Sometimes the best part of art

isn't the painting....

Hanna on the Phone

Hanna (alas) isn't available until Monday, so I'm taking a little time to start redoing sketches. This one is derived from the one put up two days ago; I quite liked the pose.

24"x36", NuPastel on Kraft paper.



While I had the camera out, I thought to reshoot the Hanna Prone (below). That one was taken at night, and I found the colour a little washed out. So here it is again:

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.

Hanna Prone (and other things)

A great weekend down at the Mahone Bay Center, learning the basics of lithography. Thanks Dan O'Neill (who ran the workshop, and who made an enormously complicated subject comprehensible with a minimum of pain), Ed Porter (who kept things moving), and especially Sally Warren who organized it. As well as the rest of the print group there, who were very generous to a Halifax based interloper.

Hanna and I spent spent most of the afternoon today on a technical drawing which is rather dull, but something I had to work through, after having butchered the same pose on several previous sessions. She's amazingly patient. Maybe now I can actually do something interesting with it!

But the last hour or so was something livelier. The lighting is a bit odd because we arranged the spots for heat rather than visual effect, it was getting chilly in the studio. But they gave lots of interesting little highlights.

24"x36", NuPastel on Kraft paper:

Hanna 2-for-1

I've just gotten around to photographing the work Hanna and I have done this week; most of the work needs to be extensively redone. There's good weeks and bad! Unfortunately I won't be able to get back to these on the weekend, as I'm off to the lithography workshop at the Mahone Bay Center. How can Mahone Bay volunteers organize these things so well, and NSCAD can't at all?

These 2 drawings - which I rather like - were done Monday and Tuesday; the first was done with Hanna on Monday; the second is a reworking from the first. I did the second to correct drawing errors in the first and try and settle it down a bit, but in many ways I prefer the first (particularly Hanna's expression, and the looseness of the drawing).

Both are 24"x36", NuPastel on Kraft paper.

Off to the Beach

Ok, I haven't updated this in a week, that's very bad. To make matters worse, today was far too nice to spend the afternoon in the studio. So after a morning of destroying yet another drawing, it was off to the beach. Tomorrow I'll put up some of the newer drawings, and maybe a bit on the Freeman Dyson article, which was very much worth a read. Or maybe a little on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (thanks, Hanna!) and this article from Reason: People Who Live in the Shade. But meanwhile, an afternoon at Conrad's!




My best walking partner (as long as we don't meet any other dogs...)

Hanna Precarious Redux

Spent awhile today tarting it up....No model, but lots of sunlight.