Thursday, November 18, 2010

Life Class ---- A first after a LONG time

This past Tuesday I was invited by my former art instructor, Dov, to join his evening class because  he had book a model for a life class.  I haven't done sketching from a live model since I left art school ..about a million years ago, so that although I knew I would be very tired with my art workshop in the morning and my Petanque game in the late afternoon I felt I couldn't miss this opportunity.
The model was due to arrive at 7:00PM so we first did some warm ups taking turns being the sitter,


Here are the results. All done on newsprint 50x70 cm using brown charcoal stick.






I was quite pleased with the results after such a long time.... I didn't do any measurements during the sketching  time ... concentrated more on catching the pose and filling the page so now looking I find some lack of proportions... rather smallish heads and larger bodies.....My favorite is the last one although I had a problem with the fore handed arm... either she moved or I moved my eye view.... probably the later.  Really had a good time and hope they have another session soon.

Getting Creative-Breaking Out of the Box

Yesterday was a really active day... so much going on.  Art workshop in the morning, Petanque in the afternoon, and a life class in the evening.....A lot has been written on how to develop more  creativity and to try to get out of the BOX... well this morning in my art workshop we did just that.... First instead of setting ourselves up in our usual spots, funny how everyone has them, we positioned ourselves in a huge circle around the walls of the auditorium. Heleni then described what we were to do.... first we all brought drawing stuff... charcoals/pencils boards/paper etc....
The exercise was in 4 stages. Each stage we were told what to draw... in  5 MINUTES 
Phase 1  man  woman  man+woman 
Phase 2 bird    ball        bird+ball
Phase 3 chair  flame     chair+flame
Phase 4 man+chair+bird
All drawn from absolutely no references, from our heads. .One other instruction was to get the work to a finished stage.   You can well  imagine the groans.... I worked first on 100x70 cm cutting board with a charcoal stick and then on newsprint paper!. After each phase we turned our easels around and Heleni gave a quick critique of our works,  Some were pretty amazing. Even those that had non drawing skills came through with flying colors.... because mainly it was a question of "concept" more than of the actual subject,
I not going to post all the images..... the first phase was was pretty good....then man less than the other two...


 Second phase was a flop for me... and for most the ball the biggest challenge for most and only a very few got out of the box for this,,,

Phase 3 Only my chair went well, flame  was really nothing special as was chair+flame.... flame was another problem for most.



Phase 5  worked out fairly well...
 
Bottom line: It was a very productive and tiring art session but really worth the efforts Kudos to Heleni!!!!
Next creative class in a month will be with COLOR

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Getting Back to Photoshop

Since I have been putting most of my creative juices into traditional methods,painting and sketching, my photoshop skills have really gone down..... hard to imagine after doing 2 books by Katrin Eismann with an online study-group, but there it is... what you don't do you seem to forget.
Please notice on the right side of the blog a little button to a free e-course fro elements and higher photoshop programs.  I am doing round 2 but you can pre-register for round 3 which will start December 6th. This has been a great boost for me and I am really enjoying getting back to some digital work.  I hope some of this will be integrated in my traditional work.... Not going to post images but here is a link to some of the stuff  skinny-mini  Not much there but have dig into my photo library for stuff to work with. Did use a traditional sketch in the manipulation process....just to see what happens.... love to work with textures and have always been a bit afraid of added text.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Oil Sketches on Paper and Paperboard

Art workshop Tuesdays Nov 2   Nov 9

In my art workshop I continued to do sketches on paper but this time to be painted in oil.  I was a little apprehensive about this process.  Up till now I really wasn't happy about the painting part. I couldn't seem to get a hold on color and making them work.  Heleni, my instructor, suggested I work with a two color palette. I used yellow ochre and ultramarine blue and white. In a few I added the use of white and black crayon. Seems I fall back on the drawing part.  Hope soon to drawing with my paint brush.

ranch-girl 

Ranch Girl

Hooray

Hooray


 Little Ballet Dancer

flower-vender

Flower Vender

Seated Nude

Getting Back to the Basics

I have started a new art workshop. Getting back to the basics with some sketching on brown paper. Next step oil on paper. Size 50x70cm. Sketching was done without any background elements. Feeding  the ducks from image on reference library on wetcanvas,com.
Feeding the ducks by Ruth aka madum on wetcanvas
Off to the Woods photo of my grandson by Shabtai Itzhak Edan
Flower Vender   my original photo from trip to Romania.




Feeding the Ducks
Originally uploaded by Edanim


Off to the Woods

 Off to the Woods

graphite-brownpaper_03

Flower Vender