Ruth was on Holidays #1

So I had time to play around with materials....
This one started with a pencil drawing on 18"x24" Canson 1557 drawing paper. I wasn't real happy with the drawing, so it seemed worth victimizing first :)
I first glued the paper using Golden soft gel medium to a similar sized cradled & gessoed birch panel, and then experimented using Golden high flow acrylics, in some places using their airbrush medium as a sort of resist. The effects of that are pretty interesting and (I think) exploring more.

Inverting the colors gives and interesting result as well, this I think might make a good poster...

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)

Will and Representation

Reading Schopenhauer - such a delightful crank! - brought this about. Blame him.

Acrylic on canvas, 30"x60"

Bayesian Anita (another update)

Bayesian Anita, Acrylic on Canvas, 40"x60"

OK, I changed the name again. I'm nothing if not flexible :).

Anyway, I had procrastinated over the statement for the work, but finally (after a lot of grief), here it is:

114. (Tractatus Logico-Philisophicus, 4.5): “The general form of propositions is: this is how things are.” – That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)

[Bayesian inference is a formalization of how we draw from subjective, uncertain, fragmented experience towards a more objective but never completed whole.]

Art is a proposition, both about and to the world; the rest of the Wittgenstein quote is pretty much in tune with what happens when one draws so much from another.

The painting is currently at the Dart Gallery , though not yet on display. But you should pay them a visit anyway, they are just finishing up a great show of street art, and will be hanging a new one soon on dance.

Anita of Bayes (was Anitium)

Anita of Bayes: 

Acrylic on Canvas, 40"x60"

Because it was the biggest canvas I could fit in my car.

Anitae Noctua

"Eule der Minerva, die erst bei einbrechender Dämmerung ihren Flug beginnt."

"The owl of Minerva begins her flight at the falling of twilight." 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Acrylic on canvas,48"x24"

Anne Marie at Richard's

Well, I finally decided to bite the bullet re. acrylics; I needed something for studies that would allow me to work as quickly as with pastel, but was more portable. So I bought a bunch, and Saturday morning took them, brushes, and one 20"x30" canvas to Richard's Saturday morning life drawing session to see what would happen. The sessions tend to go along 8 three minute gestural poses followed by a single long pose of 2 1/2 hours. So everything went onto one canvas. Then I took the result home and tarted it up....

  I hope Anne Marie forgives me for this :)

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.

Jennifer

Jennifer's another new-to-me model, though she's worked a fair bit for the other side (photographers). It was really interesting talking to her about the difference between the two different forms; I learned a lot. And although they are quite different, she took to the figure work quite naturally. Not an easy task, both gesture work and longer poses are quite at variance with photographic practice.

As for me, I struggled with my usual problems of working with a new model - learning to see someone new as they are, and how to represent them. But the weather at least cooperated - cold and damp outside - which gave me all the excuse I need to crank up the heat and turn on all the lights. I like a cozy & bright place to work. And for a first go, I'm happy with this, and look forward to working with Jennifer again.