Life Drawing Day

On Saturday 12th June I went to a life drawing day in Wisbech with my 2 OCA friends, Paul and Rachel.  Rachel lives in Wisbech and goes to regular life drawing classes which this was an extension of.  I'd never done any life drawing before and this was a great experience - just lovely to sit and draw and paint all day!

Here are some of my efforts....

We started with some quick 5 minute sketches - I like doing these as I enjoy working quickly.  I also think that when you make mistakes or you aren't so happy with the results you feel more comfortable with yourself knowing you only had five minutes to do it in!

These 2 were my favourites - both in charcoal, felt I got a good grasp of the body shape and use of tone.

We then went on to some longer poses.  Originally she planned to pose for an hour or more for a couple of them but the room was freezing cold so she only did up to 30 minutes.  I was happy with this as would have struggled to fill an hour with one picture.  In fact osme of the 30 minute poses I broke down in to 2 or more pics.

I had watched a video on the OCA website about starting a life drawing with shapes - squares, triangles, sausages etc so decided to try this method out.  I think it worked well as my best proportioned piece but perhaps not my favourite as slightly stiffer and more formal than the others.  I do think it would be useful though if doing preparatory sketches or if working for a longer time.

I then tried some pen drawings as my favourite medium.  Maybe because you can't make any changes and it is pretty unforgiving so you just have to get on with it

Here are 3 diff pics of the same pose.  I found this really tricky to work with as it looked very unnatural to me.

The last one is a pen drawing with an acrylic wash over the top.  I like using the 'wrong' colour in a monochrome as it forces me to think about the tones - dark and light rather than in colours.

I liked this effect so did some more.

I hope to join another class soon.  Some friends at work have talked about the possibility of joining together and hiring a model ourselves which would be great - must remind them and see if we can do it soon.

Materclass with Chen Hong

On Saturday 22nd May - I attended a masterclass with a Chinese artist Chen Hong.  Chen Hong specialises in fish paintings and was artist in residence at Norwich Castle Museum during May.  There were about 15 students at the class which ran from 10.30 to 1 (but actually finished closer to 1.45)

Chen Hong doesn't speak any English so had an interpreter with him - this meant it was difficult to ask him questions as the interpreter was not always with him particularly when he came round to comment on our work - we had to guess at what he was saying! Also at one point he asked the class if we would like to start with something simple but somehow our answer was lost in translation as we started with the more difficult big fish before trying out the much easier little fish at the end of the class. 

We were first given a demonstration of a fish painting which not only includes the fish but also calligraphy and stamps.  We were then told about the basic brushstrokes before being given a chance to try some out for ourselves.  After this we were shown how to paint some simple bamboo and blossom and all had a go.

Mark making

Bamboo

After grabbing a quick cup of tea and a biscuit it was back to work to try out painting our own fish.  It was pretty difficult but we were reminded that Chen Hong has been practicing for 30 years!  And also that he had a very expensive brush and higher quality paper (bad workmen...!) It was said that Chinese artists develop close relationships with their brushes which can cost up to £1000!

My big fish

My little fish

The time went far too quickly and it would have been nice to have had more time to keep working on our pictures.  Although each picture is quick to do as you work quickly I think with some more support and maybe further demonstration so we could see where we were going wrong as individuals we may have improved further.  It was only at the end that I realised I had been making a mistake with my brushstrokes on the body of the fish.

Chen Hong is clearly a master of this specialist type of art but I'm not sure I would want to paint the same thing over and over again!

My notes on the class

Chen Hong's website (in Chinese!)