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.

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)

Future plans, models wanted

Now that Hanna has moved on, I am looking for a new model or two to work with in the Halifax area. [The rest of this post has been moved to the Help Wanted page linked over on the right]
Ahh, the lost post is back....

Hanna Over the Edge

The studio was cold again on Tuesday, so Hanna worked in a robe. She takes fascinating poses - she (generally) chooses the pose, and I the position to draw from. This one just seemed so organic and natural, it was a pleasure to work from.



Occasionally I ask her for a specific pose - this one is based on something that happened last week, when she took a call during one of the breaks to schedule a modelling session. (And yes, she does model for others, if you are an artist in the Halifax area looking for a great professional model, drop me a line and I'll pass the info along). While she was on the phone & busily writing in her agenda, I kept wishing I hadn't left my drawing tools in the studio. So I asked her if she could try repeating the pose, which is obviously (physically) difficult, what with the unbalanced weight and the pressure on her neck. She was able to do it long enough for me to get a quick sketch down (while she was actually drawing my feet....)



Both drawings are 24"x36", Nupastel on Kraft Paper.

Just down the street....

Just down the street (and in the same neighborhood in the blogosphere) is the studio of Joy and Brian Scott; good art, good woodworking, and right across the street, good coffee :)

Briana has taken the time to start up a reference blog for life drawing in the Halifax Dartmouth area - http://figuredrawingns.blogspot.com/ - and this is to thank her for her effort! Figure groups - except for a few that have been around for awhile - tend to come and go very quickly here, due to lack of space & financing (and of course a certain amount of internecine squabbling). So a few (Christmas) thanks to Briana for putting this together!