Ringing Out 2011, Figure Drawing

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We worked hard at Studio b. last night at the weekly figure drawing session.  I had very mixed emotions, knowing that I have made a decision to start painting in the coming year, and the likelihood that it will be landscapes rather than figures.  As much as I love figure drawing, it is not the favorite subject for people to purchase and hang in their homes, and I would like to have more of my work hanging in people’s homes.  In the early ’80’s, when I was the featured watercolor artist at Susan Foster’s gallery in Grayton Beach, I sold most of the paintings that I produced.  Since returning to my art a couple years ago, I have focused on figure drawing.  I intend to continue doing figure drawing once in a while, because I so appreciate the human figure as an art form, and because the discipline is so demanding.

But it is a lot like my physical fitness.  I have been going to spin classes for a year and a half, and my aerobic capacity may be the best it has ever been in my life.  But today I went to a different work-out, a core-fitness work-out, and I could barely do half of what everyone else was doing, and what I could manage was not in very good form!  So it will be with my painting, I know.   I will need to re-learn the properties of various pigments and how they mix, as well as brush technique, and then re-developing my color sense.

I will continue to post stories and samples of my work on this website.  I have decided not to have a bona fide web-store in the interest of saving money.   Instead, I have started putting prices in the descriptions of my later drawings that I have posted on this website, at least on the ones that were drawn on archival paper.  Recent sketches and gestures that were drawn on less durable paper can be photographed and produced as a giclee print, if anyone is interested in them.  My webmaster is going to change the comment form under each gallery image to a contact form so that people can contact me directly off the image page.  I will still have comment forms on the blog posts — that is where most of the comments have originated anyway.

Last night at our drawing session, David Orme-Johnson continued experimenting with watercolor, Steve Wagner played with both charcoal and graphite, and I warmed up with Nupastel and then did my final drawings in my usual white Nupastel and graphite.  Our warm-up period was spent on 2-minute and 5-minute gestures, and some of those are posted below.  The final drawings were 30-minute poses, shown at the top of this post.  Our model was beautifully tattooed, but I didn’t get far enough along on my last drawing to carry out my intention to draw her tattoos.  Maybe next time!

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Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot