Dark & light, an art day

[amberdreams]

My artist friend Lois, who I met last year when we both painted pigs for the sculpture trail, makes a living by running art workshops as well as by selling her paintings and papercuts. I've been thinking about trying one of her workshops for a while now and when I saw she was running one relatively close (only 30 mins away by train), and that it was about working with dark and light tones, I thought I'd give it a go.
Teaser

I had a lot of fun and was realy pleased how these turned out. Well, apart from Death, because though Lois thought it was the best - i.e loosest and most 'powerful' - I can't get past the fact it's all wrong proportionally. LOL.
The idea of the workshop was to use the mid tones of the paper itself as part of the picture, so we had to start by laying down all the light areas, then the darks, and leaving the paper to show through for the rest. I do like that effect, that automatically made the art look more dynamic than my usual efforts.

I'm a sad bimbo, I'm showing easel pics here because I was excited to be working in an art studio for a change! LOL

So this is the one I did first, this morning.

I was really chuffed with this, because I've tried drawing Hiddles before, and it looked nothing like him, whereas this, though it is'nt perfect, is, I think, recognisable.

Then after lunch I attempted to capture Death (sorry Julian, your nose isn't really that long, honest!)

And because Lois said she thought I'd done enough on Death, and because he was scaring the other people in the class, I moved onto something prettier...
Yup, Dean.

I think it looks a bit better cropped, mainly because I got his posture wrong.

I can see there's stuff not quite right with Dean and Tom (Death is just so wrong it's not worth worrying about LOL), but I was still feeling pretty happy on the way home. These were all much larger pieces than I'd usually attempt. Tom is on A3 size paper, the other two are A2. I've never used these chalky-soft drawing pencils before, or the soft pastilles we used for the darkest darks, and the creamy highlights, or a stand up easel either. So basically, the whole day was well outside my comfort zone!

In November Lois is running a workshop on repurposing a canvas, with acrylic speed painting as part of the menu, so I think I might try that one too!

Comments

[be-my-precious.livejournal.com]

it's true! we're used to seeing people with some altered proportions, so when you draw them it's easier to go "outside the lines" to capture the differences they have from a perfectly proportioned face.

problem with all that, as far as i can tell (for myself), when a person has those magical proportions, we're so used to altering them, so it's very hard to keep with proportions. a lot of the times for me is that i'll tend to add something out of the ordinary, and that doesn't exist to help me move on with the rest of it. but then, of course, i look at the final and it's never right.

[amberdreams.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds familiar!