Lifedrawings

It's been a busy week and I haven't much accomplished, but I did finally populate a Lifedrawings page at my website. Or, rather, found the images between two computers, and, determined to move out of Flickr, uploaded them to their own album at Picasa. The drawings are mostly from 2005-2006.




Or click on a direct link:

Lifedrawings

                                                    

Two new pages at my Art & Writings website

Been working on my Art & Writings website, put up two pages: "Women in Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter, 2008-2009," and, finally, a "Lifedrawings" page, and redid the Navigation Buttons. You can see the Navigation Buttons below every post, and they are active links to those pages at my website - and you can see which page with a mouse-rollover. I've changed a few of the images, with intention to change the last three whenever. I only put up this website last June but already it is filling up. I've been working on it for 12 hours straight today, finding images, re-sizing them, dealing with html, positioning, layout, etc. etc, and was up till 3am last night a-werking on-the-website.

☆sort of tired☆ of .( ․or perhaps high from°☆.․ ․:)♥staring at a pixelated screen♥:))))♪♫¸¸


                                                    

Figure in Blue-Feathered Strokes

Figure in Blue-Feathered Strokes, pencil, India ink, fixative, acrylic matte medium, watercolour pencils, oil paint on archival paper, 12¾"x10", 2006. Digital version, 2009.

This morning I vacuumed the apartment (uh huh), and then did yoga (yah) with the intent to "do" the tasks I'd set for the day (a major clean-out of a closet, working on 2 paintings). The 'yoga with intent' didn't seem to be working since after the yoga I ended up dancing like a crazy cotton-tail all about my small space grateful that I was alone. What do you expect if you're listening to Buddha Bar? That went on for some time. Song after song found me kicking and jumping and shaking my hips, I couldn't stop. After I settled down after lunch, oh strange occurrence considering there hasn't been a night in many months that I haven't thought about starting the final painting in the Women in the Seasons series and day after day I've resisted, you know, I put a large piece of Plexiglas on the twin pull-out leaves of my desk, a few clamp lamps underneath, and transferred figures to delicious 300lb Arches watercolour paper! Pleased to report that guilt for a year (over not starting this final painting of a series) = gone.

While I was looking for the set of figure drawings I've been using for the Women in Seasons series, I found this little painting. Yeah, she's the same life drawing model who graces the Women in Seasons series, only I've not painted this pose in those paintings. I find the final digital composition of my afternoon's work on how best to present the image with its layering (only about half a dozen layers in the image), multiples, repetitions, colouring intriguing. It's fun to play digitally, though I like to base my digital work on images of an actual drawing or painting, which in turn is composed from sketches from lifedrawing sessions... (didn't Wallace Stevens say something about always basing your work on the 'real'? I like that.)

I scanned the painting in two sections and stitched it together in Photoshop Elements 6, which is what I use on my iMac. The central image that I have titled is the high resolution scan. Then I took a photograph of the painting on the smoky-coloured Plexiglass with the light shining through it. Through the afternoon the images got attached to each other, and then a third, and digitally painting a framing, and, here it is, sharing...

(click on Figure in Blue-Feathered Strokes for a larger version)

Later: after 2am now... since this was a simple project with few layers , I created a short slideshow out of saved versions. Click through to Picasa if you'd like to see it larger, with captions:



Direct link:

Figure in Blue-Feathered Strokes

                                                

Women In Summer

If anyone knows the code to reverse the order of a Flikr slideshow I'd appreciate it. It's currently running backwards, from finished painting through all the stages to the drawing, which is a bit awkward. Women In Summer, I'm happy to say, is finished.

(Clicking any of the images will stop the slideshow and provide more of the info I included for the picture.)

Also, I've grouped this series on one page by the tag, WomenInSummer, at Flickr, here.

Paiting Still in Process, nearing end though...

awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again

complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. unscrew tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.

where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.

(click here for larger size, you might need to press F11 if you'd like to see its whole cacophony)

Painting In Process July 08

Clipped 2 clamp lamps each with 100Watt daylight spectrum bulbs on either side and snapped it. Blue is a bit bright, slightly darker in the original. The lower right quadrant a little darker than in the painting, but running the Dodge tool in Photoshop over it even at 25% didn't bring it to its shade of colour. Every monitor's different anyhow. My old iMac & new Dell laptop each present colours differently. Overall, and I worked on this awhile, between the 2 computers, the coloration's not bad.

