Costume Life Drawing Class

Today I managed to put pencil to paper and do some sketches. From some photos.

this is a talented artist Ruth Brain, who has some fantastic frilly frilly dresses.

and this is Ossian MacUrchin, who regular blog followers may recognise from the Strome Castle Historical event photos I took.

Why was I sketching folks in great clothes? as a warm up for this:~

Which will be at The brilliant Greehouse in Dingwall on Tuesday 13th December , 6- 9pm

Facebook event here.

Life drawing is a vital discipline for anyone wanting to do figurative art, illustration or comics. One of the problems is getting nude models, another is that not all amateur artists are entirely comfortable with nudes, nor the venues, and lets face it in the North Highlands its way too cold!

Traditional Life Classes are good for understanding the muscles and skeleton fits together up to a point, but illustrators like me need dynamic poses, and action rather than relaxed reclined poses, i need to know how clothes hang, how hats sit. So I'm hoping that this class will appeal to all the closet cosplayers in the north, and be something different to get the budding artists and illustrators out on a winters evening. It should be a lot of fun!

Christmas Fair at Kelso-Ceilidh Barn.

The 'South West Ross Arts & Eats' 2011 Christmas Fair is underway, its on until Monday afternoon and has a mass of delicious hot food and snacks, foodie gifts and art work. Last year it snowed for a few of the days we had it on, sure enough tgis morning the snow had crept down the mountains- you can just see it to the left of photo below the clouds. The building there the the New lodge, the fair is in the Ceilidh barn next door. Here is more information on the Northings website. The event raises monies for the Hospice.

here is my wee corner display.

Applecross Dancers

This is another small painting. 14cm x 21cm. Its based on a photo of two little girls from Applecross doing Highland Dancing at the annual games in 2008. It makes me smile as Applecross children are great.  They are unselfconscious, exuberant, and just a little bit wild, in a great grubby kneed sort of way like all children should be. I love doing art projects with them as its always a relaxed creative time, whereas with most children's groups nowadays one is always treading on eggshells.

Everyone loves Highland Cows

Heres the cow I posted progress pictures of yesterday. Not too impressed with this canvas, prefer the flow I get on paper. This is one of the beasts over on Applecross Estate, the calves are very cute but look like silly teddy bear cow things. Box canvas, acrylic 24cm x 30cm.

Next....

Coire na Ba

Okay that's that one finished, 23cm x 30cm. People who saw the film 'Stardust' may recognize the site of Ricky Gervaise's shop atop this hill. I called the painting after the Coire rather than the Buttress, which is unpronounceable. Its a weird hill, from certain angles it looks like a friendly scramble and calls to me - from a distance it becomes apparent that its thousands of feet of slippery vertical death, even for someone with fully functioning knees and feet.

meanwhile I'm working on some small paintings for Tore Gallery Christmas Show. There is the Highland Cow, ceilidh dancers, spinning ladies- to save confusion I've decided to put progress pictures up one painting at a time. The coo is nearly there, stand by...

Buttress and Coo work in progress

Acrylics on thick paper, building up the layers. Another view from The road to Applecross, a bread & butter painting, trying to get the sombre light without making it all too dark. This technique means a lot of waiting about between wet paint layers, so I have a few paintings on the go at once. Its not ideal as I'd prefer to immerse myself in one at a time. My poor attention span craves to stop multi tasking for once !

So this is the other painting, the obligatory Hairy Coo, this is a small box canvas and I'm finding the surface laborious with my wet layering approach. we'll see what they look like tomorrow. Then there's also the spinning wheel ladies I've just started...

Russel Burn

Here's the finished painting, Russel burn- as seen in the evening light on Sunday. Enjoyed doing this, frustrated how everything else impinges on painting time.
There are technical things which I want to work through, the work seems to be getting more & more representational, which I'm not sure about. I want to capture the light, textures, colours, movement, contrasts in things; but I want to do so in a lively, expressive manner, minimum brush work & layers, I want to avoid muddying, overworking, labouring over detail. I also want to avoid the techniques used by other local artists painting the same mountains - as plagiarism drives me mad! I'm not looking to recreate photographs. Someone today was talking about trying to paint in an impressionist style, I don't think one should aim for a particular style but just intuitively find one's own. Curious then that my work seems to be wandering off on a completely different tangent from me.