Posting the same sketch from a life-drawing session inked in.... #InkTober

Inked sketch of final pose (inked in studio after) - Life-drawing at Bampot Bohemian Teahouse - 19 Oct 2014 - ©Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", 4mm 6B graphite in a Pilot Croquis lead holder, Derwent InkTense permanent ink and Prismacolor NuPastels on Canson 80lb archival cream drawing paper.

I pulled the knees and lower legs way back and inked the sketch in. After, I added a bit of NuPastel. At this point, I am quite satisfied with how it has turned out. The overall composition works for me and the elements are subsumed in it even as they create it.

Tinkering will continue, however... a few things I can already see. I'll include this drawing when I post all the sketches - this will be the most 'finished' one. It was roughly a 40 min pose.

The messy paper and grottiness? I love that! Seeing process as well as the final incantation makes a drawing or painting feel like it is part of the real world, that the artist's materials are still in flux as they flow together to make the image appear as a demarcation of a perception of a figure on the page.

#InkTober
___

 

Drawings from Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Reloaded in Toronto, Halloween theme, Oct 3, 2014. #InkTober

Life-drawing @ Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Reloaded in Toronto, Halloween theme, Oct 3, 2014, ©Brenda Clews, 18" x 24" Inktense black and red blocks with a water brush pen on Strathmore 70lb archival drawing paper. You've seen some of these already....

See photos from the evening at the Dr. Sketchy Blog.

#InkTober

(Zoominess and deepened shadows added for extra Halloween effect! I rather like.)

(the actual drawing)

___

 

Little sketch of Norman Bethune Allan and Waleed Abdulhamid @ The Art Bar #InkTober

It was so dark at the Art Bar last night that I could not see what I was doing - literally, could not see pencil lines on the paper. The water-soluble ink I was using appeared so black there was hardly any detail. Would have been better, perhaps, if I had enough light to see the paper - so I'll have to take a small book light if I go and draw at The Black Swan Tavern again.

Norman Bethune Allan and Waleed Abdulhamid (where the ink wash drawing went later in the evening and the original sketch) @ArtBar-14Oct2014 ©BrendaClews, 11" x 15", Derwent InkTense black permanent ink blocks,  Faber-Castell Pitt India ink pens, Pentalic 130lb archival paper.

#InkTober

___

 

Ink Drawing #8, w-i-p. #InkTober

Ink Drawing #8, w-i-p. October 8, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", Faber-Castell Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine sketchbook. #inktober

Eh. No idea where it will go. The oh-so short but intense flu's aftermath has settled into my lungs and deep, unbroken sleep and energy are zapped. Yah, well, so what if today's drawing is rawther unfinished. Some notches on a page. It makes me giggle. Which is needed in between coughing bouts, you understand. It's also got a rhythm of an ocean flow, a turbulence. I think it's at a dock where energy flow and land mass meet. Abstract art doesn't take me anywhere - though of course I like it when it's done well by others - whereas, the figurative is about subjectivities, ways of reading ourselves in context. So there will be a figure...

For the last two days, I've been submitting poetry. Ok, I only got two submissions out. But what a lot of work! Oiy ya. And I made an error, too, I know it. I sent out prose/poems that will be in my forthcoming book - it'll be published by Guernica Editions but not until maybe 2016 or later - and I told the editors in the accompanying letters! So those two submissions will be rejections for sure. While unpublished, the prose/poems will be published - and the journals require work unpublished in any format. This predilection for honesty sometimes slips me up. Yeah, I know I'm doing it backwards but I need to generate interest in my work before the book comes out. Who knows for sure if these places will take what I sent... but I am at a point where I would like to publish in print and on-line journals.
___

 

Ink Drawing #7 #InkTober

Ink Drawing #7. ©Brenda Clews. 10" x 7.5", FaberCastelli Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine notebook.

Yesterday's drawing with 'two women' added.

While there is a frivolous woman in a checkered hat (with perhaps a chandelier attached to her hat ribbon), the other woman fascinates me. She is the accidental woman who dominates. Her hair is slicked down black with a rhinestone barrette tucked in, there is a dot for an eye, a star earring, some feathers perhaps as the other earring, a shoulder (where my signature is) and her breast is the round circle at the base of the black irregular rectangle. The two black triangles at the bottom indicate she is wearing a slinky black dress.

