Sketching at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) on Nov 24th with the group, Sketching Around the City. Was an interesting sketching trip. Thanks Valerie Animus Léo for organizing it! This is a Toxodon platensis, from Argentina, 1.5 million years old, actually a hoofed mammal that most resembles a rhinoceros.
We all went our separate directions and met up afterwards in the lobby with our drawings. Photo by Valerie Animus Léo, who organises this event. You can see me peering at the sketches, my Toxodon amongst the others.
Here is the 'dinosaur' I was sketching at the museum. My sketch in the bottom left corner is a bit dark in this iPhone photo, but you can see the skeleton of beast I was drawing (not real bone, but simulated, as it turns out). As I found out when I'd finished, he's actually a Toxodon platensis, from Argentina, 1.5 million years old, and not a fabulous dinosaur of the reptile family but a hoofed mammal that most resembles a rhinoceros. Rock on Toxodon!
My little figure sculpture has hit a landmine. Not too happy at this point - arms and legs cut due to difficulties with the original armature that wasn't twisted right and which I couldn't seem to fix. Next week is the final week, so... I'll have to see how it goes.
The first four photos are taken with a Canon 60D, 50mm lens, and no idea why I then started snapping with my iPhone5S. Promise not to in the next two, and, gasp, final weeks. Nowhere near done!
Also, I asked the instructor to cut the arms on my figure without offering any direction as to where. This is big on the agenda for next week's session - fixing those stubbs, either to look better at the length they are, or to elongate somehow. Photographing the figure with the arm stubbs is when I switched to the iPhone's camera.
Week 8, and I took in a Canon 60D with a 50mm lens (which made it easy to carry) to photograph the strangeness better. The images are sharper, and there is more bokeh going on in some of them.
The instructor enlarged and adjusted the head on my sculpture, which it needed, but in the process wiped out the face for the second time, making this is the third go at the face. It doesn't quite work, maybe next week will be a better session. Only 3 sessions to go - I'm sure I could work on it a year and still not be finished.
The chin is a bit too long - I was working from the front and trying to get that chin bone, which is smaller than an uncooked grain of rice, and ran out of time before I could move around the model to adjust the proportions of her profile. The photographs help me to see that adjusting her profile has got to be first next week.
Shhh... hot lady (she is, but doesn't look so much like it in my sculpture). Somehow I have aged her quite a bit. Odd how that occurs, and how you consciously have to head back into a more youthful version.
Snapped in storage. Quite beautiful, huh. I will reveal all details on where, what and who when the session is over.
... was messing around with some brush pens that I filled with different coloured inks... the sketch I did of La Vie de Jolie Jade on Aug 11th at Lizzie Violet's Cabaret Noir was what I found when searching for something to apply a new technique to.
Perhaps you're getting bored, but I continue with posting, now into week 7. Only 4 more weeks to go! I worked on the face (re-done twice, so roughed in) and the hair (roughed in). I also took some video but think I will wait to see how the sculpture goes over the next month before posting anything along that line. Even though I am very new to sculpting -this is my first time ever working on a figure- in the 2nd photo surprisingly there is strange resemblance to the model's personality, something in the face.
It's official. I signed the contract today. I'm having a solo show at Urban Gallery in Toronto in January, and maybe February. The Opening party is slated for Thurs January 9th 2014 from 5-8pm. During the time my paintings are up, Luciano Iacobelli will host a performance poetry event; Nik Beat, a poetry and music night; and Banoo Zan will host a poetry event. I am thrilled. The winter just got a whole more fun!
And the lady who is responsible for this turn of events is Mary Lou Patchell, who owns He and She Clothing. She told Calvin about a lady who danced poetry in masks that came out of paintings and he told her to tell me to get in touch with him. We (Calvin & I) met in September, and I thought, that was nice, what a lovely man, and nothing of it, and then got an email a week or two back and am finally able to burst with the news.
Today I was in Lou Lou's store, and she dressed me up a little bit. I did buy the top, and maybe will the shaped leather mask (which fit perfectly) later on if I can figure out a poem for it and how to use it in a poetry performance... (She also laced me into a corset, a purple and black one (that is definitely for performances), and it is now tucked away in my drawer.) She took this photo and I really love it even if I think I look too thin, but then again, I didn't in the others she took, so it's just the angle. She kept saying, 'You look so different in that mask... another side of you.' Something to ponder... what is a normal self? And why should a simple eye mask change the perception of this elusive concept?
After my last meeting with Calvin Hambrook, one of the owners of Urban Gallery and Urban Catering, I took some iPhone pics and videos of Lou Lou's store. Plan to go back sometime to draw those mannequins!
The video was a quick patched job of iPhone video and photos, but today am considering making it a videopoem with a voiceover, so that might happen, who knows. It's been awhile since I made a videopoem- it might be fun.
