Monday Drawings

A Selection of 2016 Monday drawings

Erin, pastel on paper 6 x 6

Since the New Year I haven't missed a Monday morning.  I get to the venue early, to help hang the plastic  in front of the window, to roll out the rug and to get a space on the side of the room where you can see the model.  If you are on the other side the model is backlit. Sue organises the sessions and we usually have some fast poses 1-2 minutes or 15 mins of a moving model and some longer poses, 10 - 30 minutes.

We have a range of models (in terms of age, hair colour, height, size, flexibility, agility). Many of the models have been coming for as long as I have been going (more than 15 years). Erin has been modeling for us for a year or two.  She can hold a pose in standing but doesn't 'fold' well.

Like Erin, Marilyn is athletic with long legs. Marilyn never moves and is always enthusiastic to push herself to hold poses until her feet turn blue.

Marilyn, pastel on paper, 6 x 6

Esme, pastel on paper 6 x 6

Esme has modelled for us twice.  Like the other two, she is brilliant to draw. She makes strong poses. Each model has her own character (we have a few men too) and for me, the trick is to stay loose enough to capture it and to avoid getting bogged down by the local colour and the setting.

Peace, Energy and the Turquoise Muse

Turquoise Muse - Pastel on paper 6 x 6

Now that I have made a few pattern studies using my new muse: the fabric beads, I notice that arranging the fabric to create drama and interest is like building a nest.  I'm thinking colour, light and energy.  It's quite a restful phase in working. When I draw I find it is chaotic at first and then I find a peace in the image as things start to coalesce. I think keeping the drama and energy and suggesting peace is what I like about this new series.

Resolution number one: paint more

Oriental Bouquet in January 30 x 30 oil on canvas

I sanded down a painting that was tight and unresolved from last spring and tried to apply what I'd learned from a small pastel drawing .  The drawing was done from life and much of the set up remained. I painted quite thickly at the start of last week and it was only dry enough to return to today. In the interim my ideas had moved on, the flowers had changed and I had begun a necklace series. 

In the same way that local colour can be a barrier to making the most interesting drawing, the objects in front of you can be too. Sometimes invention is the only solution.

initial 6 x 6 pastel drawing: Freesias and Kimono

Textile studies

Often I buy things for the pattern and colour.  I don't have expensive tastes, most of my shopping takes place in charity shops and car boot sales.  I know I will use them in a drawing at the least, so I gather stuff. 

My mother, Janice M Moss,  makes fabric beads with delicious patterns in luscious colours and I wear them most days.  People stop me and comment on their beauty. 

I often mention that the I find it tough to navigate between figurative and abstract and when I was thinking about what I wanted to do this year, one of the ideas I had was to draw and paint figuratively about textiles in a way that would create abstract designs.  I thought the necklaces might be a good place to start. 

The cloth under the necklaces this time is a vintage bathrobe and a Mexican shirt that has a tiny headhole that makes it impossible to wear.   The drawing really is this dark but what you can't see in the scan is that the ground was made with metallic pigment that shimmers, so the circles, which shimmer in real life shimmer in the drawing a bit too.

I loved making this drawing so will revist beads.

Begin again with what you know

It's my first day back to the rhythm of what I do. So I began with what I know very, very well. This is where I stand to prepare food and it is the place where outside and inside merges, where if I am lucky I see the owl fly, the moon rise, the night fall.  I got bogged down by local colour a bit… why do I do that? But I'm satisfied by the rhythm and that was what I wanted to find today.

Drawing in drawings

When I was in my teens I learned that anything is a still life and any place is an interior or a landscape.  You just have to look hard to see the magic.  We had a new model, Esme, last week.  It is hard to draw someone new.  But it's also exciting.  Someone like me, who enters into every drawing as though I have never drawn before, really has no idea what will happen when the new model begins to emerge on the page.  Local colour is repetitive… it's the same rust coloured cushion, the same white radiator, the same grey brown floor.  I shift the colours one direction and the other colours follow, if I'm lucky.

Yesterday I turned the page with Esme to the front of my pad and put it next to a new jug of flowers  I'd treated myself to.  I found a scarf I'd bought in Edinburgh at a second hand shop, a bowl from a different charity shop, my scarf and gloves and celery-coloured pumpkin I'd grown. I love the chaos of finding the rhythm and the energy without drawing the forms. Both drawings are 6 x 6"

I also love taking drawings or books and using them as objects in subsequent drawings!

Colour to enliven a dreary day

Market Flowers and Silk

I had some errands in town and while there couldn't resist some flowers at the market.  The man who sells the plants and a few bouquets is such a sweetie, who could walk by without a purchase.  I was imagining the colours I'd pair with the flowers as I drove home on this grey windswept day. I was a bit frustrated that it was already getting dark when I got in from walking Lyra, but nothing like my boxes of pastels to chase away the December doldrums!