ART, Everything you don't have to do.
My artclass had a rained off urban sketching lesson, so we ended up back in the classroom with afternoon tea as a subject.
Not sue if this was going to be my thing but ended up enjoying making a painting even created a darker brio and ink wash drawing.
Rainy days not so bad.
Still practicing my faces , trying different media and approaches in my sketchbook.
A daily face is a good project even if you don’t get to it everyday you soon build a sketchbook of ideas.
Satisfying to leaf through it, and see your progress.
Had a nice life drawing session today. It was great to get messy with charcoal and chalk again.
Thanks to Alice Ellis-Hayle for putting on the class.
Our Art class Exhibition.
Nudity violence and Surgical procedures, The 2018 RA Summer Exhibition had it all.
This years exhibition was full of strangeness and humour, with some wonderful juxtapositions that made it all very entertaining.
Took myself down to London to see the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery and the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, more of that in another post.
I always find this exhibition an inspiration and a illustration of just how much there is to learn. I don’t think I will ever get there but you need to look at the work of others to improve, I took time to study hair and the boundaries between subjects and background. I am not sure I am any wiser.
Some tremendous hyperrealism paintings, you have to wonder at the skillset to produce this work, I always wonder if I am blown away by the technique or the subject.
I think everyone has their own winner and the picture that engaged me the most by its presence in the room and the clever use of a highlight on her ring constantly pulling your eye from her face was Gaela Erwins Portrait of Neema Tambo.
My own short list below-
I don’t exhibit my picture very often, so when our local art group had a print exhibition it was an opportunity to put some of my photo art in, I had a lot of kind remarks and interest into how they had been made, but no sales. I have always made pictures for me so it was not really surprising. They have moved on to be exhibited in the local Swan Hotel so you never know they might catch someone’s eye there.
First time for everything my daughter brought me a unstretched painting back from her travels. I have just got round to stretching it over a frame, after a couple of goes to get it positioned corectly it worked out fine.
I will have to look into the cost of stretcher bars and canvas next time I need one.
Last term my art group looked at the 6 elements of art, how they are used and how they work together in art, we all took different motifs to illustrate them, some good learning to think about when making art.
Tried reusing one of my old canvas boards, by painting on a couple of layers of gesso, it covered the original ok and seemed to give a ok surface, but painting on it was like painting on gritty sandpaper, so not the way to go for future recycling.
Thanks to Iain McKell for his reference picture of modern Gypsies.
jeff coles art 