Garden pARTy

 I issued an invitation to some of my friends to a little art event at my home. Although it was a garden party, as this year is incredibly hot already, we were inside.

   My lovely friend Elena is a choreographer and former ballerina and I asked her if she would model for us. Over the afternoon we sketched a series of short poses 1, 5 and 10 minutes, which really made us focus.

 

 My assistant was very keen to help and checked drawings, equipment, stopped Elena getting bored, (photos on facebook page) and even did some modeling. Unfortunately she couldn't hold a pose for more than 5 seconds.

Quick pose from Elena & Degas (5 seconds)

Quick pose 2 (2 seconds)

I used Inktense pencils in an A4 Daler Ebony sketchbook and Elena is so flexible that some poses she struck seemed impossible, and looked very strange in the drawings, even when accurate.

Elena with disconnected arm.

 *****
My fundraiser in aid of UNICEF's #childrenofsyria appeal is this Saturday!
Full details are here: SketchMuscatforCharity

See you there or you can donate here on my UNICEF Fundraiser page:
Sue-Pownalls-annual-fundraiserSketch-Muscat-for-Charity

Dreads & tats

Gaby, Charcoal A3© Sue Pownall 2013

Whilst in the UK I went to 2 more life drawing classes. As with drawing Terry I took charcoal to draw with as I'd had such fun before. In the 2nd class, I also tried using watercolours directly without under-drawing. I think as a side-effect of drawing portaits for my Festival Faces series, with both models I ended up drawing portraits during the long poses. Gaby was so pleased with my drawing of her that she took a photo of it. Below are other drawings of Gaby.

Gaby reclining. A3 Direct painting with Payne's Grey watercolour

Gaby A3 watercolour.

The day before I left UK, I got to draw Rachel and her tattoos again. I drew her before in September 2011 and you can see those drawings here. With the first long pose I drew the charcoal portrait below, which I think is a fair likeness. Then did the rough full body drawing. Can you tell I was pre-occupied with what I had to do before my flight the next morning?

Rachel Charcoal A3 © Sue Pownall 2013

Rachel in charcoal A3

Finally,  I drew another portrait of Rachel as a concerted effort to focus and relax.

Portrait in sepia pencil on A3

*****

Please note: I am switching over to blogging through my site, www.suepownallartist.co.uk/blog-art-of-a-nomad and plan to stop duplicating posts here. May I suggest you adjust your RSS feeds and readers to follow there?

Jungle scenes aka theatrical life drawing

One of the final poses. That's me with a closed sketchbook - oops

 I am currently having a short UK holiday to see my family. Last Sunday saw me in London for my first visit of the year. I arranged to meet artist Cathy Read and for us both to attend Dibujo London's theatrical life drawing in the Barbican Centre's conservatory. Cathy & I have been in contact for several years through social media. It was lovely to finally meet face-toface and to draw together.

I'm drawing 3rd from the left with Cathy next to me in the hat.

We started off with various warm-up drawing exercises followed by the story interspersed with poses (averaging about 10/15 mins each). I'm fairly pleased with the drawings I made, especially the direct watercolour sketches but unfortunately due to the non-existent broadbandwidth I cannot upload any of the images... nor my photos from the day. So here are the photos taken by one of the organisers Karina Ellen. 

 Please check out Cathy's paintings on her site cathyreadart.com, she's just started one inspired by our day out.

It you are interested in future events, Dibujo London can be found at meetup.com/Dibujo-London-Free-theatrical-life-drawing.

****
Edit: If you go to www.suepownallartist.co.uk/1/post/2013/01/jungle-scenes-aka-theatrical-life-drawing I have managed to upload some of my drawings there.

