Monthly Archives: August 2022

Along the Damse Vaart. Watercolour on hot-pressed paper. 6" x 12".

Circle, Along the Damse Vaart

Along the Damse Vaart. Watercolour on hot-pressed paper. 6" x 12" or 11.5 x 32 cm
Along the Damse Vaart. Watercolour on hot-pressed paper. 6″ x 12″.

Another watercolour, a medium which by the way, is incredibly difficult to photograph. The colour of the spectrum of light influences the photograph. So if I try to create a photograph on a bright sunny day the subtle highlights become washed out. If I try to create a photograph on a cloudy day, there is an inevitable bluish tonality to the light. I can try to colour-correct for that using software but then colour is lost in the process. The highlights inevitably suffer. So suffice it to say that the image presented here is the best I can do to given my skills and conditions. Sigh, the warm yellow wash in the centre is underrepresented. OK.

Otherwise, I had a lot of fun doing this one. It is created on hot-pressed paper, whose flat texture allows for finer detail, especially with the (HB) graphite pencil. I continue to enjoy discovering the possibilities of working wet-in-wet, dry/saturated-in-wet, wet-on-dry or even dry/saturated-on-dry (not much of that last one here). I continue to explore a reduced, complimentary palette within a circular motif. I didn’t use any masking fluid on this one, however I did make use of paper towels to blot back areas of a dark wash, like in the soft dappled light on the tree or foreground on the left.

Unframed. $50 or 50 Euros plus shipping and handling.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon tightened with pastel on tinted Canson paper. 32 x 50 cm.

Figure Drawing, August 22, 2022

Three minute gesture study. Charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute gesture study. Charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon tightened with pastel on tinted Canson paper. 32 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon tightened with pastel on tinted Canson paper. 32 x 50 cm.

Last night I was happy to see our beautiful young man there again. He has slowly become more relaxed and creative as he learns the posing ropes. Nice. But indeed it was to be his last evening modeling for us, as the summer winds down and soon he will be off to school. But I did discover his name, Kobe, like the Lakers’ famous basketball player. Ha!

Additionally, I had also heard that last night was going to be our last evening at the kasteel (!) but in fact, that’s next week. 😦 Turns out, is was only a summer lease as there is no heating in the place and barely enough electricity for some spot lights, so we will have to go elsewhere. Apparently a new location has already been found – and with a year’s lease. Though sessions will not begin again until the end of October. OK.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon tightened with pastel on tinted Canson paper. 32 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon tightened with pastel on tinted Canson paper. 32 x 50 cm.

Three minute gesture study. Charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute gesture study. Charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Back to tonight. It was one of those evenings where for some reason it took me awhile to warm up. The first half did not yield any keepers but the second half did. I had purchased some new Canson paper in a grey-brown hue which I was eager to try out. The two fifteen minute studies displayed here are from that batch. Since it is a lighter tonality than the sepia I have been using, I can see that in the future I will want to leave enough time to zap in some shadow accents, too. As it is, I feel these two displayed here are quite successful though a little too light overall in tonality.

As the evening progressed I found myself repeating an artist’s mantra that a friend of mine who studied at the Ecole de Beaux Arts back in the seventies once shared with me:

  • mise en page (placement on the page)
  • circulation de la lumèire (circulation of the light)
  • ne tombe pas dans les détailes (don’t fall into the details)

The first one is appropriate for any two dimensional drawing (like the three minute gestures) but the second two are especially useful for the fuller development of any drawing (for example, the fifteen minute poses included here). Also, you do not need to restrict yourself to figurative work to apply these rules. They apply to abstraction and can help you to evaluate why a good abstract piece actually works – when it does. And, as I think about it, I would add a fourth: the appeal of texture. En français: l’attrait textuel?

The Schipdonk Canal. Watercolour on cold pressed paper. 6" x 12"

The Circle Game or Homage to the Circle

I returned to Ruskin’s “The Elements of Drawing” this summer. (It’s always good to start anew and never assume that you know whatever you think you know – because most likely, you don’t) So as I was playing around with watercolours, Ruskin suggested creating shapes and filling them in, beginning with the most basic of shapes, the circle. I was creating these sun-like shapes on a landscape oriented pad, 6″ x 12″ and immediately wanted to superimpose a real landscape over it. So I did.

