Tag: Studio b

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Working With Other Artists

It is different when working in a studio setting with other artists, as opposed to working by myself in my own home studio.  There is no doubt that sometimes being alone is the best way to get work done.  But the comaraderie of being with other artists, all working under the same conditions, provides an energy and inspiration that helps me to go farther and do more in a shorter period of time than I ever would working alone.

That certainly was the case at the figure drawing session at Studio b. this week.  I was struggling, and would have quit halfway through the session if I was drawing alone.  Each pose presented new challenges for me, mostly because the model was standing or sitting on a swing by the pool, requiring each pose to fit within a geometric space bordered by the swing and the ropes.

I think that all of the drawings that I did have potential, but I don’t feel that I did justice to the model’s beauty and fitness.  Yet there is an expressive quality to each that I recognize as true.

I have decided that even though I love the texture, I don’t like charcoal paper because it wrinkles and dents very easily.  So I intend to use my stock of charcoal paper for warm-up drawings and gestures.  The first drawing is on black charcoal paper.  The rest are on Stonehenge paper, which is heavy enough that it can take quite a bit of handling without wrinkling.

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

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Thinking about Composition in Figure Drawing

Having spent nearly two years improving my skills at figure drawing, I think I would like to spend more time thinking about how the figure is presented on the paper, which begins to determine whether the piece can stand alone as a composition.  When I look back at the bulk of my work, the pieces that appeal the most to me have an unfinished quality, in that perhaps I did not try to capture the figure in its entirety.  I’d like to preserve that quality.

This week at Studio b.’s figure drawing session, we had an exquisitely beautiful model, and I found that I still need a lot of work on portraiture, as I think I failed miserably to get a likeness let alone to show how pretty she is.  However, I like the pieces I turned out, since they have just a little more “atmosphere” than much of my previous work.  Something seemed different about this night at Studio b., perhaps the bad weather, it being the night of the terrible Tuscaloosa tornado.

At left I also am posting the drawing, now more developed, that I had started on the last day of the portrait workshop that I was taking from Charlotte Arnold last month.  When I last posted it, it was primarily a head study.  I used a photograph of that model and her pose,  for reference.

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

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Figure Drawing with a Live Model

To a figure drawing artist, the title of this post is redundant, but the non-artist may not know that we use live models in figure drawing.  To this point, I have been a bit of a fanatic about it, allowing errors and inaccuracies to be a part of the final drawing.

But I am thinking that I would like to take a photograph for reference for correcting and finishing a live-model drawing outside of the studio, away from the live model.  My hesitancy to use a camera comes from my concern that I may lose some of the immediacy of expression if I work on my drawings very much outside of the studio.  But I would like the accomplishnent of a more complete, or perhaps I should say, more technically accurate drawing, which can more easily be done, I think, with a less hurried pose or with a photograph for reference.

Next week I’m bringing a camera to the Wednesday night figure drawing session at Studio b., if the model doesn’t mind me taking a photo.

Following are a few warm-up gestures from this week’s session, followed by a drawing from a longer pose.
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More Fun with Encaustic Painting at Studio b.

I took an Encaustic Painting workshop from Rae Broyles at Studio b. last fall and I had a lot of fun, so I signed up for another workshop by Rae a few weeks ago, again at Studio b.  Rae demonstrated a number of techniques, and I tried a few.  I used stamps and stencils on the first piece, above left.  In the second piece, center, I built up texture by accretion, and in the third painting, I put the hot pigmented wax on top of the background to make the foreground stand out in relief.  At the end, I used gold leaf on the seahorses to give them a little sparkle.

I enjoy doing something like this, every once in a while, just “playing”.  It’s entirely different from my usual art.  It’s great fun, and maybe a little dangerous too, playing with hot wax and blowtorches!

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The Joy of Drawing

When I am figure drawing, I am an artist without a message.  I’m not trying to tell you anything.  I just draw because I enjoy drawing.  Well, maybe it’s a compulsion, because sometimes I have to admit, it’s a little uncomfortable, frustrating, and at times perhaps even painful.  But for the most part, the challenge of figure drawing is in the mastery, being able to portray what I see, or what I think I see.  By practicing every week, I am becoming more confident.

