At the Double

I had two life drawing sessions on the bounce this week. First was at SCAC with artist and model lovely, lissom Laura Ryan then a private session at my bachelor penthouse flat where Alexa Garside and I drew the fabulous Naomi Wood. After a fairly long gap in Mallorca where the life drawing sessions are very thin on the ground it was great to get back in the saddle in arty farty Brighton where we are spoilt rotten for drawing. Her are my best scribblings from the two sessions.

Rachel under the Cathedral

There is a big contrast between the availability of life drawing sessions in Brighton and Palma.
In Brighton you can go to many different life drawing sessions in different venues all over the city both day and night and in Palma I can only find one. And it only happens once a week on a Wednesday afternoon but it does take place in the exotic setting of the ancient stone vaults in the shadow of Palma´s magnificent cathedral. So it was there that I persuaded my Russian friend Anna with whom I had a recent exhibition at the German Consulate to join me in drawing the beautiful Rachel. Here are my best attempts.

A Brace of Beauties!

I'm off back to my small flat in Palma tomorrow so I've been doing as much life drawing as I can in the knowledge that despite its plethora of galleries there are bugger all life drawings classes in Palma.
So for two days running I drew two of my favourite models- Laura the Fabulous Finn and the Divine Naomi! I'll miss it when I'm out there but weather should be nice!

Naomi, Mimi and Me

My very talented and lovely niece came to Brighton for a couple of days. It was her first visit since she was six (now nineteen) and she loved the place. She's an excellent oil painter (better than I'll ever be) and is starting at Glasgow College of Art in September. I'm sure she'll go far! I arranged a private session with the wonderful Naomi so that Mimi and i could have a chance of drawing together. It was great fun and we all got on swimmingly. Here are my efforts. Mimi will post hers up on her own blog I expect.

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?

Clementine

Last night here in Brighton was my first life drawing session at The Sussex Arts Club for about 3 months. I'd attended a couple of sessions in Palma but I'm not keen on how the Palma session is run. There is no music, no tea break and the same model for months. So it was very pleasant to get back
to Bill's Tuesday night class where he plays a great variety of fab toons, there is a decent tea break (with biccies) and a different model every week. Last night's model was a new one on me- the delightful Clementine, a lovely French girl with a fantastic mop of curly red hair. It's good to be back!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

Sophia

Tuesday night's session at The Sussex County Arts Club was pretty full as usual and our model was the excellent Sophia who could hold a pose like a statue. Other cartooning stalwarts in attendance were Geo Parkin and Phil Dobson. Here are my attempts at capturing the lean and  lissom Sophia.

Zoe

Zoe was our model on Tuesday night at Bill's life drawing session at the SCAC. She's slim and tanned and very goo

d to draw. That night she had a feather in her hair giving her a Native American Indian Squaw look which appealed to me greatly being a bit of a fan of all things Wild West.

Laura the fabulous Finn

Last week on my return from Mallorca I managed to fit in a couple of drawing sessions with Laura the fabulous Finn. One was a private session at my flat with Alexa Garside and the other was at the regular Tuesday night SCAC class. Laura is terrific to draw as she's very tall (6'3"), looks fabulous and can hold a pose like a statue. On top of that she has a great personality. I confess to being slightly smitten.
Hey ho! Dream on!