Anyway, how's that drawing I posted going? Eh. Tinkering, dabbing, letting it grow in its own fashion. Slow, but I'm enjoying slow. My paintings used to be done in 20 minutes and that felt fine then only now I want to linger longer, enjoy the process continuously. A dab, a little bit of paint, wait a day, see what's next. This piece, however, who knows, it seems quite complex to me as I work on it, and I don't know in which direction it'll develop.

I just spread the blue of her back into the other blue to syncopate the rhythm across the page better because alone it overwhelmed, was too strong. I started using watercolour pencils because they're more forgiving, and I can test the colours first.

Do I like it? I'm not sure. It's growing on me. It seems diagrammatic. A blueprint. Though of what, I cannot quite say. Groupings, images of women.

72.5cm x 52cm/28.5" x 20.5", oil and watercolour on paper (click image for larger size) or go directly here (you might need to press F11 to see it all).

Prep drawing for painting

India ink on paper with acrylic matte medium brushed over the drawing, 73cm x 52cm, 28.75" x 20.5"

Prep drawing for a new painting. Combining figures from lifedrawing sessions and a very famous Venus, to become part my current work-in-progress: the Botticelli Venus Suite of Poems (I've included some tiny bits of text from my poems which may be lost in the paint, who knows).

Click on image for larger size, & the tiny quotes from which poems.

Women In Spring, process of a painting

Tag at Flickr: Women In Spring - I wonder if it'll work?

Sketch of Sketches



It's really pale, I apologize. A pencil sketch of sketches from a lifedrawing session in, oh, Nov 06, that's how long it's been! Feeling like painting again...

(25.5" x 19"; 64.7cm x 48.2cm on textured ivory Strathmore Artist Paper)

Women In Spring, first wash of paint



Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper (click to enlarge)

In process... who knows. Not what I'd thought I'd do. Painting, like life, is like that.

Colours dart at me. Touch, and pull their washes back.

Can I shroud you in the colours of the background, so you'll fit your pattern, so you're not cut-out from it.

I'm not different from the scenery I surround myself with.

Look closely, there I am.

With my addiction
to you.

Dreaming Truth, detail



dreams are infallible, accurate, true for that situation, that relationship, things change, dreams reflect the changes; nothing expresses the truth of life like the dream; the dream is a clear representation of our reality;

the dream is a clear representation of our reality.

dreams never lie, the dream doesn't lie: it foresees and predicts, even forewarns
encapsulates; explains; never our enemy - nightmares are our fears, turn and face them

the dream conveys its messages in metaphorical language, images that shock, or bewilder, or uplift, that astound, are vivid, direct

dreams guide, our helpers: offering insight, mystical information, a panoramic perspective

ancient wisdom calls to us through our dreams, where our intuition is powerful
prescient

Dream Truth...



Painting Corner



How little space for painting! This is the corner. You can see the original sketches from which I composed the composite image of The Women in Spring. What's nice is that if I don't like the way the painting turns out, I can create another one. The painting on the board is influenced by the one on the wall, isn't it. I did that one in Vancouver and it's quite large: Celestial Dancers, 2004, oil on canvas, 4' x 5' based on late Medieval relief figures of the temple art of Cambodia when it was in the midst of a shift from Hinduism to Buddhism. The smaller one on the wall to the left is Celestial Dancer II (31"x35", acrylic on canvas, 2003) based on an image of the Hindu God, Krishna. This nook is about to become all desk as I move the futon couch out and create a workspace for painting and writing...

Women In Spring - finished!



Women In Spring, 2008, 24.5"x18", 62.2cmx45.7cm, oil wash on paper

It's relatively easy to swoosh paint, Zen-like, and let the image emerge however it does. Only now I sought to include detail, painted lines, to put effort into the composition. I wanted the women, who are one woman, drawings from one lifedrawing session placed on the same page, to be colourful like tulips in the garden. The figures appear in varying stages between perhaps more painterly and a reliance on drawing, and I don't seem able to move away from that, not yet anyway. I outlined boldly in paint tonight, resisting the urge to use coloured pencil, then wasn't sure, then knew that from across the room there would be more definition. The final criteria - can I live with them? Who knows?

The grouping; the way they create the space around them; their relation to each other; the view they allow the viewer; some emerging out of the washes of colour, or disappearing into...

The fecund forces of Spring, who can define it?