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Ringing Out 2011, Figure Drawing

Click on image for a larger view and description.

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!

 
Click on any image for a larger view and description.
   

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

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Don’t Worry, Just Draw!

Sometimes the artists will talk during the breaks between the longer poses at the figure drawing sessions at Studio b.  This week we touched on the purpose of our lives, parallel universes, and the annihilation of the solar system that is going to happen in a zillion years.  I have to confess, I have never lain awake at night over any those issues.  It’s challenge enough just being myself in my small world!

My life is pretty basic.  My “day-job” can be all-consuming.  Many of my activities are trade-offs, where I have to give up one thing so I can do another.  But having made those trade-offs, I am so much healthier than I was 3 years ago when I first started working out, and I draw better than 2 years ago when I started coming to the figure drawing sessions at the b., and I have more friends since spending more time paddling the local waters over the last 2 years, and somehow I have managed to find a little time to practice meditation and yoga.  All told, that probably consumes 20 hours a week.  If the economy changes, and my work gets busy again, I’m going to have to make some choices, because that 20 hours is time I used to spend working.  But for now, things are good, and the solar system is not worrying me.  Global warming, yes, acidification of the oceans, yes, but the solar system , no.

I don’t worry about anything very much.  Once in a while, not having a lot of money will make me itch, but not too often, because the experiences I have make me wealthy beyond any amount of money.  The trick is merely to be present, to be looking at what is, and allowing myself to be amazed.  And that brings me back to figure drawing, to my state of mind when I am most successful at capturing the essence of a particular pose.

Both of the poses I show above, were about 30-minutes long.  I roughly and lightly sketched the gesture with white Nupastel, and then refined the shapes and the lighting with both nupastel and graphite.

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

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Interruptions and Trade-Offs

I’m spread thin right now.  I often have to give up one thing in order to do another.  I wish I could work up the nerve to become a full-time artist.  When I start to paint, it will be another step in that direction.  Whether it takes me another 10 years, or if it happens tomorrow, something is going to have to give, because I am enjoying my art more and more every week.   Last Saturday I took videos at a stand-up paddleboard race but I discovered that my videos took forever to upload to YouTube.  I ended up doing projects around the house between video uploads, and I never got my blog written about last week’s drawing efforts!  So here we are, a week later, video-rich, blog-poor.

I won’t be drawing this week because I want to spend time with a friend who is visiting.

Below are my drawings from last week.  Underneath is a photograph of a blue heron that I took yesterday.  I had just finished a site inspection to make a service proposal for my business, and I was driving through the community when I saw a great blue heron, posing by a pond.  The overcast sky, frigid temperatures, and gray tones all combined to make the slightly nervous bird very picturesque.  Nature photography sometimes is just the good luck of happening upon it!

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

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Surrounded by Painters at Figure Drawing

On this night at Studio b. at the regular weekly figure drawing session, I was the only artist who exclusively draws the figure.  David Orme-Johnson brought his watercolor paints, and Nancy Nichols Williams brought her acrylics.  Steve Wagner also is an accomplished figure painter, although on this night he worked with charcoal and white on brown paper.  As expected of all students majoring in art in any university, I took my share of figure painting classes, but when it comes to the figure, I like making dry marks on paper.

I warmed up with some small sketches using water soluble graphite pencil on watercolor paper, which I added a wash to later when I got home.

I enjoyed the longer poses.  I feel that I am coming closer to my intended effect as I continue to use graphite and white nupastel.  It is always a challenge to draw the female model we had tonight, who is in constant training for triathlons and is now training for an Ironman next year.  Her musculature is supremely developed, but I find myself minimizing her definition, probably because it becomes very detailed and I always feel like I am rushed and must simplify.

The first pose I have posted above was supposed to be for 10 minutes, but we asked the model to hold it a little longer, so it grew to 15.  The pose below was for 45 minutes, with a break after the first half hour.  That longer pose allowed me to spend a little more time on the face.

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

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Figure Drawing the Night Before Thanksgiving

The model couldn’t make it to Studio b. for our figure drawing session this week, so the owner of the Studio, Colleen Duffley, graciously offered us her time, posing clothed for us.  When the artist knows the model, it seems important to try to be accurate in the drawing, for the sake of not offending the model by one’s poor craftsmanship.  I tried to put that additional pressure out of my head as I drew.

Clothed models are much easier to draw than nudes.  Clothing is very forgiving — I can fudge one way or another with a line or a shadow on clothing without it feeling awkward.  Nevertheless, I still wanted more time, even on the 20 and 30-minute poses.  Between the wire-mesh of the model’s chair, and the leather and denim of her clothing, and her extraordinarily beautiful, curly hair, it was frustrating to be faced with such rich textures that I could only hint at because of the duration of the poses.

Below are two warm-up drawings, and two longer poses.  Click on any image for a larger view.

