Escaping the Outline!

Like my fellow cartoonist and all round good egg- Geo Parkin, I have recently become enamoured with the joys of watercolour. It's such a happy medium! Prone to the surprising happy accident. I love it. Normally I would draw the subject in outline and use the watercolour to freely colour it up but last night I decided to get out of my comfort zone and paint the model ( the excellent KIARA) without any guidelines. Just watercolour paint straight onto the paper. Below are  the mixed results of this nerve racking but enjoyable experiment before I scurried back to my comfort zone like a scalded cat and took up the outline again.
Well you've got to challenge yourself occasionally incha?

Red Naomi!

As an artist when you find a model that ticks all of your boxes you must take advantage of her availability while you can. So consequently, I've been doing a lot of drawing of the fabulous Naomi Wood lately and here are my most recent efforts from two sessions over the last week. One of the poses from where I was sitting looked like she could have been wielding a sword so I added one and she instantly because Red Sonja from the Robert E Howard Conan books. So I'm thinking of doing some more in this vein with her if she can fit me in to her busy schedule.

Naomi encore!

Naomi Wood and I had another drawing session on Thursday night. I'm trying to draw her as much as I can before I return to Majorca in a couple of weeks. She's a great model and a great girl too. I love drawing her and I hope it shows in the work.

Clementine

Last night at SCAC's Tuesday night life drawing session our model was the beautiful French girl Clementine.
This is the second time I've drawn her in a week as she was one of the two models in the Egon Schiele inspired session for the Brighton Illustators Group.
I was working larger than I normally do and being very splashy with the watercolours hoping for the happy accident that watercolours can give you.
Afterwards a few of us repaired to the local hostilery for copious quaffage and the discussion of wide and varied topics as usual. Much fun!
Here are the best attempts.

Naomi Noir

I've been trying to emulated the great film noir images from crime novel covers of the 40s and 50s with the help of my new muse the gorgeous redhead Naomi. My intention is to get enough paintings together for an exhibition glorifying the redhead. It's early days yet as acrylic isn't my usual medium but
Naomi is inspiring me to keep trying. Here are my latest efforts.

Doing a Double

Over the last two nights I've attended The Sussex County Arts Club for two life drawing sessions.
The first one was Bill Donohoe's excellent Tuesday night session where the assembled scribblers tried to capture the fabulous curves and huge eyes of Michaela whilst groovin' on down to some chilled vibes, man.
Then last night Jo Moore on behalf of the Brighton Illustrators Group hosted a session inspired by the work of Egon Schiele with models Laura Kate O'Rourke and Clementine (I'm sorry Clem but I don't know your surname) for 3 long poses in suitable Schiele-esque clobber and finally in a nude tableau.
It was a great and inspiring session and here are my best efforts from both nights.