The drawing I am posting here was difficult because the facial features look very different when a figure is reclining than they do when the figure is upright.  I think that the portrait class I finished taking last week helped me a lot.  I will need to continue to practice heads and faces in different positions and attitudes.  I still feel hesitant with faces, and I still spend a lot of time guessing, but my guesses seem more accurate now.

This drawing was made with a graphite pencil on Stonehenge paper.  I drew it at the regular Wednesday night session of Figure Drawing at Studio b., in Alys Beach, FL.  Heather Clements is the instructor.

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A New Model at Studio b.

We had a new model at figure drawing at Studio b. this week.  Every model brings his or her own energy to the session, which adds to the excitement.  This model took a very wide variety of poses, some extremely energetic and ambitious, and others very natural and relaxed.  I enjoyed the variety and contrast.  I’ve begun taking a course on head studies and portraiture, so I tried to pay a little more attention to the facial features and attitude.  It never ceases to amaze me how I can make a passable effort until I focus and try to do a good job, and then it is as if I had never seen a pencil before, it turns out so badly.

Our instructor, Heather Clements, suggested we take a different approach to the initial gesture, and I will try to learn how to do that.  Her suggestion was to in effect draw a stick figure or a stick-skeleton, which can be roughed in fairly quickly to establish the overall directional line and then the individual limbs and sections of the body.  Once the “armature” is established, it is easier to compare relationships of one part to another, and then to make corrections.

As always with new models, I struggled trying to learn how to draw him.  You would not think there would be that much difference from one figure to the next, but there are worlds of difference.  We’ve been rotating models for a while a Studio b., so that we don’t return to a previous model for perhaps as long as 8 weeks, unless one has to fill in for another.  That has added to the challenge for me.  When I am struggling, I learn more.

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Slowing Down

Sometimes the art of drawing seems very out of place with our high-speed, instant-messaged, texted, digitized, and “shared” world.  After all, since the invention of the camera, and then with the advances of the computer, drawing probably seems archaic to some.

So why do I draw?  The primary reason I draw, is for the exhilaration of the capture of a form, a texture, a light pattern, or even a single line.  It takes time, and time often stops in the process.  The exhilaration can last from the beginning of the drawing to the very end, and then afterwards too, when I look at the work.

The day after the figure drawing session at Studio b. this week, I went to my first group meditation meeting, where again, time stopped.  I found similarities in the two experiences, both bringing me solidly into the present moment, both resulting in a sort of euphoria, and having the effect of energizing me.  There was a difference though, in that the drawing session as usual brought me peace with myself, a very powerful self, but group meditation brought me peace with everyone else in a powerful, unified oneness.  Both resulted in incredible power.

There are other results from the experience of drawing.  I find that I know so much more about something I have drawn, and I have a much richer experience of it.  My memories of most experiences become foggy over time, but when I look at a drawing I made, even some from college days, snippets of details of my life or the experience come to mind that I would never recall otherwise.

I think it’s all about slowing down and intensely focusing.  Except there is more to it than that, because slowing down and intensely focusing on a mathematics examination does not give me the same empowerment as drawing or painting.  I guess that’s why we call it Art.

I have posted the final piece I made in figure drawing this week.  I drew it with washable graphite on Stonehenge paper, with the intention of applying a loose wash over it to draw out some subtle tones, and instead I decided I wanted to keep the textures of the lines.  But I may yet apply a wash.  There is still plenty of opportunity to make a mess of it!

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The Bare Bones of Figure Drawing

Heather Clements taught a 4-hour figure drawing workshop at Studio b. Saturday afternoon.  She used slides to show us where the underlying skeletal structure and muscular anatomy were evident in paintings and sculptures by such artists as Rubens, Michelangelo, daVinci, Philip Perlstein, Picasso, Egon Schiele, and others.  She also gave us  a packet of photos and drawings of the skeletal and muscular anatomy to study and use as a reference.

