Sunday, March 13, 2011

It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it. ~ Baltasar Gracian

While I have been waiting to hear from the university, I have been keeping myself busy with more exploration, and some other more familiar paths. I dreamt an abstract painting - well, at least I dreamt the main components of it. The size, and basic colours, and the basic look, with one corner of the painting standing out in the dream. How fortuitous that I'd been in the art store, and seen the exact colour I would be needing for this painting. Pthalo Blue is not an easy colour to find in a pouring paint!

Here then, is the series of paintings I did with Ptahlo Blue mixed directly into the plaster. The first of these is the one I dreamt, and the others were more playing with it after I'd done the first. I just love all the tones and shades with Pthalo Blue!


Midnight Splash - 24" x 24" Mixed media acrylic


Untitled for the moment - 16" x 20"


Untitled for the moment - 11" x 14"


Untitled for the moment - 10" x 10"


Untitled for the moment - 12" x 12"

Another thing I have been doing is working with Pan Pastels. After eyeing the set for a year and a half, my partner gifted me with them, and I have enthusiastically embraced them.


6" x 8"


Salkantay - 12" x 18"


Yet another medium that I purchased, and started working with is Scratchbord. These are made with archival quality board and clay, and finally painted with black  india ink, so that when you scratch through, the white clay is exposed underneath. You can then use the coloured india inks to colour in where you have scratched. You can re-scratch after applying colour, and colour again, allowing you to layer the colouring. This medium is reminiscent of etching, and really lends itself to wonderful textures!

The first one I tried was very basic, and allowed me to simply get the feel of the tools on the board.


Purple Aura 5" x 7" Scratchbord and ink

Next up, I wanted to do something much more challenging. Considering I haven't done any animals in any medium (other than one abstract a few months ago), I figured this would do, as far as challenging myself.



5" x 7" Scratchbord and ink

I have also entered a couple of art contests...next week, I'll post some of those entries, and show you the first self portraits I have done in about 28 years!




Sunday, March 6, 2011

The world becomes fresh and hopeful and new, when we create. ~ Lynda Lehmann

Sometimes, life gets ahead of me. With all the best intentions, I have not made it back here to blog. Inspired to create, but not to write. Where has it been, my enthusiasm? It's currently residing in the hands of the administrators for OCAD University, where I applied to go back to school, and do my Masters of Fine Art degree.

The application went in near the end of January, and I have been enthusiastically waiting to her back from them. It's about all I can think of. I didn't want to blog until I heard some news about it, but then, I had expected to be called for an interview by now. No such luck, but as ever, I am hopeful. While I wait, I boost my hope and feelings with creating.

This semester, I am taking a class called Anatomy for Artists. Learning and studying the underlying muscles and bone structure is fascinating to me. We spent the first 2 classes drawing the skeleton, and the class after that drawing from a plastic figure that looks like a person who has had his skin peeled off to reveal the musculature. Since then, we have been drawing from life models, and what a joy it has been!


For this class session, we were focusing in on the torso - front and back. The mistake I made in the second drawing: I had only a rough outline of his face by the end of the pose, and tried to go back and complete his face after the class - from memory. Ugh! Wrecked the drawing!


The next class we focused on the hips and legs. I added as much detail of arms or torso as was needed to show his position, but tried to learn from the previous mistake and didn't fill in details of his face without him in front of me






Next, we had a female model. A few shorter poses, before focusing in on the head and face for two poses.






With a different female model in the next session, we then worked on arms, hands and feet.






In between classes, I have been doing a variety of things. I have some new abstracts to post. I also just got a set of Pan Pastels and some Scratchbord, both of which are exciting new mediums to work with. I'll post those results in the next few days.