Sunday, February 28, 2010

A New Commitment to my Blog

As you see, I haven't posted to my Blog since last October.  Trying to control the layout of the blog while also trying to upload several photos of paintings was exceedingly frustrating, so I just let it go and concentrated on other things.   The fall and winter have been very busy with quite a bit of painting and an exhibition at the Lafayette Art Museum, in Lafayette, IN.

In the last month or so, I've also gotten interested in drawing from the figure.  Since I have the most wonderful handmade drawing paper available when ever I want it from Twinrocker, you're probably wondering why I haven't been drawing on a regular basis.  All I can say is that I was so excited to be painting in oil that I didn't even think of spending serious time drawing.  The Lafayette Art Museum offers a Drawing Guild once a week where anyone can draw or paint from a model, and the group shares the model's fee.  I started to do this and am getting "hooked" on the delight in translating the gesture and energy of the model in raking light onto a sensuous handmade paper surface.


I'll post a drawing each day for a few days that I've done during the past month.  This first one was drawn with Prismacolor Verithin pencils, Black #747 and Terre Cuite #745.  The paper is Twinrocker "Yale", 100% cotton rag, Text weight, Coldpressed surface.  I "toned" the surface of the paper with a very,very pale Yellow Ochre watercolor wash in which the pigment is allowed to settle into a lovely irregular pattern as it dries on the paper.  This gives the paper surface a beautiful visual depth and also adds a very slight, sensual ripple to the paper surface (as the paper shrinks slightly from the drying of the watercolor wash), making the paper have a beautiful aliveness to it.  For me, it's much more fun to draw on this type of surface than a completely flat, anonymous one.

Well that's about all for today, I'll post another one tomorrow.  I hope you enjoyed this blog and will share my blog site and forward this blog to friends who might enjoy it also.  I'd appreciate receiving any thoughts you have or comments on this drawing if you'd like to share.  You can see more of my art work on my web site at www.kathrynclarkfineart.com.