Terry

Terry A3 Charcoal © Sue Pownall 2013

 One thing I like to do when I visit my parents is to go to the Monday life drawing class, which has been running for years. I first went in December 2009, I attend several times in 2010, but last attended a class in September 2011. Knowing I was going today, on Saturday I decided to draw with charcoal, not something I've done in a very long time, so bought some ready for today's class. I was slightly nervous having not taken a class in so long and because of my choice of medium. Consequently, I did the three 5 minute warm-up sketches using a Conté sketching pencil and then happily used the charcoal for the longer poses. Usually I like the precision of pen and pencil and was surprised how much I enjoyed experimenting with the roughness of charcoal. By the way: Despite the photos here I didn't use tinted paper, but white and so the contrasts are greater.

A3 charcoal © Sue Pownall 2013

During the 3 hour class, I completed 12 drawings of which the two here are my favourite. I feel it was a very successful morning and I hope to go again before I return to Oman. What do you think?

Tattooed lady

5 min warm-ups. © Sue Pownall 2011

As I'm stuck in UK, problems with paperwork for new contract yawn, I thought I would take advantage of my local drop-in life class. Despite the fact I haven't been since last summer, several people recognised me and so chatted to them in the breaks. I was preoccupied as I was going to a printers for the first time that afternoon to arrange prints of some of my work and was unsure if I've choosen the right pieces, number, size...

30 min pose © Sue Pownall 2011

Despite that, I was very pleased with my 5 min warm-up sketches and the half hour long pose afterwards. However after the break and the resumption of the long pose, I started a new piece which got too over-worked and pretty. Oh, and despite remeasuring, checking  and altering several times the hands still look too small.

arrrgh too pretty © Sue Pownall 2011

Towards the end of the class, I abandoned the pretty drawing and I grabbed a sketchbook (35x25cm), a pen and sketched the tattoos.

Pen © Sue Pownall 2011

One of the reasons I attended the class, apart from opportunity, is that I feel it is important to practise the basic drawing skills whenever possible as well as sketch and produce finished pieces. By coincidence, the fabulous writer and ceramist Diana Baur wrote a post on that this week click here to check it out. It's very worth reading.

Life drawing class - Doreen

Tonal study during long pose.

The life drawing class on Monday was a challenge as the model, in real life, has short stocky legs and so to get the drawing to "look" right, would have meant not drawing accurately. On top of that, I didn't have a very successful morning as I was too tense due to starting to stress about the future - on Friday I fly to a new country to start a new job, my 3rd country and 3rd contract this year. (more info here).

5 minute warm-up poses.

Dr Sketchy's : Life drawing & burlesque!

Khandie Kissea in first session. 10 mins.

Over on Inklings, I read Catriona's post on Dr Sketchy and saw her fab drawings (check them out here). Two days later, feeling very nervous as I hate going to pubs alone, I signed up for an event at The Old Queen's Head, Islington. Yesterday, several weeks later, I was so nervous as I travelled up to London to attend. As Lisa advised in a post on Wanderlust Women's Travel Dreams, I had on my lipstick, dressed for success, and also carted up my A3 block of cartridge paper, various pens and pencils.

My table at breaktime, with 2nd G&T.

First stop, the bar for Dutch courage (why do we call it that?) then I chose a small table near a couple of friendly looking lads. Honestly, I don't know why I was nervous, as really it wasn't like going into a pub solo, but was joining a group of like-minded people for some drawing and fun, which the afternoon was.

Kiki drawn with eyes shut.

Peggy (Margaret Sterner Cox) would have liked the warm up as we had to do a blind-contour of the hostess Kiki Kaboom, who was a real character and directed us throughout the session. After the break we had to do a blind drawing of Kiki! After the warm up we then did some very short poses, and after each we had to hold up our results. The longest poses all afternoon were only 10 minutes and there where lots of challenges to add to our drawings, should we wish. I just drew what I saw - very unimaginatively.  

Displaying sketches - the brown paper is mine.

After the break, we had a burlesque-style performance by our model, which I did a few scribbles of. Then after drawing Kiki with our eyes-shut, Lieutenant Luke posed for us. At the end of the afternoon, after a joint pose between the two models, there were prizes for the best drawings. The prizes went mainly for originality. I felt all my drawings had been tight and too small for the paper - my most successful was my drawing done with my eyes shut.

