightyarns )  - those are for a secretspecial project which I might share details of after it's been gifted - the middle two skeins are a merino nylon mix from Siobhans Crafts (which unfortunately doesn't have a website noted on their labels) in Unicorn and Grey Rainbow, and the final skein on the right is "All of Time & Space" in Merino Tencel sock from Temporal Spin (www.temporalspin.co.uk) - you can't see it very well from the photo, but there's a darker rainbow flash at the top of that skein - Whovian yarn!  How could I resist?!!

I also finished a jumper this week, but it's turned out to be a complete tent (even on my currently oversized frame), so I'm going to fix it.  Luckily it was top down and the top part and sleeves are lovely, so I'll rip it back to just under where the waist shaping stopped, add some more shaping and lengthen it without the increase in needle size etc.  I'll share photos of that mess when it's fixed!

So . . . that was still more crafty than arty I guess, so between now and next week I'm going to set myself the goal of spending some time in the shedio sorting out a better working area (and then doing some WORK in it!).  Let's see how that goes!

S xx