Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Xmas activity in Rignac



 Our Monday night life drawing group kicked off Christmas in Rignac last week, followed by Christmas dinner in Le Tramizal with friends.

(I am very frustrated with the new Blogger format because I can't size and position the photos anymore.)












Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Sixty!

Spent Monday night painting with my group as usual in the studio. We had a fabulous model who has posed for us in the past but sadly doesn't want to anymore. She has a fabulous body, very powerful for a woman with terrific muscle tone.

As it was my birthday, I bought two bottles of Blanquette de Limoux for our break and baked an apple nut cake, but I didn't have enough eggs so softened the batter with a little cream and ended up with a soupy mess. But the group had caught wind of the event and surprised me with a delicious homemade chocolate cake and two bottles of champagne-the real thing. Can't beat the French for style.

A perfect birthday in spite of grey sky and drizzle. Merci mes amis!





 

 

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Spontaneous and a bit of a scruffy birthday bash


Rounded up a few locals into my studio for a dinner to help ease me into my sixth decade...sheesh. Couldn't bring myself to getting much of a meal together- too much stressing about the bloody driving exams... so made a big pot of fish and mussel chowder supplemented with foie gras, good champagne, cheeses and a green salad, and followed by creme caramel and fruit salad. Think I got away with it: merriment spilled into the wee hours.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Babe magnet X 2!

After MUCH uming and awing and backing and forthing, Ron took the plunge, and PADDY home yesterday afternoon. It was love at first sight.

WELCOME TO DARNIS, PADDY!

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Autumn harvest

Not sure how many of these pumpkins and squashes from my garden are edible, but they're rather beautiful none the less.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Matisse?

Nope. Catherine Stock.

But the master's Dance definitely comes to mind. It's one of my favourite paintings.

The ongoing dialogue with myself continues...


Friday, October 26, 2012

A collaboration

Karen Lynn Williams and I got to know each other when we were paired up by our editor, Dorothy Briley, to do a book together.  Karen and Steve, her husband, lived and worked in Malawi as Peace Corps volunteers, and Karen had written Galimoto. We have continued to work together on several projects and have visited each other in Haiti, New York and most recently in France where I persuaded Karen to join my life drawing class. 

Here is her account of the evening:

The Nude

Figure drawing class, France

It is the delicate features;
Nose and mouth and brows
Which the artist sees.
The model, naked
wears a studied malaise
larger than life, she is “full”
a kind word.













Look at her fingers,
The artist says,
beautiful and the wisps of curl
about her face, beautiful
breasts full to her waist
if one could see
the waist in her folds.
The artist does not see the scar;
the nude has had her stomach
shrunken(for a short time
as these things seem to go)
the folds of flesh cascade to
thighs larger than two of mine,
each.

















The artist says
try a wash, fill it with color,
you see the design
there on her robe interesting, no?
Negative space,
the turn of her neck,
the angle of her chin.
Five minute poses
 like a poem, no?
 the artist says
a new pose
the figure turns away
arms thrown up, head tilted
bold angle and arc of her back
draw the eye
to light at play with the dark twist of her neck
to form lines thick and thin in turn
flow across the page
the back a soft milk white roundness
the texture of the nude
her arms swing down
and a slender finger tip dips just so
toward the dusk silk pillow on the floor.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Style vs Content

I was debating with my friend Basil once about whether subject or style was more important in a painting.  I was arguing that any subject, in skilled hands, could be elevated into something of merit: think Cezanne's apples,  Morandi's pots, and Caravaggio's natures mortes.

I have also been struggling recently to push myself beyond what I refer to as "so what?" work. Robert Genn used my note to him on this subject as one of his letters: http://clicks.robertgenn.com/so-what.php













To this end, I have been reworking old pieces to see if through persistence and play, I can make anything of them.














Reworking forms and adding some texture, contrast and detail has helped, but now I look at this picture and all I see is some throwback to the 60's. Time to move on.

Friday, October 19, 2012

"You can't get lost...



when you don't know where you are going."

Those were some of the last words of advice my friend and editor Meredith Charpentier left me with.

Turned in the final revised illustrations for a book, finished teaching for the year, and finally attended to accumulating piles of paperwork.

