A bit of fun with one of my OCA projects. A break from figure drawing definitely!

As its rained all day, my escape from the dreary ............

But I couldnt leave it floating on the page after all! ...........

Just a bit of fun, which I got totally emersed in, listening to some great music and all in all I had a great time!

'Figuring it Out'

I've spent today in Barnsley, South Yorkshire attending an art workshop at the OCA's head quarters. After a 4 1/2 hour round trip and lots of sketching all day, I'm shattered, but I'm thrilled with the day's result.

Having left home about 7am and after a rather stressful and foggy trip north, I arrived early for a change (wonders will never cease I hear you say!) After the normal introductions to the other 5 students our tutor talked through the use of backgrounds and foregrounds in our work, the use of light and tone and other such important aspects, all of which help to achieve a more 'complete' image, which was really the subject of the work shop after all.

Then it was off to work. We were lucky to be working with an excellent model, whom I became more and more impressed by as the day wore on. No flinching, twitching, itches, in fact no movements at all! In fact we all agreed that as the time flew by for us we even forgot the model was a living person and suddenly an hour would have gone by before we were called to a halt and still no hint of movement from our model!

Our tutor gave us some good tips and ideas for working sketches, a sore point for me as I'm a real failure in this aspect, but boy did I find them useful and now I understand their value. The course I'm currently doing is always rattling on about working some prelim sketches before attempting a new peice but of course I know better! Well I do now.

Of course there were many more sketches than the few I've published here and although these have no real merrit they at least give you some idea what I'm talking about.

So then we tried our hand at the first 'longer' study with the model still in the same pose as that used for our sketches, but this time we were encouraged to look at various sections of the figure rather than the whole.

I loved doing this!

There was never any emphasis on us to get it lifelike, just looking at the shapes created by the model, the clothes, posture and then to incorporate some background contrast (the model had a black curtain behind their chair)

After this some longer sketches came along, punctuated only by some lunch and debate on techniques, styles and abilities!

My favourite is the 'blue' one. Although none of them are perfect by any means (lets face it the proportions are too far off track to be anywhere near perfect) but somehow even with this fundamental problem I htink they have feeling, depth and even movement and thats why I'm so chuffed with them. Of course I'll keep working on my abilitiy (or lack of!) to get the proportions 'right' so to speak, but in the meantime its important to me to keep on enjoying what I draw and that to me means the finished peice must have something about it that gives me a spark or two whenever I look at it.

Our day came to a close as we finished with some experimental techniques and a bit of fun. My favourite was the amateur printing technique. We took a piece of clear perspex and holding it high and directly in front of front of us we used an oil pastel to trace the outline of the model directly onto the perspex. Then reversing the perspex we drew over the lines with black paint. Having lightly misted a peice of paper with water we then placed the painted side of the perspex directly onto the damp paper, thus transferring the black outline of the model. It was fun but more than that it really showed the perspective and fore shortening of the models outline.

This may not look much, but with some imagination this result could be worked on even further and I think it could end up as something quite good.

So that was my day! Hope yours was as interesting and rewarding!

A visit to Great Dixter

Last weekend I visited the gardens at Great Dixter with my sister and niece. We were extremely fortunate to have the sun beaming its rays all afternoon and it made for a truly relaxing time of meandering, checking out the the garden, the amazing planting which were full of stunning colours, along with some wonderful architectural planting and excellently kept paths and topiary.

The bees, butterflies and other wildlife were out in force and like us they were making the most of the wonderful sunshine.

The variety of planting was just great and although I am certainly no expert, it definitely seemed more adventurous than some gardens I've looked around. There seemed to be much more structure in the selection of plants used and I was pleased to see some very architectural planting amongst some old favourites.

An extremely pleasurable day and I must mention how nice it was to enjoy the day with both my sister and 6 1/2 yr old niece! Thank you

I dont 'alf ache!

As I'm turning over a new leaf, I recently decided to rejoin my local sports centre, use the gym and enroll on a few classes. Last night after work I actually enjoyed my induction at the gym and tonight I went to a Pilates class.

Dont I just wish I looked as fit as her!

But no... I am not so fortunate! Its over a year since I've done any exercise, let alone push my resisting body into un-natural poses and shapes. In fact I barely managed to keep up with the routines and found myself feeling very silly and awkward as everyone else made the routines look so effortless!

Me rapidly walking away from the class....just kidding!

But seriously, I am fortunate to be average in size and weight and not have too many problems keeping the excess weight off and I'm looking forward to more gym tomorrow night. But thats probably because I know I've got the weekend off to visit family.

Great News!

I have been fortunate enough to have one of my pieces of work selected for an exhibition being held at Birmingham's NEC in November!

The Open College of Art (OCA) has been invited to exhibit their students work in the entrance of the show for the second year running. My peice (see picture below) of the woman face, done in watercolour and charcoal will be amongst them!

I'm sure everyones work will be of the highest of standards and I feel really chuffed that my work has been accepted. You never know, it may sell, in which case I will be doubly chuffed!