Master artists -- then and now, here and there

The bright colours!  The repeated geometric elements -- like cuddly mojis!  The all-over design!  It's big news here this month with the Vancouver Art Gallery's exhibit of famed Japanese artist Takashi Murikami.  But no, the image above -- although strikingly suggestive -- is not an original Murikami.  It's the collected scrapings and splotches from my palette.

So it's not surprising that I'm far less interested (very far; very very far) in this current VAG exhibit than in my on-line art class, as we wend our way through Western art history.  The overall plan is to focus in one way or another on a different artist a week for every week of 2018.  It's an ambitious pace, but not as frantic as what you'll see here.  Do click on the link -- it's an amusing must-see.

"Wending our way" is short form for a rather meandering chronology and a pleasantly unstructured curriculum in which everyone does what they please with each week's lesson, using -- or not using -- the week's demonstrated medium.  Here's what I did in the four weeks of February.

First week, the subject was Botticelli and his familiar "Birth of Venus" and the suggested medium, encaustic -- a wax process in which I have no interest.  I decided to opt for "A Neighbourhood Botticelli" -- a painting of Sara, the local pub's lovely young waitress who cheerily dispenses coffee to our small group of retirees.  I made a quick memory drawing:

-- and then started to paint, continually correcting my tones and placements.  OMG!  Then the week was ending, and I was lost in the dark world of The Night of the Living Dead.

What the heck.  I submitted it as my homework -- there are no rules, no deadlines,  no grades, but I'm pressing myself to stick with the weekly schedule.  After posting, I continued to fiddle some more, achieving this slightly more respectable version:

At last sighting (this morning), "Zombie Sara" has been completely obliterated with a layer of grey paint, awaiting a future rebirth -- like Venus maybe.

On to Week 2, with Albrecht Dürer as the subject artist and charcoal as the suggested medium.  I'd found a fabulous painting of  Dürer's austere father as my model:

 I worked quite conservatively with charcoal pencil:--

...and then let loose with a little more drama, achieving a very un-Dürerish result. 

I was still then posting to the class Facebook site and put up my final version with the message:  "Drawing after 'Portrait of the Artist's Father'.   But which artist?!?   Looks more like Caravaggio."

Moving right along to Week 3 on 18^th century German artist Anna Dorothea Therbusch.  No, I'd never heard of her either, and she's worth reading about.  The lesson touched on her self-portraits, and we were invited to do our own -- about which I had mixed feelings.

To acquaint myself with some of  Therbusch's challenging head and neck angles, I did a quick sketch of her "Dionysus."

And then a more carefully drawn self-portrait -- which told me I needed either a haircut or leaves in my hair, à la Dionysus:

For my final careful drawing, I worked from this gorgeous Therbusch painting, "Magdalena."

I'm still intrigued by the painting -- Is she counting on her fingers?  Who's inviting her to look in the mirror? -- and I'm pretty satisfied with my four days' meticulous work.

Then to the last week of the month and the 19^th century painter John William Waterhouse.  You might not know his name but you'll surely recognize some of his paintings, one of which -- "The Lady of Shalott" -- was the lesson piece.  My contribution to the class was this link to Loreena McKennitt's lovely song based on Tennyson's poem, and then I jolly well went off on my own tangent.

Remember my fascination with the carved female faces atop the viola da gamba instruments I heard last October?  Some of the same musicians, members of The Vancouver Viols consortium, gave a concert two weeks ago, and I showed up like a groupie, sketchbook in hand.

-- and then I put down my pen to be enchanted by the music.  The instruments were beautiful, but this time only one had a carved head at its top.  And it was magical!!  Right in the middle of Chinese New Year:-- a Chinese-Finnish creation with a dragon's head! 

I couldn't leave that dragon alone and spent my class time in the days that followed using the photo to paint "Playing with the Dragon" (copyright 2018)

I don't even care that only six people "liked" it on the class site.  I stand strong in my resolution to do my own thing in whatever way I please.  Meow.

Lined up for 2018 action

 One of my key resolutions for the new year was to get back to life drawing every other week at the Basic Inquiry studio.  It's the nuts and bolts of the game for anyone interested in drawing or painting the figure, as the artist Paul Klee has been one among many to testify:

 "The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions."

When I walked in the door at my first session in January, the model was doing his own warm-up -- so fantastic, I grabbed my charcoal stick and just tried to keep up with him, one informal pose after and on top of another (shown above).  Like many  of our models, he was a dancer and was just passing through on his way to an audition in Germany, collecting a few bucks along the way with his effortless poses.  Here's a 10-minute pose:

We artists or wannabes sit in a circle around the model's stand, and our half of the circle viewed his back for two of the three long (30-minute) poses.

When he faced our way in a final restful Zen pose, I found the front view very challenging:

 and decided to concentrate on his hand.

Although I rarely stick to my plan, I usually plot out what I'll aim for in each session.  Two weeks later, when we had another male model, I decided to start with smudge drawings for the 1-minute poses.  It's an easy recipe:  Splash down some thick smudges; then add lines for limbs.

I'd also decided to focus on hands, as I did in these 5-minute poses (with a foot, too!):

Eventually,... on to full-length views for two of the final 30-minute poses:

Not shown here is one dark and brooding head -- which even gave the model a laugh when I said to him, "I guess you never imagined that as a 20-something Japanese guy, you could be made to look like a middle-aged Italian."

I was happy to see a female model again in the early February session, and I needn't have worried about her anorexic body type.  She was superb, which generally means two things -- the ability to devise interesting/challenging positions and the ability to HOLD them.

This time, I did the 1-minute poses in a technique of alternating straight and curved lines -- an interesting way of looking at the body.

One of her 30-minute poses was a lovely seated view that  also gave me time to practice the difficult hand position.

Off to a bad start on the second long pose, I decided to begin again and just do her head:

Three hours of this kind of concentration and production is, frankly, rather exhausting.    Through the final pose, I'm usually longing for lunch and a nap.  I managed to stay awake for this last one, wondering if the model herself might doze off.