We are in the world of magic.

#inktober
___

 

Ink Drawing #6 #inktober

Ink Drawing #6, w-i-p. ©Brenda Clews. 10" x 7.5", Faber-Castell Pitt India ink pens, Moleskine notebook.

The scratchy throat has turned into full-scale flu and am mostly resting from coughing and not-sleeping-last-night under a heated throw. This beginnings-of-a-drawing is all I've done. I'm posting it as my #inktober drawing for today. I'll likely add a figure and post that maybe as tomorrow's drawing. Now, more Ibuprofen and back under the heated throw!
___

 

Ink Drawing #5 #inktober

Ink Drawing #5. October 5, 2014. ©Brenda Clews. 9" x 12", Pentel brush pen, Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's brown ink and Prismacolor Nupastels on Fabriano 100% cotton cold-pressed 140lb watercolour paper.

Ink Drawing #5, pre-colour. 

Yesterday afternoon at Portobello, a monthly poetry and music event hosted by Linda Stitt, my throat began to feel scratchy. At the first break, I went home. Rested. Normally I would have gone to bed early but it was Nuit Blanche in Toronto and I had planned to video... and so out I went, dressed warmly for the cold evening, and did get a few minutes of video that I am very pleased with, did not manage to meet up with my niece, Tara, and her boyfriend, and called it a night around 10pm. On arriving home, my son and his girlfriend were outside and they visited until midnight or so. By then, my throat was starting to rage. Because the virus is settling in for a bout, I cancelled my afternoon at Bampot Bohemian Teahouse where there is life-drawing every Sunday. Fiddlesticks. I treated myself to salmon baked on a cedar board (very yummy). Then grumpily did a quick ink self-portrait. I actually don't mind this one - perhaps because it is not laboured over. I grabbed some NuPastels and added colour - one of the reasons I am ok with this self-portrait is that it is looser, more impressionistic. Working this way was a release and I am relieved to offer an #InkTober 5th of October drawing. Whew.

#inktober
___

 

Ink Drawing #4 #inktober

Two minute gesture poses. Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Reloaded in Toronto, Halloween theme, Oct 3, 2014, ©Brenda Clews, InkTense black and red blocks with a water brush pen on 18" x 22" Strathmore 70lb archival drawing paper.

I've never stitched photographs before and there wasn't time to learn how to do it for this image - the first 4 are on one side, the 5th is on the back of that paper, and the 6th is on another page (and I'm thinking, with the pencil lines, it must have been a 5 min) - but they make a nice row.

#inktober
___

 

#3 Ink Drawing #inktober

Ink Drawing #3. October 3, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink (Pitt pens, Derwent InkTense blocks, Noodler's ink, Daler Rowney acrylic artists ink etc), Moleskine sketchbook.

Not sure what to say. Uhhh. There were moments it almost appeared to be. Might come back to this one later, or perhaps rip it out of the Moleskine, or even get used to it. I was thinking about the ways women are remain constrained in our culture and how unfortunately sometimes they seem to enjoy and even get off on those constraints (I might put the ropes around her body back in). And hey, reality is messy, and so is this drawing. Had... a busy day, rushing out now.

iPhone pic, not so good with flourescent light. I'll discreetly update all these photos when sunlight and time to photograph properly becomes available again.

#inktober

___

 

Ink Drawing #2 #inktober

Ink Drawing #2. October 2, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink, Moleskine sketchbook.

Sure I will not be able to keep this level of intricacy up every day the whole month, but each drawing is one that I would not have done before the InkTober initiative, and for that I am grateful.

Fishy underwater boney spiny things, carpel bones drifting, radius and ulna, phalanges.

She, found somewhere... a martial arts fashionista. An Oriental dream.

#inktober

___

 

#1 Ink Drawing #inktober

Ink Drawing. October 1, 2014. ©Brenda Clews, 11.5" x 16.5", India ink, Moleskine sketchbook.

This is a large Moleskine sketchbook and the drawings are hard to photograph. While shooting in direct sun helps, they still requires finicky colour correction. I may post ones taken in cloudy foggy days like today, or with fluorescent daylight bulbs, and then re-take them and slip them into the same spots when there is sun and time to colour correct the images.

#inktober
 ___