Post 200! Photo 100! and Summer School!

Exclamation Marks!!!

Yes, its post number 200!!!

And to celebrate you get 100 days of project 365!!!

Time has flown by this year - my 100th post (also the blog's 1st Birthday) was just after we moved to Bristol so that I could start on my new life, and here we are, 10 months later, having finished a whole academic year of being an illustration student; having gotten engaged; having started a 365 photography project; and having thoroughly enjoyed life :)

Today too it finally feels like summer - after the last few weeks being mad busy doing stuff, and all of last week spring/summer cleaning of the house, I finally managed to sit myself down and get on with some summer projects; namely Miss Stacey's Summer School. The first project involves playing round with paint, and then painting a portrait. Well, one of my aims for this summer has been to learn how to paint skin tones, so I've been practicing by doing paintings of my foot and hand :



Guache in Moleskine Sketchbook

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have done a portrait too ... yay :)

Happy Summer everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tying it all up

Today was the last of our life painting classes and a chance to amalgamate everything we had learnt in the last few weeks. I was mostly just playing with colours still and getting to grips with working tonally. I did move up a gear and worked at a larger scale - apart from the bottom portrait, everything else is A3 size - and the paintings you've seen up to now have been A4.

The end has come round much too soon :(

Embrace the colour ...

I think I'm finally beginning to get to grips with painting and colour ... well at least I've begun to see what combinations I actually like to work with. This has been such a steep learning curve.

Painting in colour

Here's a double whammy update on our painting classes from last Thursday and today. They actually work together as you can see the progression from this to adding more colour; working in low-key colour; and eventually moving to high-key colour.

Last week:

There was a warm spotlight on him, hence the warm yellow in the middle.

This week:




Phew ... I'm not sure about this high-key stuff - very not me (although when Hockney does it it looks fab). I had to really let go of any inhibitions, especially on the last one. Its all about learning though, isn't it?

Painting in tone

Progression from last week: painting in tone:


As you can see, I'm really struggling with acrylics. Then we moved on to adding one tint (colour):



I missed the last bit of the session as I had been volunteered by the course director to go sit in a student consultation. During that time the rest of the class did a head and shoulders in tint of the life model. So I did a self portrait in the same technique once I got home.


Homework had been to do a tonal scene, not necessarily with figures, and we could choose what media to use - charcoals/conte or acrylics. Guess what I went for ...



I sat in the back garden and looked over the fence at the neighbours. Black cat kept jumping up onto the fence so I thought I'd draw him as well.

I'm still determined to get to grips with painting in acrylics ... will just take a little time, and more practice. Still getting to grips with tones. Being currently inspired by Lucien Freud and Euan Uglow.

Drawing in Tone

Amidst the panicking over the book/ship project, we've also started our 5 week life drawing module. It all happened last Thursday, but I've only just got my act together to take photos and post ... so here goes ...

First, some warm-up 5 minute poses

Then a couple of longer 15 minute ones (the two images are 90 degrees to each other - ie one the model is lying down, and the other he's sitting forward).

After this we had a break to have a look at everyone's drawings and talk about how most of us have our model out of context and usually done in line. So our first task was to put the model in context - ie put a frame round, and fill in a background. Also, to do the drawings in blocks of tone. The one below was 60 minutes.

After lunch more practice: A 45minute full body

And a 45minute head and shoulders.

Homework for the week (which I did today) was to do two more portraits, one in daylight if possible, and one in artificial light, ideally trying to make some kind of dramatic lighting setup. As it was a sunny day, I sat out in the garden with a mirror (which seemed to freak the neighbourhood cat out) and did a self-portrait. I took a 'before' photo, before putting in the tonal values.

And this is the final one (the arrow shows the direction of sunlight). No I'm not angry, just squinting because of the light and for not wearing my glasses ;)

Then after Sunshine came home I enlisted him to be my model. I knew he had work to do so I suggested he does his work and I do him lit by his screen ... quite pleased with this one actually. I drew under candle light and he also had his screen on full power and four little tealights for extra illumination and contrast.

Tomorrow there will be more tonal work, but we'll be using paints!

And fear not ... I WILL take lots of good photos of the ship soon and upload ;)

Life drawn ...

Have been feeling a little 'blah' all week ... dunno why. Was not really with it at life drawing today either, so everything is quite sketchy. Nothing I'm proud of, but thought best to post anyways. The top two are actually about A3 size and the others A4. Mostly Indian ink and washes on stone coloured sugar paper; and the bottom two with white pen on black sugar paper.

The colour of skin

More coloured pencils on a tonal background today. This time I had a 45 minute pose to really have a go at something I really want to learn - colouring skin. I love how portrait painters especially, seem to be able to see so many shades of browns, beiges, yellows, pinks, reds and even sometimes blues, greens and purples, in skin. My brain only ever sees the one colour - "skin". So this is my attempt at breaking skin down a little bit. Still experimenting ...

(click on the picture for a larger view)

Life on mid-tones

At life drawing today I came across some stoney coloured paper and decided to work on that instead of my usual white. What a difference it made to be able to do highlights!

Life in watercolour

Another life-drawing Thursday. As these sessions are free to join and not assessed, I'm using them to experiment. Today I was looking at breaking away from my usual 'lines' and doing a bit more form.

Figure study

Otherwise known as 'life drawing' - which I think is just SUCH the wrong word to describe it.

There hasn't been much update on college work since last week as it's been spent mostly on research around the two briefs I'm about to embark on. Somehow it's transpired that I'm going to be doing quite a lot of figurative work - dancers - with both briefs. It's good as I'm very immersed in the subject matter, but it is also very 'bad' because drawing people, especially conveying movement, is something I feel I can't do and am incredibly scared of. Having talked through my ideas for the briefs with the tutors during our first ever tutorial this week, we decided that tackling this fear head on and getting used to it now would be the best thing to do. As an in-road to this I've started doing some life drawing.

The college has an on-going life drawing session on Thursdays with two models - turn up with whatever media you like, and just get on with it! It's not a taught class, just a facility for use by the art students. So off I went this morning - and spent 2 hours there.

Two things I noticed - I'm a line drawer. That's what I love and am good at. I really struggled when I tried to do form and shade. Obviously something I'm going to have to work on. The other thing was this feeling of "what am I doing drawing? I should be doing some real work!", and it's been like this all the while. I'm still finding it hard adjusting to the fact that I'm doing a degree where I'm supposed to draw all day. Blimey! How did I manage to end up here?!?!

Click on the picture to enlarge and see more of what I drew today. This is about half the work as I got bored after scanning this half in!