Heads must roll

When I did a recent glean of sketches from my life drawing sessions, I was pleased to salvage some rather nice head studies I'd achieved.  One of my virtual teachers (as I call those whose books I've learned from), Mary Beth McKenzie  wrote: "You must constantly challenge yourself.  Set ambitious goals and push your limits."

So I decided I'd try assembling four of them for a friendly coffee meet-up -- bodies included.

  

 

For several days, I was pretty pumped as I went downstairs to the studio each morning -- thinking that this foursome might really hit it off together.  As I pressed on, though, things started to get a little weird.

This image doesn't begin to describe how every stroke I made seemed to be the wrong one.  What to do???  Consult another virtual teacher -- wonderful BC artist Robert Genn (1936-2014), whose artist daughter Sara carries on with his  biweekly "Painter's Keys" newsletters.  It happened I'd recently read a post that she'd republished from her father's archives on a learning experience he called "The 37 Club."

The objective? Push yourself to do a painting with only 37 strokes of the brush.  OR, do a painting in 37 minutes.  OR, do 37 paintings in a day.  Whatever.

Okay.  Why not?  I could devote 37 strokes to each face.   And I did that.  Four faces x 37 + an extra 37 for the times I lost count x 2 cycles through the four faces.  Any way you add it up, it was not a magic answer.

 The spacey blonde looked more spacey than ever.

The successful drawing that I'd tried once before to transform into a painting continued to elude me.

The right-hand figure, although looking a little more congenial for a coffee companion, was hopelessly muddled in strokes of paint, pastel, and water-soluble crayon.

And the once-promising female on the left was clearly no Vermeer.

Help!  What to do, Virtual Teachers?   Richard Schmid replied immediately with this stern admonition:  "Never leave a mistake on the canvas."  In fact, this mistake was so pervasive........it was time for it to hit the cutting room floor.  For that matter, I've discovered that there's a whole world of possibilities in painting faces ON the floor -- check out "The Face on the Barroom Floor."