Seated Man (in progress), TSA March 30th

Seated Man, 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, graphite on stretched canvas.

Sketch from TSA Friday night in pencil on a small canvas, 16" x 20", that I will finish as an ink painting.

Seated Man, in-progress, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, mixed media on stretched canvas.

When I go to TSA non-instructional, drop-in lifepainting sessions, I usually spend the first 3 hours working on a larger painting; then I leave it to dry for the last hour while I sketch the model on a smaller canvas. At the top of this post you see the sketch that will become an ink painting. Below is the larger painting I did first. At TSA, I use thin layers of acrylics - they dry fast. To the left is what I completed at TSA on Friday night. At home, I finish the painting with oils - oil sticks, oil pastels, oil paints.

On the left is where the painting is today. It's still unfinished.

I'm considering putting a figure in black line only behind him, and some purple crocuses at his feet. To me, he seems a spring god, the spring rains and sap greens around him, a garden god who represents the fertility of the onrush of Nature's awakening after the long winter months.

Before the light was gone, on my walk through my neighbourhood this evening, I saw yellow tulips, small star-shaped blue flowers (which are? not phlox, or asters, but...?), yellow forsythias, and small magnolia trees just beginning to blossom. I may go by in the next few days with my sketchbook and see if adding a spring fauna to this painting will give it a fullness.

Seated Woman (one finished, one in process), TSA 23 March 2012

Woman of the Sea Far Inland is finished. I painted a beautiful model at a non-instructional drop-in session at TSA on Friday night. Last night I whipped up the energy of the painting with some oil sticks I had bought at Gwartzman's. Looking at it, I think it might be a painting to go with a poetry manuscript I am in the process of compiling for submission.

I'm still working on the second painting below, Woman Seated, Waiting. She does look like a woman caught in thorns, a jagged and perhaps dangerous situation, doesn't she. There's something Pre-Raphaelite about her, and Medieval Christian saint.

2 Woman of the Sea Far Inland (final), 2012, 18" x 24", 35.7cm x 61cm, 

acrylic, oil sticks, oil pastels on triple-primed canvas sheet.

2 Woman Seated, Waiting (in process), 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, 

graphite, India and acrylic inks on stretched canvas.

Here is a little slideshow of the album where these paintings from the 

non-instructional drop-in painting session I went to at TSA last Friday night. 

Click on any image in the slideshow to go to Picasa and a larger size.

                              

Seated Woman, TSA 23 March 2012

Last night I went to TSA (Toronto School of Art) drop-in painting session (it only took a year to get there). Many fine artists. Perhaps these capture an essence. I'm considering going at the painting with oil sticks, and the pencil drawing on the canvas is going to get an ink treatment.

Woman of the Sea Far Inland, 2012, 18" x 24", 35.7cm x 61cm, acrylic on triple-primed canvas sheet.

Woman Seated, Waiting, 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, graphite on stretched canvas.

                              

Dancer in Red and Black

Dancer in Red and Black, 2012, 16" x 20", graphite and India and acrylic inks on stretched canvas.

The second image is in my Moleskine, and 8.5" x 11". I was going to continue working until I arrived at a similar place to the image in my Moleskine. My daughter thought that I could leave the painting as a raw sketch with the red and black ink. It doesn't feel 'finished' to me... and so I am struggling a little with knowing that it may work at this stage as is, and I could overdo it and decrease its energy by continuing to work on it. Not sure anyone can offer any art advice, but I'd welcome any thoughts on the two images. Thanks!