Chiara

I went along to last night's life drawing session at The Sussex County Arts Club where our model was the excellent Chiara. Here are some of my daubings.

Laura- the face in the misty light.

Last night I went along to SCAC for my second life drawing session in 5 days. Our model was the lovely, lissom Laura who shares a birthday with me but not in the same year (alas!). I used the session as an excuse to go mad with my new set of watercolours as recommended to me by Jan Irvine. They're fab and made by Ko-i-Noor. Laura liked one of my drawings so I gave it to her. It was a quiet class probably due to the shit weather but very enjoyable nonetheless. The usual suspects repaired to Witherspoon's afterwards to put the world to rights. Here are my best efforts.

Drawing Circus: Petty and Leyendecker

On Tuesday night I went along to Jake Spicer's regular Draw session at the Old Market in Brighton.
Emma Sandham-King chose the theme this time which was the advertising and pin-up work of George Petty and J C Leyendeker (who is one of my all time faves). It was quieter than usual which meant that you could get a seat and I spent most of an enjoyable evening sitting next to my mate and fellow cartoonist, the fabulously talented Geo Parkin. We were mainly sketching Beth, a new model to me, who has the longest legs since I last looked at mine in a funny mirror at the fair. Here are my best
attempts at capturing Beth along with a couple of lovely Emma.

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.

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?

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.

Kate Shields

I'm trying to get in as much life drawing as I can in Brighton before returning to Mallorca where there is only one class and it isn't very good. So I attended Bill's always excellent session at The Sussex County Arts Club last night where our model was the immensely talented Kate Shields sporting a snazzy new haircut which was great to draw. Here are my best ones. Afterwards some of us repaired to the local Wetherspoons for some cheap quaffage and arty-farty chat! Much funnings!

Kate Shields

On my birthday, having already celebrated for the previous two nights I went along to the regular Tuesday night session of life drawing at SCAC where our model was the ever fabulous Kate Shields.
It was a hot and clammy night and the assembled stalwarts (including fellow renowned cartoonist and comedy sketch writer Geo Parkin, flamboyant fashion artist Hamza Arcan, fitness instructor and illustrator Alexa Garside, anatomy expert, teacher and animator Jeremy Radvan and lovely new friend and healer Ye Ping Tsim) were wilting a bit but it was a fun session. Here are my best attempts at capturing Kate.

Eleanor in the land of pink and grey

In Tuesday night's session at The Sussex County Arts Club a packed to capacity (26) crowd, including such eminent luminaries of the illustration world as Geo Parkin, Mark Harrison, Jeremy Radvan and of course, Bill Donohoe our gracious host and perveyor of cool toons to the artisans, tried to capture the lovely likeness of our model for the evening Eleanor. Here are my best scribblings.

Michaela

Last Tuesday night at SCAC here in Brighton we were treated to a drawing session with the fabulous Michaela.
Here are my best efforts from the night.

Jas and Kitty

I've had two private sessions with the lovely Jasmine Glover over the last couple of weeks. In the second session we were joined by Jas's friend Kitty, who wanted to try modelling and my friend Alexa who wanted to do some drawing. Both sessions were relaxed and fun affairs and here are my best scribblings from them.

Laura the Finn agin!

Last Tuesday's model at SCAC was  the fabulous Laura everybody's favourite Finn.
She's always great to draw as well as being one of the most confident young women I've ever met
and makes an impressive sight singing and playing her double bass in the bars of Brighton.

Anatomy and me

I finally got along top the Worthing Museum and Art Gallery to see the exhibition that of life drawings that I'm part of. It went up on 4th March when I was in Hungary and is on until 29th March. On show is a wide range of styles of drawing by 12 artists in a lovely light and airy space. I managed to coincide my visit with a talk on anatomy by Jeremy Radvan (whose digital depictions of the human body are also in the show). Now there's a man who knows his onions. His talk (with slides) was really fascinating and I finally learned what my favourite part of the female anatomy is called- the sacral dimples!

Amy

At last night's drawing session at the Sussex County Arts Club a full class (despite the God-awful weather) gathered to draw the lovely Amy who plays cello in A band with Lucy and Laura. Talented girls all! Here are me best scribblings.

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!