The Schipdonk Canal. Watercolour on cold pressed paper. 6" x 12"

The Schipdonk Canal. Watercolour on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″ SOLD

The first in the series, was of a scene along the Schipdonk canal somewhere around Eeklo. Since I thought it turned out rather well, I thought, hmmmm…., this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship? I liked the serendipitous contribution of the sun-like circle, compositionally and chromatically, enhancing its one-point perspective. I also liked the idea of doing the landscape in a simplified colour scheme  of two complimentary colors. I began to imagine doing more, particularly of my favourite scenes around here.

Farm on the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Alizarine Crimson and Thalo Green Light) on cold pressed paper. 6" x 12"

Farm on the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Alizarine Crimson and Thalo Green Light) on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″

The second in the series then is of a farm along the Damse Vaart that I have painted in the past. I really like the sweet, afternoon light on the farm buildings in the middle ground but have struggled to make it an interesting composition. Would this circle approach help? I decided to try it with a green/red palette, The result was OK, but compositionally, still rather static, so I enhanced the golden circle with an external wash of purple. It felt pretty rad. 🙂  

Framed. $50 or 50 Euros plus shipping and handling.

Bend in the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Thalo Blue and Burnt Sienna) on cold pressed paper. 6" x 12"

Bend in the Damme Vaart. Watercolour (Thalo Blue and Burnt Sienna) on cold pressed paper. 6″ x 12″

Well, OK, what’s next? I have plenty of favourite spots around here, so I chose another one further along the Damse Vaart, this time at its bend (which I have also painted in the past). I ended up doing three different versions of it: the first in a ‘normal’ colour scheme’ (boring!); the second in Thalo Blue/Burnt Sienna but with a horizon line that was about a 1/2″ too high (ugh!, toss); and the last one (pictured here) with the Blue/Sienna colour scheme but a lowered horizon line ( it finally felt right chromatically and compositionally).

Framed. $50 or 50 Euros plus shipping and handling.

Luckily these small experiments are easy to do so there’s more to come. Stay tuned…

Please contact me if you are interested in either of the DaamseVaart pieces.

Conté crayon on Canson tinted paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Figure Drawing, August 8, 2022

Conté crayon on Canson pastel paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon on Canson pastel paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Conté crayon on Canson tinted paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute study. Conté crayon on Canson tinted paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Tonight we had another new model. New to us but also new to being a model for figure drawing. So, besides setting the length of the poses, Patrick, our new co-ordinator, does not tell the models what to do. (Bruno our last maître didn’t either) It’s always best to let the model sit, stand or lay in ways that are comfortable to them. Then we figure out how to make that interesting.

 

All that being said, there are models who intuitively understand what makes for a good pose. In that context, our new guy seemed to possess a comfortable bodily solidity so that the poses he took, though extremely simple and without any contrapasto or inner movement, were quite interesting to draw. That was my experience at least. These are a few fifteen minute studies as well as some three minute gesture drawings.

Three minute sketch, charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute sketch, charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute sketch, charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute sketch, charcoal on tinted sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute pose.Conté crayon tighten with pastel on toned Canson pastel paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Figure Drawing August 1, 2022

Fifteen minute pose.Conté crayon highlighted with pastel on Canson paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute pose. Conté crayon highlighted with pastel on Canson paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute pose. Conté crayon highlighted with pastel on Canson paper. 30 x 50 cm.

Fifteen minute pose. Conté crayon highlighted with pastel on Canson paper. 30 x 50 cm.

We were so lucky to have the same model again tonight.  I smiled to see him and could observe over the course of the evening that he was a little more relaxed this time. He even brought his girlfriend and the two of them modelled together during the second half.

All that being the case (the first half or the second) I did not feel that I had a very successful catch for the night. The double session drawings did not play out for me. (Both were very sweet but unsure how to make such a venture interesting for us to draw.)

Three minute pose. Charcoal on toned sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Three minute pose. Charcoal on toned sketching paper. 35 x 50 cm.

Displayed here then are a few that made the grade.