Fourteen

This is an oil painting sketch made during a 3 hour life drawing session on Sunday. At the time I thought it was just awful but a few days later I think it is not so bad. I certainly learned a lot from doing it. One of the things I learned is how hard it is to paint with oils! I struggle with how to mix the colors, they're unpredictable and I need to take some time to learn what it is they do when you put them together. I find the combination between seeing value AND color AND knowing how to capture it in oil paint to be dizzying. As my comfort with drawing faces increases I can feel my next project being born. I will learn how to oil paint. I look forward to the value/color studies, the little painted objects and portraits to come.

Fifteen

The intense dry heat of June in New Mexico brought longing for June in Maine this morning. I ache for Earl Grey tea in the fog on the deck of the Inn on the Harbor in Stonington. My longing brought me to visit this post. How amazing to be able to visit moments of your very own life when you're longing for what you want. I was surprised by what I wrote there about movement, "It is only movement that closes the gap. Ugly, awkward, lovely movement." I was talking about the gap between idea and form at the time, be it the written word or an image on a page. 

It was before I started or even knew about the yoga therapy program or really thought much about movement at all. Now I have 85 faces drawn or painted after avoiding them for most of my life. Who knew that the daring that morning of drawing the harbor when I hadn't drawn anything for so long and the fear of not being any good yet moving anyway would bring me here? I guess I did, somehow.

Sixteen

This model is wearing just the right outfit for the 95 degree heat.

Seventeen

This pose had the extra challenge of how to capture a face when it's mostly hidden by hair. It felt good to get back to Wednesday night life drawing again.