Double Trouble!

I managed to fit in two drawing sessions this week in between packing to move house. The first was part of the Brighton festival and was a Drawing Circus hosted by Jake Spicer incorporating three hours of live music and a host of excellent models in a variety of circus themed costumes. Jack's event are always superbly organised and inspiring as was this one. It took place in the Bosco Theatre beside the Spiegeltent on the Old Stein and the steeply tiered seats gave an excellent view of the varying tableaus as they changed and evolved. I had to leave early, unfortunately, so I missed the fabulous Naomi gyrating on a hoop. Great fun!
The following evening I went to my usual life drawing class hosted by Bill Donohoe at the Sussex County Arts Club where our model was the beautiful and statuesque Kate. She liked my drawings so I gave her one! I'll rephrase that- I donated one to her! That's better!

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.

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!

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 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.

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!

The Return of the Redhead

I was priveleged enough to get Naomi the fabulous new (to me!) model round for a modelling session at Wick Hall.
I would love to do some mock pulp crime novels with her as she's exactly right for a femme fatale despite being a really sweet girl. In the meantime, here are my sketches from a few days ago.

Laura the Fabulous Finn

Last night at The Sussex County Arts Club we were treated to a session modelled by Laura the Fabulous Finn who threw some wonderful poses while we all grooved to Bill's excellent (always)
compilation of banging tunes. I hadn't drawn Laura for a while and had forgotten how good she is to draw.

Third time with Lyre

My third time at the art session here in Palma in an old stone vault below the cathedral. Our model was Lyre again. They seem to have the same model every week. Luckily she's great although on Wednesday she wasn't feeling well cos she has to have an operation on her stomach and the one person in a million who has an allergic reaction to the necessary pills is her. Nevertheless, she posed magnificently and here are my best efforts. Hope she's OK.

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.

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.

Double Body Double

Last weekend I was lucky enough to have private drawing sessions with two stunning girls, my good friend Marie and my new friend Jasmine. In both cases I was exploring further the idea of "Body Doubles" or one model in one drawing with two joined poses. It has a psychological angle in that we all have more than one personality and there are at least two sides to us all. A dark and light side to bring it down to polarities. Anyway, that's what I'm endeavouring to indicate in this series of drawings. Deep huh?

Jasmine's Body Double

After making over 50 life drawings in the series I called "Me and my Shadow" trying to indicate the shadow psyche that we all carry according to Jung, I wanted to do something different but still with a psychological angle. So I had an idea for a kind of double exposure thing where the model strikes a pose then just moves part of her body into another pose on the same drawing so that that two figure are connected. I also wanted different expressions of attitudes  on her face to indicate two sides of her personality. My model was the lovely Jasmine who got what I was on about immediately and was very helpful in trying this idea out. I was rather chuffed with the results and am keen to do more. Here are the best ones. Thanks again to Jas!

Laura's Shadow

The other day Laura the fabulous Finn came over for a private modelling session.
I'd already chosen 6 of the "Shadow" series that I'd been working on for the forthcoming exhibition but I wanted to do some more with Laura in case I manage to sell any and need some more for the internet.
So here are the best ones. For a change I was working larger on A2 watercolour paper the only drawback to that is that they won't fit on my scanner so I had to use my iPad camera, hence the slightly odd colour gradation.

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.

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.

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?