Sketches of Featured Poets @ The Art Bar

Three featured poets at The Art Bar last night... Jan Conn, Sue Reynolds and Allan Briesmaster. Don't laugh. It's dark, and you have to work fast. If you get a likeness, it's lucky. Norman Allen (who is a friend and whose work I like) draws, and so do I. He posts on their Facebook as often as he likes, but I've declined due to... well, someone on the committee said they were trying to 'declutter' the Art Bar wall and could I post no more than maybe one drawing a month. Since they are all drawings of poets done while they are reading at the Art Bar of course I was offended and deleted my drawings from their page el pronto. My analyst wants me to go to the whole committee about the situation but so far I haven't cared enough. Most of them know nothing about how my work was banished by a rogue committee member and would likely be surprised since when they've hosted and seen my drawings they say they like them. I'm also wondering if the fact that another artist is allowed to post as often as he likes is a form of favouritism or horrors, sexism. When I go to the Art Bar event, which is far less often than before (when I felt welcome), I draw anyway and post on my own Facebook page and here in my blog. 'Draw, draw, draw...' is an artist's motto. :~)

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Rock on Toxodon: sketching @ the Museum

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!

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Figure Sculpture, week 10 (1 photo)

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.

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Figure Sculpture Week 9 (7 photos)

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.

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Figure Sculpture Week 8 (11 photos)

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.

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La Vie de Jolie Jade (painted in ink) @Lizzie Violet's Cabaret Noir

... 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.

(8.5"x11", 130lb art paper, mixed media.)

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Figure Sculpture - week 7 (9 photos)

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.

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