The Elements and Ewelina

My final projects in last semester's figure drawing and painting classes worked with the idea of bringing the elements indoors. I find that the seasons always effect my mood and at the time autumn was making me feel really good. Autumn is probably my favorite season just because of the colours of the leaves. Anyways, I made a dress from garlands of leaves (fake ones I purchased at the dollar store) and got one of my friends, Ewelina, to be my model. I took some photographs and did a few quick sketches to start my pieces.
The first piece is 30x 40 acrylic on canvas. It was actually created after the two pastel drawings.
The other two pieces are about 36x 24. It's not the exact size, but close. They are done with chalk pastels. The third piece shown is actually the one I worked on first.
I didn't feel the need to include too much of the background in the works, I wanted to focus more on the figure and the dress and their relationship.

Figure Painting

Today I'm going to post some figure paintings.
The first nude study is a 30x 40 oil monochrome on an acrylic stained surface. I added a bit of a glaze with burnt sienna, and the red around the figure is in oil.
The second figure is also in oil on a stained 30x 40 surface. This one was odd. We had to use a limited palette from a list that the teacher gave us and I chose red, green, white, and black which gave the painting a weird effect. Also, just the position of the pose was a challenge along with my point of view. I remember this model though, he was a pretty interesting guy, a writer. I think his name was Phlip.
The last one is done in acrylic on paper. It is about 5' tall and I'm not really sure how wide it is. This was a 3 week pose, the others were done in two weeks. Each week we get about 3 hours to work on the figure. This was also done in a limited palette of red, yellow, white, and black. But I used blue as the ground to work on as well as the sheet that covered the chair. This one was kind of fun to do and was very different from working on the other poses. I was able to do a lot of layering with paint because it dried so quickly.

Studies

I'm going to post up some studies I made for my figure drawing and painting classes from first semester.
The first are some hand studies on coloured paper done with charcoal and conte.
The second is a skull done with oil on stained paper.
Then there is an 8x 10 monochromatic self portrait that was glazed over with burnt sienna.
16x 20 copy of a master, "Meditation on the History of Italy" by Francesco Hayez.
There is another self portrait done on paper with chalk pastels. The face didn't turn out badly, the hair and background really was an afterthought.
The next is a class study of a plaster cast and skull. It was on of the first things we drew in that class. It's done on craft paper with charcoal.
The last two are just some studies of hands and feet. They are done with acrylic on canvas on top of a coloured ground.
Although these are not really finished works, I think its interesting to post some of this stuff since I learned so much from doing them.

Figure Drawing

Well I havn't posted anything up here in a while. I've just been busy with school, but it's Christmas break, so I can post some more stuff up here. I think just for now I'm going to post some stuff from school. These are just some live models from a figure drawing class.
I havn't had time to make any art for myself, so unfortunately most of the stuff I put on here are things I've made for school.
So these pictures are actually in reverse order. The first one was a three week pose that was created after the first two and is about 5' using chalk pastels on a stained ground. The other two are also done on a stained ground but only took two weeks. The second one is using the three colour technique and i used charcoal and conte. The last (which was the first to be made) is a black and white charcoal monochrome.

Figuration

I've always been interested in people, even at a young age. So going to an art school where I'm able to draw the nude is quite satisfying. I think in rendering the human form you appreciate the body in a new way. Although my interest with people started with how people think, I'm starting to take interest in people's relationship with their bodies. I'm not sure what kind of work I can make from this, but we'll see. Until I figure it out (no pun intended) I'm content in learning. So if Blogger will let me upload some photos, I can show you some older work. I'm going to post some gestures, short poses, and some sustained paintings. The paintings were some of the first I created, but I like them.

RAWR!

You know that feeling when you see someone's art and you're totally in love with it? I think I've been bombarded with art in the last two weeks. Between a visit to the AGO, falling in love with Alexander Calder's work after not looking at any of it in a couple of years, critiques at school, and watching "Where the Wild Things Are" (which was fantastic!), I feel like I'm buzzing inside. I'm afraid I'm going to attack my new canvas that I built (with a lot of help from the school technician) with something totally obscure and random. We'll see where it goes.
I think all creative people are total slackers. It must be a part of being creative. Almost everyone I know who is creative slacks off and procrastinates. Okay, maybe not EVERYONE, but close to it. I must be like creative person of the year because I'm too laid back sometimes. LOL! I carried a 3x 4 foot canvas from Toronto to Brampton on foot, a train, and two buses and did I work on it at all yet. NO. Why? I don't know, I must be all kinds of awesome....
Buuutttt listening to Matt Good is keeping me in a good mood right now :)

Lambs, lambs, lambs

So I absolutely LOVE lambs, no idea why. I just think they are adorable I guess. Well I use them in a lot of my work. So I think I'm going to post some of the work that I've done with the sheep as the subject matter. :D
The first image a sketch I did in my second year of that stuffed lamb (Lullaby). I was just doing it to practice a more architectural way of drawing, seperating the subject matter into different planes. It was mostly a study to help me with my figure drawing.

The second image is another project for school where we had to do a collage and paint from that collage on a large wooden panel that we had to make ourselves. Basically I took some scrap fabric and made them into three simplified lambs. The first white lamb in the painting has a funny right eye because water got on the original collage and made the ink run. I like this piece just because I wasn't really used to painting this realistically before. Obviously the subject matter isn't realistic, but I wanted to make the paint look like the fabric I was drawing from. It's not exact, but I like being able to interpret things in different ways.

And finally the third is is a painting I did for my second year abstract class where we had to abstract from observation. So I used my stuffed lamb, Lullaby, as the source. You can see the outline of the shape of the source. I found this to be pretty challenging actually just because of the ground colour I was working with- bright yellow. It was hard to balance all of the other shapes and colours around it. Actually, I was working in the open studio at my school and someone in their fourth year I guess gave me the idea of placing flat shapes on top which I think worked out well because it gave the painting some depth.
I think I have some photographs I took of my lamb for a photography class in highschool. If I find it, I'll post it up here. Anyways, Happy Thanksgiving!