Brown Nude

Oh Hello there!

Another nude.

I think there is something a bit wrong with her knee, but I like the line of her stomach and breast and I like the volumes created with the scratching and hatching of paint and chalks.

I gave this to my friend Mary One (she got her spake in first!) as a present for her thirtieth birthday. In fact i gave her a token that entitled her to come to my house and pick one out of any of the paintings or drawings off my walls or out of my attic. So she picked this one herself.

It is always hard to try and imagine which drawing someone else will like - taste is so personal. As it happens this is certainly one I might have picked myself. So I am glad that she also liked it.

I enjoyed drawing this. I liked the way of working quite quickly, splodging on paint and then working feverishly back into the darker colour with the white chalk to raise the highlights. Drawing on a brown ground helps to make the highlights stand out also.

I am going to boast a little bit here by the way - i drew this while in college and one of my tutors said that it reminded him of a Picasso drawing! Well, How's that! High praise indeed. I know what he meant - it does have a certain character of the type of drawings that Picasso did at a certain time of his life but I also realise that there is absolutely no comparison in Picasso's ability to draw compared to mine. He wouldn't have a wrong knee anywhere unless he was drawing one of his dismembered women - which, of course, was done on purpose.

To be honest you should be able to draw properly before you start to muck about with your subject, however i usually just start mucking about first, because i want to. I still have a bit more practice to do really - get those 10,000 bad drawings out of me!

By the way - and i know that this is an Irish obsession - the weather has unsettled again. I will never get a job in the Meteorology Office!