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

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Figure Drawing Media – Small Changes

I have been working on fairly smooth paper, primarily using graphite and nupastel, for the past few weeks.  This week I opted to use graphite on a textured paper for one drawing, and charcoal with nupastel for the second one.  I confess, I prefer nupastel and graphite, but it’s nice to try different media or different surfaces.  Not having as much control over the media because of less practice, shakes things up a little, requiring me to draw more slowly or else to be more forgiving of my efforts if I am a little clumsy.  The textured paper was Canson Mi-Teintes, which I have used before, but not strictly with graphite.  At 19 x 25, the paper is a little larger than I have been working on, but though I intended to, I could not manage to fit the entire figure onto the page, even though she was sitting hugging her knees.   The pose was our usual 30 minutes long, so I had to use some rough cross-hatching to block in the darker values.

My second drawing was on Stonehenge, one of the the smooth papers I’ve been drawing on recently, but charcoal is not as easily handled as graphite.  Combining charcoal with nupastel certainly made  it easier to graduate the toning, than using charcoal alone.

These drawings were made during the regular weekly figure drawing session at Studio b. in Alys Beach, in Northwest Florida.

I am adding in a minimalist sketch of the sweetest cat I have ever known, my cat Sumi, an adoptee from the Humane Society, a big Maine Coon cat.  She didn’t live long, only 6 years, having compensated renal failure, and she didn’t gain the weight many Maine Coons have.  This drawing shows her thinner summer coat, with wisps coming out of her ears and elbows.  I made a sketch of her many years ago, and recently I transferred that sketch to good paper.

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

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Artist’s Statement

I have added an Artist’s Statement to my Bio page.  I will be exhibiting a few pieces of my work in the  A+Art Committee member exhibit at Okaloosa Walton State College next spring.  The committee functions under the umbrella of the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County (Florida), selecting artists and organizing shows in the lobby area of the South Walton OWSC business office about 4 or 5 times a year.  This year was our first year, and we decided to avoid any appearance of self-promotion this first year.  But several members of the committee are accomplished artists, so we decided to have a show of committee members’ works for a couple of months next year.

Following is my Artist’s Statement, at least for today, 11/14/11.  No doubt it will evolve.

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Joan Vienot – Artist’s Statement

The greatest pleasure for me as an artist is the capture of the present moment, a little piece of Now.  The challenge is greatest when the subject is the human figure, where the length of a pose is limited by the live model’s ability to remain motionless for any duration. Very little time is available for retractions or corrections, so my marks on the paper have to be certain and authoritative.  Every pose is a challenge of my mastery.  Similarly, plein air painting requires intense focus and present moment awareness in order to execute a scene before the light changes radically.  In both cases, the subject must be portrayed in fairly general terms, with only enough detail to lend unique identity and a bit of atmosphere.  I rarely do anything more than minimal correcting, or perhaps heightening of contrast, when I get back to my studio, preferring to let my interpretation of the moment stand on its own.  My approach might result in what some may call mistakes in proportion or perspective, but I think accuracy should be subordinate to my effort to convey the essence of the subject in a short amount of time.

When time is so fleeting that I could never capture something in either dry or wet media, then I resort to my camera to produce a photograph, which of course records the quintessential moment in time.

My favorite subject for drawing is the human figure.  People’s lives and experiences create lines on their faces and sags on their bodies, and their posture bears witness to their youth or to their years.  The nude figure in particular, with the façade of clothing removed, reveals the essence of a person’s physical existence and might even hint at her spirit.  Most of my figure drawings are of females simply because most of the models I’ve had opportunity to draw are female.  My figure drawings are very simply my personal expression of the beauty and complexity of the human form and my efforts toward mastery of that expression.

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Showing Some of My Work

I have participated in two recent showings of my work – one local at the Bayou Arts Center, the new home of the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, and one with international exposure, at Studio b.  At Studio b., probably 75 of my drawings were displayed, informally.  At Bayou Arts, CAA Board members art will be exhibited until sometime in December.  These are the pieces I am exhibiting there, including drawings, photography, and encaustic:

And this past weekend I entered 3 drawings in an international juried competition, Au Natural: The Nude in the 21st Century.  On November 30, 2011, they’ll let me know whether any of my pieces were accepted.  Below are the pieces I submitted.  They are drawn in the style I am having fun with right now, using graphite on toned paper, with white nupastel for the highlights.

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

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Figure Drawing Starts With One Mark

I don’t have time for stage fright in figure drawing.  No performance anxiety allowed.  No worries about perfection.  No time to test the water, I have to just jump right in.  I start with warm-up sketches, timed one-minute gesture drawings.  I am drawing so fast and furiously that there is no time to be afraid.  I go through a lot of paper at the start of every session, knowing that every warm-up drawing will probably be thrown in the wastebasket when I get home.

