Figures

First I am posting the figure drawings that I have done in the last three days. They are done with either black or sanguine conte and the last two are oil, done in the reductive manner that I do my underpaintings. Those were a lot fun, but I am very aware that all of them have "issues", especially the male (head, hands, and maybe even the penis) but it does capture the models pose quite well.

I had a great night's sleep finally, only woke up once in the night! Today I planned to do some more drawings and then maybe start doing some small underpaintings of the figures. However, I woke up thinking that I should just go ahead and do them on the larger birch panels. So this morning after breakfast I went right to the studio. When I got there, though, I decided to rearrange things a bit so I spent some time doing that. I don't really care for the easel (it's wobbly) or the stool (it's wobbly too). I considered hanging the panels on the wall and working that way, but I decided to make do with the easel, although I lowered it and used the plastic lawn chair that comes with each studio. Anyway, I set up my little painting area and it feels pretty comfortable, finally. I did four underpaintings, which are all shown below. Be gentle with me, I don't usually like to post works in progress, especially when I am feeling my way through them, but I fiigure what the heck. It's not like this stuff is really that important in the scheme of things and I promise admit it if they fail during the next stage.

I finished them up and found that it's true-if you don't get to lunch on time, some of the food is gone. So I had a nice salad and a few slices of cheese and went back to the studio. I looked at the underpaintings and realized that they were too dark, so I lightened them up. I went to figure drawing about an hour late and did one decent drawing, of the male, above. There are a few problems with it (face and hands, legs, and maybe even the penis) but it does capture the pose he had.

I took a good walk outside right before dinner, which felt really good and then, OMG dinner! It was some sort of hybrid middle eastern food, one dish had eggplant, chickpeas, and potatoes there was a cauliflower dish, and the best asparagus ever (yes I know, totally not seasonal), hummus, pita chips, crusty bread. And dessert was lemon poppy seed cake. We all rolled out of the dining room after.

I am totally getting into the social thing now. I feel comfortable enough to introduce myself to someone I don't know and then go on to ask the four most common questions here: Where are you from? Painter, writer, sculptor? Which house are you in? Which building is your studio in?

And this evening we were supposed to see slides of some of the artists here, but guess what, no one submitted any. Seems no one has slides anymore. We will be having a jpeg night next week instead. I have spent this evening sitting in the lounge chatting (with a few other women and now a sculptor, Greg, from Brooklyn), listening to the news and trying to get my ancient laptop up and running.

PS. Sorry for the crappy photos. I didn't bring my really good camera, and the oil figure sketches put up quite a glare, so I shot them at an angle.