meldrum artVenue: Master Olafsgården, Old Town, Stockholm.
I am enjoying playing around with watercolour, I learn a lot from these quick sketches.
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| Ten minute watercolour nude |
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| Fifteen minute watercolour nude |
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| Ten minute watercolour nude |
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| Three minute sketch. Too much fixative, that’s why it’s so wrinkly. |
Venue: Basis, Stockholm. 20140315
I’ve drawn this model too many times, I know all her poses, no surprises. I’m not blaming the model, I just wasn’t able to get it on. Saying that, I am actually happy with the first sketch. The other fifteen or so sketches from the session were well below standard.
Man, I’m grumpy when I don’t feel so well. I gotta stop moaning, life is too short for negatives. I am looking forward to new, positive, life drawing opportunities this Tuesday evening. 🙂
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| Ten minute watercolour nude |
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| Ten minute watercolour nude |
Lars, who has the nick name, Action Bear posed last night at ABF. I don’t normally attend the life drawing there but my Tuesday figure drawing place of choice (Konstnärshuset) was cancelled due to illness.
I really enjoyed my return to watercolouring at life drawing. It turned out to be a rather special day, the intended model never turned up and we were all packing our bags to go home when this beautiful Russian girl volunteered to pose. It turns out that she was an expert at posing, really beautiful poses. She must have done art-modelling before. ( The model who did not turn up was the uninspiring one I had last week, so you can guess how happy I was about our bit of luck. )
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| Five minute watercolour nude |
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| Two minute nude |
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| 5 minute nude |
Drawn from a reference on my computer screen. I practice my tonal values and shading a lot at the moment. It’s something I have done very little of in the past. It really is important to get a good understanding of tonal value in art.
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| Shading practice |
I seem to want to draw and paint artists that I admire. This week’s offering is Alberto Giacometti. I should have made his nose a little longer and a little bigger but otherwise I am happy with the result. Normally I tend to draw very quickly so this was an exercise in patience for my part. It took 90 minutes roughly to complete.
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| Alberto Giacometti pencil sketch on Fabriano A4, 21 x 29,7 cm |
Location: Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, 20140218
Well, normally I am very self-critical but this time I have to admit that I’m totally happy with my life drawings. Instead of shading with a 6B lead, I used pastels. A friend uses charcoal and I was envious of the amount of shading he was able to achieve for each pose. With a 6B one has to shade carefully otherwise it looks rough and unattractive to the eye. This takes time and time is short at the life drawing sessions. So using pastels is perfect, they are quick, colourful and create smooth fills. I do not like charcoal as it creates intense contrasts. This results in very dramatic drawings which is something I do not want achieve. I’m searching for a more sensual, softer approach.
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| Five minute nude |
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| Five minute nude |
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| Five minute nude |
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| Five minute nude |
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| Five minute nude |
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| Two minute nude |
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| Five minute nude |
Location: Basis, Stockholm, 20140215
I’ve drawn Lars many times. He is fun, he has a name for each of his poses, like the ones below: “The Base Ball Player”, “The Prisoner”, “Björn Borg” and “The Egg”. I cannot remember the title of the first pose unfortunately.
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| Ten minutes |
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| Ten minutes |
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| Two minutes |
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| Two minutes |
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| Ten minutes |
Location: Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, 20140211
Today I improved some of the sketches I did at yesterday evening’s life drawing session, the first drawing especially, it was originally just a two minute sketch with little detail. I enjoyed finishing it and adding some design into the mix.
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| Two minutes plus ten |
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| Ten minutes |
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| Two minutes |
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| Five minutes + two |