Time Passes in the Blink of an Eye

And suddenly a week more than a week as slipped by. I'm really busy with work, my angels and acrobats course, visiting family and getting ready to go away for Easter.

Here are a few images to be going on with...

Anne Street, Bradford

More Sketching in Costa Coffee, Shipley

And Yet More...

Shovelling Snow

Testing PITT Brush Pens

Still Sketching

The weekend was just too full for me to catch up on my blog posts. Friends to catch up with and more mundane tasks.

I have been sketching all the way through, some better than others. And one sketch was started on Monday but not finished until Thursday.

On Mondays I teach a Pilates class in the evening. Last Monday I arrived a bit early and began a sketch out of the window looking towards Bradford University and the city centre. Almost as soon as I had started, women from class began to arrive. I didn't get very far, just the foreground. However, I also teach a yoga class for older women in the same room on a Thursday, so I had half an hour or so to finish what I had started. I added the colour later.

Bradford Skyline

At the moment I'm experimenting with how much colour I put on sketches. I deliberately left the foreground uncoloured. I intend to play with more and less colour in future sketches.

Later on in the week, I did my usual session at Costa Coffee, and added some sketches from the pub as well.

Back at Costa

Down The Fighting Cock

And then on Friday, it was back to Hive in Shipley for another two hours of figure drawing for the Angel and Acrobats course. The model for Fridays session was Izzy again. We were doing a lot of quick, gestural sketches this week. I spent most of the session working in a sketchbook that is hard to scan, so I may try taking some photos if I have time this week. I did do one sketch on a piece of loose paper. This one was about looking for big shapes rather than outlines.

Izzy in Ink

And then we had some fun with an exercise that helps build teamwork as well as relieving some of the attachment we sometimes have to our artwork. Johnny, a student from Leeds Met University on work placement, kindly agreed to sit alongside Izzy for the last pose. For this exercise we worked in groups of three on two drawings. Using different coloured pastels, two people worked on the two drawings while one person observed. After a minute we all moved on one place, and kept moving each minute for about ten minutes. It was great fun, and all of the pairs of drawing had very different emotional content depending on the relationship of the two figures.

Izzy and Johnny

We finished the session with a ten minute play with some tin foil, making figures based on some of our gestural drawings from earlier.

Tin Foil Figures

(apologies for the photo quality)

Finally, on Sunday I had a play with a new fountain pen. I need to get some waterproof ink so I can put  colour washes over it without the ink flowing into it.

Black Cat on the Rug

Keeping up the Practice

The no slacking off rule was easy to keep because there was a Saturday People session this week. For once I actually got up early on Saturday morning to go to the morning session. This meant that I had two days of two hours of life drawing. Joseph, the model, was very good. The first hour was broken into three twenty minute poses and after the break, we had an hour long standing pose.

First Pose of the Day

Number Two

Last Twenty Minute Pose

Longer Standing Pose

The three shorter drawings were done with a 6B graphite stick, and then I switched to charcoal for the longer drawing. This is all sticking firmly in my comfort zone. Now I'm back into the habit of the drawing sessions, I will have to get back to challenge myself a bit more.

Sunday was sunny, if rather cold. We decided to make the most of the sunshine and get out for a walk. I took some sketching materials, with a plan to do some thumbnails rather than full blown sketches. I concentrated on the clouds, which were dramatic, demonstrating Yorkshire skyscapes at their best. Since I enjoyed it so much, I've done a few more this week.

Cloud Thumbnails 1

Cloud Thumbnails 2

Cloud Thumbnails 3

Getting Back into the Saddle

Life really got in the way at the beginning of the week. For a few days, I couldn't find the time to fit any sketching in. When I slack off it shows. Or another way of putting it, daily practice pays off.

It was Wednesday before I finally got back into the saddle, and I think it was a couple of days before I was properly back into the swing of it. I attempted a couple of sketches in Costa Coffee in Shipley before work, but was too ambitious. Sketching people in the library made me forget just how much people in coffee shops move, and I tried to do long detailed sketches rather than get it down quickly. As a result I don't think these sketches are as successful.

Back in Costa Coffee

On Thursday I had to grab the time to draw when I could, and just drew what was in front of me. A house plant and my ever squirming cat.

Dragon Palm

Black Cat Sleeping. Again!

So this morning I was back at Hive for the Angels and Acrobats course. Today we were working on drawing from the figure. We had a great model, Izzy, who was wonderful to draw. There is a great range of experience of the class participants. Some people haven't done any drawing from the figure before, and needed to start with the basics. So for the first half of the morning we concentrated on one pose. In the second part of the class, Izzy held a number of different poses for us to work in a more gestural way (and she added a tutu! which was fun). The added wings in some of the sketches were purely from imagination.

Izzy at Hive 1

Izzy at Hive 2

Izzy at Hive 3

Izzy at Hive 4

Izzy at Hive 5

I think I'm finally getting back into my stride. Just have to make sure I don't slack off again!

On My Birthday

I'm going to make this quick. Not because it's my birthday, but because it's Monday, and on Monday I work a lot.

I was going to post over the weekend. In the end it was taken up with life stuff and visits from friends I haven't seen for a long time. So here I am on Monday...

First up is a couple of scans of sketches. I did put some colour on the city park sketch and like it much more than the original. My boyfriend thinks the original captured the bleakness of the City Park. For a park, there is very little greenery.

City Park in Colour

On Thursday, I was in Shipley Library again with less time than usual to draw. I did a couple of sketches of people on the internet. They don't stay quite as still as the men reading.

On the Internet

As I mentioned at the end of last week, I started a course on Friday morning At Hive in Shipley. It's nearly always the case that the first session of any course that gets outside funding is a paper chase. This one was no exception. Now we've got all of that out of the way, we'll be able to really get on with the fun. Rachel, the tutor, did manage to get the paperwork done with in time for us to have a play with the two different raku clays that will be available.

To break the ice (as some people had no clay working experience at all), she divided us into two groups and gave us fifteen minutes to produce a tableau. She gave each group a different brief. For my group it was Swan Lake, and for the other group it was an illegal rave. The intention was to let us just get the feel for the clay and for the pitfalls of constructing figures.  There were no expectations, and no one had to save the figures they made unless they wanted to. I did because they will be useful in later weeks as test pieces.

Figures

I'm going to leave you with a couple of shots of raku pieces from a previous course.

Vessel with Horsehair

Glazed Raku Vessel