Another old drawing

This is a drawing of my studio window done earlier this year.

... and a drawing of Lis, from February of this year.

Lis

Old drawings

I have been trying to clean out a lot of junk from my studio so that I can get back to painting.  i came across this old drawing from 2001.  It shows Kath, one of our group who used to do out drawing and painting au plein aire....

... this was done in the yard of Peter's place.  It's pencil and cartrige paper, but it brings back the memory of the day....  more than 10 years ago!

A scanner!

Photographs of drawings and paintings that I have uploaded here until now have been photographed with a digital camera, cropped and added.  These are hard to take.  The focus and cropping is usually not the propblem, though it's always hard to avoid parallax errors.
I have access to a scanner.....

.... and drawings are much clearer and more like the original.   This is a test, using an old drawing that I like.  I'm looking forward to some newer pieces now....

Lifedrawing, the last for a while

Yesterday afternoon was the last of the lifedrawing opportunities for a while....  until June 15th, in fact.  I found the practice harder for some reason.  It will be hard to maintain the momentum for later in the year.  This drawing ventured across onto the opposite page of my sketchbook and someone suggested that I use larger pieces of paper...  

 ....In fact,  I don't like using lots of big sheets of paper very much because one ends up with a huge volume of fragile studies that end up dilapidated and not a lot of use.   For me, it is the actual practice of making the drawings and making my hand-eye (without my brain's interference) coordination.  The product is much less important.  I do have a lot of notebooks full of sketches and at least they fit into a bookcase.

This  drawing is done in about one minute, and, while it is anything but a finished piece, I loved the pose and the twist in the model's back that made her shoulders end up at different heights....  amazing pose, though I don't think she could have remained there for a long time.....

 Another pose that was at least more comfortabe for the model.....

  .... this drawing took about five minutes and I like it.

Friday lifedrawing before a busy weekend

I made it to lifedrawing before heading off on a hectic weekend, with no time to post,  or to do much else either....

I did enjoy lifedrawing....  first a few very quick drawings....  

 I had my mind on other things,  and drawing was tricky....  I made a drawing of the model's face....

 ... his right hand....

... and then investigated both hands....

... not the most productive episode,  but the practice is more like the exercise that football players do in the gym....  it's an exercise that keeps the muscles working for the game later in the week.  Lifedrawing keeps the eye-hand-thingy working ready for painting later in the week.  It feels like drawing via the hand and eye though bypassing the thinking part of the brain... I don't know whether this is true,  but that is what it feels lik eto me.

More watercolour experiments

I have been trying a few new things with watercolour and the weather (hot and dry) is useful.  Drying times are short and I can try a few things that I ahve been meaning to do for quite  a while....  the ink bottles again....

 ..... local colour....

 ..... local colour with some further "fiddling"....

 .... colours outside the studio door.

Hard to know what I think about these yet,  but I will be going back out to try some more "fiddling" with the paint.

Last Friday... lifedrawing

Lifedrawing last Friday was busy.  I drive to Burra to participate and I'm gald that I do.  The model was tired and slept during this final pose....  so we had nearly half an hour to draw.....

A few preliminary sketches were useful to get used to the model, and to get my brain to work after missing the practice during the previous week....

 ... these drawings take about one minute....

This one was a bit longer... maybe 15 minutes....

There are only two more sessions during the next few weeks, so I'll be back to drawing the chickens... or the goats.