drawing my own - plus some hockey talk

While I waited to hear about an illustration yesterday I started another painting of my own tattoos.

Here's the progress so far.

This figure-8 knot was done about a year and a half ago by Steve Baker in Guelph, ON. I think he did a really nice, clean job on it.

Not much to say about it: I like the look of knots (I used to be into tying fancy, decorative knots), I like the number 8, my sister-in-law was about to get married so I had the phrase "tying the knot" (and eternity) on my mind.

This one was done several years ago by Lydia Stalingrad in Halifax, NS. At the time I think she was a bit nervous about the smallish lettering but she did a great job - true to the feel of the old advert it came from.

This was sort of a memento of living in Halifax, to my love for hockey/hockey-history/Canadiana, and to my love for old advertising all wrapped up in one.

I don't play hockey... I did play soccer for a bit... but I've never been able to "get into" soccer (despite reading The Ball Is Round - which was a good read). The game is just too long and boring for me. There, I said it.

Hockey captures my attention on many levels. I'll happily admit that it's partly due to living in the province of its origin for 5 years and running into Sidney Crosby a few times. (I watched the Pens win the cup in Sid's boyhood arena - it was hilarious and cool.)

Anyway, I get attached to places via the history of those places and Halifax's and hockey's histories happen to be intertwined.

This little book made a good argument about Halifax-Dartmouth being the place where hockey really began. Also, it's a quick and informative read about hockey's interesting history. I recommend it.

I might get the little striped guy tattooed someday... maybe when the Pens win the cup again.

I thought this tidbit (or should I say "timbit"?) about the acrobatic influence of the goalies from the "coloured leagues" on the NHL was really interesting.

last night of guelph life-drawing for me

I didn't have any newsprint and didn't feel like buying any for one night of drawing so I just doodled in my sketchbook on this, my last evening of life drawing in Guelph.

The original model for the night didn't show up but I was able to contact the director of the school and she was able to contact a model who lives nearby and that model came to our rescue - thankfully!

It so happens that the replacement was one of my favourite models so that turned out great.

Also fun was a bunch of the drawers taking turns posing while we killed time waiting for our replacement model.

It was the most fun night of drawing so far.

Up to this point I've been mainly excited about our impending move but the sadness of leaving is now starting to kick in. Guelph is a great town and I will miss it. And I will miss being the facilitator of life-drawing night at GSA. Sighs...

Here are some of the night's drawing (all 15 minutes except the last one which was about 35 minutes):

I liked how the sun was falling on the drawing here:

the life report weekly

i don't know what it was about last night but i felt like i got some great drawing done! maybe it was a bit of valentines voodoo, maybe my very bad headache put pressure on some part of my brain and lessened my inhibition, maybe something about the feral-child-look of the model resonated with me... i dunno but it was good magic!

so first we do our stretches, don't forget to breath (1 minute gestures):

then we let our backbones slide (5 minutes):

if you aren't falling down, you're not trying hard enough (10 minutes):

take time to reflect (15 minutes?):

or take a nap (15 minutes):

now get your mojo rising again (20 minutes):

and face the situation head-on (40 minutes but this was a second attempt... so maybe 30?):

i was happy enough with this one (also, it is on nice paper) to hang it up in the house for a bit. ..

the model had dark hair and was resting his head on a black cushion. if i had more time i would have made the blacks really deep and rich and saturated... but i'm too lazy to go back into it now and i don't want to make that kind of mess in my apartment.. it would look like a coal mine afterwards!

still life-drawing

Just another Life-Drawing-Night-Update. We know the drill right? On Monday nights I go to the local art school, unlock the door, make coffee, and set out cookies. Then I get to draw for 3 hours with all the good people who paid for this privalege. Afterwards I turn out the lights, set the alarm, lock up, and go home. The next day I post some of pictures on here. I only post the ones I like or at least have some interesting little bits in them. That's my prerogative and I'm sticking to it. It's a pretty sweet deal.

I'm glad I've been taking pictures and posting these here because it turns out I'm going to be moving soon - chances are to a smaller apartment. I won't be taking these reams of papers and charcoal with me so this has become my little archive.

By the way, if you want a distorted human drawn on newsprint that will turn yellow in a few months and will shed charcoal dust on your floor, I'm your lady! Holla' at me.

So, on with the show...

2 minute gesture:

5 minutes (I think... I should start writing down the length of the poses...):


15 mintues (again, I think):

15 minutes:

20 minutes (this one is my fav of the night):


40 minutes (this one was hard to photograph... it's nicer in person but even so I'm not crazy about it... I lose my looseness when I have more time... also, i cropped her legs off a bit because they were so unfinished that it looked really bad...):

double the fun (double the frustration)

I have a real bad headache. Boo.

Last night at Life Drawing we had TWO models. This was totally new to me and I was pretty intimidated at first. It was fun and interesting though... but also frustrating because there was just so much MORE to draw (also, double or triple the amount of shifting during the poses) and I never got as much drawn as I wanted to. I would definitely like to try this again.

High are the highlights.

2 minutes:

2 Minutes

About 5 minutes (2nd attempt during a 10 minuter)


Can't remember how long... either 10 or 20 (you would think I would be able to tell but I can't!)

Same for this one... I think 20 minutes?

About 40 minutes. Wish I had gotten to their faces... Some people managed to get a lot more drawn than I did... well, I always knew I was slow... slow and messy... an unusual combination.

yesterday night in life

Last night I forgot to bring charcoal to Life Drawing. It's what I'm most comfortable with. Argh... But a little discomfort never hurt anybody...

I like these two 1-minute gestures. I think they are the loosest I've been in a long time... maybe ever. The cat agrees.

And the lady on the right there was done with an itty-bitty piece of charcoal I found in my pencil case. I liked her enough to put her on The Shelf today.