Our initial assignment was to try to imagine the skeleton underneath the model’s pose and to draw that skeletal pose.  It was a hard job.  When I attended the University of Northern Colorado, I studied anatomy, not for my Fine Arts major, but for my other major, Health, Physical Education and Recreation.  But that was many years ago, and I have forgotten most of it.  So I just copied what Heather had shown us, as best I could.  I was impressed with how quickly it began to make sense, and I began to feel very comfortable with it.  Below is the progression of some of my warm-up skeleton gestures, with the last one showing the fleshy form added during in the final 30 seconds of an 8-minute pose, after the imaginary skeleton was already drawn.

This turned out to be an immensely helpful exercise, as I found it much easier to locate the various parts of the figure in relation to each other later on in the session.  But rarely do things ever go quite the way I wish they would when I am developing a new awareness, and I complicated things further by trying out some colored conte that I had been carrying around for about half a year in my box of drawing media.  I’ll probably get up the nerve to try the conte again, but I know for sure that I will be getting out my anatomy books and studying the skeletal structure of various poses.  Below are my two final drawings from today’s workshop.
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Dueling Pencils, Figure Drawing at Studio b.

Last Wednesday evening was “open studio” at Studio b., which is to say that we did not have a scheduled instructor.  The tentative plan is to schedule guest artists on the third Wednesday of every month, and open studio if a guest isn’t scheduled.  One of the regular figure drawing artists, Steve Wagner, was asked if he would share his approach to the figure with the group, and he said he would and he asked me to also.  I laughingly referred to our session as Dueling Pencils, since we were presenting together.

Each week the artists warm up with a number of 30-second gesture drawings, progressing to one-minute, then two-minute, and perhaps 5-minute or 10 -minute drawings before we move on to longer poses.  By doing these quick poses, we “wake up”, improving our hand-eye coordination, learning what the model looks like, and trying to remember how to draw.

Steve and I each talked for a minute and then we each demonstrated a 30-second gesture.  Steve’s gestures actually map out the landmarks and the masses of the figure, whereas my 30-second warm-up drawings are little more than a vague scribble, usually way out of proportion and perhaps only suggesting the angles of the body and limbs and the general directional line of the figure.

When we advanced to the 2-minute gestures, Steve and I each showed and talked about our gestures, and everyone turned their papers outward towards the center and showed their efforts.   It is interesting to see how the other artists approach the figure — that’s one of the values of practicing in a group.  Sometimes I am lucky, turning out a gesture that might have a sense of completion without further development.  I felt like that happened with my first 2-minute gesture, shown above left.

Our model had ballet experience, and it showed in her poses, especially with the positions of her hands and feet, and her attitude, in the tilt of her head.  We were channeling a little Degas, I think.

The two works I have posted below are 30-minute drawings from later in the session.  The last one is drawn with watercolor pencils which I finished later in my studio at home.

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Figure Drawing on Colored Paper

This week we again had a new model for figure drawing at Studio b. The young woman had a number of interesting tattoos, but tattoos are one of those things that you see right at the beginning, and then while you are drawing, you forget about them, and then maybe you will see them again at the end.   I’ve had this happen with with whole body parts before.  All of a sudden I realize there’s another leg  — how many legs does this model have?  So I missed drawing most of her interesting tattoos.

A few months ago I bought an assortment of colored Canson Mi-Teintes papers, and I had not used the brighter colors, so I brought them to figure drawing to try out this week.

I had fun even though the bright colors were a bit outside of my comfort zone.  I particularly enjoyed working on the red paper.  I used Nupastel, letting the red show through for some of the middle values.  I opted not to do anything with the background, leaving the figure floating, unanchored.

At left is one of my warm-up gestures.  Our instructor, Heather Clements, gave a very good demonstration about gesture drawing, and setting up the figure on the paper.  This example is nothing like what she taught us, but I just thought it was interesting.

The studio was a-buzz with creativity, with all the drawing upstairs while Colleen Duffley worked downstairs, uploading the New Years camera-phone competition.  Earlier this week Studio b. hosted a presentation by one of the Escape to Create artists, Judith Levy.