Finally!

If you notice an improvement in the photos on this blog in the near future, thank Ruth. She's been doing a marvelous job getting photos up to date for work done over the last year. This in turn lets me produce much better prints, as well as much better pictures for posting. And it gives me much more time for drawing and painting.
Here's a few, all of which Ruth modeled for:

Moonrise: Acrylic and Conte on pastel paper, 65x50 cm.

Catching up....

Art has its own reasons:

Acrylic on Panel, 24"x48"

We are slowly catching up on photographing work - it's kind of hard to focus on that when the weather is so spectacular (it's not snowing!), and I would much rather be drawing or painting - but I guess it has to be done.

(more below)

Ruth

Whoa, it's been awhile. Not that I haven't been busy, though probably a little too distracted by reading. Want some suggestions? I've got lots, from Schopenhauer to my most recent find, The Singing Neanderthals.
Or Arts and Letters Daily (how much time do I waste there?!). Or (especially) b.o.a.t scribbles, thank goodness Avalon Moore only does one page a week, or I'd never get anything done....

Anyway, I've been working with The Artist Known as Ruth for on a prett5y regular basis since last fall. She's a good figurative artist in her own right, which means she brings a lot of artistic experience and background to modeling. I'm going to start putting up more work as I get caught up with the more boring aspects of studio practice - there's a rather large pile of drawings collected over the last while, ready to be edited and either tossed or photographed, as well as a couple of paintings. So I hope to get these up as soon as I can.

But in the meantime, some from last week. All are Conte on either Canson Mi-Teintes, or Fabriano Pastel paper; 50x65cm.

Ruth is very good at rather difficult poses:

(more after the break)

Off the Map

The Halifax Art Map is holding their annual show this month at the Art Sales and Rental Gallery at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The opening reception is Thursday, May 1st, from 6:30-8:30. Lots of fun, and good work to look at! Bring your cheque books :)
The two pieces I'll have in are:
Anita Reading Breugel:

and 

Anita at Rest:

Both are 50x65 cm., Conte and pastel on Fabriano Pastel Paper, framed and quite reasonably priced!

See you there!

3 Anitas....

A few from the last two weeks (I really should get back to posting). Most of the winter I have been working with Anita in pen and ink, reading too much philosophy (more on that later), and trying to learn German. So it feels great to be getting back into working large with pastel.

 All are Conte and Pastel on Fabriano Pastel paper, 50x65 cm.

Anita Reading Breugel

Anita and Kafka

I was reading about Walter Benjamin recently, and one of the things he says about Kafka is that "...he divests human gesture of its traditional supports, and then has a subject for reflection without end." My world is hardly Kafkaesque, and Anita is certainly not a Kafka protagonist, but I love the sentiment.

Two from this Sunday with Anita:

Conte on pastel paper, 50x65 cm.

Anita's Back!

Anita's back from her late summer perambulations and it is a pleasure to be working with her again. But first a little something (12"x18", pastel on Rives) I had been working on from figure sketches done before she left:

There's still more to do before I take it to anything larger.

(more below the fold)

Ruthless in Colour

Now that I am in between models, it's time to clean up some of the work I did with Ruth this summer. These were quite fun to do; we'd set the timer for ten minutes, Ruth would take some (usually difficult) pose, I would find an interesting angle, and then draw from there until either the timer went off, or (more likely) one of us broke.

Ruthless

This ought to be my theme song:

How're ya gonna keep them down on the farm

After they've seen Paree Montreal....

(In case the video doesn't load)

Alas, I've been left Ruthless as of last Friday. And since I've been tied up with a bunch of boring stuff since then, and since I have a pile of more finished stuff to work on, I thought I would spend a bit of time doing a little capriccio  to remind myself what delightful summer it was working with Ruth.

Ruth, Continued

A lovely day to continue on with previous work, like this one (at the bottom of the page) from Wednesday.

Ruth

Wednesday was a delightful day here in Halifax - proper summer weather! And to top it off, Ruth was wearing a delightful orange sundress (is that what they're called? My fashion sense is abysmal). My only regret is that I chose to start off in charcoal. Well maybe there's another, my drawing was quite stiff to start off with. Anyway, I love the ways these things hang on her.

And as usual she struck some graceful poses.

Anita

I guess I don't exactly provide the best working conditions here. Thanks goodness Anita is a trooper!

Ruth, Working Hard

On Tuesday, I was working with Ruth, and we spent most of the time on longer poses. These can be hard - though this might look easy, try doing it for an hour:

Finally caught up....

Last Friday we worked with Anita, who as usual provided some delightfully difficult warmup poses. I really have to get my litho press working....

Catching up with Anita

With Anita, I have started laying out something more formal, probably along these lines:

Catching up with Ruth

Well, I've been very busy these days (somebody has to go outside and keep track of the sun after all). And Billy is back:

That was taken the day he arrived from Alberta - a long plane ride, followed by a swim and a romp in the mud. As you can see, my Venus de Dartmouth is really stressed.

Meanwhile, I have been active in the studio, both with Ruth and Anita.

Raining? Time for Plein Air...

Well, not really plein air today, just finishing up the one I started on Monday....
Pastel and conte on Fabriano pastel paper (grey), 50x65 cm., whatever that is in real numbers (hmm google has a converter. 19.685"x25.59". Bizarre.)

Ruth Bound, Not Fiddling Around...

Last Friday Ruth was busy binding a book (as well as doing some writing & design). I find these sorts of activities fascinating to watch - partly because I'm clueless about book binding, and my writing and design skills aren't much better - but largely because these "little skills" produce so much that make life worth living.

The above drawings are in the order they were done ( a number have been left out). What I find interesting is the way they evolve from tight, awkward, and incoherent (in the top image) to something looser but more coherent in the bottom image, even though it does have some significant proportion issues.  I think that has to do with building of a subconcious model of what one sees, and which is what one actually draws from. She also brought her fiddle, but my drawings from that were a disaster, and I'm too embarrassed to put them up.

On Monday my schedule fell apart (as it is wont to do from time to time) so I spent time working on the paintings of Marissa and Said, two of the coolest people I have ever met. There's still a good deal of work to do on both paintings, but they seem to be coming together.

That was going well, and I figured that - given as rain was predicted for the whole day - I wouldn't get distracted and hence could get something done. But afternoon noon the sky cleared, and with all the rain we've had this spring there was no way I could stay inside. There's a shadowed corner of the garden I've been dying to paint, what with its confusion of knotweed, hawthorn, and forget-me-nots. But as the weather these days is so unpredictable, it had to be quick and dirty....

Ruth and Frances

Once again, I have been rather bad about keeping up with posting (but not with drawing).
I think this one is my favourite from the last week or so:
Ruth:

Pencil on Canson sketchpad, 9x12.

Some of the others:
Ruth in the Garden:

Frances in the Garden

Both are conte and pastel on Canson pastel paper, 12"x16"

Finally, a large one of Ruth reading:

Ruth Reading Homage to Catalonia:

Conte and Pastel on Kraft paper, 24"x36"

Ruth

New conte ( 4 shades of sanguine!) arrived in the mail; I found some old Rives BFK stashed away;  the miserably cold wet weather seems to have broken; and to top it all off, a delightful new (to me) model. A great time to experiment and just enjoy the pleasure of drawing.

(I'm going to studiously ignore this week's computer crashes etc. For all the wonders of high tech, it sure finds ways to waste your time if you let it...)