Roller Derby Girls

Last night Jake Spicer's Draw group hosted another event at The Old Market. Emma Sandham-King was the host model this time and she presented us with her Roller Derby team kitted out in their tough
looking sports gear. Considering the fact that none of them, apart from Emma had modelled before, they were amazing and great fun to draw. I was working on my iPad for a change as I'd already had a private session with the wonderful Jasmine that afternoon using pencil and watercolour (I'll post these up later) so I fancied a change of technique. I was using my favourite art app for the iPad- Artrage and discovered a trap to avoid when using a digital app for drawing. If you zoom in to the image to draw a more detailed head after already drawing the body it's very easy to get the scale wrong as you can see fro the middle right image where the girls have enormous heads. I didn't have time to go back and do the heads again but I'll watch out for that in future. Still learning!

A Brace of Beauties

Yesterday I was privileged to draw two of the best of our local models here in the damp city of Brighton and Hove. I'm trying to build up a number of watercolour or charcoal drawings to choose
from for the up and coming exhibition in Worthing so to that end I had the gorgeous and very talented Jasmine Glover round to my flat to pose for Alexa and me in the afternoon then I went to my regular class in the evening at SCAC where our model was the luminously lovely Lucy Victoria Sponge who is also very talented. I'm still exploring the theme of the shadow that we all carry with us. Freud calls it the unconcious mind which also encompasses the collective unconcious and is usually a very negative influence that has to be confronted and accepted whereas Jung things the shadow contains positive elements like the spark of creativity which (as we artists know) can be richly rewarding. A bit deep for as jobbing cartoonist but that's what I'm (subconciously) trying to put across. Anyway, here are the best from yesterday. Jasmine is on top with Lucy under her. Er... I think I could have put that better. I need a lie down.

Shadey ladies

I've been asked to join about a dozen other artists in an exhibition of life drawings to appear in Worthing in March and to that end I wanted to try out a new unified style instead of my usual eclectic mish-mash. I've recently seen two artists' work that has inspired me. Russell Patterson, and american illustrator from the 20s and 30s used a lot of areas of black in his images and modern artist Steve Huston does fabulous work with charcoal. So I decided to try my hand at monochrome images in watercolour and charcoal and these are what I've come up with so far. I'm quite pleased with the way it's looking and the large dark shadows are meant to symbolise the oppressive dark side of our personality or the emotional baggage that we carry around and the naked figure stands for vulnerabilty.
I'm hoping to create some sort of emotional response in the viewer rather than just creating pretty pictures of naked people. I don't think I'm quite there yet but I'm going to keep going and see where it leads me.

Zoe

At last Tuesday's session at The Sussex County Arts Club our model was Zoe. I've drawn her a few times before and she's really good to draw. I was tempted to continue my attempts to draw on my iPad but as I have an exhibition coming up in the new year I thought I'd better go analogue.

Jasmine and Michaela

I had one private session with Jasmine and a SCAC session with Michaela a couple of weeks back but because of the pressure of Christmas deadlines I've only just got around to scanning and posting these and I've had another session since these which I need to scan in too. It's all too much! Can I have 8 more hours in the day please Time Lords?

Lichtenstein themed session

Last Tuesday night Jake Spicer's Draw group held a Roy Lichtenstein inspired life drawing event at The Old Market in Brighton and Hove. As usual it was well attended and there were three tableaux design and built by Laura and three models in suitable pop art costume and make-up to pose in front of them. I seemed to spend most of the evening drawing the magnificent Laura Nenonen who was throwing some suitably cartoony shapes. Great fun! Next month the theme is Norse mythology so get yer helmets out gang!

Monster Festival

You can get a signed copy of my poster featuring all of the Doctors and all of the monsters up to the end of series 6 for the unbelievably cheap sum of £5 for an A3 copy or £7.50 for a massive A2 copy plus postage and packing.
Contact me at-
http://paulcemmick@me.com