(The print in this picture says "A Farm on the Frontier". It fell out of a used sewing book I bought awhile ago. I'm thinking of painting something on it but haven't decided what just yet...)

this and thattle

I had a surprise visit from one of my sisters and her friend the other day. Went out for lunch at a great, little vegetarian place here in Guelph called The Cornerstone. My meal was delicious - the only thing missing was meat. hahaha...

Anyway, the restaurant is right beside an antique store so I had to peek in at Dis-a-Ray's. The owner, Ray, always cracks me up when I go there.

I purchased these two hand-painted signs. I forgot to ask where they came from but I have a guess (an old department store further down the street?). There were two others but I only wanted these two to make a headboard-thing for my bed.

See below:

(It's a bit of an inside joke... I sleep on the left, always cold and covered with many blankets. Freakishly-Furnacelike-Husband sleeps on the right below an open window with only a sheet and a pillow. There, now it's an "outside joke"... not a very funny one... but I need you to know my quirks have their own interior logic.)

***

Life-drawing has started back up. I got pretty rusty over the holidays and didn't end up with any drawings I'm particularly proud of.. but here are the highlights anyways...

These are both from the long pose at the end. I didn't have the attention span (or any nice paper) for the pose so I just flitted around and did a bunch of shorter drawings. These two almost fit together.

I think the next one was 10 minutes... that's a pretty long time to not get to her head and arm drawn - shows how slow I am at drawing! But anyway, I thought there was some nice stuff happening in the inner thigh area. hahaha. That sounds suggestive but I'm serious.

This one was also 10 minutes and done in pencil for a change of pace.

I was happy with the outline and I think I actually got her to recede from the heels to the head... I'm generally not very good at that but I think I'm getting better.

Aesthetically, I kind of like how she slips into the fold of the paper at the top but I wish I hadn't run out of room (and time) to draw her hands. They looked interesting.

on the horn with london

Totally out of the blue this morning an old friend skyped me from jolly ol' England - where she now resides. I was a little nervous when she first texted that she was going to call. We haven't talked in about 12(?) years, wouldn't it be horribly awkward?

But I was reassured from her very first giggle that it would be cool. Despite the "trans-atlantic" (as she calls it) accent she's developed she still laughs the same: a lot, infectiously, at the same stupid things I say, etc. We talked for an hour and it was really great. Our lives have progressed in alarmingly similar ways even though our careers and continents are so different.

She still inspires and challenges me. I'm still a little in awe of her - as I always was.

She felt bad that she was keeping me from work so I'm posting this doodle I did while we talked so she knows my hands were still busy.

This is a little boxer by the legendary "Stoney" from a Taschen book I have. I'll probably finish him on better paper, in ink, later on but for now I really DO have to get to work...

last life drawing session (back in january)

A few excerpts from last night's life-drawing session (the last before the holidays).

Yesterday I felt like everything was wrong with my drawing but today I feel a bit better about it... I'm glad I'm at least trying...

I forget whether this was a one or two minute gesture.

Tried to draw with some weird charcoal pencil I had in my stash of supplies. I think this was 25 minutes. I like the floaty shape.

The people next to me said it looked like Stephen Harper (the model did NOT look like Stephen Harper - except for maybe his hair...) which makes me laugh when I look at it now.

This was a 30 minutes section of a 50 minute pose (I ditched the first attempt). I managed to avoid excessively-small-head-syndrome with this one! (You're probably wondering if his head was extremely large in real life to allow me to draw it normal-sized... well, it was "large-ish" but not freakishly so.)

A nice thing about living in a city with a university Fine Arts program is that you find lots of cool art books at the thrift store! I found a book of Paul Davies' Portraits the other day. A few of them stopped me in my tracks.

I really like this one. It's a Russian poet whose name I didn't recognize and can't remember off the top pf my head. The photo doesn't do it justice.

last night's pose

Last night was a special Life Drawing session where we did one long pose for 3 hours (with tea & cookie breaks of course!)

Frankly, I was very intimidated by the prospect and maybe that's why I conveniently forgot to bring any good quality paper. I couldn't commit to the effort of drawing one drawing for 3 hours. Thinking back to art school, I can't even remember doing poses that long... though I'm sure we probably did. I've just blocked it out.

Anyway, I did remember to bring some ink so I used part of the time to experiment with that. This was 30 minutes.

This was the last 30 minute chunk of time. Another small head! She was a very tiny person in real life but I turned her into a mountain... though maybe this reflects her personality a bit. She seemed strong and confident.

Life Drawing Catch-Up Part 2: Various Views of 3 More Ladies

I have this one hanging up because I like it a lot and sometimes I can't believe I drew it... though she is much curvier on paper than she was in real life.

Same lady. Longer pose (maybe 35 mins?) Hard to photograph this one due to the pencil drawing. It's cooler in real life. But I like that I got her face to look pretty. Faces, hands, and feet of course are the hardest for me to pull off... which is why I often focus on them to the exclusion of the rest of the body.

Different week, different lady. 10 minutes but it was going well and I really wish it had been longer. I'm a painfully slow drawer - I look around the room and other people will have drawn whole bodies, classically beautiful and delicate. Meanwhile I'll only have a few heavy-handed scratches down...

Close-up face in a 40 minutes drawing.

Small head. My heads are always so small... am I over-compensating for my own very large head? Is it because I minimize the importance of the brain? Because I only possess a dinosaur-like-pea-brain myself?

She looks like a giantess here but in real life she was very very small.

Next lady, from last week.

My favourite-though-headless gesture of the night:

A 10-minute Rubens (she didn't have a perfectly flat head. That is just where my paper ended due to previous pages being flipped over the top of pad of newsprint) :