A Week of Life Drawing

What a great week I have just had 20th – 24th April five days of total immersion in high energy life drawing. I was lucky to take part in a block course run by TLC in Te Aroha with 13 other people, the tutor was Christina Earl a lovely lady full of beans and high energy. Over the five days we had three different models (Sally, Christine and Tina) who worked hard and injected more energy in to the mix. We were drawing from 9.30 to 4.30 each day, learning life drawing techniques i.e. left and right handed blind contour, positive and negative space block drawing, line weight drawing, weighted block drawing, drawing with other mediums and drawing, painting implements, by the end of the week there was more than a few of us that could hardly lift our arms above our heads but it was still an amazing week and I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to take part in it.

The 22nd World Wide SketchCrawl

Yesterday I took part in my first World Wide SketchCrawl. A sketch crawl is were a date is picked and on that date people all around the world set out in groups or solo and draw for the day and post the results up on the World Wide SketchCrawl website

I went to the Auckland Domain here are my pics I did.

The Dust did Fly

Just spent the weekend on a two day pastel workshop the tutor for the workshop was Lyn Diefenbach. She is a highly regarded and award winning pastel artist from Australia, and she Came to New Zealand to do a number of workshops, the main one being at the Pastel ConventionLyn is a great tutor, on the Saturday she explained the 4 thing that make up a painting plus the 10 thing you need to make a strong painting. Then she did a demo on sky’s and clouds. And then we had time to complete a painting for ourselves with her coming around and offering constructive help. Sunday Lyn started with a demo on waves and again we had time to complete a painting for ourselves. In the afternoon we had a talk and Lyn did another demo this time on trees

All in all it was a great weekend and a brilliant workshop

Here are the pastel paintings I did

Clouds soft pastels on Rose grey Colorfix board (7”x 16”)

Sea scape soft pastels on Rose grey Colorfix board (14”x 5”)

First Pastel Portrait from Life

Well it’s Thursday again and I’m playing with my soft pastels again. We had a model come in and sit for us today it’s a bit harder to work for life as you are very conscious of the time you have to work in, I must admit it was kinda fun

Soft pastel on chocolate Mi-Teintes wrong side A3

The year is on the move

Wow it April 1st, this year ha defiantly got a gallop on its just going so fast,Well today I got stuck in and finished the abstract painting I have been working on it is in the style of Ben Nicholson

Acrylics on canvas (16”x 20”)

March 2009