Lieutenant Luke

Julie, Kiki, Khandie, & Luke.

Edit: I forgot the link for Dr Sketchy here.

Life drawing class - Vicki

 

It is so good to have a weekly drop-in life drawing session near my parents and I went along this morning, still suffering from travel tiredness. I think all the drawing I have done over the last 4 months - especially EDiM - has paid off, as I was very pleased with my results. However, I didn't complete the full 3 hour session as I got too tired to concentrate.

Having got my scanner back, which takes A4 comfortably, I drew on A3, so these are the images I could squeeze on it. Plus I covered 8 sheets, so it's too boring to post them all.

D

Drawings from top to bottom: Long pose in pencil: 15 minutes of long pose in coloured pen: 15 minute seated pose; & 5 minute warm up sketch.

I'm not sure who's blog it is, sorry, but recently an EDMer wrote about her life drawing, pointing out that she had realised that it''s not necessary to draw the whole model. Today I remembered that and concentrated on the shapes I liked, hence the legs at the top, and had fun with the 15 minutes before break and used orange as my main pen colour.

Life drawing class - Alice

Monday I attended anther life drawing class in my endeavour to be more accurate in my observation and subsequent drawings. I find long lying down poses quite boring to draw, but I think I did okay. The seated pose was a 10 minute pose and would make a lovely sculpture... oh right Rodin did it already.

Life drawing class - Michael

At class the other day, I was not expecting a male model. It took me a little while to settle, hence the very bad, unpublished,warm up drawings and the seated pose from the side, but after tea I drew the two reclining poses. I am very pleased with how I captured the foreshortening in the last picture of the day (top) and the strength of his legs. I measured and remeasured Michaels raised arm in the lower picture, and concluded it was a the way the pillow covered part of the arm which made it look wrong, I'm still not happy with it.

Art-based resolutions

I'm starting off the year quite well despite the difficult weather conditions by drawing mum & Nelson inside on the 2nd & 3rd. Then on the 4th I attended another life drawing class. I was not to happy with the results, my proportions kept going wrong, so switched to my favourite pen and gave up on the pencil to produce the piece above. I walked around the model trying different viewpoints and details, and ended up fairly happy with the results.

Reading Cathy of asketchintime I thought I would steal some of her ideas for art-based resolutions. Checkout her blog for some great illustrations.

"Manage my time better - far too much time is spent on the internet, which is perfectly entralling but doesn't get any painting or sketching done". I think that's a great place to start, although I will still blog my results, but maybe not spend so much time on Facebook, and reading various blogs. 
 
"Do what I love, love what I do ...- I’m not about to throw out all other mediums, but I would like to focus on getting better at... ". in my case I'm going to concentrate on my pen & ink. I've had lots of fun since September, when I started this blog, painting, drawing in pencil etc., but I want to develop and complete more ink drawings.

"I am also so enjoying sketching, the quick, immediate and spontaneous act which I’d never really considered an art form in its own right until I was exposed to wonderful work on Urban Sketchers". Me too, and I resolve to do lots more this year.

I left the UK on the 7th, so my future posts will be from Italy, I hope you like them and I look forward to reading your comments.

HAPPY 2010, MAY IT BRING YOU PEACE & HAPPINESS.

Life drawing class

For the first time in a very long time, on Monday morning I attended a drop-in life drawing class. I was quite pleased with the results, especially on the quick poses, but reverted to drawing "as-you-are-supposed-to" rather than like me for the final long pose :(    It was the first time I had drawn in pencil for a while too, and loved using the 5B for the strong bold strokes, at least until the end when I got all tight and precious about my drawing. Oh well, it was a learning experience.

Above are 2 of the drawings from the morning, the first a 20 minute pose and the bottom one a 35 minute pose, which I moved around to get the three viewpoints.

On the Friday before, after writing in Pompeii that it was to cold to draw outside here in Europe, it was a beautiful morning when I got to Napoli airport, so I stood outside sketching the smokers and phone users.  Then, whilst waiting to board, I drew the man with his laptop (Bottom right).