It all starts with making the first mark on the paper, usually a broad gestural sweep showing the general directional line of the posed model’s position.  I like to use something soft, and light in value, a color which can be incorporated into my final drawing.  Soft chalk-like pastels are a little messy because they are so soft, so I use nupastel, which is a little harder, but not as hard as conte which is made of graphite mixed with clay.  I use conte sometimes, for my warm-ups, but with conte I am always risking permanent damage to my paper or my drawing by the unfortunate specks of hard material that are often in conte.  My favorite medium is very soft graphite, in a pencil.  But in my warm-up drawings, I sometimes never graduate from nupastel to graphite.  Instead the whole time is spent building shapes onto that first gestural directional line, correcting and re-correcting to get proportions and shapes more or less “right”.  The 5-minute warm-up drawing at right shows multiple corrections of the position of the left leg.

Below are my final 30-minute drawings for the evening.  I’m having fun drawing on paper that is lightly toned tan or gray, using white nupastel to make the highlighted areas stand out, and using graphite for the darks.  For the midtones I just let the paper show through.  I’ve been using my fingers to mush the media together in places, creating a softer texture.

We draw every Wednesday evening at Studio b. in Alys Beach.  Last night I had the pleasure of drawing beside accomplished artists Nancy Nichols Williams, David Orme-Johnson, Susan Alfieri, and Denielle Harmon.  I was exhausted, having taught all day at one of my other jobs, and then attending the opening of Donnelle Clark’s mixed media show in Rosemary Beach before coming to draw at Studio b.

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

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The Figure Artist’s Shell

First, some blatant self-promotion — if you will “Like” my facebook page and share one of my posts, it will greatly improve my fan base.  Right now my exposure is a little puny.  It may be because I am practicing figure drawing, which is the subject of this blog post.

Some people are not comfortable with the nude figure.  It is more accepted in some cultures, certainly more so in Europe than in the United States.  In many areas of the world, it is not at all unusual to see bare-breasted or nude people at public locations like the beach.  But in the United States, many people are taught that the body is to be hidden, some even associating it with shame, others merely with privacy.  Many years ago, I remember when one of my drawings was accepted for a juried show when I attended the University of Northern Colorado.  My drawing instructor told me that my wildly expressionistic and colorful drawing was not selected for technical merit, but rather for the sheer expressive quality.  The subject was a dancer, drawn in bold strokes of bright reds and greens, with charcoal contours defining the figure.  I had actually attended some modern dance classes where I was allowed to sketch the dancers, and that drawing was from one of those sessions.  The figure was neither clothed nor unclothed in the drawing — it was simply gestural, to reflect the dynamic movement of the fast-moving dancer.  But I remember when I brought it home, and proudly showed it to my family, one family member told me that I should be ashamed, that it was nasty.  It was not the first time that my art had not been received exactly how I expected, but I had already by that time grown a shell, so while the comment is one I will forever remember, it did not stop me from pursuing my favorite subject, the human figure.

Other areas of the world readily display nude sculpture and paintings.  But here in the U.S., we are a little more prudish, distinguishing “non-offensive” art as “family-friendly”.  Public institutions displaying art might refuse to display nude pieces because they want to be family-friendly, because children seeing nude artwork most certainly will be corrupted.  More likely, they need to keep their more conservative benefactors happy, so they are reluctant to take risks.

In our weekly figure drawing session a couple of months ago, a woman from England brought her talented 13-year-old son to participate.  Clearly he was practiced — this was not his first time drawing a nude model.  Shock of shocks, instead of having some puerile, voyeuristic interest, he behaved just like all the other artists, immediately and matter-of-factly diving into his drawing.

The stigma is so pervasive where I live, in rural Northwest Florida, that it was a long time before there was any nude figure drawing available on a consistent basis.  In the not-so-distant past in fact, the sheriff was called to shut down previous efforts at one gallery.  Even now in my area, even with the sophistication of the people now living in the beach area which has been developed over the past 30 years, out of the 40-some good-sized galleries between Destin and Panama City Beach, Studio b. in Alys Beach stands alone in offering regularly weekly figure drawing sessions with a live nude model.

Working from a human figure is unlike any other subject.  A tree for example, will be very forgiving if you draw a branch coming out of the trunk at a different angle.  The figure on the other hand will look grotesque if you draw an arm coming out of the trunk at the wrong angle.  There are certain articulations that joints can do, and the viewer’s eye will notice if it is incorrect even if they can’t consciously put their finger on it.  If an artist wants to put people in his art, it is essential that he practice figure drawing, if he wants them to be convincing.  There are a number of artists in the area who use figures in their work, who might benefit from more practice.  Just saying…

Not everyone is comfortable with nude figures — I recognize that.  At least now, if someone is uncomfortable with my work, at least to my face they just give a tepid response if any, and not outright condemnation.  To a great extent, I think that people who have been exposed to the nude as an art form, view it as a thing of beauty, and the more they are exposed to it, the sooner they can let go of the nasty or shameful interpretations they may have been taught to associate with nudity.  When we see all things as having beauty or at least a correctness in all stages of their existence, then perhaps we will care for our planet and its life forms with more reverence.  My figure drawings are very simply my personal expression of the beauty and complexity of the human form and my efforts toward mastery of that expression.

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