As if Death Were a Passion

As if Death Were a Passion, Brenda Clews, 2012, 12" x 16", graphite and acrylic on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

outline the skeleton
in red
make the lines of the bones
red

alizarin crimson, cadmium red
flame red, poppy bright

ok, blood too

the passion of death

as if death
were a passion


_________

It's taken many weeks for me to watch this great little instructional video on how to draw a skeleton. I've never taken anatomy, so I fully appreciate teaching tools like this (thank you Kenny Mencher!). I'll have to get myself a wee skeleton at a Medical Supply store at some point. :)

I meant to take a photo before I started working it. Ah well. It's not perfectly drawn because I don't want that.

The instructional video is here: http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.ca/2011/11/video-drawing-skeleton-front-view.html?m=1 (if, like me, you'll probably watch it later do bookmark it since it's an unlisted video you won't be able to find it on YouTube without the link)

I took the photo with my iPhone 4 using Camera+ and then a Clarity filter - later I'll blog it without the filter. It's just kind of neat with the tones the filter gives it.

Green Fire 1

Green Fire, 21cm x 29.2cm, 8" x 11.5", Moleskine, ink.

Words:

'Follow the green fire that's in your life and in mine. Billow. Float through green streams of smoke. Remember to look under the burning leaf.'

'waiting for spring in the emotional subconscious'

                                          

The Lady and the Chimera- first, a sketch on canvas

The Lady and the Chimera, 12"x9", 30.5x23cm, chalk drawing on bone black acrylic on canvas, 2009. Click on image for larger.

The words within the school of fish say, 'peace of the doubly confounded.'

We sewed an opened seam of my daughter's favourite stuffed bear, years old now, 'Honey.' Yesterday when I worked in the toy store a woman bought a beautiful soft bear for a 70 year old woman, a puppet actually, in which she was going to stash chocolate. My Chimera is sort of a cuddly stuffed animal, but a mystical mythic creature too.

The Chimera wears a crown.

There are flowers beneath the woman's feet.

The ocean moves behind her like her wings or a shawl.

Perhaps she's a Venus image, or a rendition. The Zephyr blow Venus to the shore where the Horae wait with a cape of magnolia blossoms among the magnolia trees. Which is slightly different to this image, so I'm not sure.

I'm going to try a Tanya Wolski technique of beginning with a black canvas and moving towards colour, the white. In Wolski's recent paintings the black outlines of the figures is the background peeping through. Sometime I will do a post on her work - I think her one of the most talented artists working today.


                                                    

The Bird Who Couldn't Land

shirt, belt, thin body
cigarettes, names unknown, but known
I meet you in your dreams
the forest is blue-grey with fog, palms, fronds
in the day of being wild
I read your hand
for signs
who knows you better than yourself?

sketch from 2008 while watching Wong Kar-wai's
Days of Being Wild (1990), © Brenda Clews