My dance card is free. Here are some pictures I did this week. 

These are for you, Meredith.











Monday, October 08, 2012

Bob Ross Day

Following my post on gimmicks:

We spend one morning in my watercolour workshop focusing on textures and how to achieve different ones using various methods of repelling and resisting pigments, stenciling, stamping, blotting up, spraying, using dry and wet brushes of different shapes, etc.

In the afternoon, I lead everyone through a fantasy painting. There are three approaches to painting: from direct observation, using reference, and pure imagination.  The latter is the most difficult to teach and do, to my mind, so I lead everyone through various initial steps to acheive a purely invented but three dimensional landscape, acheiving a sense of space and distance using the studies we made in the morning

The paintings inevitably end up rather kitsche and are my least favourite of the week, but nevertheless serve a useful purpose and I find myself constantly referring back to this exercise the following week when we are painting  in the field.

I refer to this day of superficial effects as my Bob Ross Day. Bob Ross was an extremely successful American artist, in financial terms, who demonstrated on television shows how to paint instant art to impress your family and friends...

Saturday, October 06, 2012

Gimmicks

 In my watercolour class, we spend one day studying and working on tone. I get the students to mix up a bistre, a mixture of all the primary colours to get dark browns and blacks to work with, and then I set up a  composition using old pots and kettles that I find in local flea markets.

I had ended up with some straightforward exercises that were a fairly dull, so I then jazzed them up by swashing more dark washes here and there, covering them with kitchen film wrap that I then scrunched up, and left to dry.

I am sure Morandi would turn in his grave if he knew I refered to the these exercises as Morandi Day...


Another revision

This is another still texture/edges/colour/composition still life study I painted for my class over the summer.  The upper right corner was a bit of a muddy mess, so I have just drawn in another sunflower and some foliage which has improved it, but the problem is the poor composition: the large sunflower in the middle of the picture. Always a mistake.

 I might cut the paper down and just save the artichokes and peaches which I rather like. It's important to figure out why something doesn't work before moving on.


Definitely better.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

New model

 Not always easy finding models in rural areas, but we were lucky enough to find a lovely new one recently. Marjolein is of Dutch and Indonesian parentage and has elegant long limbs and a lovely golden skin. She has also modeled professionally before and falls naturally into beautiful poses.
 I am still battling to find my way in "art", but drawing and painting the human form comes closest to summoning the presence of my muse. Only when I am totally immersed in and absorbed in work, even a very simple sketch, does she allow something magical to happen and I become aware of a faint heartbeat and gentle breath emanating from my brush.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Saved from the trash

Scooped all my messes from Monday evening's life class from the floor to throw into the trash yesterday, when this one caught my eye. Actually not too shabby.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Sad day for Rignac

My delight at seeing workmen removing the old handmade tiles from the witchy little barn next the stream was short lived as I realised that they were not preparing to repair the roof, but to demolish the barn itself. 

For years, my students and I have been painting this centuries old Quercy barn, a hundred meters or so from my studio.  The owners, who live in Paris, claim not to have the money to repair the barn and have been badgering our mayor for permission to pull it down. He resisted for years, until the roof became in danger of collapsing.

My friend Petra Röhr-Roendahl painted the sketch, below.

RIP little barn. At least you will remain in our drawings and thoughts.



Thursday, September 20, 2012

View from Domme

 This was one of the scenes I scheduled for the second week of my watercolour workshop. Domme is a bastide town that sits on an impregnable bluff above the Dordogne River (or so the inhabitants thought, until they were surprised by an attack by the Protestants during the One Hundred Year's War who scaled the cliffs.)

September and October are my favourite months here, with warm sunny days and crisp nights. The painting is mine. Note the little yellow kayaks.

Thumpity-thump

My heart did a little flipflop when I spotted this camper car in the parking lot at Domme. I couldn't resist tiptoeing around the van and peering in through the chintz curtains at the neatly arranged kitchen and table that could be lowered and rearranged into a bed. Then I cheekily stuck my card under the windshield wiper with a note, asking them to contact me if they ever decide to sell it. I feel like the wallflower sitting next to the phone on a Saturday evening.