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.

Hanna Precarious

This was a beautiful day for drawing, with tons of sunshine filtering in through the blinds. Unfortunately because the studio room faces south, the light raced from one end of the couch to the other during the pose this afternoon. I probably should have worked faster and done three or four!

NuPastel on Kraft paper, 24"x36"

Hanna, a double session Monday

Monday is a long day; we worked together for the afternoon, and then Hanna modeled for the DASL night class. That left lots of drawings to work through today.

All work is NuPastel n 24"x36" Kraft paper.

This first is from the afternoon session.



The next two were the long poses from the DASL class, a half hour each.

This first one is missing the support behind her head, alas I got lost on Hanna's legs and only had time to sketch in where it should go....



We had been working on foreshortening during the afternoon, so this next position was pretty irresistible, what with things poking up everywhere. My favorite part is the little bit of fingers showing just above the breast, between the legs. The harsh light also lent itself to abstracting the figure; Tony-my-neighbor called it a Group of 7 knockoff :)

Hanna Distracted

This is the last from the Wednesday & Thursday sessions (or at least the last salvageable one). Though the drawing is a little hasty, I quite like the pose, Hanna was engaged with some pictures up on the wall, and not too concerned about forcing a pose. Could be interesting to extend the picture to the left, and put in an Olympia, or Venus of Urbino, or the central part of Courbet's Artist's Studio