sound and motion

I recently spent some time in Toronto ON, working with a friend who is studying performance and movement arts at York University.  We had seven 8-hour studio sessions booked; here are a few of the drawings I made during that time.

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

A long time ago I did a lot of life drawing, working with professional artists' models who would hold very still for durations of time.  It's an excellent practice, one I would recommend to anyone wanting to hone their drawing skills.

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

Once I'd honed my own drawing skills (a 4-year process of drawing from life models several times a week), I began to be bored with immobile humans.  It's very unnatural for anyone to sit still for any length of time; in fact it's inhuman.  So I stopped.

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

Instead, I drew people while travelling on transit.  I learned that it takes 30-45 seconds for most people to realize they're being observed, at which point the drawing must be finished.  I got really quick at making portraits!  And I've kept up making portraits all these years, mostly in 9x12" sketchbooks.

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

Sketchbook portraits aside, I have done extremely little figure drawing in 20 years.  So it was a very open-ended endeavour to work with my friend, who would be in almost-constant motion.  And I went minimalist, bringing only big paper and drawing tools.  No paint, no brushes!

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

A challenge.  We didn't know whether anything would come of it, so we held no expectations.  I made some drawings of the movements she made, and some drawings of the sounds of her voice & body as she moved through the space.

oil paint marker on pale grey mystery paper, 22x32"

oil paint marker on bond paper, 24x36"

About halfway into our time together, some of my markers began running out.  I saw this as an opportunity to procure a couple of hardware-store brushes and a bit of ink.  ;-)

various drawing media + ink on vellum roll, 24" x 10 yards

same roll, opposite direction

Mixed in between all this I made a bunch of large portraits.  

Because I can.  Somehow I can draw fast enough, even on a larger scale, to make portraits while a person is moving, and taking on various personas, and talking-whispering-yelling, and generally doing everything but staying still.  

I'm enthralled by the magic of that: a person just being human, and me drawing them.

oil paint marker, China marker on bond paper, 24x36"

oil paint marker, charcoal, China marker on bond paper, 24x36"

oil paint marker and China marker on blue mystery paper, 22x32"

oil paint marker and China marker
on pre-painted BFK Rives paper, 24x36"

oil paint marker, China marker on BFK Rives paper, 24x36"

oil paint marker and ink on green mystery paper, 22x32"

oil paint marker, China marker, ink on brown mystery paper, 22x32"

oil paint marker and ink on black mystery paper, 22x32"

It was really cool to see my drawings emerge as we worked: to see my same basic style from years ago when I worked large scale from models, now augmented by 20+ intervening years of non-figurative art-making.

At the end, we are hoping to work together again, perhaps next year, and perhaps using some different materials.  

Already, ideas begin to emerge.  Wait.  Let them pupate.  See what happens.

peek back

A couple of decades ago I was really into figurative work, running life drawing sessions at several schools and studios in Vancouver, BC.  Three to four times per week for 6 years I did this, and wound up with a big stack of works on paper.  Some of the works sold and some were lost in a series of moves, but I still own a few favourites.

I had just one showing of these figurative works at Basic Inquiry, where I also ran a couple of sessions per week.  It was the old location of the Basic Inquiry studio, with 5 big walls which I basically papered with my drawings!  Here are a couple of images from that exhibition:

This has all come up because I'm in the process of updating my website.  I've got some of my portraits on the site, and I thought it would be good to show some of the history of that work.  It's been an interesting trip down memory lane, as I have not looked at my old life drawing photos in years.

Here's a link to this figurative work on my website.  

For the last decade or so my work has been focussed on urban and now abstract work, but here is a little peek into my history.  It is important to remember who we are.

Draw 'Til You Drop - part II

mixed media on paper

9x12, 12x16 inches

Nov 30 and Dec 1, 2013

Well that was really, really fun and also really exhausting!  Being around so many people for so long was quite a challenge for me.  However, we were all mostly focussed on our work, so it was not like having to talk to people for that long.  Here are a few of my favourite pieces from the weekend:

This last one is interesting - I know how to render what I see fairly accurately, but I get bored with that. I'd rather be working fast, with colour, and make expressive things: I'd rather catch the feeling of the model than their exact proportions...  interesting how so many people do not respond to work unless it is "accurate" though.

So on the way home I had this little thought: it has been said that my urban paintings are interesting because they do not show any specific city, they just show "city"....  well lo and behold, seems I like to draw "human" rather than any specific human.

One day I will scan and upload images of my life drawings from 10-15 years ago.  I was doing the same thing then: catching the human.

oh, p.s.: about the panels I prepped in the last post - wound up using only 1 of them.  Haha.

draw 'til you drop!

This weekend I will be going to "draw 'til you drop" and I'm really looking forward to it!  I have not done life drawing (except portraits) in over 10 years, so this should be interesting.

I have prepared a number of panels - old paintings gesso'd over.  Then I tested one by doing this:

I wasn't sure if the border thing would look good - I made the border by taping off the edges before applying gesso.  This seems to work OK, with the drawing going over the border...