The Drawing Circus- Matisse

I went along last night to the Drawing Circus which is a monthly event held very near where I live. I was only going to stay for an hour or so of the 4 hour session but it was so good and inspiring that I stayed 'til the end. The theme was Matisse and the bar area at The Old Market was colourfully decorated with large cut-out shapes taken from Matisse's famous works. We had four beautiful models-
Frankie, Laura B, Laura N and Clementine who was painted entirely blue which contrasted wonderfully with her curly red hair. And for the final tableau they were joined by the impressive and gorgeous Belle who organised the whole thing. It was great fun and it was a pleasant surprise to see old friend and marvelous puppeteer- Daisy there with her lovely friend Sofia. A great evening's drawing!
Here are my best efforts, some of which I've tickled up in Photoshop.

Drawing Circus

My first life drawing session back in Brighton after a 2 month stay in Majorca was down at The Old Market where Jake and the girls put on another intriguing event. The 4 girl models struck a mix of nude and dressed poses with a variety of times from 3 minute poses to Mary's heroic 45 minute standing pose that my fellow cartoonist Geo Parkin manage to do justice to. I was working exclusively on my iPad using the fabulous drawing app Adobe Ideas. Here are my efforts. Pip pip!

Digital dabblings

Having been getting into producing digital paintings in Photoshop for a few months now, I thought I'd try expanding the possibilities with a new drawing programme called Artrage. I downloaded Artrage 3 from the internet having read a bit about it in Imagine FX magazine. It takes a little while to get used to a new programme's interface but luckily for my pea brain this one was quite easy to pick up and soon I was experimenting. The two things I like most about it are the way you can get brush strokes in the oil paint brush setting that look really real and also you can get a nice smooth line with the pen a setting which I haven't been able to get since the programme I used to use -Streamline went
kaput! I'm informed by cartoon buddy Geo Parkin that Illustrator can do this but I don't have Illustrator.

Anyway, here are my first stumbling attempts at starting a painting in Artrage and then tickling it up in the more familiar (to me) Photoshop. I'm having great fun with this and hope that one shining day I'll be paid to work in this style.